So at this point, we have set up a situation where our husbands are used to us doing the housework and taking care of the baby, where they don’t know how to help, even if they think of helping, while we moms suffer in silence, getting more and more angry that our dear husbands don’t know that we’re suffering and do something about it. We have done this to ourselves. That doesn’t mean that this situation should be easy to fix. Breaking the status quo is much more difficult than setting things up evenly from the start. I do believe, however, that our husbands generally want to be good husbands and good fathers. I do believe that they are trying to do what seems right for their family. But they cannot read our minds, and they are not able to sense when we reach that point of getting overwhelmed.
For that matter, they are likely feeling a bit overwhelmed as new dads as well—more so because they don’t know what to do with this little one. No matter how much they want to support us and their new babies, they don’t necessarily know how to. What we need to do is to be very patient and understanding, and, of course, to communicate clearly and effectively with our husbands. Hopefully in the end, we will come out on the other end of this more confident and more fulfilled than we were before. And our dear husbands will come out of this feeling like good, hands-on fathers.
