Dad Holds Baby! 🏅
A recent reel from @alongcamemotherhood popped up on mother.ly’s Instagram feed earlier this week, featuring a young, White, millennial dad holding his baby, changing her diaper, and being a “hands-on dad.” The caption read, “Changing the narrative ❤️” with the words scrolling across the video, “Say what you want about millennials. But this is a generation of hands on dads. Dads knowing exactly what to do when mama is away. Because they are IN IT every. single. day.”
Holy Mother Mary, call the President! Somebody has to get this guy a medal!
We immediately scrolled to the comments. This was going to be fun.
The obvious one, “Imagine saying, ‘This is a generation of hands-on mothers 😳,’” was immediately satisfying because really, what was the point of this “Breaking News: DAD HOLDS BABY IN 10 SETTINGS!” video? And why are we still talking about dads stepping in “when mama is away”?
We know that in the 1980s, when we were growing up, fathers held their kids, played with them, and even (shock) changed babies’ diapers. What women now keep saying again and again, seemingly to deaf ears, is that if these physical tasks alone are what we celebrate in fatherhood, then maybe we need to take a page from Jimmy McMillan’s playbook and start a Bar is Too Damn Low political party in 2025. All of this fanfare for a dad’s “active” involvement only reinforces the notion that equitable parenting is a novelty rather than a norm.
We’ve said it before but to reiterate: in the realm of parenting, there’s an invisible load that is still disproportionately held by women—one that cannot be romanticized in nostalgic videos. What’s more, it’s not just the never-ending mental checklist that takes up the invisible load, it is also what we like to call the worry load. Take this excerpt from a recent report on Gender and Parenting from the Pew Research Foundation:
“Nearly half of mothers (46%) say they are extremely or very worried their children will struggle with anxiety or depression at some point, compared with 32% of fathers. And, by double-digit margins, mothers are also more likely than fathers to say they are extremely or very worried about their children being bullied, being kidnapped or abducted, getting beaten up and getting shot.”
But back to the Instagram comments on the Mother.ly post. Lots of people used applause and heart emojis to celebrate this awkward dad whose wife, let’s face it, probably made this dumb video at gunpoint. And then the people who dared to mention that this video was garbage were told off by those with sunnier dispositions. One man commented, “Why so much hate. Why can’t we just appreciate that dads are trying to [sic] better dad than their fathers were.” We wanted to ask this person, first of all, “Why so much periods instead of questions marks,” but it was getting off topic. Another guy chimed in to say, “so celebrating a positive change is not worthy?”
To that we say, no, of course celebrating a positive change isn’t a bad thing. But where is the actual change? Did people forget about the civil rights movement of the 1960s, with the personal is political rallying cries? And what about the #metoo movement that reminded us that when women point out injustice, it makes us truth tellers, not annoying, whining complainers. The public, it seems, is just not getting the message, at least not fast enough.
So this week, we’re waiting for a different kind of heroic dad reel on Instagram. It can feature a guy waking up in the middle of the night, staring at the ceiling in the dark and blinking. As a viewer, you won’t be able to tell, but this dad will be paralyzed by insomnia as he lays awake wondering if his kids eat too much sugar; if they know never to stand too close to the street; if the parental controls are up to date on the kids’ iPads; if the youngest child’s teacher really understands their learning style; if he raised his voice too much yesterday; if he should have started the kids in some sort of music lessons when they were younger; or if being the kind of parent who lays awake worrying is subliminally bad for the next generation.
It’ll be the most boring, longest, and somehow also the most stressful reel ever, and we are here for it.
As a (gasp!) millennial dad, I sympathize with a great deal of this. Your criticism of the Instagram post is obviously spot on - it's an easy target to be fair, but the number of fathers I know who still use phrases like "help out at home/with the kids" is pretty eyebrow-raising.
On the other hand, I'm not sure what is the point of bringing up the fact that mothers apparently worry more about bad things happening to their kids. As a dad who worries a lot about bad things happening to my kids, I'm not really sure if the presence or absence of worrying is a sign of gender parenting inequality or if maybe there is something else at play here?
I'm all for deconstructing the higher mental load that mothers typically carry. In my house, we make a conscious effort to be on equal footing but if I'm honest I know that my partner thinks about a lot of stuff that I don't, or at least thinks to do it faster/sooner than I do. I'm working to be better at this. A lot of it is down to communication and organization, in which the most important ingredient is mutual trust and taking of responsibility.
This paragraph got me though:
"So this week, we’re waiting for a different kind of heroic dad reel on Instagram. It can feature a guy waking up in the middle of the night, staring at the ceiling in the dark and blinking. As a viewer, you won’t be able to tell, but this dad will be paralyzed by insomnia as he lays awake wondering if his kids eat too much sugar; if they know never to stand too close to the street; if the parental controls are up to date on the kids’ iPads; if the youngest child’s teacher really understands their learning style; if he raised his voice too much yesterday; if he should have started the kids in some sort of music lessons when they were younger; or if being the kind of parent who lays awake worrying is subliminally bad for the next generation."
Ummmm.... first of all it's a bit hurtful to the dads out there who do spend a lot of time lying awake and worrying about our kids... but for whom sugar consumption or parental controls might not be the first thing on our mind. In our house meanwhile, it's usually me who's worrying about whether the kids are too close to the street.
I'm just questioning the premise of whether more dads laying awake worrying about whether we enrolled our kids in enough extracurricular activities is actually the kind of equality we want to be striving for - or whether maybe all of us parents should be engaging a bit more critically with perceptions of what makes us good moms and dads. Maybe we should all be worrying less instead of shaming men for not worrying more?
Again, if we're talking about chores/household orga/kid logistics/all the other tiny mental aspects that go into running a household with children, you're preaching to the converted. In my house, we're probably at 35/65 there and I'm trying every day to get better. I try to engage critically with stuff that describes the experience of being a mom but as a dad I have to say I find posts like this a bit alienating... because in the end I feel I'm being condescended to simply for not measuring myself more against whatever moms think the societal ideal of a mom is.
We should be questioning that ideal rather than also trying to make men feel bad for not meeting it. Let's embrace the fact that we think differently and maybe try to focus more on supporting each other with the unique mindsets/qualities that moms and dads each bring to the table.