CHRISSIE RUSSELL Paloma Faith is right — dads need to take more initiative. But some mums don’t give them a chance
Here’s a scenario I’ll warrant most mums have experienced a version of. There was an occasion recently when I was not going to be the one to dress our youngest child. “Have you left clothes out?” my husband enquired. Irked by the idea that my role is one of ‘child stylist’ I replied in the negative. “So what do you want him to wear?” came the incredulous reply.
“Just clothes! There are three drawers in his room, all containing clothes. Put him in whatever you want!” I replied.
Ten minutes later... “No, not that.” I knew all along there was a likelihood that our child would emerge wearing the wrong clothes (I can’t remember exactly what the ensemble was but I’ve a cloying feeling that it might have been something seasonal, a Santa top perhaps) because, as Paloma Faith recently pointed out, this is what men do when left to their own devices.
The singer recently delivered a series of blistering interviews decrying the lack of initiative dads have when it comes to shouldering parenting decisions.
“Parenting is a full-time job,” she told the Radio Times. “If you’re also CEO of your own business, like I am, then I’m meant to delegate to my partner. But that’s a full-time job because they’ve not got any initiative.”
Faith, who separated from her husband, and father of their two daughters, French artist Leyman Lahcine in 2022 after nine years together, pulled even fewer punches in her interview with this paper at the weekend, saying that women can’t “have it all” because men are “f**king useless”.
Now, having no desire to also find myself separated, with this column listed in divorce proceedings, I would like to go on the record and say that I don’t feel similarly towards my spouse, despite whatever I may have muttered privately in moments of parenting-related frustration. And while my initial reaction was to empathise with Faith on the tedium of mammy delegation — because it definitely does exist — it also got me wondering if perhaps maybe we, the mums, are part of the problem?
Mum-blaming is a fairly saturated market but bear with me on this. The inequalities in the burden of childcare are a complex societal issue but in the minutiae of everyday decisions, I wonder if us mammies have often become so preoccupied with getting parenting ‘right’ that any decision outside our own is instantly wrong.
Take, for example, the hypothetical situation of a child wearing a Santa top in June — is it really that big a deal? If the sandwiches are cut differently, if the kids eat something else for dinner, if they take the wrong lunchbox to school? If all those little things aren’t done the way we would do them a) Does it matter and b) Isn’t there a chance that in the vacuum of our own instructions, someone — kids or father — might just figure it out?
In the areas where I have had no input, my sons have clearly reaped the benefits of their dad’s decision-making — fearless on ziplines, adept at climbing trees and skilled on scooters, spaces where I know my anxiety-ridden, helicopter parenting would surely have hindered them.
It’s different of course when parents are separated, and there’s a desire for continuity of care and routine for the children going between parents. But while Faith says she is frustrated by the impossibility of having it all, I think there’s also freedom in realising you actually don’t need to do it all. No, it might not be done the way you want it, but that in itself isn’t wrong.
Mum instincts are honed by repeatedly having to figure things out. We can’t criticise dads for not having the same parenting initiative if we don’t give them the chance to develop it by themselves.