Recently, Brooke Glassberg reached out to me regarding an essay she had written for Yahoo Parenting. I wanted to share it with you!
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My husband, Brian, and I are on the same page about everything. Politics, music, food, we’ve ridden the same wavelength for more than a decade. Even when we were ambivalent about having a baby, I always knew he’d be an awesome dad, and the idea of him feeding a newborn a bottle or rough-housing with a little kid helped push me into the “we can do this” column.
So when our daughter was born, I was blindsided — absolutely gobsmacked — by how differently we operated. Not better or worse, just different. He was OK with her crying (it cut through me like electricity); he wasn’t phobic about the TV being on (I was pretty confident it was scrambling her brain); he continued getting dinners made and light bulbs changed without feeling he was depriving her of adequate eye-contact or tummy time; pants and bibs are optional. He does not liberally dispense Puffs. And he has no problem saying when he isn’t having any fun.
Of course, these “infractions” are minor in the grand scheme of things. What I did not understand at first, though, is how useful they are.
“Women and men parent very differently — and this is a great thing,” says Dr. Meg Meeker, author of the bestselling “Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters.” “My husband and I raised four kids while sharing a medical practice and, even as pediatricians, we disagreed on how to do things. Dads approach parenting with different priorities than we mothers do. They tend to care less about dress, eating habits, and other details. Instead, dads tend to want to play with kids more and challenge them more, and this can help kids gain confidence.”