Women, Dad's and Kids

I know that MaxLead, SmallHolder and the Foreign Minister are all Fathers, as am I.

So I was discussing baby issues with a Female co-worker. I won't go into details, except to say it was a poop related problem. The co-worker has no kids, and no practical baby experience. Yet she saw fit to lecture me on how to deal with this particular issue. And this is a common thing. At a cookout at a friends house on Sunday I was talking about our 7 week old baby, and when telling someone about the poop issue, I got the standard Mother response. "Did you try A? Did you do B? C works?" forget the fact that I was telling the story to set up a joke, I get the "You're a Dad, and an idiot, and you need to be lectured" attitude. Granted, she didn't mean it that way, but the undercurrent is there.

Many women seem to assume that they know more about dealing with any child then any man. Not ALL women, of course. And I do my fair share of second guessing other parents, but I think that's normal.

A friend of ML's and mine tells a story along these lines. Details may be sketchy on my part, but the gist is what's important. He's at a mall with his two daughters. One is fussy. A mother near by comes to "help him" calm his daughter down, and tries to take her out of his arms, seemingly assuming she could deal better than he with it. Now seriously, who do you think a fussy 3 year old would prefer? Her father, or some stranger?

Now I accept that many women, indeed most mothers, know more than I about Children in general. But there is only one person to whom I will defer when talking about my own children, and that is my wife.