Adventures in Double Standards

When I returned to work, many people asked me who was taking care of the baby. If I'd been a man, nobody would have asked that question. It's because women are supposed to take care of babies, whereas men are not. Even government studies define father care as daycare, not parent care! Additionally, fathers are portrayed as clueless incompetents, unsafe to leave alone with their children.

Fathers are painted as incapable buffoons in commercials, movies, books, etc. I've seen more commercials than I can count in which Dad can't control the kids and Mom saves the day (using the product being advertised, of course!). Movies get a lot of comedic mileage out of incapable Dad messing everything up while Mom is out. Mr. Mom is but one in a long line of such movies.

Combine this perceived Dad incompetence with the fact that childrearing is not a prestigious activity, and you have the reason why this stereotype is still pervasive. Women used to be perceived as incapable of rigorous academic work, for example, but because it was prestigious and rewarding, we fought the stereotype and entered into science (and many other fields). But many men feel no motivation to fight the incapable father stereotype, because if men were actually thought of as competent parents, then that would mean more (low-prestige) work for them.

So that leaves us with a society where a man taking care of his child is "babysitting," where my stay-at-home-dad husband goes to the store with our son and everybody asks "Where's your wife?", where people look down on him for making a choice that they wouldn't think twice about a woman making.