Dad Isn't Clueless, and Mom Doesn't Need Help

Our narratives around fatherhood, motherhood, and childrearing are in dire need of change

Image compiled by author in Canva.

I’m not the first mother who has, at one point or another, said, “I need help.” Well, I haven’t always just “said” this. I’m more likely to have grumbled, wailed, or screeched it.

The generally apathetic response, both from individuals and society at large, has astounded me.

Male partners insist that the household labor is divided equally, that invisible labor doesn’t really exist and we’re just making up unnecessary shit to do. Employers tell us to prioritize our jobs above all else, and if we can’t afford or find the childcare we need in order to do said jobs, well, that’s not their problem.

Friends without kids may offer sympathy, but as some of them make very clear, our kids are also not their problem. Friends with kids may offer sympathy, but they are too busy to do much more than text a “care” emoji before letting us know that they’ll have to reschedule the happy hour we spent two months getting on the calendar because there’s a bug going around and they’re knee-deep in vomit.

Oh dear, Covid has closed down schools indefinitely? Your daycare provider is taking a week off? Teachers are going on strike? Sounds rough!

Summer is approaching and all the camps are too expensive or too far away or have hours that in no way correspond to your working hours? Winter break is approaching? Spring break is approaching? One of the dozen other days your kids have off that you don’t is approaching? Ugh.

Your car is in the shop and you can’t get your kid to practice? Your kids need to be in two different places at the same time? Aw, man.

You need to take care of a dozen different things at a dozen different places that are only open during working hours and you’re out of PTO? Your kid is sick and you’re out of PTO? You’re sick and you’re out of PTO? Bummer!

You need to respond to a dozen emails from various teachers, PTA members, coaches, school staff, and after-school staff but for every email you respond to, another one comes in? You need to sift through four group text chains about playdates and birthday parties but haven’t yet found the time to attach names to the numbers and have no idea who sent what? Poor you!

No matter what logistical tangle arises, and logistical tangles arise multiple times a day, the general message from society to mothers is:

Sorry, not sorry. 

Also: Figure it out.

Also: Stop bitching.

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Personally, I’ve had it with asking for help. Because “help” is not actually what I need. 

Even if my partner promises to take care of that one thing, it doesn’t really change the stubborn dynamic we’ve struggled with — the stubborn dynamic most heterosexual couples struggle with — wherein I either delegate or do it myself. 

And whether it’s my partner or coworker or friend, it’s nearly always me asking for help — which not only doesn’t feel good, it’s also more thing to do.

No one puts it better than author Amy Betters-Midvedt in this Instagram meme:

Part of the problem with the narrative of motherhood is that “moms need more help.”

We don’t need more help.

We need our partners and families and society at large to recognize that not everything is our job in the first place.

People don’t need to help us, they need to contribute to the good of the group. Everyone needs to do their part, not think they are somehow helping with ours.

Once upon a time, childrearing was seen as a collective responsibility wherein extended family and community members, whether or not they were actively parenting children of their own, all did their part to help raise the next generation. 

As our family structures and our built environments evolved (or devolved, as the case may be), childrearing responsibilities shifted heavily toward the parents only — and by “parents,” of course, I mean mothers.

Still, for a time, kids roamed freely up and down streets, neighbors kept an eye on other people’s children, church communities offered additional support, and the majority of mothers weren’t juggling home responsibilities with a paid job outside the home.

Yes, I’m grateful that I’ve had the chance to opt out of a career in homemaking, but the point here is that even when we shifted to a smaller nuclear family unit, mothers still had access to some sort of so-called village. 

Over the course of the last seven decades, that village has all but entirely dissolved. Kids no longer roam the streets, neighbors keep to themselves, and more and more of us can no longer stomach the patriarchal dogma of organized religion. 

Even though mom usually has another job, even though it’s increasingly common for mom to earn as much as (if not more than) dad, even though we expect more of dad in the household labor department, caretaking is still seen as a female endeavor, with the men occasionally pitching in to help. 

