How relevant do you think your gender is to being a parent?

Despite our so-called equality, living in todays society under a capitalist patriarchal power structure, often means mothers end up taking on most of the childcare responsibilities, domestic labor, as well as holding down a job.

"Very. As a mum I think I am the one who organises everyone's schedule and keeps us all on track."

"Extremely. I can’t emphasise this enough! I feel I am very much the default parent. Partly this is due to work differences - but, for example, any time our children are sick, it’s me taking the time off work. Or if there’s a party happening then it’s me staying at home. A lot of this is down to the fact that the children are very young and they’re more attached to me (at least the youngest one, who is still breastfeeding)."

"Yes, in terms of what is expected of me. I feel that being a woman is the reason why the bulk of the responsibility has landed on me."

Organisation

Breastfeeding

Responsibility

Sick days

Time restrictions

Expectations

Break from work

Run household

Comforter

Emotionally attuned

"Enormously relevant! From day 1, my gender has very much put me in the role of primary caregiver - I breastfed both my children and this meant I was the only one who could feed my children. Of course there's so much that a co-parent can do to support in this set-up, but it does ultimately put a lot of pressure on the breastfeeding parent."

"It's hard to pull it apart - do I parent in a particular way because of personality traits linked to my gender or am I projecting societal expectations of my gender and how I should parent onto myself?"

"Societally we expect certain things from parents dependent on their gender and it's difficult to push against this. Women generally are expected to take a break from work, to stay at home to bring up children, to keep a household running, etc. "

"So relevant. As a cis hetero woman who gave birth - I do almost all of it. I breastfed and took mat leave, I'm the one the child goes to at night and times of distress"

"I will go for days or even weeks looking after the two children by myself while my partner is working away. But after a couple of days recently where he had to look after them he quickly started complaining that he didn’t have any time to “get anything done”. I really don’t think he understands what it’s like for me looking after both our children when he’s away - and he doesn’t think about how it restricts me. I’ve heard similar things said by other female friends about their situations as well."

"As a mother I think I feel far more affected emotionally/more in tune to the children’s thoughts - happy or sad"

"I felt my partner expected me to automatically know how to parent my daughter because I am a mother. But I didn't know, we have to learn on the job but look like we know what we are doing when we don't. It is a lot of pressure for a woman to bear, but she bears it because she wants what is best for her child."