Mom Asks If It Takes Two To Make A Baby, Why Do We Expect Only Mothers To Take Care Of Kids?

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The following account was posted on Facebook and published with permission from the original poster.

We went out with friends recently and my hubby was praised for being a “hands-on dad”, “helping” me take care of the baby. I responded, “Dapat lang jud nuh”.(That’s how it should be.) And so it dawned on me..how society places too much expectations on women.

It takes two to make a baby, but why do we expect only one (the mother) to take care of the baby? 

Why is a hands-on Dad taking care of the baby seen as “helping” the Mom when he’s just supposedly doing what he should be doing? It’s not “helping”. It’s called doing your part.

Apart from breastfeeding a baby, everything else can be done by the Dad (or someone else). So why do we only expect Moms to do it?

It’s as if moms, even first-time moms, are born with the knowledge of child care. 

Instinct, you say?

But what is instinct ba? Do you immediately know if your baby is crying because of hunger just because you have the so-called “mother’s instinct”? No, right?

'I just don’t think it’s fair to expect women to work and share the bills, and then expect her to do most, if not all, of the baby care.' -Gilvie Pioquinto

You develop that instinct after spending hundreds and thousands of hours taking care of your baby. And since it usually falls on women to be the primary caregivers, mothers develop the instinct to know how to respond to their child’s needs. Full-time dads have it too. Or the yaya (nanny). Or whoever is the baby’s primary caregiver.

Anyway, back to my point.

I remember a couple of months back when I went out to work from a local coffee shop. My Mom was worried, asking me “Who’s taking care of your baby?”

“Her Dad, who else?” I answered.

I just don’t think it’s fair to expect women to work and share the bills, and then expect her to do most, if not all, of the baby care. We split the bills, we split the chores.

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Although ideally speaking, the unpaid work of child care and household responsibilities should be shared by the couple—it doesn’t matter if the wife is working or not. Or you outsource it to a yaya or helper.

Never in my entire life have I clearly seen the burden placed on women until motherhood. You go through all the changes in pregnancy, the pain of labor and delivery, and then take care of your baby postpartum when you’re still healing yourself.

It’s just expected of you (since you’re a woman).

That's probably why I was a “child-free women" advocate before. The burden of rearing kids is immense. So why aren’t we expecting men to step up and be more involved?

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Dads changing diapers? That’s his job. Feeding the baby? He signed up for that. Bathing the baby? Good! He should do his part.

As we see more and more women in the workforce, hopefully we’ll see more and more men taking the reins at the domestic front too.

Men are just as capable as women; they’re just not expected to be.

Gilvie Pioquinto is a nurse turned digital marketing specialist who shares a four-month-old child with her husband.