If we moms forget to be patient with the dads and to let them learn on their own, but instead tell them how to do things, or, even worse, tell them their way of doing things is wrong, dads often wind up feeling too nervous to do anything for fear of doing something wrong. On top of that, they see us taking care of the babies and think that everything is under control. So, the combination of these two things can make dads step back and not participate as much in the care of the new baby.
The problem comes when the baby reaches four or five months old. At that point, we new moms realize that we never distributed out the housework, and we realize that our babies take a whole lot of work. Plus, we realize that we cannot keep living in a disaster area. We hear “no one expects you to clean the house for the first x months of the baby’s life.” I have heard this number being anywhere between three months to a year. But we all have our limit. At some point, we try to go back to our routines that we had pre-baby, and that’s when we realize that we can’t do it all.
Now here is where the secondary problem kicks in. How many of us women actually go to our husbands at this point and say, “This is too much for me. I need you to help, and I need you to do x, y, and z”? Based on my experience, I’m going to say not many. I don’t think this is the style of most women. We tend to complain “I can’t get all this done,” and then get mad when our dear husbands don’t offer to help. Or we suffer in silence and wait for our dear husbands to notice the incongruity and to start helping. Or, if we do break down and ask for help (at which point we’re already highly annoyed that it has come to this), we are not good at clarifying exactly what our husbands can do to help.
Another thing I want to note is that my friends are all highly educated career women who have (or have had) good career jobs and who have lived on their own successfully for a period of time before marrying. These women are used to being independent and in control. I think that it is extra hard for women who are used to being completely in control of their lives to admit to themselves, as well as to their husbands, that they can’t do it all. When there is a baby in your life, being in control is a thing of the past. Your life is completely run by the needs of the little one. This is particularly hard to bear for an independent career woman.
