This resonates with me so much. My husband and I were both in our forties when we had our first and only son. I had 12 weeks of FMLA and a short term disability that covered 60% of my salary for four weeks (I had a C-section). My employer paid me two weeks maternity leave, so I suppose I should be grateful. My husband received 8 weeks of paternity leave with full pay. He wanted to be home and to help. While I struggled with post-partum depression I made every excuse to get out of the house for an hour or two each day while he watched our son. He sleep-trained our son at 8 weeks while I slept for several hours. He did laundry, washed dishes, fed our son, cooked and ordered groceries. He was and continues to be a wonderful partner. If he didn't have paternity leave I would have drowned. Men must be a part of early child-rearing and must be given the time to do so.
1000% would not have survived having twins if my husband didn’t have an 8 week parental leave that he extended to 10. Literally. I would not have been able to do it lol. Thank God he was there. Also, parental leave is so important for bonding! My husband tells all his male friends that they should take a parental leave because caring for his infants day & night helped him really feel connected to them. Parental leave is so important!!
I feel your experience to my core. When my oldest was born 7 years ago, my husband had a position with his animal pharmaceutical company where he traveled Monday-Thursday (catching a 6am flight on Mondays and coming home around 11:30pm on Thursdays) for 3 weeks in a row and then would be home for a week before doing the rotation again. It was fucking hell to say the least. I longed for that one week where he was home and fell into despair when he ramped back up to travel. We don't have family out here in the pacific northwest either to help. I worked full-time as well and looking back, I have no idea how I made it through that time with my wits still intact. I breastfed my oldest until he was 2, so the middle of the night wake ups were constant until I finally weaned him. Thankfully the second (and last) time around my husband had a job where he was home a lot more so I wasn't suffering. There's a reason why the saying goes, "it takes a village". Humans aren't supposed to raise children completely alone.
Claire, this is so much my experience, too—except it took 5 months of pumping for my son to latch and I was lucky enough that my husband had 20 weeks of paternity leave (longer than my maternity leave despite the fact that I was the one who had had emergency surgery to give birth, PPD, and was attached to a machine for hours a day to feed the kid). My son is 2.5 and I honestly still feel inadequate when my friends have easier times with their newborns or manage their husbands returning to work with seeming ease. The cultural messaging goes so deep. But regardless of how “easy” your newborn is, one newborn is not a job for one person, much less two newborns!!! Thank you for sharing this and making me feel slightly less inadequate today.
This article is so beautifully written and so so relatable. Thank you for articulating this so well; I feel so much less alone in my feelings about parenting after having read this. I'm saving this article and rereading it when we decide to have our second kid!!
This is such an important topic! I feel like you've probably already read this, but there's a chapter in the book Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed For Men about paternity and maternity leave and how it benefits all of society, not just the people who have kids. I was woefully ignorant before I read it and had totally bought into the patriarchy's messaging such as the rhetoric you mentioned about it being a "lifestyle choice". Thank you for writing about this!
This resonates with me so much. My husband and I were both in our forties when we had our first and only son. I had 12 weeks of FMLA and a short term disability that covered 60% of my salary for four weeks (I had a C-section). My employer paid me two weeks maternity leave, so I suppose I should be grateful. My husband received 8 weeks of paternity leave with full pay. He wanted to be home and to help. While I struggled with post-partum depression I made every excuse to get out of the house for an hour or two each day while he watched our son. He sleep-trained our son at 8 weeks while I slept for several hours. He did laundry, washed dishes, fed our son, cooked and ordered groceries. He was and continues to be a wonderful partner. If he didn't have paternity leave I would have drowned. Men must be a part of early child-rearing and must be given the time to do so.
1000% would not have survived having twins if my husband didn’t have an 8 week parental leave that he extended to 10. Literally. I would not have been able to do it lol. Thank God he was there. Also, parental leave is so important for bonding! My husband tells all his male friends that they should take a parental leave because caring for his infants day & night helped him really feel connected to them. Parental leave is so important!!
I feel your experience to my core. When my oldest was born 7 years ago, my husband had a position with his animal pharmaceutical company where he traveled Monday-Thursday (catching a 6am flight on Mondays and coming home around 11:30pm on Thursdays) for 3 weeks in a row and then would be home for a week before doing the rotation again. It was fucking hell to say the least. I longed for that one week where he was home and fell into despair when he ramped back up to travel. We don't have family out here in the pacific northwest either to help. I worked full-time as well and looking back, I have no idea how I made it through that time with my wits still intact. I breastfed my oldest until he was 2, so the middle of the night wake ups were constant until I finally weaned him. Thankfully the second (and last) time around my husband had a job where he was home a lot more so I wasn't suffering. There's a reason why the saying goes, "it takes a village". Humans aren't supposed to raise children completely alone.
Claire, this is so much my experience, too—except it took 5 months of pumping for my son to latch and I was lucky enough that my husband had 20 weeks of paternity leave (longer than my maternity leave despite the fact that I was the one who had had emergency surgery to give birth, PPD, and was attached to a machine for hours a day to feed the kid). My son is 2.5 and I honestly still feel inadequate when my friends have easier times with their newborns or manage their husbands returning to work with seeming ease. The cultural messaging goes so deep. But regardless of how “easy” your newborn is, one newborn is not a job for one person, much less two newborns!!! Thank you for sharing this and making me feel slightly less inadequate today.
This article is so beautifully written and so so relatable. Thank you for articulating this so well; I feel so much less alone in my feelings about parenting after having read this. I'm saving this article and rereading it when we decide to have our second kid!!
This is such an important topic! I feel like you've probably already read this, but there's a chapter in the book Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed For Men about paternity and maternity leave and how it benefits all of society, not just the people who have kids. I was woefully ignorant before I read it and had totally bought into the patriarchy's messaging such as the rhetoric you mentioned about it being a "lifestyle choice". Thank you for writing about this!