Is it just me that think's that its wrong when a dad refers to looking after their children as "babysitting the kids"
That's what today society has created. When do you ever hear a mother say she is babysitting her children. Never and where more likely to question her if she did. But when fathers say "sorry mate i can't as i'm babysitting" we just shrug it off like its normal.
We as dad's have just as much responsibility to our children as the mothers in their life and we should as a nation of parents start closing the parental equality gap.
Equality Gap
So how has society created this equality gap, well lets start with when a child is born.
Obviously a man can not carry a child to birth, that's human nature and i sure i don't have to explain this to you but we can do everything in our power to make it easier for your partner to get through the nine months.
preparing the nursery, accompanying your partner to appointment's or doing most of the share of house work and day to day tasks, what ever it is, it's the least we can do.
When the child is born and stress begins it's even more important that as a couple you team together to tackle the straining tasks of parenting like sharing feed times, changing mucky bums, winding and getting them to sleep and so on as these are the hardest and most challenging part of any relationship.
More and more dad's of the modern age are getting involved in the parenting of their children so why do we as a society not see this.
An employer has to allow a mother 52 weeks maternity and can pay then up-to 90% of their average earnings a week for at least 6 weeks of that and then for the remainder of the time they receive statuary maternity or 90% which ever is lower.
Now lets look at paternity leave for the dad, well it's quite a shift in balance as we as dads are entitlled to 2 consecutive payed paternity, which has to be taken at one time only and unlike mothers do not get full pay when attending antenatal appointments. Yes there is shared paternity that the UK government has brought out back in 2015 but this does not give employers a strong enough employment law to obliged to. So we settle for being the bread earner and let the mother do most of the day to day stuff at home and that is why ( at least in my mind) the parental equality scale rests mostly on the mothers side and we as dads are just the babysitter.
We need to wake up and smell the dads
I am a firm believer that shared leave shouldn’t mean the mother had to sacrifice her time, and that it is time the governments realised the importance of giving dads the time to bond with their children and to support the mother in those initial weeks. my partner had to have a cesarean wit both of her births and was not able to lift anything for the first two weeks, luckily for us she has a close family that helped her when i had to return to work but i can't say that would be the case for others. We as dads are parents too and are effected just the same so lets wake up society and teach the next generation how to balance the parental scales.
