If you give a dad a cookie...

I don't want to speak for all mothers or parents, but there are things I have witnessed in the way that people view mothering and fathering differently that I feel need to be addressed, before they make me gouge my eyes out in frustration.

- double standards, we has them -

So often I see fathers congratulated for showing up. Don't get me wrong, showing up as a parent is a great thing, but it is only the first step of parenting. He changes a few diapers or makes dinner or takes the kids to the park and he's Father of the Year? Why is it that when we see a mother do these things, it isn't considered special or extraordinary or worthy of a pat on the back? Mom could be at the park with the kids or the grocery store or the library and it's just considered normal.

When I was a checker, I'd occasionally see a mom out doing the shopping by herself and when she ran into people she knew, the first words out of their mouth after the usual hi and how have you been were, "So where are the kids? At home with [name of dad]?" or even worse, "Oh, is [name of dad] babysitting? Lucky you!" And yet, when Dad is at the store alone with the kids, he gets practically cooed at by every passer-by with a biological clock.

NORMALIZE THIS!

All too often, when I witness people talking about divorced/separated co-parents, their reaction to a mother having her child/ren two nights a week is that she isn't really much of a parent or is a deadbeat or must be lacking in some motherly instincts/abilities. The reaction to a father taking the child/ren for two nights a week is a shocked and impressed exclamation, "he has them EVERY weekend?" I've gotten this response from people about my ex and it blew me away. If our roles were reversed, I'd be vilified! Even worse if I ever had the audacity to move to a different part of the country for a period and left my child to live with his father in the meantime.

So yes, I want to see pictures and status updates about how your husband/boyfriend/co-parent wears the baby or volunteers in the classroom or takes the kids to the beach; not because you're tripping over yourself in unwarranted gratitude for him doing Normal Good-Parent Tasks, though, but to show that these things already SHOULD be considered normal for him to be doing. Every time they exert the bare minimum of effort and we gush about how UH-MAY-ZING they are, we're only short-changing them out of their role as a parent, and worse, short-changing the kid/s on the receiving end of such bare minimum parenting. Saying it's good enough is letting them off the hook from ever carrying more of the weight.

And as for how we treat moms... pleeeeeease give them a break and let them do their thing. This judging every single tiny thing they do thing really isn't helping anybody.

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