Shared parenting, or lack of /rant

 (Rant alert).

The ever-brilliant Renee over at Womanist Musings recently wrote a post about how biology was not destiny. I can’t hope to explain succinctly so I suggest reading it yourself.

Thing is this. My biology does make me better at one or two jobs than my husband. He couldn’t have gotten pregnant. He couldn’t have given birth. He couldn’t have breastfed our baby.

But that’s basically it.

Now, I know there are one or two jobs that are “allied” with those things. So, for example, by being the lactating partner, certainly in much of the first year, it meant I couldn’t be apart from my baby for too long (unless I wanted what was for me extra, harder work in the form of pumping). This meant in turn, that it made sense for me to take as much maternity leave as possible.

(Aside: I am not anti the idea of “parental leave” rather than “maternity leave” at all but I do think discussions about it do need to take breastfeeding into account and often they don’t.)

That meant I ended up doing the baby-”duties” during the day when my husband was at work. Which again, I felt was fair enough.

It also meant I ended up doing the night feeds. Which again, I felt was fair enough. Until he got to about 16 months he couldn’t settle back to sleep without nursing, so I felt it was fair for it to be my job.

And that, my friends, is where it ends. That is the extent of the “destiny” to which my biology tied me.

We have: night-time nursing. Nappy changes whilst on mat-leave. Erm… that’s it. I even – even – accept that the fact I do paid work part-time meaning I am at home with my son part-time means I will be the one doing the tidying up after him, and the games we play together. I even may slightly, just ever so slightly, accept the guffins about prolactin and bonding, in the very, very early days.

What we do not have, what my biology has not tied me to, is this:

Washing and drying and putting away all the nappies. And the clothes. nd tidying the house from top to bottom. And washing the bath. And cleaning out the back yard of our dogs’ poo. And waking up every morning with the baby even if it’s five a.m. even if I’m working that day. And washing up after ever meal. And walking the dogs every day. And emptying the bins. And cleaning the kitchen. And doing all the “bits” shops. And sweeping up the dog hairs at least three times a day. And feeding the pets. And hoovering upstairs. And laundering all the bedding. And putting the bins out once a week. And… oh I could go on, but you get the picture.

And it seems to me, that herein lies the real problem, if you’re partnered with a man (and possibly if you are partnered with a non-lactating woman, too, but I have no experience of this). Because the truth is, there are some things your partner can’t do and only you can. Not many, but some. But it seems that it gets to the point where “you can do some baby things I can’t” = “therefore you should do everything else too”. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been told the only solutions are to either lose the first part of the equation (i.e. not breastfeed) or to somehow alter the first part of the equation (i.e. pump milk so partner can “share” the feeds, which conveniently ignores the fact that the work here is not equally split, and that the mother is still doing a job – pumping – which for some is actually harder than feeding direct in the first place!)

I realise I’ve gone and brought it all back to breastfeeding again and I have a habit of doing this. The fact is, to be quite honest, I think if I were bottle feeding I’d be in a very similar situation. I don’t believe that bottle feeding is this marvellous egalitarian solution to lack of shared parenting. I know many Mums who formula fed their babies only to find the promise of shared night feeds rapidly deteriorate under the guise of “but honey I’ve got to be up for work tomorrow!” (which funnily enough continued when both of them did paid work).

The problem is childcare is not paid and it is not valued in any other real, tangible way either. It is not appreciated and is certainly not matched with other work of equivalent value. I sometimes think about drawing up a table of every single activity I do during a 24 hour period and every single activity my husband does, and adding up who does more. My husband often says “but I do all the cooking! I do all the driving! (I can’t drive, and even if I could, we could never afford to buy or run a second car.) And I think, “yeah but I do x and y and z and a and b and c which more than makes up for these things…

Don’t even get me started on “I changed his nappy… for you“.

This was a rant, you were warned.