The subtitle of this 2023 Pew Research study says it all: “Even when earnings are similar, husbands spend more time on paid work and leisure, while wives devote more time to caregiving and housework.”

In the meantime, the logistics of childrearing have become exponentially more complex. 

Consider, for instance, the rise of playdates and scheduled activities, the monitoring of screen time, the increased demands of paid work, the burgeoning number of consumer product options, the escalating financial pressures, and the decline of available and affordable childcare.

As Amy Betters-Midvedt so astutely points out, moms don’t need help. When it comes to modern motherhood, we need to change the narrative.

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A lot of well-meaning dads out there claim they’d like to pitch in more. But they can’t, they say, because they don’t know how.

This feigned helplessness is something that, for some reason, many of us find funny. 

It’s the subject of countless standup comedy routines, in which men portray their wives as the all-knowing, though usually naggy, parent, and portray themselves as the “typical” bumbling, clueless dad.

I’ve written about this before and was reminded of it again while watching Nate Bargatze’s (otherwise very funny) special, “The Greatest Average American,” in which he talks about a call he took from his daughter’s school:

…someone from school called my cell phone. They have my wife’s cell phone, they have my cell phone. They called my cell phone, and she said, “Do you know what bus number your daughter’s supposed to be on?”

And I said, “I’m her dad.” As in, “Are you cra…” I was like, “This is how you thought you’d get this information, was to call the dad? You saw Mom and Dad’s cell phone, you go, ‘I bet the dad knows.’”

I was like, “Do you have parents? You ever seen a family before? You thought, ‘Let’s call the husband?’” Unless there’s two husbands, you should never call a husband a day in your life. I’d rather you ask a lady that doesn’t know her. I think she could get to the bottom of it quicker than I can.

Paternal cluelessness is largely portrayed and understood as biological. A person with a penis could never keep track of all the silly little details, like school bus numbers, that clutter up mom’s brain. 

His Man Brain was made for Big Things, like hunting and chopping wood.

It’s a funny thing, though. A dad will assume helplessness when it comes to researching summer camp options, but when he’s researching destinations for a summer trip with friends, he suddenly becomes an expert Googler. 

He’ll poke fun at the work his wife puts into researching stroller options, but if he’s making a major purchase for himself, he’ll spiral down dozens of online review rabbit holes and may even create his own spreadsheet. 

He’ll opt out of the parental text thread about who’s bringing which food items to his daughter’s basketball game because he “can’t” keep track of all those damn texts, but he’ll enthusiastically participate in equally chaotic March Madness text threads with coworkers.

I don’t mean to suggest there is anything malicious, or even intentional, about this assumed helplessness. What I am saying is that it’s learned from a society that continues to insist that everything involving childrearing and homemaking — particularly when it comes to invisible labor — is still, first and foremost, the mother’s job. 

As I’ve previously pointed out in Boys Can Do Everything Girls Can Do, there is zero evidence to support the widely held belief that women are “better multitaskers,” and there is absolutely nothing biological about one gender’s ability, or lack thereof, to make lists and keep track of things. 

No one ever questions a man’s ability, based on his gender, to manage the operations of a company. But somehow, we deem him biologically incapable of managing the operations of his home. 

Clearly, our narratives around fatherhood are also in dire need of change. Dads aren’t innately clueless and the cluelessness they might project isn’t something any of us should be laughing about. 

We should expect, and demand, more of dads because they are perfectly capable of rising to the occasion. If cluelessness is learned, it can also be unlearned. 

It’s not just the narratives around motherhood and fatherhood that we need to change, but our broader narratives around childrearing. 

Once we begin to frame needs like paid leave, childcare, and reproductive rights not as “women’s issues,” but as issues central to our collective health and economic stability, we may actually find the political will to move the needle on them. 

Once we begin to reframe childrearing as a shared social responsibility, we can all ultimately benefit — both from the joy that children can bring to everyone’s lives and from stronger networks of mutual support.

But as long as dad’s clueless, mom’s fried, and no one else cares, we’re not going to get anywhere anytime soon.

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