WITH FATHER’S DAY almost here (21 June in case you forgot), could one of the biggest gifts we give to our pops this year be to retire the hackneyed, out-of-touch phrase “hand-on dad” once and for all?
For me, the phrase does little but patronise fathers by normalising the celebration of the bare minimum of child-rearing, like changing nappies or pushing a pram.
In the spirit of Roy Keane – sure, why wouldn’t he do those things? That’s his job?
While well-intentioned, praising fathers for basic parenting feels reductive. It does nothing to address the greater imbalance of the mental load we know is a factor in 77pc of mums feeling overloaded.
There was a time when fathers were, by default, considered much more “hands-off.” They were not encouraged to do things like wear their babies in carriers or push prams in the park, and may even have faced slagging if they did so.
Dads and mums deserve better
As a child of the 80s, I grew up in a typical family that had traditional roles. My stay-at-home mum did the lion’s share of the childcare and household duties during the week, while my dad went to work.
He certainly helped; he changed nappies and gave bottles, but the day-to-day mental load, like pickups and drop-offs, doctors’ appointments, packed lunches, attending school plays and so on, mainly fell to my mum. In fact, the times when my dad dropped me off at school or made my lunch were so rare, they stand out in my mind for being fun and a bit chaotic.
In the last 40 years or so, family dynamics have shifted massively, as have the roles and expectations on fathers, and with those changes, the term “hands-on dad” crept into the discourse. How often do we read profiles of well-known or celebrity fathers who are described as being “real hands-on dads” for simply doing the basics, such as feeding or changing their infants or dropping their child off at school? The same would never be said of a mother.
Maybe there was a place for this “hands-on” phrasing at the start of the societal shift, praising fathers for getting more involved, giving them the support and encouragement required to keep them at it, but surely, we’ve gone past the need for faux praise for doing the bare minimum of parenting?
Or so you’d think, because even today, it’s hard not to fall into this way of thinking on an unconscious level. It might be looking at a father wearing his baby in a carrier or pushing a toddler in a pram and thinking to yourself, “What a good dad!”
Which he is, but you probably completely ignored the handful of mothers you passed doing the same thing, or worse, internally tut-tutted at her for not dealing with a toddler meltdown fast enough or being on her phone. I’m willing to bet these double standards have crept into all our thinking at some point.
Modernise our thinking
So, is it not high time that we shelved this out-of-touch messaging around fatherhood? What modern dad actually wants a pat on the back for ‘babysitting’ their own child or being dubbed a saint for doing the grocery shopping with unruly toddlers in tow?
According to Alex Trippier, couples coach and founder of the Be A Happier Parent podcast, the answer is not so cut-and-dried.
The dad-of-three, who has gained a cult following for his insightful videos which often address the mental load and couple dynamics of modern parenting, believes there is still some good to be found in the messaging of the “hands-on dad.”
“Fatherhood is facultative. It changes a lot more from culture to culture than motherhood does because motherhood is biologically restrictive and looks quite similar in the early years all around the world, whereas fatherhood looks massively different. So, in that praise of fathers, there’s a really important signal for men that this way of being is desirable,” he explains.
“If I talk to my female friends about this, they might admit that when they see a dad playing with his kids in the park, they stop and smile. Whereas mums playing with their kids are completely invisible,” he adds.
“And the thing is that has an evolutionary reason behind it. You’re seeing this male behaviour that is the thing that women need from men right now. And if we were to completely cut all that praise, what would happen?” he wonders.
Trippier argues that in a world where messaging for men is often muddled and led by toxic influencers like Andrew Tate, perhaps the “hands-on” dad message is “not necessarily a bad thing. We’re kind of signalling to men that this is, oh yes, we like this, let’s have more of it.”
I can agree with this logic to a certain extent, but still can’t help feeling that practically giving out medals to fathers for doing the basics is leading to an imbalance in parenthood. These downsides are ones which Alex understands all too well.
“Certainly now, men changing nappies, pushing strollers, it’s just not a big deal. For me, I was getting this kind of praise from the universe telling me I’m a good dad, and even my wife’s friends, and so my attitude to my wife was like, ” What’s your problem? Everyone says that I’m a great dad, but I was missing all the mental load piece,” he explains.
We know that the mental load, which is disproportionately carried by women, is one of the biggest issues in households and contributes to feelings of burnout. What mothers consistently want is for fathers to do more than push a pram or bring children to the doctors’ appointments.
“We have to book the medical appointments, not just bring them,” says Alex. “That’s the difference. I took my kids to all the medical appointments, and again, I was like, how can you say that I do nothing?” he recalls.
“But my wife knew the schedule, she knew where the little red NHS book was, she knew when the jabs were due, she had the Calpol levels and so on.”
Categorising parents
Alex also makes the point that branding mothers as ‘natural’ or having that ‘maternal instinct’ from the get-go can cause similar problems for women.
“These female qualities that have no male equivalent are actually much more damaging to relationships, and they get in the way of equity more because they carry this idea that women are naturally good at this stuff,” he counters.
The podcast host believes the solution is less about taking all the praise out for dads, and more about acknowledging the invisible work mothers do on the daily.
“Let’s start noticing the stuff that mums do and giving that praise because it took me a long time to realise that loads of people had told me I was a good dad and no one had ever said that to my wife.”
The other major issue that would help address the imbalance and eliminate the need to call dads “hands-on” is paternity leave. In Ireland, fathers get just two weeks, which is grossly inadequate. It gives them little time to bond with their newborn, let alone get into the nuts and bolts of childcare from the get-go.
“[Because of that] Systems get set,” says Alex. “And why do men not see invisible labour? Well, they haven’t done it. And we don’t have the experience of it,” he adds.
The reality is, though, that only about half of Irish fathers take their paternity leave entitlements, according to a report published last year by The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) and the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
Finances play a huge role in these numbers, of course, but improving paternity leave entitlements and take-up might be a good place to start if we want to retire phrases like “hands-on dad,” and all the double standards that come with it, for good.
Niamh O’Reilly is a freelance journalist and parenting columnist for TheJournal.ie.