Men are worse at everything to do with parenting, says Mother & Baby magazine (with its all-male board of directors)
By Duncan Fisher
The other day I was dropping my daughter off to do some swimming training and on the table of the swimming pool reception was a copy of Mother & Baby magazine. Having rather moved beyond this kind of magazine (our girls are 13 and 17), I was interested to see how things have moved on in the 13 years since the girl I was dropping off to swim was born.
I discovered bad news: things have not moved on in the mummy magazine world, indeed, it’s worse.
There is hardly a nod in the entire magazine towards the existence of a male parent, other than one article: Dads think we’re clever. Mums actually are. Sub-title: “It’s time to face the facts, says Giles – women are the smarter sex when it comes to, well, everything about parenting.”
The article is nonsense – as a graduate in science I squirm when I see someone so unable to interpret research evidence. The argument is familiar. Men’s brains are different. They cannot multi-task like women. They cannot parent like women.* The editors have got a man to say this – as if somehow that puts the seal on it.
Two things upset me about this, and neither has to do with the infantalisation of fathers, nor the compliment of being told I am a genetically disabled parent while I drop off my child for her training. These things used to wind me up, but actually, personally they do me little harm. It is not really the impact on men that gets under my skin.
First, it is the agenda behind this. What this magazine and the advertising behind it are saying to women is that they cannot depend on their families. They are invited instead to lean on the providers of commercial products who fund the magazine – the cover of the magazine invites women to “meet their new support network” and that is not their family! This is a false promise. Families may be imperfect, men may be, but as sure as the eggs we all started off as, families are a better bet than anything else.
The development of babies’ brains and their preparation of children for a fulfilled life are dependent on the teamwork that goes on within their families and dependent on the innate skills and instincts that all families members have. This article and the whole idea that babies are mums’ work only systematically attacks this idea, and it is the impact of this on children that triggers the strongest reactions in me. It is time to see all this as a child development issue.
Second, this magazine promotes a deeply conservative agenda that asserts deep inequality between women and men. If only women can look after children because of biological inevitability, then it is right that men should run the world and the economy – including the company that owns this magazine, Bauer Media, the entire board of directors of which is male. So we have a women’s magazine, controlled by men, fielding a man saying that men are useless at looking after children.
I think it’s time to start exposing this agenda much more. This stuff is not good for children and not good for parents and we need to show why. This is where an alliance between mothers and fathers is most needed.
For the record, on multitasking:
There is no evidence that women or men are better at it; it all depends on whether or not we are in charge of a task and skilled at it. Women tend to be more in charge in the home.
Even if there were a difference between women and men, the difference in averages is tiny and we are all spread out along a spectrum. All it means is that there is a little bit less of a 50:50 chance that our partner is better/worse than us at something owing to gender, which is not terribly useful for understanding the situation in our particular family!
Human beings learn and the huge extent we can do this annihilates any tiny statistical differences that might exist.
Duncan Fisher co-founded the Fatherhood Institute to challenge how services only engaged with mothers. Most recently he has launched MumsandDadsnet.com as a father-inclusive alternative to parenting forums that are predominately mother-orientated. To learn more, visit the site and read this article about the launch.
This article was first published by MumsandDads.net on March 2nd 2014.