When my daughter was born, my wife and I would take turns caring for her through the night. She pumped breast milk so I had access to food as needed on my nights, and she could breastfeed directly on her nights.
It soon became clear that our daughter preferred direct breastfeeding to the bottle, but I was much better at calming her and getting her back to sleep. The result was that I ended up covering my wife’s nights more frequently because she was otherwise at home with the baby all day while I was at work and felt like she needed the break. I was also “used” to sleep deprivation from the past years when I was working full-time while also going to college full-time, and she would stay home and watch TV, read, or paint.
I was constantly exhausted for the first 6 months, until she was mostly able to sleep through most nights. I would regularly apologize to my coworkers for my reduced cognitive ability because I didn’t get any sleep the previous night or two, and my boss would express how he didn’t understand how I was still vertical. Thankfully they were all very understanding and accommodating, and I was at least still able to get most of my work done to our standard of quality, albeit much more slowly than usual.
I didn’t have time, opportunity, or energy to even consider the prospect of intimacy at that time, so I absolutely sympathize with new mothers with absentee partners that have normal levels of energy and libido.
Women do get a shitload more time off work for it than men, so they kinda have to be the one doing most of the childcare regardless of what either parent actually wants.
Friend of ours recently had another child, she is getting most of a year off, he got a couple weeks.
My work gives parental leave based on whether they’re the primary caretaker or the secondary one. The primary gets 6 months, the secondary gets 3.
What decider whether you’re primary or secondary? Simple. If your partner is taking more than 3 months they’re primary.
What this means in practice is that for US-based employees pretty much everyone at my company is the primary caretaker since few people’s spouses even have the option for more than 3 months.
That’s a couple of weeks more than I ever got.
This was funny like 60 years ago
The fun part is when you are involved and it still happens
Well atp, it’s just genetics and hormones, which isn’t really her fault either lol
Long as it’s still the man’s fault for desiring intimacy, am I right or am I right ladies?
The assumption that it’s always a neglectful husband causing marital issues is incredibly demoralizing, especially when the response to “but what if it isn’t a neglectful husband” is this sort of thing. Just more reasons why the man is the one being unreasonable.
Look, no man is “owed” their wife’s affections or physical intimacy. But it is often an important piece of an adult romantic relationship, and it’s not unreasonable for a member of that relationship to have some feelings about things changing over time, or suddenly for that matter.
Is affection a thing that even exists?
If that’s your perspective, is anyone ever responsible for anything? Or is it all just genetics and hormones
What stupid take.
If your hormones tell you to punch someone you should be reasonable enough not to do it.
If your hormones make you not horny, you shouldn’t force yourself to have sex.
Those are two totally different things.
So it’s his fault or it’s not her fault?
A dude I used to work with left his wife to deal with the newborn.
It was so bad between dayshifts that he used to leave the house at 2am and just sit in a motorway service station with a coffee for a few hours just to get some peace before coming to work.
If I tried that, my other half would stab me in the face.
I got 3 months paid paternity leave through a state program. A coworker who had a kid that same month chose to not use the state program and take 2 PTO days instead. I talked to him before hand and told him about the program but he said something like “I wouldn’t be much help, she’s done it twice already so she has it handled”. It was very evident how his wife felt about him at the Christmas party that year.
She sought out my wife, who she knew had a kid recently too and my wife brought up how nice it was to have me home for those first few months and somehow the state program came up in the conversation. She then booked it over to me and asked me about it, not knowing what was going on or thinking much about it, I told her about it and that I can’t believe coworker didn’t do it. Then all hell broke loose. This tiny little lady dragged out my 6 foot heavy set coworker by the ear, calling him every name in the book. She made him use all his PTO days and went to spend new years somewhere warm. He bitched about how hard it was taking care of 3 kids on his own for weeks.
‘Funny’ enough all the guys in the office thought she was being ridiculous but all the women were praising her.
I think if a face stabbing is the result of doing something like that you have more serious problems…
An issue with post-interstate USA is the ability to move away from family for education and work, also fragmented the extended family. Managing life, everything and a under-6 month old infant takes way more than two people. (Day care in many areas will accept an infant at 6 weeks, which while huge, is also problematic.)
I expect the only solution is get rich and help your kids with the grand kids. (UBI!)
None of this is an excuse to fuck off and not help. It is pathetic when men say “and I never changed a diaper”. Hardly a parent at all at that point.
This is a severely under-discussed consequence of modern culture distancing family “connections”.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s only about 4 people on my side of the extended family I actually miss, and 3 on my wife’s side. That’s being generous. But not having that reliable help if you don’t have an absolutely amazing social group makes raising a kid through early childhood an absolute slog.
I wish I could say this wasn’t my exact experience.
Tack on the lack of any romantic overtures and it’s pretty much how it went though.Redneck boomer shit, can’t relate.
