In my post, Adoption: Does Reluctant Spouse = Reluctant Husband?, John posted the following comment:

Hi Faith, interesting post. I am always amazed at the standard assumption that parenting is purely working with the child. It takes a place to live, and food on the table to parent also and that is a key part of parenting. Someone has to bring home the bacon, and they are parenting every bit as much as the stay at home mom. That is one tread that appears in most of the posts, "I am the parent, and he does other stuff'. No, he is parenting too, give credit where it is due. A part that must be especially frustrating for fathers in two parent homes is the attitude 'I have been caring for the kids all day long, now you are home from work and you need to take over'. He needs a break just as much as you do. John

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While John's comment was posted on the Hoping to Adopt blog, I am moving the discussion over to the Adoptive Parenting blog because the topic really applies to adoptive parenting.

I have thought a lot about this comment because my family is definitely one in which I do 90% of the hands-on parenting. While I agree that my husband's role in "bringing home the bacon" is parenting, too, I do believe that he needs to do more hands-on time as well. My husband gets home from work 90 minutes before our son goes to bed. We eat dinner, and my son has a bath before bed, so that leaves precious little time on a weekday for them to do anything together.

I know other families in which both parents work full-time and yet the mother still takes care of 90% of the hands-on parenting. This is particularly an issue with some adoptive families because the high price of adoption forces the family to need two incomes to stay afloat after paying for the adoption. Since both parents are bringing home the bacon, why is it only the mother taking the children to doctor's appointments, soothing them through nightmares, tending to the sick child, and the many other hands-on parenting tasks that are required?

I do not mean to turn this into a "father bashing" post because there are many hands-on dads who are very involved in their children's lives. From what I have read from John's many comments, he is one of those very involved dads. However, I also know many dads who cannot name the child's doctor and who refuse to watch the children very often while the mother gets a night off. In my opinion, that is not hands-on enough parenting for a child or the spouse.

Also, the cooking, cleaning, bill-paying, and other tasks that many mothers do are just as much about parenting as bringing home the bacon is. The difference is that all of these tasks were things that were being done before a child joined the home and will continue after the child leaves the nest. While the child is in the home, there are many additional responsibilities that are heaped on top of those chores that both the husband and wife had beforehand, so why it is that, in many families, only the wife takes on these added responsibilities?

The problem is that, in many families, the mother does not get a break while the father does. After the kids are in bed, the father has the freedom to watch sports or take down time in another way while the mother is folding laundry, paying bills, and numerous other tasks. Heck, when my husband is tending to our son for the 30 minutes between dinner and bath time, I am cleaning up after dinner and preparing lunches for the next day, which is hardly a break or down time from parenting for me.

Unfortunately, in many families, the lines are drawn, and this can build resentment in families. If my husband were to read John's comment, he would be agreeing 100%, and yet I get worn out by doing too much hands-on parenting and very much need a break myself. I don't know what the answer is, but I think this is a subject worth talking about.

Related Topics:

Adoptive Families category

Photo Credit: Lynda Bernhardt