There is a reason why I and my American husband moved from the US to Norway when it was time to start a family… I don’t know much about parenting in the UK, but in the Nordic countries, there is definitely much more of an expectation of the dad being more of an equal partner, although the mother is still seen in many cases as the primary parent. Parental leave here is 54 weeks at 80% pay or 44 weeks at 100% pay, of which 10 weeks are reserved for the father and 9 weeks (!) for the mother. The rest of the time is up for grabs, although the tendency is for the mother to take most, if not all, of it. The father’s portion was increased from 6 weeks to 10 this year, because there are still many employers who believe the father should take only the time that is strictly reserved for him, and the movement here is towards more equal parental leave, so the lawmakers had to reserve more for the father. Also, with only 6 weeks, a lot of families would have the mother spend vacation time during the father’s leave, and she would still be the primary parent while the family went on vacation, which is not really the point of having the father stay home and get to know the kid better.

Anyway, long story short (too late, I know…), I do feel that Americans (like my husband’s family) expect me to be the primary parent, and Norwegian society is at least tilted more towards equal partnership.

Also, a man who takes a break from his career to be a SAHD is often assumed to have somehow failed in his line of work. My husband stayed home with our older daughter for 2 years, and often felt he had to explain himself. There was also the opposite reaction–people gushing about how wonderful he was for being such an involved dad (all of which is absolutely true, but he got a lot more lip service for it than any mom would have ;)

When I visited London in 2001, I was surprised by how many dads I saw out with their babies/toddlers/kids (without mom). It also seemed like the dads who were with their spouses were more “parent-like” than many American dads in public. It was an anecdotal, intangible thing, but the perception stuck with me. Overall, the British dads just seemed happier to be dads.

Interestingly, I have a friend who is British with an American wife who now live here but had their first child in England. He was telling me that in England he was basically ignored as a father. At the hospital and just friends and family they would only talk to the mom about baby stuff, they actually told him he was in the way when he tried to be involved. So he had the opposite perception of dads in America than Rob did.

I think that’s entirely accurate. Sometimes I feel like I might as well just have a goldfish instead of a child for all the respect I get sometimes for being a parent.

Two months ago, the wife of a male coworker of mine had a baby and he took one week off work to be with his family. My 76 year-old female boss’s comment was “what does he need a week off for? it’s not like HE’s the one having the baby!” He also had to take it as vacation time, instead of kin care.

AND I live in a supposedly very liberal area of California. I was disgusted by this. It was only a week (!) and there was no consideration that maybe this father would want to spend some time at home caring for his wife and older children and bonding with his new daughter.

We live in a VERY pro-family, pro-dad, pro-kid town, Portland, OR… so I don’t really see it as society problem here.