Women with children do more work – paid and at home – than their male partners. There’s research to back this up, but for now I’m going to call this The Problem. That’s a very unattractive proposition. I could, however, be coaxed into something that resembled a 50:50 split. A genuine equal partnership. Co-parenting, equal […]
Reflections on our Switcheroo
Two years ago I returned to work and Tee stepped out to do some solo parenting. Thus we moved into the second phase of our journey: Parental Leave II: Electric Switcheroo The Switcheroo is when the birth parent returns to work, the other steps out to do solo parenting. I’m increasingly vocal about the role […]
Unpopular opinion: I’m not a mum, I’m a parent
So this is where my rhetoric gets a bit radical… I don’t identify as a mum. Mum is my title, it is Buddy’s name for me. But fundamentally, I am a parent. I don’t do mum things, I don’t wear mum clothes or attend mum activities. I have no interest in Mother’s Day. Mum media […]
The “no reaching” rule
Every day I get thousands of letters, fruit boxes and stripagrams from AFC readers who say “why so quiet?” or “What happened to the award-winning blog on equal parenting?” The answer is simple: I broke the “no reaching” rule. When we embarked on this baby adventure, Tee and I agreed that for the first 12-18 […]
Sick days: the ultimate test
Sick days are where the rubber hits the road for equal parenting. Kids get sick, and they get sick a lot in the early stages Evidence guru Emily Oster says kids younger than school-age get an average of six to eight cold a year, which last an average of 14 days. (School-age kids have two […]
Saying yes to sleep and no to martyrdom
Early on Tee and I decided that sleep would be our #1 priority as parents. I believe it’s the secret sauce in our family arrangement. Everything is easier with sleep – feeding the baby, maintaining a relationship, going back to work, feeling human. I’ve written about this before but now, 18 months into this parenting […]
Equal parenting is a radical pursuit
A few things happened recently that made me realise: equal partnership parenting is radical pursuit. radical /ˈradɪk(ə)l/ adjective1. (especially of change or action) relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something; far-reaching or thorough.2. advocating or based on thorough or complete political or social change; representing or supporting an extreme or progressive section of […]
Introducing The Switcheroo
In Australia, anyone who’s spent at least a year with their employer is entitled to take 12 months of unpaid parental leave. That’s 12 months per parent. And yet caring for young children looks like a woman’s game. In the playgrounds, the playgroups, the cafes and libraries all I see is women. Only 1 in […]
Our model for when one parent takes leave
I took 6.5 months of parental leave. I’ve previously shared how valuable it was to have Tee at home for the first two months (leave + WFH). His return to the office was the first test for our equal parenting approach. We didn’t have a game plan but used trial and error to find something […]
Shared feeding: what worked for us
It’s part II of my award-winning series on feeding! You’ve read my manifesto on shared feeding; this is how we’re doing it: Newborn phaseTee gave Buddy a bottle a day from week one. This was usually in the evening, as part of Midwife Cath’s famous ‘BBB’ routine, outlined previously. This meant more sleep but also […]
Shared feeding or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bottle
In my last post I said the newborn phase was where best intentions crashed into biological realities. I think that’s partially true. However there’s scope to shift our rhetoric and practices in one key area: feeding the baby. Here in Sydney, we receive fantastic post-partum support from the public health system. Community nurses are there […]