Fatherhood: the questions that men who take care of their children must deal with

“I’m not a single father, much less a widower,” explains a influencer in a video that went viral on social networks.

The first-time father, as he defines himself, says that when he shares his daily routine with his baby on social media, he frequently receives questions about his wife’s whereabouts.

Some users even ask him if he has died.

“I’m trying to understand what’s going on in these people’s heads so that it’s easier for them to think that my wife is dead and that I’m a widower, rather than just seeing me as a present father.“he says in the video.

How do you explain the strangeness that the image of a father caring for a child can still cause?

We asked the psychoanalyst Vera Iaconelli, Doctor in Psychology from the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil, and author of the books “Antimaternalist Manifesto”, “Raising Children in the 21st Century” and “Discomfort in Motherhood”.

“This break an expectation which in our time is differentiated by gender: that is, we understand that care is provided by women. And not just children, but care in general: who takes care of the elderly? “Who are the nurses?” Iaconelli tells BBC News Brazil.

The psychoanalyst explains that, faced with this situation seen as unnatural, thoughts arise such as “a caring man is a man who lacks a woman, because he is gay or because he is a widower”, or “he is left with a son who must be under the care of “primary care of a woman.”

“If you see a man playing this role, you start trying to justify this event not as something natural, a possibility, a choicebut as the result of the absence of a woman.”

What Iaconelli describes is also what naturist Tiago Koch, 41, father of Nalu (2 years old) and Iara (7 years old), notices daily.

When he is the only adult with his daughters, there are two reactions that tend to be the most common, he says. “Or it is ‘oh that’s amazing’ when I’m doing normal thingsor ‘why is this guy alone with these girls?'” he says.

“If you are not accompanied by a woman, either you don’t know, or you will leave things half done, or poorly done.”

Tiago remembers one morning when he was with his daughter at the bakery.

“Iara got angry because she wanted a chocolate at 8 in the morning and I didn’t want to give her a candy at that time. She was a girl acting like a girl: she fell to the ground and did what is expected of a frustrated 4-year-old girl “.

“Then the lady who was serving me started to get uncomfortable and ask me why I didn’t give her chocolate. ‘Are you alone?’ I saw her looking at me and looking for someone else. I felt very disqualified, delegitimized“, it states.

Tiago, who teaches courses on fatherhood (focused on the period of pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period) through the Paternal Man project, also mentions that he is judged for spending more time at home than his wife.

“I see a lot, in practice, that this care is very related to the feminine, as if it were something practiced exclusively by women. So, if a man does this, he is considered less of a man. If you are a housewife, for example “What kind of man are you? I’ve been asked a lot of questions because I spend a lot more time at home,” he says.

Tiago thinks we are in a “moment of transition of standards and questions about the standard father figurewhich comes from generations”.

At the same time, he warns of a possible “false sense that things are getting better.”

“In this movement where conscious parenting is discussed, we are still much more in a phase of awareness than of action. (…) In addition to speaking or publishing, are we applying this in our daily lives? Do we want to change?” , he asks.

“To make an analogy, it is the idea of ​​the leftist man, the guy who aesthetically looks great, but that, on a day-to-day basis, their behavior is still far from what is desired“, Explain.

“The man who puts on a T-shirt and a baby carrier and goes out into the street, and he’s already a great dad. A man carrying his baby in a baby carrier on the street is quite an event: ‘Wow, what an amazing father.'” , it states. he says, referring to the backpack or cloth used to carry a baby.

At the same time, Tiago, who has been talking to men about fatherhood since 2018, says he worries about fathers who “are lost in this limbo,” whom he describes as “the men who really try” but who “are always disqualified or invalidated”.

“There is an urgency, which above all comes from women – who are the ones who suffer the most from this paternal neglect of centuries -, who are intolerant of what was previously tolerable. So many men, and I include myself in this too, because it is part of my process, they are faced with this scenario: a very great urgency for a very rapid transformation“.

At another point in the conversation, Tiago points out that “there is a long way to go for parents to recognize themselves as capable of caring.”

“I am a man, I recognize myself as a man and caring is part of my masculinity and fatherhood. The main flag I raise is that we need recognize ourselves and affirm our masculinities and paternities through care. Until this happens, things are not going to change.”

Vera Iaconelli highlights that “the sexist and maternalist discourse is in the mouths of men and women“.

She says that it is also up to women to demand conditions that allow them to “delegate the task of caring in a more equitable way, also giving up the prestige that caring gives.”

Iaconelli acknowledges that giving up this prestige can be “very difficult”, but considers that for women it is “more of a relief than a cost” to stop being the great “possessors of knowledge about care.”

For her, there is a paradox.

“The task of caring is discredited because it is the least paid, the least valued in our society, but at the same time it serves, paradoxically, as a place of prestige for women, since it is assumed that only they know how to do it“, says.

“We then have a contradiction that makes them suffer in this position of exclusivity, but at the same time they are afraid of giving up one of the few places of recognition.”

The way society is organized today, it is common for a man who cares for a child to receive praise or support, he says.

“And, when a woman is taking care of a child, she is not doing anything beyond her obligation and she has no reason to complain since that is her role in the world,” she says, reproducing common sense about the role of women. in motherhood.

“Even a single mother abandoned by her husband, who is not single because she wants to, She is seen as someone who chose the wrong father of her child. In the care setting, the sky is the limit in terms of idealizing what a woman should be and do.”

What happens when the family configuration does not have a female caregiver?

BBC News Brazil spoke with Carlos Ruiz, 37, and Lucas Monteiro, 32, a couple who share family videos on the “parents of 3” profile.

In 2020 they adopted three brothers: Kawã (12 at the time), Edgar (9 years old at the time) and the youngest, Ketlin, who joined the family at age 5.

Carlos, who previously used social networks to share content as a teacher, says that as soon as he started sharing everyday moments with the children, The question appeared: “Where is the mother?“.

“There were questions both about the race issue and about the search for the mother,” adds Lucas, referring to the fact that the children were black and the parents were white.

Without a female caregiver at home, Lucas and Carlos say that the next issue became the search, by followers, for supposed traits of a “female figure” in the couple.

“It is not necessary to have a feminine figure or try to identify within ourselves [una figura femenina] for this type of work, which is for those who have a home and family,” says Carlos.

Lucas adds: “For us as parents, it is normal to take care of our children as much as possible. We see that, unfortunately, this is not reality“.

Most of the questions, the couple says, arise when they share things such as caring for their daughter’s hair.

“It seems like a father can’t be affectionate, he can’t take care of his hair,” says Carlos.

“There is an idea that men cannot, under any circumstances, take care of a girland that women can take care of boys and girls,” says Lucas.

Iaconelli points out that, in general, there is a “false assumption” that only women know how to take care of either men or women, while men do not know how to take care of themselves, either men or women.

“It is a smokescreen around the big issue: the Humans care for humans, regardless of gender, but the sphere of care is inferior, and is on the side of women. And everything that results from this is shocking because it subverts a power play“says the psychoanalyst.

Lucas perceives that there is a difference in the judgment that society makes about homosexual and heterosexual parents.

“Heterosexual fathers tend to have a higher position: ‘He’s doing way more than his share.’ […] “A straight father who cares while the mother works is much more valued than us, who are going to be underestimated by a part of society, due to the lack of a mother figure.”

For Iaconelli, “the fantasy that, to raise boys and girls, there needs to be a man and a woman, makes us assume that these children will not have access to other people of other genders in the world“.

“But the daughters of two men have a thousand references from women, inside and outside the family,” says the psychoanalyst.

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