Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Unfriendly Fathers

I'm not one to generalise, but in general I find fathers unfriendly.  Specifically I would have to say my own father, and my husband the father of my children are both very friendly - but generally fathers out there in the world are unfriendly.
I am a full time mum at the moment.  It's not the most rewarding (oh except it is the most rewarding job in terms of reason for living/ continuation of the species yadda yadda)/ glamourous (oh except on those days when your child insists on picking your clothes for you so that you actually decide not to leave the house) of jobs - no one has ever sent me a mail after I folded the washing to say it was particularly well done, nor has anyone high fived me if I manage to get the sitting room tidied up while 3 year old is doing something non mess creating, (or at least no bigger than the mess in the sitting room prior to my tidying) - ok well no ones ever high fived me for anything in a real job either thankfully (though there was that door to door job in america that I had for two days where everyone clicked their fingers as a kind of applause for each other and we had to tell people to give money to our cause or suffer polluted air forever - it was actually a bit creepy really - I think maybe it was a cult - though there was supposed to be free pizza the third day, but they fired me on day 2 as I wasn't bringing in enough funds)... the point is - I am doing this job of minding/ feeding/ guarding from all danger/ empowering/ educating/ loving/ hanging around with and enjoying my kids and it's great.  And one of the nicest things about it is the colleagues actually.  I meet other mammies all over the place - at playgrounds mostly, or just out on walks, and we usually chat - and I'm not a chatter - I'm actually pretty shy, but for some reason the mammies are great, they chat, I chat - we're just like the people in the "wheels on the bus" song going chatter chatter chatter, in fact I've never talked so much to my co-workers in any job ever.  We have so much to talk about you see - how old are they, how big a gap between them, did you find they did this at this stage, are they more like daddy or mammy, what school are you thinking of, what's your favourite cartoon etc etc etc  But - and here's where it gets really weird. - the daddies - not so much.  Why is that?
There are lots of daddies out there - doing the same job as me - minding - and they don't chat, ever.  I don't get it. Today I was in a beautiful playground by some water, baby was asleep and there were no other kids, so I had to be a stand in kid for my 3 year old to play with, I was climbing up the slides, walking the rope bridges, even dragging myself through the tunnels, and woe of woes allowing him to spin me on those roundabouty things until I almost remembered what it was like to drink way back in 2010....  Anyway we were nearly ready to go when a daddy and a little boy arrived - yay I said to myself, and said we'd have another 10 mins, just to let my little fella socialise. If the daddy had been a mammy we'd have been there chatting like old friends in no time, but nope.  This guy was following his child around dutifully, but actually kept his phone held out in front of him like a shield as if in actual fear of his life that I'd talk to him.

1 comment:

Niamh B said...

A quick amend actually - have since met several friendlier fathers - maybe it was just me.