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Have you ever felt ostracized for being Dad? (feddit.uk)

submitted 9 months ago by Oneeightnine@feddit.uk to c/dads@feddit.uk

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One of the first things I noticed when we embarked on this great adventure was just how tailed to Mum everything seemed to be.

I get it, they're likely to be the ones doing the majority of the caregiving, but still, as a hands-on dad I couldn't help but feel a little...pushed out by things. Nothing massive for sure, but little things like how a good chunk of the online resources are written as if Mum is reading exclusively. Or how pretty much every baby group in my area is advertised as a Mum and Baby group. It's far from the end of the world, but it can be pretty intimidating and unwelcoming to a new Dad.

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[–] OfficeMonkey@lemmy.today 19 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I knew I was excluded and was generally okay with it... Until the kid was about four months old. Family went out to dinner. We were having a good time, baby needed changing, I grabbed him and MY diaper bag (yes, I had my own). I went to the restroom and discovered the only changing table was in the women's room.

I knocked, said hello, and went in. The only woman (teenager? College student? Younger than me, at least) who came in while I was changing the baby was polite and even offered her help.

But this US chain restaurant didn't even consider the possibility that someone other than a woman would change a baby. Come on.

[–] stiephel@feddit.de 4 points 9 months ago

Same thing happened to me in a German restaurant. I had to change my son in The ladies' restroom. To be fair, none of the women didn't mind me there, which was a relief.

[–] Patch@feddit.uk 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Mother and baby groups were definitely a gripe for me. I'm a part time worker who has 2 days a week on dad duty, and trying to find things to fill these days was a challenge. Almost every group (and certainly all the free/cheap ones) were explicitly mum socials which I wouldn't have felt comfortable gatecrashing. The groups I did find, which weren't explicitly "mum" groups, were still entirely mums other than me, so that took some getting used to (and some iffy looks).

Nursery was a bit of a pain for a while too; they'd basically never talk to me. I remember once when my lad got ill at nursery, and they tried to call mum but couldn't get through as she was driving a long way away for work. I was working from home that day 10 minutes from the nursery, but they never bothered to call me. I was furious when I went to pick him up at the end of the day and they said "we've been trying to call mum but we can't get through". Like, you've got my number, what do you think it's for?

[–] jabjoe@feddit.uk 1 points 8 months ago

Hope they brought themselves into the 21st century after that.

[–] Sacreblew@lemmy.ca 6 points 9 months ago

I still have my wife do babysitter coordination, to avoid me having to get the numbers of a bunch of teenage girls and texting them.

[–] Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 9 months ago

The only one that really got me was the mother and baby groups. Most of them didn't have enough information on the posters to know if it was mothers only, or if it was just badly named.

As it turned out, they tended to clash with existing baby groups that I went to, so it wasn't a massive problem.