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Care & Feeding: "I’m So Sick of Correcting All of My Husband’s Parenting Mistakes"
Dear Care and Feeding,
My husband is great guy. He loves our two young daughters with all of his heart, he provides for them, and he loves me to death. The problem is that he’s completely incompetent when it comes to common parenting tasks, which constantly leaves me exhausted because I have to clean up all of his mistakes. He makes ponytails wrong, so I have to do them myself. He dresses our daughters in mismatched outfits, so I have to put them in different clothes. He also makes unhealthy snacks for the girls, so I find myself having to constantly tell him what to make and how to make it. Lately he’s not been lifting a finger to help out with my daughters at all. At first he was doing everything wrong and now he’s doing nothing. I’m so frustrated! Please help me reach him.
—Frustrated in Fresno
Dear FiF,
Let me get this straight: You have a great husband who loves you and your daughters, and he provides for them—but after you micromanaged the hell out of him, he lost interest in taking part in parenting tasks, and you’re writing in wondering what happened? Really?!
Maternal gatekeeping is an issue that should be taken very seriously, because I’ve seen my share of marriages and relationships end because of it. To be clear, he doesn’t make ponytails “wrong”—he makes them differently than you. His sense of style for your girls may seem “mismatched” to you, but that’s your opinion, not a fact. Contrary to what you believe, the parenting world doesn’t revolve around your beliefs.
More importantly, your behavior has taken away the joy from parenting he once had. Dads do things differently from moms, and that’s a wonderful thing, because it allows us (dads) to bond with our kids in our own unique ways. For example, when I was growing up, my mom went on a weekend trip to visit some of her relatives and left my brothers and me at home with our dad. When she walked into the house afterward, all three of us were on the floor with empty KFC buckets everywhere watching WWF (now WWE) on our TV. I’ll never forget the look on her face, but she didn’t “correct” my dad or micromanage him—she shook her head and smiled as if to say, “I would never do that, but this is his way of creating memories with the kids, and I appreciate that.”
And guess what? As I sit here almost 35 years after that weekend, it still stands as one of the best memories I have of my dad. Would you want to deprive your kids of similar memories with their dad because you need to have everything done your way? I promise you, as your girls grow older, they won’t give a damn about the messy hairdos or funky clothes; they’ll care that their dad cared enough about them to try. That’s what’s important here.
If you want to empower your man to be a better hairstylist, send him to YouTube to watch some tutorials (that’s how I learned how to style my daughters’ hair), but don’t browbeat him or roll your eyes at his efforts. At the end of the day, you need to ask yourself these simple questions: Are my kids safe? Are my kids happy? If the answer to these questions is “Yes”, then back the hell up and let him bond with his kids in his own way.
My husband is great guy. He loves our two young daughters with all of his heart, he provides for them, and he loves me to death. The problem is that he’s completely incompetent when it comes to common parenting tasks, which constantly leaves me exhausted because I have to clean up all of his mistakes. He makes ponytails wrong, so I have to do them myself. He dresses our daughters in mismatched outfits, so I have to put them in different clothes. He also makes unhealthy snacks for the girls, so I find myself having to constantly tell him what to make and how to make it. Lately he’s not been lifting a finger to help out with my daughters at all. At first he was doing everything wrong and now he’s doing nothing. I’m so frustrated! Please help me reach him.
—Frustrated in Fresno
Dear FiF,
Let me get this straight: You have a great husband who loves you and your daughters, and he provides for them—but after you micromanaged the hell out of him, he lost interest in taking part in parenting tasks, and you’re writing in wondering what happened? Really?!
Maternal gatekeeping is an issue that should be taken very seriously, because I’ve seen my share of marriages and relationships end because of it. To be clear, he doesn’t make ponytails “wrong”—he makes them differently than you. His sense of style for your girls may seem “mismatched” to you, but that’s your opinion, not a fact. Contrary to what you believe, the parenting world doesn’t revolve around your beliefs.
More importantly, your behavior has taken away the joy from parenting he once had. Dads do things differently from moms, and that’s a wonderful thing, because it allows us (dads) to bond with our kids in our own unique ways. For example, when I was growing up, my mom went on a weekend trip to visit some of her relatives and left my brothers and me at home with our dad. When she walked into the house afterward, all three of us were on the floor with empty KFC buckets everywhere watching WWF (now WWE) on our TV. I’ll never forget the look on her face, but she didn’t “correct” my dad or micromanage him—she shook her head and smiled as if to say, “I would never do that, but this is his way of creating memories with the kids, and I appreciate that.”
And guess what? As I sit here almost 35 years after that weekend, it still stands as one of the best memories I have of my dad. Would you want to deprive your kids of similar memories with their dad because you need to have everything done your way? I promise you, as your girls grow older, they won’t give a damn about the messy hairdos or funky clothes; they’ll care that their dad cared enough about them to try. That’s what’s important here.
If you want to empower your man to be a better hairstylist, send him to YouTube to watch some tutorials (that’s how I learned how to style my daughters’ hair), but don’t browbeat him or roll your eyes at his efforts. At the end of the day, you need to ask yourself these simple questions: Are my kids safe? Are my kids happy? If the answer to these questions is “Yes”, then back the hell up and let him bond with his kids in his own way.