2013-05-19T23:46:36-04:00 Gideon Burrows http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=gideon-burrows Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Gideon Burrows Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2291870 2012-12-13T08:11:47-05:00 2013-02-12T05:12:01-05:00

Gideon Burrows http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gideon-burrows/
When my two were very small and I used to go to new baby clubs, I'd be asked if I got to see a lot of boobs.

Mostly I'd just laugh this stuff off. Sometimes, I'd even laugh along with it. But this week, I got to feel first hand how difficult it is to shake the sexual element when it comes to relationships between men who are hands-on in childcare, and the mums who dominate the world of children and school.

There are two girls in my four-year-old daughter's class who, like my daughter, also have younger brothers. As the girls have got to know each other in class, I've been thinking for a while how good it would be to get the boys together so they can play together too.

For a couple of weeks I've been holding back. When I plucked up the courage to approach their mums outside the school gate this week, there was a nervous quiver in my voice.

My fear was not these women wouldn't see the logic of having our boys play together and refuse. Rather it was that my invitation - for two women to come back to my house, while my wife wasn't there - might be taken as some kind of sexual advance.

The mums said it was a good idea, though did I detect a slight nervousness in their reply too? Later in the week I wanted to confirm, but held back from approaching again in case they through I was being just a little too keen. I certainly didn't feel able to ask them for their mobile numbers, so we could settle the details.

It was like being a teenager again, too afraid to talk to the girls in case I got rejected. (Only back when I was a teenager, I really did have other things on my mind.)

In the end, my wife agreed to be around for the start of the play date, so the boy-girl factor didn't feel so apparent.

This theme is one familiar to other involved parents I interviewed for my book on shared parenting, Men Can Do It.

As one full-time stay-at-home dad put it: "I can't walk up to a woman and introduce myself, it would feel like a come on. But women do it all the time with each other. I wouldn't make an arrangement to go round a woman's house if the husband was at work. You just can't get the sexual element out of it."

And it goes deeper. My daughter's head-teacher recently put out a call for parents to come and run the after-school book club, which being an author myself would have been right up my street. Except the advert described the "very eager group of girls" awaiting a new volunteer.

I decided it might be best for me to volunteer with the more gender mixed gardening club instead, lest someone get the wrong impression.

Perhaps I am being oversensitive. But if a hands-on involved father like myself is worried about the perceived sexualisation of my relationships at school, surely others must at least be thinking along the same lines?

Afraid that my involvement with mums, or with girls at the school, will be regarded as sexually motivated, it seems easier to take the option of not getting involved at all.

That's incredibly sad. It's no wonder one in four primary schools have no male teachers, and that there are just 48 men working in state funded pre-schools and nurseries UK wide.

How to break the deadlock?

I'm convinced the solution is for men to go ahead and ask for the playdates, and volunteer for the book club, whether it is uncomfortable for us or not.

For too long, men have excused themselves from the woman-dominated world of parenting and school, making any number of excuses for not being involved: work, social stereotypes, not being good at it, the perception of a sexual element.

That means these areas stay woman-dominated, and the vicious cycle continues.

Being visible and active as an involved father at school, even if it makes us a bit nervous or we worry that others will get the wrong impression, is the only way to demonstrate we can be trusted around children - yes, even groups of girls - and that any relationships we build with the mums of our children's friends can be purely friendly.

We have to demonstrate our competency with children. We have to show we can be interesting, engaged and knowledgable people for other parents - men and women - to talk to.

The more visible and active fathers become, the easier it will become for other fathers to overcome these barriers too.

It may be a little uncomfortable at the start, but if we want our children to benefit, fathers have to make the first move.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2242472 2012-12-05T04:27:01-05:00 2013-02-03T05:12:01-05:00

Gideon Burrows http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gideon-burrows/
As we enter seven or eight months of closely monitoring the Duchess of Cambridge's progress with her pregnancy, how her morning sickness is going, how many week's she's 'gone', how she looks, whether she'll have a natural birth and whether she's too posh to push, we should remember one vital thing: This pregnancy is happening to a father too.

We like to think all fathers are modern dads these days. Hordes of men, we're told, amble through parks with Baby Björns strapped to their chests, dutifully getting up in the night to bottle feed baby, and row-row-rowing the boat gently down the stream at playgroups the length and breadth of the country.

Except, where are all these guys? I call it the new fatherhood myth.

In the eyes of the media, in maternity services and for most of the British public too, pregnancy and birth are still something that happens to the mother. Men are bystanders, the bit players who deliver the sperm and blush with pride when his wife delivers the baby.

At an antenatal appointment with my wife, the nurse wordlessly pulled a curtain in front of me so that she could take her trousers down for an examination.

At antenatal classes, everything was aimed at the woman. The only comments reserved for the lads were to know where our car keys were at all times, and that we might need to cook for ourselves from time to time.

During labour of both of my children, I wasn't spoken to once by a midwife. I wasn't consulted (despite my wife being away with the fairies on remifentinil) when there were some complications with the delivery. After the birth of our kids, I was sent home because 'visiting time' was over.

This was 2008 and 2010, not decades ago. And by the way, midwives, my name is not 'Dad'.
The most recent strategic plan for the Royal College of Midwives makes clear just how much of a priority fathers are for their profession: "We hope that whether you are a researcher, a midwife, a student, or a woman using maternity services, that you embrace the challenge contained in this document."

In other words, fathers aren't important at all.

Where half-hearted attempts are made to engage men with pregnancy and birth, it's made very clear that those efforts are to benefit the mother and her baby, not to benefit fathers in their own right.

That men might have our own needs in the pre- , during and post-birth experience is not even considered. And if our opinions differ to those of our female partners? Forget it.

With such an attitude to men's role when it comes to babies, it's no wonder men excuse themselves so early on, only too happy to return to work after taking our two week's paternity leave. In fact, just under a third of men don't even take that.

This subtle separation at birth soon grows into a far wider gulf, leading to the mother as primary childcare and the father as breadwinner (even if both parents had earned the same before baby came along). It also leads to the huge pay gap between professional mothers and fathers, as well as reduced opportunities for promotion and responsibility for women with children, that men with children simply don't face.

It's time to turn this attitude to men in pregnancy and birth on it's head.

If we're really to make the new fatherhood myth a reality, then media, maternity services, women and men's own attitudes to our role with babies needs a radical overhaul.

While we're wondering very publicly over whether Kate will have a c-section, or breastfeed or take maternity leave, we should subject William to just as much scrutiny: Will he attend every antenatal appointment? Will he go to every antenatal class? Will he demand to stay overnight in the labour ward? Will he take his statutory two weeks paternity leave?

Most significantly - since the law now allows it - will he and Kate split equally the 26 weeks of parental leave they have to share? Will Kate go back to her work of being the future Queen, letting the future King stay at home with the baby? At least William and Kate can't claim - like most men do - that they can't afford to equally-split their parental leave entitlement.

There's very clear evidence that active involvement of fathers with their babies, right from the very earliest hours of their birth, makes a positive difference to the baby's future, the mother's health and wellbeing, and yes, the father's own wellbeing and life-satisfaction too.

The pregnancy and birth of the new royal baby offers a great opportunity to demonstrate to men and women the potential for parental equality and really involved fatherhood. Fathers need showing that men are just as capable as women when it comes to babycare.

And role models don't come much bigger than the future King.]]>