An Open Letter To (Straight, Married) Dads From A Mom Coach
Why are you here?
Are you here to raise your family in partnership with someone you love?
I’m here because I have coached a few thousand moms and I’ve seen a vastly different idea of what partnership and parenting mean to moms and dads. I have questions. These aren’t questions for you to answer to me. I’m not the one who has to live with you.
Honestly, these aren’t questions my dad could have answered - and you could say I turned out fine. But they are questions that Adam can answer without missing a beat and that’s important to both of us. The issue is why are you here? Why are you in this relationship, marriage, household? Are you a father or are you a guy who lives with a mother and some kids?
Why is your wife or partner wondering why her husband does nothing to help her?
I don’t need the answers. The mother(s) in your life do. Your children do. You do.
What are the names of the people who care for and/or teach your children? What are the school policies? How long does your kid need to be fever-free before they can go back to school?
Who is your child’s pediatrician? Where are they located? What are their hours? What is their phone number? Does your child like them?
Dentist?
Optometrist?
What are the names of your kid’s two best friends?
What are their parent’s names?
What sizes of clothing and shoes do your kids wear? Where do you usually buy them?
What are your kids worried about right now? What are they excited about? What are they scared of? What do they want most? Who do they love?
WHY ARE YOU HERE? Are you here to raise your child in partnership?
How many times a week does laundry need to be done in your house so that no one runs out of anything?
How long does it take to clean each room in your house?
How does that change when your kid(s) are home/awake?
How often does each room need to be cleaned to keep things generally organized and household stress low?
How do you create a meal plan that takes into account everyone’s nutritional needs, allergies, preferences, what is already in your fridge and pantry, as well as the family budget?
What did your kids eat for lunch today?
What are the steps necessary to get each child from asleep to their first class in school each morning?
What are the values you are actively teaching your child each day?
What is age-appropriate behavior for your child(ren)? Age-appropriate expectations? What milestones should you be looking for next? What do you need to do to support your child in reaching them?
What are you doing to support your child’s emotional and mental health?
What tools do you need to learn in order to parent effectively?
What have you taught your children about how their bodies work?
What have you taught your children about consent?
What have you taught your children about gender, sex, class, and race?
Who are the family members and friends who understand and support your parenting style and choices? Who are the ones who undermine them? What boundaries do you need to set for the health and happiness of your family? Who will push hardest against them?
What is your babysitter’s name? What are they paid? How are they paid? What is their experience and background with children? Who else have they worked for?
What extracurricular activities would be most supportive of your child’s emotional growth right now? Physical growth? What would they most like to do? What supplies would be needed for each? What can fit in the family budget? What can fit into the family schedule?
What OTC medication does your child take for fevers? For colds? For stomach upset?
What activities, shows, foods, and comfort items are most soothing to them when they are sick?
Who gets the call from school or daycare when your child is sick or hurt?
When is the next parent-teacher conference? What are your concerns?
What are your plans for childcare during school breaks?
What are your personal criteria for summer camps/programs for your kid(s)?
WHY ARE YOU HERE?
What would you need to pack for your entire family to go on vacation to someplace cold for four days?
What would be the best time of day for your family to take a trip that involved flying?
What needs to be in your car for a trip lasting more than two hours?
What is your child’s favorite color?
TV show?
Book?
Movie?
Song?
Author?
Musician?
Toy?
WHY ARE YOU HERE?
Parenting is not a spectator sport. And far too many of the mother’s I coach tell me how much easier it is when their partners aren’t home because at least then there is no expectation that this time he’ll do something to lift the load.
If what you bring to your household is a paycheck, then why are you there? You don’t have to live there to support them financially.
Are you coming home, dumping your feelings about your day on your partner, sitting down to a table to eat, and then moving on with your night? YOU JUST MISSED ABOUT A MILLION STEPS, MY DUDE.
And honestly, I’m done. I’m over it. I’ve had it up to here with meeting brilliant, caring, thoughtful mothers who are working to heal their traumas, to give their children happy and healthy childhoods, and who keep running into a brick wall of husbands or partners who think that simply because they are doing more than their dads did they are heroes.
100% more than 5% is only 10%.
Parenting is complicated, exhausting, labor-intensive, logistical, emotional, mental, WORK.
Holding on to your personhood as a mother in today’s world is all of that and more.
So dads, my question stands - WHY ARE YOU HERE? Are you a father or are you a guy who lives in a house with some kids?
If you were Thanos-snapped tomorrow, how much of the daily life of your family would change?
This is not an essay asking you to help with the emotional load. Plenty of mothers have written about emotional labor, guides to how you can help more, about why saying “You should have asked” is bullshit, about how mothers aren’t actually better at this than fathers. It’s even been satirized in McSweeney’s.
I’m not saying you should help.
Help implies that all this is a mother’s job and you’re some kind of assistant.
RAISING THESE CHILDREN, AND EVERY SINGLE THING THAT ENTAILS, IS YOUR JOB, DAD.
Knowing all of the answers to all the questions above is your job. Knowing which ones apply to your family and which don’t is your job. Knowing that there are so, so many questions I left off the list (and also knowing the answers to them) is your job. And more than knowing - taking action to provide for your family is your job.
I’m not talking about providing financially. You don’t have to be there to do that. What are the things you provide for your family by being there?
Do you provide emotional stability?
Do you provide logistical support?
Do you provide physical labor?
Do you provide love and care?
Or do you provide another person she has to plan for, someone else to remind to go to the doctor, more laundry she has to do, more dishes for her to wash, more presents to choose, buy, wrap, and send to your parents for their birthdays, more schedules to work around, another person to clean up after, more asking and asking and asking to be seen, to be acknowledged, to be partnered?
If my husband doesn’t help me with the children, or when I’m sick, or with anything at all, that means that I am the sole provider of emotional and physical care taking. Can you see the toll this would take on your wife?
What is it that you actually provide?
Why are you here?
