Parenthood: gender differences?

[aliki]

(This is a follow-up to my poll, found here: http://aliki.livejournal.com/465388.html)

We were in NYC enjoying lunch, when we had a conversation that more or less went like this:

Clare: I go back to work in 8 days.
Carol (Clare's sister): On Sept 1?
Clare: Yeah. *sad face*
Brian: And I'm off work for six weeks! [Ed note: He's taking paternity leave]
Clare: Taking care of Erika IS WORK.
Brian: Well, it's hard; but it's not hard like working.
Clare: Yes it is!
Brian: At work you have to deal with clients, and deadlines, and phone calls. It's so stressful!
Clare: If you don't do your job as a parent, someone dies!
Brian: If I don't do my job at work, lots of people die. [Ed note: He's an architect]
Clare: But with Erika, you always have to be so vigilant and watch her. At work, you can take lunch breaks, check your email, zone out.
Carol: Yeah, you can put things off for another day; it's not pressing the way a baby's demands are.
Clare: I'm telling you.. looking after Erika full-time, all day, is harder than work will ever be.
Brian: Then you must have a very easy job.

Steam must've been coming out my ears with fury, because Brian gave me the "you're not convincing me but I'm going to shut up or this is all ending up on Clare's Livejournal" look, and went back to eating his lunch.

Clare: **not able to let it go** You're sleep deprived, and lonely, and exhausted, and she still wants to play or nurse or she gets bored and wants to go outside, then she's overstimulated and cranky and wants to go inside!
Carol: And with work, you can take breaks. Parenthood is like pulling a college all-nighter... and then doing it over and over again, every night, for several months straight.

~~~~~~~~~

I think there are gender differences involved, regardless of the jobs we hold: him being an architect, constantly faced with deadlines and pushy customers who dont know what they want and me being a high school teacher. I think it has to do with our roles as parents in the early months.

As many posters point out, early motherhood is round-the-clock nursing (if you breastfeed), waking every 2 hours to burp, nurse, and change diapers. During the day, the infant clings to you like glue and protests when you put them down (even for the short duration it takes for mom to drink some water or go to the bathroom). Fathers-- well, unless it's spacefem's situation where you have a stay-at-home-dad-- their lives go on, pretty similar to pre-fatherhood. They dont have to contend with feeling like you were hit by a freight-train after labor, you dont bleed from your nether-regions for six to eight weeks, you dont feel like your breasts have swelled to 4 times their size and are about to explode from engorgement.

And janehex once wrote, the infant sees your face all day and gives you the "poker face" stare, and then dad walks in the door after work, and her face lights up and she, giggling, starts to bat her arms for him to hold and play with her.

smittenbyu writes, "My husband says he doesn't feel being a parent just yet, as I am the one taking care of her physical needs. He says he is enjoying the perks of it as he goes to work, comes home and plays (although he does a lot more than he gives himself credit for)" which I think is what Brian feels too. Erika is four-and-a-half months old, and his weekday interaction with her involves kissing her goodbye in the morning (if she's awake, half the time she's taking her morning nap when he leaves), and then seeing her excited face when he returns at 7pm. We eat dinner, then the two of them play for 30 minutes, then it's bathtime, then bedtime at 9pm. Weekends we split the caregiving 50-50, but still, it's 50-50. You get to take a break to eat, to go to the bathroom, to sit in a quiet room and decompress while the other parent is there to hold her.

Don't get me wrong, I love her to death. Motherhood, by far, is the best thing that has ever happened in my life. But I find, as the primary caregiver, that after cosleeping with someone who hogs the bed and kicks in her sleep, then being alone with her from morning till 7pm, I am exhausted!

This is, by far, harder than any job I've ever held.

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[breakableheart.livejournal.com]

Having full care of another human being is work. The end.