A thoroughly good thing to do. I vividly remember the terror I felt when my partner had to leave the ward at 9 PM, leaving me alone post-caesarean with a screaming hungry baby for whom my milk had not yet come in. (No babymoon for us! And I confess I desperately longed for the US-style baby nurseries I’d seen on TV. In the UK, they rightly work hard to promote bonding and breastfeeding, even after caesareans. But, to my mind, they wrongly prioritise this above the mother’s recovery and sanity.) I also remember all the NHS brochures on parenting that seemed designed exclusively for single mums– not a word about any other adult presence, but lots of homilies on the importance of constant skin to skin contact with mum. So yes, great move!
But do you have to suggest scheduling ante-natal visits around football matches, and getting men’s mags in waiting rooms? Why not go instead with “scheduling around the needs of both parents”, and “catering for a broader variety of interests in the waiting room?” (I’d certainly have liked something other than women’s mags.)
Thanks, L!
I had a baby recently in the US and the hospital-run birthday classes were very pro-Daddy-involvement in care of the newborn and in care of *me*. (This included one four-session course we took, a one-time hour-long course in the hospital about how to take care of our newborn, and a one-time three-hour session that my husband took before I gave birth called “Daddy Boot Camp.”)
The rule at the hospital where my wife gave birth was that, if you had a private room, your partner/whoever could stay with you overnight, but if you shared a room, the partner had to leave. My wife and I were able to shell out the $300 to buy out the other bed in our room, so I was able to spend the entirety of the time she was in the hospital with her–I didn’t leave until she and our son did. So the economics of birth in the US plays into this too.
(And, luckily, we didn’t have any problems with the fact that we were two women having a baby, rather than a heterosexual couple–although this might have been because we were in Brooklyn.)
I think this push for father involvement has more to it than you realize. This Fatherhood Industry is more about the male control of the child than anything. It is very very dangerous for abuse victims who are being forced by court order to ‘co-parent’ because of this fatherhood supremacy BS. The choice to involve the father should be the mother and the mother ALONE. It is her body, her decision. She is the only person risking her life to bring another life into the world. The people who think this is all so great are the ones making a profit off of creating this cottage industry. An industry that receives billions of dollars in taxpayer money in the US at a time when many people don;t have adequate food or healthcare. The government should stay out of people’s lives and let them make these personal decisions for themselves. Many women do not want men around when they are having a child, but instead want the support of other women. Spending lots of money catering to men and buying products that are for men alone takes away money that could be used to provide support resources for the mother and child and a support person of any age or gender that the mom (the one who is actually giving birth) wants to have with her. There is also forced custody of infants going on where tiny nursing babies are being taken from their moms to be given to (abusive) fathers simply because they donated a single cell 9 months earlier – but then proved to be an abuser who the mom should not have around her or her child. Women and children in these situations should not have this Fatherhood Ownership of children forced upon them. It is similar to slavery to give another person ownership rights over the objection of another. Women are losing custody of their children at alarming rates to men due to the billions of dollars being used to help these men take the children from the moms. It is not a good thing. Women in healthy relationships with men will decide between the two of them what works best for them individually. Women should not be dictated to bring the father to doctor visits. It’s as if the woman is being made inferior as if she cannot make decisions for herself. It is very very insulting and dangerous. It is a march back in time to male ownership. This needs to end.