Sunday, February 26, 2017

Stay at Home Dads- Where's our support?

I haven't posted anything for a long while as my hands have been pretty full.  I have enjoyed the last 7 months so much but I have had one thing that has ticked me off during this time.  How come every advertisement, app, or anything that must do with taking care of babies, are geared only to the mom???  It’s funny because I remember downloading the Huggies App being all excited that I can earn rewards for every diaper and wipe massive container that we buy and going into the app and being severely upset.  So, upset that I ended up writing an email to their customer service team.  Why was I upset, well in the link that I created above, it turns out that on the site and app, they have a huge section dedicated to "Mommy Answers."  Why does that upset me, well because, 1. I am not a mommy and 2. We are in the year 2017 and the number of dads staying home has definitely increased.  And it’s not just Huggies that is gearing the majority of the content towards women.  Just because I am on my kick, I decided to check out other major baby brands to see who else is geared towards "mommy."   The following links all have content geared to the mommy's out there:  PampersLuvsGerberBeechnut, BabyCenter, baby Einstein, Johnson BabyAvent,  etc.  Now I do not have a problem with the content because a lot of it is really good, however the times have changed and it’s not just the mom staying home anymore. specifically, in my case.  And just so everyone out there is aware, this is a choice of mine and not something about I lost my job, I have always wanted to stay home and take care of our children.  Stace has a very great and rewarding job that allows us to have this amazing opportunity.  

I figured I should do some research before I just went on a rant and try to figure out if I have any merit to my argument and it turns out I did.  I had a conversation with Stace the other night and I was basically stating how it’s not fair that men do not have anything really geared to them.  And she said well it’s not that common which made me look it up.  But before I do give you the facts and articles, it really isn't known.  Just like infertility isn't a topic of conversation among most of the male population, especially male factor, because typically guys do not talk in general about our emotions and feelings regarding how we are treated.  I came across a really neat article in the Huffington Post regarding how many dads are actually staying at home.  Here is the article and I am pretty sure it might shock some of you reading it, because honestly, it opened my eyes up even more.  Now the article does state that 80% of the almost 20% of men that are staying at home is due to unemployment reasons, however there are still almost 20% of men staying at home to take care of children.  In the article, they reference that in the 1970's, only six (6) total men were stay at home dads.  I am pretty sure that the number has risen greatly over the years and this article was even written in 2015, so I am sure that the number is even higher.  We will not know for sure until another census is taken but I was actually intrigued more than a fifth of the United States population is stay at home dads.  That is why I rant about the websites and apps that do not mention men at all as being the primary caregiver.  

Now to go back to the Huggies piece about the site not having anything geared towards men, I decided to email the site to see what the company’s response would be.  I did not expect them to change their whole website, but the first response I got was the usual, we will pass that along as an idea.  I did not really think that was an adequate response so I decided to email them again and include my original email and I did get an actual response this time.  But it was more of a push over than it was okay we will take it into consideration.  With technology on the rise and everything being so accessible now a day, there is no reason that major companies would just say parenting instead of mom and make it universal.  I am pretty sure that they pay people lots of money to maintain their websites, so they could easily have someone just change the words or a couple of pictures here and there.  Basically, in the times that we live in, we should all be recognized.  I understand that motherhood is very hard and that women should have a lot of resources available to them because that is the norm, however, for us guys out there that must take care of our beautiful little ones, we should also get some respect in the same regards.