It does not happen very often, only on a few occasions, but I always have a strange feeling when as a nurse I ask parents things and they answer that they don't know what their mother's business is, or vice versa, I ask the mothers and they tell me that it's a parent's thing.
The second situation is uncommon. Normally it is the mothers who take care of the babies and consequently they are the ones who know best what happens to the child and what does not happen, but some mothers do when they see the child's genitals or when you ask them if they lower a little the skin of the foreskin, always without forcing, to clean the area. At that time some of them also say it: "I don't know, that's your father's thing".
Penises and vulvas
Then one is a little surprised, because it seems that women have not seen a penis in their life and, conversely, it seems that men have never seen a vulva. What I say that in the past could happen, that the woman waited for the husband in bed and in the dark and there nobody saw anything, but now, luckily, there are not so many taboos, we are all a little more uninhibited and the difficult thing is to have a partner and not knowing how his genitals are, I say.
So it seems surprising that you later find yourself with peers, but in miniature, and the fathers and mothers stay in the "I don't touch it" plan when the baby is of the opposite sex. I don't know, I think it's time to take off prejudices and assume that responsibility as fathers and as mothers. That they do not need to know if the baby has phimosis or not or if the testicles are in the scrotum, or if the girl has synechia of the lips (although if they know how to assess it, better), but what less do they know how to clean them, what less than, if for some reason the genitals change their appearance, they know how to differentiate them, than to the question "does the penis of the most swollen kid notice?" a mother can say "well yes, I see more swollen part of the foreskin," I do not "I do not know, I see it as usual, this is his father's business."
Of medications and diseases
As I said, when it comes to medications and diseases, it seems that the one who always finds out is always the mother. I do not say that parents do not, most explain perfectly what their children take and what the symptoms are, however, I still find myself with parents who either don't know or don't want to know.
On more than one occasion the mother, the father and the son have come and when asking the father about the baby, while the mother undresses him, I have received a "I don't know, ask your mother", as if he were a taxi driver who was passing by when a woman with her baby asked her to approach the pediatrician.
And already the height of the lack of involvement comes when the child cries, the mother tries to speak without making herself heard and after suggesting to the father that it be he who removes her clothes and diaper, or that she puts everything on, if the child has already been assessed while directions have just been given, respond "No, I don't know, mother do it".
How can it be that a father of today don't know how to change your diaper to your son or daughter? It's terrible. I already say that the cases can be counted on the fingers of one hand, but it is that who says to change the diaper says to put the clothes, and who says to put the clothes says to prepare the food, or give them the medication, or ...
Nowadays, in a world where fathers are much more involved in the care of their children, as it has to be, both of them have to know how to do everything, because even mothers, sometime, get sick someday. It cannot be that fathers are accommodated in "the mother already does it" and that mothers allow it. Isn't it true that two children are needed to have a child? Well, to take care of them too, I say.
