The birth of a child has a quiet way of revealing things we otherwise take for granted. In my case, it revealed how deeply our ideas about caregiving are shaped, not only by love and concern, but also by long-standing assumptions about who is expected to know, and who is expected to learn.
From the earliest days of parenthood, I noticed a pattern that many fathers will recognise. Whenever I held my child, fed her, or tried to soothe her to sleep, advice came easily and often. Do this. Don’t do that. Hold her this way. Try it that way. None of this was unkind. In fact, most of it came from well-meaning individuals who had genuine concern for the baby’s well-being. And yet, even when things were going well, when the child was calm, safe, and cared for, there was a persistent sense that a man’s way of caring needed supervision, correction, or validation.
One memory stands out clearly. Our daughter had developed a habit of falling asleep on my shoulder while I gently rocked her and walked around. The moment I put her down, she would wake up. So, I would pick her up again, rock her a little, walk some more, and try again. After many attempts, I decided to just let her sleep on my shoulder for a while. Our concern, as parents, was simple: she needed good sleep. Even if that meant a few days of sleeping on my shoulder, we felt we could later work on getting her to sleep lying down. When we were in shared family spaces, this turned into a recurring pattern. Women would often pass by and say, “Put her down.” I would explain that this was how she was sleeping and that this was what worked for her at the moment. Still, the same instruction would return every few minutes, until I found myself explaining less and simply nodding. This is not about accusing anyone of bad intentions. Most of it grows out of care, habit, and deeply ingrained ideas about who is “naturally” expected to do what. Over time, I began to notice the same pattern in other, more ordinary moments of caregiving. Even today, when I feed my daughter, now a toddler, she sometimes wants to hold the spoon herself, and sometimes she prefers to eat with her hands. I try to balance both, letting her experiment, guiding her gently, and still making sure she eats enough. Yet, in such moments, women around me often step in, distracting her, turning the meal into a game so that she eats. Yes, she does eat, but she eats because of that intervention. This leaves me wondering whether this response comes only from concern, or whether there is also, quietly, a lack of faith in a father’s ability to feed his own child. What makes this feeling more noticeable is that the same pattern often disappears when the mother is present. In such environments, communication slowly becomes one-sided. Suggestions start to feel like corrections. Concern starts to sound like judgment. And over time, some men respond by going quiet, not because they do not care, but because they have learned that their way of caring is not expected to shape outcomes.
My experience is only one small window into this, but it helped me see a much larger social reflex at work. In many families and communities, caregiving knowledge is assumed to naturally belong to women. Men, even when they are present and involved, are often treated as learners at best, or as potential risks at worst. The underlying message is subtle but powerful: a mother knows, a father helps. A mother decides, a father follows. This is not usually said out loud but, it is communicated through interruptions, through recurrent advice, and through the habit of addressing all guidance about the child to the mother, even when both parents are equally present.
Over time, I began to notice how these patterns shape behaviour on both sides. Women are placed under the constant pressure of being the “primary knower” and “primary carrier” of responsibility. Men, meanwhile, are slowly trained to doubt their own instincts, or to withdraw from decision-making altogether. To an outside observer, this can look like disinterest or detachment. In reality, it is often the result of repeatedly learning that one’s perspective is not expected to matter.
I slowly realised this was not an accident. It was a social norm, reinforced by culture, by family traditions, and by media portrayals of fathers as either incompetent, comical, or peripheral in everyday caregiving. We often joke about fathers being ‘clueless’, but its effects are serious. When society repeatedly tells men that care is not really their domain, it becomes harder for their way of seeing, feeling, and responding to a child to be taken seriously, at times even by themselves.
And yet, I began to see that fathers do not merely “assist” in raising children. They observe. They learn. They sense patterns of hunger, fatigue, discomfort, and mood. They develop their own forms of attentiveness and connection. Their relationship with the child is different from the mother’s, yes but, different does not mean inferior, and it certainly does not mean irrelevant.
This is where, for me, the idea of consultation became crucial. I did not arrive at it through theory, but through the everyday need to make sense of our child together. I began to see that true equality in parenting is not about dividing tasks mechanically, or about proving who does more. It is about shared thinking. It is about creating a space where both parents can bring their observations, their concerns, their intuitions, and their questions, and where both voices genuinely shape decisions. Consultation, in this sense, is not just a practical tool; it is an ethical stance. It makes the parents realise that their perspective matters because they are equally responsible, equally invested, and equally present. In our own small ways, this often happens quietly: one of us notices a change in her behaviour, the other wonders if sleep, food, or routine might be the cause. We talk. We weigh possibilities. We decide together. Far from diminishing the mother’s experience or intuition, I have found that this kind of reflection actually honours it, by ensuring it is not a burden she has to carry alone.
When I think about what it would mean to truly reimagine the family, I find myself looking less at slogans of equality and more at the ordinary moments of care like feeding, soothing, deciding, worrying, adjusting. It seems to me that equality has to live there too. It has to look like shared authority, shared trust, and shared responsibility in thinking, not just in doing. Children do not only need care; they need to grow up watching cooperation. They need to see two adults who take each other’s judgment seriously. And I find myself hoping that my daughter will inherit a world where caregiving is not quietly sorted by gender, but openly shaped by cooperation and collaboration.
