DadTalk

Men better at building the cot

Tom Sykes envies his male forebears whose responsibilities when their wives were pregnant were limited to two important tasks.Putting the cot together, and making sure that the motor car was filled with petrol in case of an emergency late night run to the hospital.

As a father of two children aged four and three, Tom Sykes envies his male forebears

whose responsibilities when their wives were pregnant were limited to two important tasks. They had to put the cot together, and they had to make sure that the motor car was filled with petrol in case of an emergency late night run to the hospital. And that was it.

But since the 1960s, when just 5 per cent of men attended the birth of their children, the notion that men should be there for the great event has become such an article of faith that 95 per cent of births are now attended by the father. Now, however, new research has appeared giving males an opt-out from the nonsense of being forced to attend antenatal classes and birth. According to Dr Jonathan Ives of the Centre for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Birmingham, men who are obliged to attend antenatal classes and be present for the birth of their children can actually become “deskilled” at parenting.

He describes the dogma of “equal involvement” in childbirth as, “false, modern rhetoric”, and argues that men who feel a sense of duty to become actively involved in pregnancies are left disenchanted and self-doubting as they realise that they can offer little more than passive support to their partners.

In short, he seems to suggest what many a hapless father could have told you: that being a useless spare part in the delivery room whilst your wife and various nurses yell abuse at you for standing in the wrong place is not the ideal start to fatherhood.

Read the rest of this story from The Telegraph Online