{"id":2847,"date":"2021-05-19T21:49:59","date_gmt":"2021-05-19T21:49:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/s37407.p1377.sites.pressdns.com\/resources\/en-gb\/why-you-should-celebrate-dad-this-fathers-da\/"},"modified":"2021-05-19T21:49:59","modified_gmt":"2021-05-19T21:49:59","slug":"why-you-should-celebrate-dad-this-fathers-da","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/en-gb\/why-you-should-celebrate-dad-this-fathers-da\/","title":{"rendered":"Why You Should Celebrate Dad This Father\u2019s Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<br><em>If aliens were to land on Earth and browse the shelves of the parenting section of their local book shop &ndash; which, if you were a visiting alien, would <em>of course<\/em> be the first thing you would do&hellip; they would learn three things:<\/em><br>&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;<\/p><ul><li>Parenting is pink.<\/li><li>Parents need a lot of advice to do what is completely natural and usually happens perfectly well without any information at all.<\/li><li>Dads are useless, and it&rsquo;s the Mums job to tell them they are.<\/li><p><\/p><\/ul><p>&nbsp;<br>This is a shame. Because, while I can live with the pink (just) and the advice (much of which is very useful in those moments when you think you&rsquo;re the only person making a total pig&rsquo;s ear of it, and then you realise you&rsquo;re not, and you feel much better), the bit about Dads being useless is something I can&rsquo;t go along with. Because, for the most part, they are not.<br>&nbsp;<br>There are as many mums as dads that struggle with the everyday parenting challenges. It&rsquo;s just that dads don&rsquo;t tend to spend large chunks of their lives publicly complaining about us on social media, in magazine columns and in playgrounds.<br>&nbsp;<br>Most of the fathers I have known over the last 17 years of parenting are dedicated, loving, hard-working, patient, helpful and bloody good at building space-ships out of Lego.<br>&nbsp;<br>Many dads are doomed before they start, by living with partners who because of their controlling parenting methods don&rsquo;t let them go anywhere near the baby, in case they get it &lsquo;wrong&rsquo; &ndash; and then criticize them for not helping out enough.<br>&nbsp;<br>Many dads also do that selfish thing called &lsquo;going to work for long hours, to pay the bills&rsquo;, and then get shouted at for not being at home enough. They are then told how little help they are around the house while they&rsquo;re out earning this money, and having a great time every day on the packed, stinking commuter train, reading all those fun documents.<br>&nbsp;<br>While I agree that childbirth, giving up a career, and dealing with screaming children for ten years is not exactly a picnic &ndash; having done that myself for my three kids &ndash; portraying Dads as feckless, lucky, lazy and useless always seems monstrously unfair to me.<br>&nbsp;<br>I&rsquo;ve learned a few things about shared parenting, and the most important one is this; we all do things differently. And differently doesn&rsquo;t mean WORSE.<br>&nbsp;<br>Generalising hugely, many dads tend to have patience with their children that we mums often lack. I&rsquo;m almost constantly doing 400 things at once at home, so sitting down to play with a train set for an hour is something that makes me break into a sweat before I&rsquo;ve started. My husband, on the other hand, could do this, without pause, all day.<br>&nbsp;<br>No lunch, no nap for the baby, no washing hung out, the entire house looking like a toyshop has exploded in it&hellip;.but he&rsquo;s playing happily &ndash; and so were our children. That&rsquo;s something I think is hugely valuable to children, and should be valued, not always criticised.<br>&nbsp;<br>What we see as mess everywhere, one could also see as a relaxed, fun atmosphere where playing is more important than tidying up&hellip; For just a little while!<br>&nbsp;<br>What my children have learned from their dad, is stuff I could never have taught them, and I&rsquo;m really glad he has. They are the children of BOTH of us, and we both have different things to offer them.<br>&nbsp;<br>We&rsquo;d be wiser, kinder, and better parents if we sat back and let dads do things their way sometimes. Even if we don&rsquo;t agree with it. Even if it&rsquo;s slower, or messier, or just&hellip;.SO annoying! It&rsquo;s <em>their<\/em> way.<br>&nbsp;<br>Happy Fathers Day. Just don&rsquo;t forget to put the Lego away when you&rsquo;re finished.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;If aliens were to land on Earth and browse the shelves of the parenting section of their local book shop &ndash; which, if you were a visiting alien, would of course be the first thing you would do&hellip; they would learn three things:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Parenting is pink. Parents need a lot of advice to do what <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/en-gb\/why-you-should-celebrate-dad-this-fathers-da\/\">Read more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1094,"featured_media":68297,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"enable_toc":false,"care_reviewed_by":0,"care_post_updated_flag":false,"care_updated_date":"","last_update":"2021-05-19","view_count":140,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[],"member-type":[42],"vertical":[84],"platform":[2],"class_list":["post-2847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized-en-gb","member-type-all-en-gb","vertical-child-care-advice-en-gb","platform-resources"],"acf":[],"created":"2015-06-15","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1094"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2847"},{"taxonomy":"member-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/member-type?post=2847"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=2847"},{"taxonomy":"platform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/platform?post=2847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}