Soon after my first child was born six years ago, I sat in a doctor’s office with my wife and watched as the nurse couldn’t look me in the eyes. “Any concerns?” she said, asking my wife a list of question even though I made it clear I was the main caretaker who’d be attending doctor’s appointments.
Six years and two kids later, it’s still happening.
“How long’s he been sick?” a doctor recently said to my wife, even though I was the parent at the previous four doctor’s appointments.
I estimate that I attend over 65 percent of my kids’ medical appointments solo. My wife and I decided I would be the one to attend because I’m the parent with the flexible work schedule. I also don’t mind my kids’ crying after shots. But, sometimes, if I’m juggling multiple kids’ appointments in one day and it fits within her schedule, my wife will tag along. Then – poof – it’s as if I’m not in the room.
It can get to you, especially if you are a new parent. During my kids’ first year in daycare, my wife and I battled over who would attend the intro session. I was adamant I had to be there because I needed to make sure staff knew I was a dad they should keep in the loop. My fear of being cut out of my kids’ lives is real. I know – I did it to other fathers.
During my decade-plus working with children and families as a community and school social worker, I had a Microsoft Word file for easy access to parent contacts. Every time, I called the moms first.
It wasn’t because dads weren’t present – many were. It was because I was lazy and intimidated by them. Some kids even had single dads, who I’d call much less than single moms. The dudes made me nervous.
I’m not the only one: A 2023 Tufts study showed that 60 percent of the time, if school principals were asked to contact one parent in two-parent heterosexual households, they called mom. If they were told that dad was the go-to parent and mom was less available, 26 percent of the time, they still called mom.
Meanwhile, many dads are pushing to be more involved. According to Pew Research in 2019, dads spend three times the amount of time caring for their kids than they did 50 years ago. They consider parenting a core part of their identity, and
one in five stay-at-home parents is a dad. Yet, overall, women still carry the brunt of childcare.
“Care can absolutely be a burden, and it’s a lot of responsibility, but it’s also an essential part of what makes us human,” says “When You Care” author Elissa Strauss. “And when we deny men the ability to care, we’re denying them the ability to participate fully in humanity.”
Experts Featured in This Article
Elissa Strauss is a writer and the author of “When You Care: The Unexpected Magic of Caring for Others.”
Ted Bunch is the co-founder and chief development officer of A Call to Men, an organization “promoting healthy, respectful manhood.”
Jordan Shapiro, PhD, is a gender, sexuality, and women’s studies professor at Temple University and the author of “Father Figure: How to Be a Feminist Dad.”
Change is happening naturally, but slowly, she says, because more women are working and men need to thereby take on more than they previously might have, but “we need to take real steps to get fathers more involved, and we cannot do it through shame and blame.”
Most men weren’t given the tools to be caretakers, Strauss says. Meanwhile, “Women are just given vocabulary through the way that they’re raised. As much as we’re mad at men for not being caring, we don’t really give them a chance to care. And people still raise an eye over a male preschool teacher or boy babysitter.”
Growing up, I certainly wasn’t provided this vocabulary. When a new baby was born into my family, my stay-at-home mom handed them to my sister first. I was the one who was supposed to take over the family wallpaper business that my dad worked at six days a week, not be caretaker, so I came to believe that if I picked up a newborn, I’d break them.
I fell into caretaking after failing at the family business (turns out, my older sister would have been a better option). After graduating college, I followed my little sister to the daycare she had worked at for years. Kids are hilarious, so I never left the field, but as I rose in rank, I felt more and more distant from men who had jobs deemed more masculine by society.
To me, other men were inept at parenting and brutish. I took pride in not fitting in with them, yet reinforced the cycles that kept them from breaking free of the boxes society had placed them into.
These “Man Boxes ” – a term coined by the organization A Call to Men – are reinforced through society, telling us we need to be tough, emotionless, fearless, powerful, heterosexual, and in control. Because of them, men die 5.4 years earlier than women. We die by suicide four times as often. These boxes are steeped in violence and oppression, harming men, women, boys, and the LGBTQIA+ community.
And the entire time I worked in social work, I knew it.
But forming a close relationship with more than one parent took effort and facing my own fears of masculinity, so I put the burden on the moms, inviting them to planning meetings and calling them for emergencies, thereby reinforcing the gender boxes I claimed to despise. With dozens and dozens of cases, eventually I collapsed under the weight of paperwork. After years of internalizing trauma associated with my cases, along with the guilt I carried from knowing the role I played in it, I quit.
At first, I still worked with kids part time, providing them with the care I wished I could have given them when I was overwhelmed at the school, but after I started my own family, I left the field completely, becoming a stay-at-home dad. But when I attended doctor’s appointments and I felt the pride and joy of watching my presence soothe my babies as the nurse measured them, I recognized all I had robbed other men of.
There were so many things I could have done differently, but it would have taken systemic changes at the school. For me to have focused on incorporating dads, it would have taken guidance and support, including lessening my workload elsewhere.
This generation of dads is the first working to break free from the boxes killing us, A Call to Men co-founder Bunch says, and many of us are jumping in without any model. We may be underconfident in our abilities. Sometimes, we need a nudge.
Caretaker culture is often gendered. Schools should avoid putting “mommy” in any event titles, and volunteer opportunities shouldn’t be overly female-coded or only held on weekdays, when working parents can’t attend, Strauss says. Ideally, a diverse crew should be invited into the PTA. “Your kid’s gonna have a fuller, richer experience at [school] if they see that dad’s there volunteering too,” Strauss says.
Domestic work is one of the only places where women have historically been given authority, Strauss adds, and that can be difficult to give up. Even if moms do allow guys to take on more caretaking, they will be blamed if something goes wrong. If a child goes to school dressed inappropriately for the weather, it will be the mom who’s judged, no matter who provided the clothes.
Pushing for change is hard for everyone. It takes moms making it clear the guy is in charge and trusting him to back that up, and it takes men saying to doctors, “Hey, I need this information so that I can do the job,” Temple University gender studies professor Jordan Shapiro, PhD, says. “I am the caretaker.”
But this “beautiful moment” is “filled with potential,” Strauss says. “Cultural change happens a million incremental, intentional acts, and we all can do this.”
Today, when I roll into my kids’ school or doctor’s office and someone won’t look me in the eye, I wonder, am I being paranoid? I understand, it’s difficult for folks to break through these boxes we’ve been taught to stay in. Luckily, there are plenty of providers who don’t suck as much as I did, who treat me the same way they treat my wife.
If someone needs reminders, I gently tell them I’m the one on call. After three kids, I’m confident in my caretaking. Along with my wonderful wife, I’ve managed to keep these three kiddos alive and happy, and all three of them, regardless of sex, love caring for their baby dolls.
Related: How I’m Bringing “Dad Energy” Into My Role as a Queer Parent
Jay Deitcher (he/him) is a freelance journalist, former social worker, and dad to three kiddos. He loves writing and ranting about parenting, Judaism, comics, pro wrestling, addiction, and mental health. He received an MFA from Stony Brook University and has been published in Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, Esquire, Self, BBC, The Cut, and Vox.
