The Not-So Incompetent Father

Last month I was out to dinner with a bunch of mom friends while my husband stayed home with the kids. About halfway through dinner I get an alert on my phone that there is motion outside my front door. When I open the app, I see my husband leaving the house with both our kids, in their pj's, and headed for his car (it's 8:30pm, so this is a bit alarming to me). After sending a text asking him how it's going, he responds back that our daughter is having stomach issues and that we are out of pull ups so he has to take them to the store to get more.

When asked if everything was okay, I told one of the women I was with what happened, and her response absolutely rendered me speechless:

"Why didn't you make sure he had enough pull ups?"

When I say I was speechless, I mean absolutely, 100%, without words. I ended up just giggling a bit, then went back to eating. I couldn't figure out why it bothered me so much, until the next day when I had more time to think about it. Her question bothered me because why is it my SOLE responsibility to make sure we have enough of everything? Does she think my husband is not capable of tending to such matters? Does she think it's solely the mother's job to maintain the house and it's contents? Whatever her reason or belief, it did NOT sit well with me.

It's the end of 2018, people. Most men are perfectly able, and willing, to do things such as grocery shop, cook, clean, and, take care of the kids BY THEMSELVES (gasp!). In our house, if we run out of something (like diapers or pull ups), the blame is on both of us for not noticing it, not just me, and my husband knows this. When I got home from that dinner, he didn't yell at me or get angry at me for not having what he needed to take care of our kids. In truth, he laughed about it! In that moment he acted like a man and solved the problem.

So why would a friend, and fellow mom, assume this was my fault? I thought this way of thinking was mostly with the older generations, but she is the same age as me. Then I thought maybe it's because she is a full time stay at home mother that makes her think this way. If this is the case, then her question is valid because as a stay at home mom, these responsibilities generally fall upon her. But does that mean she can't expect help once in a while from her spouse? I mean yes, I too am home all day, but I'm working, just like everyone else, so I don't always have time to leave the house to run errands. My husband works all day, sometimes long hours, and would still stop at a store if we needed something. It's called teamwork. It shouldn't be expected of one spouse to be in charge of everything.

I can't believe we are going into 2019 STILL thinking there are "men's jobs" and "women's jobs." We have men who stay at home with the kids while their wife goes off to work everyday, and we have women seeking careers in fields that were once dominated by men (i.e. Technology Industries). Our society has come such a long way, but it seems our way of thinking hasn't caught up to modern times. Well, it's time to change that! So let's go into 2019 with the mindset that parenting is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and everyone needs to GET BACK TO WORK!