How I know that men do not like nurturing babies!

My FM station has been a mother lode of new ideas for my posts recently.

 

A few weeks ago one of the RJ’s had been suffering from lack of sleep. It had been going on for a few days and she asked listeners whether they suffered from the same, and if so, what their causes were? Partying, computers, TV, YouTube, gaming, immediately sprang to my mind, as the chief culprits for modern day sleep deprivation. But what amazed me was that most callers and sms messages, cited babies and small children as the main cause. I did not see that coming, but still accepted it for what it was. However as I continued listening, what astonished me was that the calls (and messages) were predominantly from men.

 

Seriously!

 

Men were calling in and complaining about midnight walks with crying infants, and night time feeds!! How crazy is it that the most common reason for men not getting a good night’s rest was children? What happened to drinking and partying with friends? Darts, bowling, football matches on telly, I would have understood.  But babies?

 

It is simply amazing how expectations from men on child rearing have been ratcheting up over the years. Pictures of handsome men pushing strollers or carrying an infant in a papoose are so prolific that we take them for granted. There are others with attractive Dads reading bedtime stories or getting up early to make a breakfast for their equally good looking triplets.

 

Talk about subliminal conditioning.

 

That got me to thinking about how much ground (and liberties) we men have given up in the last few decades. Women have been subverting the media to their own agenda, and men have been blissfully skipping along. This trend has been building for a long time now and no one has caught on. Now I fear it’s too late. It is the classic case of starting by asking for an inch and then sequestering a yard.

 

Just think how great it was for men a couple of generations ago. There were no expectations to stay up at night, feed the child or entertain an infant. In fact, no man worth his salt would be caught changing nappies or feeding a bawling infant. Even if one felt an unaccountable urge to do so, one would have to swear the household to secrecy and hope that your friends never found out. Today the situation is the reverse.

 

To admit to feeling embarrassed about publicly feeding an infant (your spouse’s expressed and bottled milk) could be grounds for separation on irreconcilable differences. Nowadays, for a man to confess that child nurturing is not something that he deeply and spiritually enjoys, would result in expensive joint therapy sessions. Before the man even finishes the sentence, he would find himself lying on a psychiatrist’s couch, with his distressed wife weeping inconsolably over the sympathetic shoulder of a Dr. Freud.

 

I want to ask what the joy is, in this?

 

I am a father of two and honestly never enjoyed changing nappies, cleaning puke, and having my child burp phlegm on to my shirt. I cannot bring myself to think that anyone (even women) enjoy this. It is a job that needs to be done - that is it. The only conceivable reason why a man would pretend to like this is to try and score with other women, whose estrogen levels soar when they see a nurturing male.

 

So if it keeps going this way, where will this trend end? A few years from now maybe men will be expected to get pregnant, give childbirth and suckle the young, through genetic manipulation. Technologically, I am sure that this is imminent. But I find it difficult to reconcile the image of a bald, heavily muscled and tattooed man - breast feeding!

 

To the women
 

So to all young women - let me 'plead' on behalf of the coming generations of men. Trust me when I say that I have nothing to gain by this. My children have passed that stage, though I do shudder at the prospect my son faces. I beseech you in the name of whatever it is you deem holy - do not take away even this last bastion of manhood from us.


I know what you are going to say. That women had it bad for generations, life was unequal to the sexes, and that the load and responsibilities should be shared. But we did not ask you to join the workforce, we did not say - go get a career. "You" wanted it! You now wear trousers, smoke cigarettes, curse like sailors, and drink along with men. You have the ability to work and earn alongside men, have careers, join the army, and become pilots. You wanted it - so you got it! After haranguing entire societies for decades you won these choices. You got what you wanted and then what did you do? You turned around and said that since you are too busy doing what you wanted, men have to chip in and do what they do not want.

 

In this spirit of openness, let me tell you something else. Something most men (especially with infants in the house) do not like admitting to, as it can upset his wife and make his day a guilt ridden living hell. Men do not like to handle babies and infants. I am not saying that we do not like to play with them when they are laughing and gurgling, just that we prefer to pass them on as soon as their faces crunch into an imminent bawl. Being peed on, or drooled over is neither cute nor endearing, and being puked on by an over-fed baby is definitely a no-no. Let me also assure you, that there is absolutely no bonding happening at two a.m. in the morning, between a bleary-eyed man changing a soiled smelly nappy and an infant. The thoughts going through a man's head, after he has been holding a bottle to an infant’s lips for half an hour followed by another fifteen minutes of frantic pacing to burp the baby, cannot be printed.

 

I know what you are thinking. You do not believe me - do you?

 

Then explain why over the last few decades (in every Country) without exception; where the expectations from husbands to be nurturing fathers has been going up, the population growth rates have been plummeting - and in countries where traditional parenting roles are followed, they remain at healthy constants? Hah!

Culture vulture

Culture is a funny thing, and in all cases (I am sure) means different things to different people.

 

Take for example my early years in Dubai. One of the common refrains I heard was that it was a good place to live in, but lacked culture. Even though I never argued against it, to this day I do not really know what that statement meant. Dubai had (still does actually) great sports facilities, restaurants, movie theaters, music groups, etc. but obviously that was not enough. I think it was something to do with old buildings and art galleries, but can't be sure as I quite like modern skyscrapers. It was not as if there were no arty events in Dubai in those days. I remember going for a Russian Ballet with my wife - a Black Tie affair with the crème-de-la-crème of Dubai society. We had managed to procure passes from someone, who must have been under the notion that I might be vaguely interested. My Mother In Law used to like this sort of thing, though my Father In Law would generally deride ballet. He preferred not to go to shows where men danced around wearing tights and (in his words) what looked like stuffed ‘samosas’ in their crotch. All I remember of that show, were these dancers in white leggings prancing around on stage, and the food and music lulling me to sleep at the back of the hall. Give me a Hollywood Blockbuster any day!

 

Then let us take Accents. Since Hollywood is the main global cultural force, an American accent is deemed mainstream, an English one is perceived as interesting, and French or a Spanish accent as exotic. English spoken with an Indian accent however is universally thought of as funny, despite the fact that as a Nation, Indians would be the biggest bloc of English speakers in the World. So as an Indian kid, unless your aspirations are to become a bit actor in a Hollywood B movie, you will lose your accent before you have lost your diapers. Indian parents will be the first to encourage their children to speak with a 'Phoren' accent, and actually inflate with pride when their offspring stumbles around in their own mother tongue. The fact that this brogue is a mix of four jumbled accents is lost on them.

 

Music has had the most tectonic of shifts as far as culture goes. Growing up, a concert generally meant a classical music recital. The hoi polio of Bombay would descend into the auditorium, speaking in the Queen’s English with a few Parsi dowagers even resorting to French. It was definitely not for the masses. Today on MTV all you see are bikini clad girls and bare chested heavily-muscled guys gyrating away seductively. It seems in America, women singers perform either next to the ocean or in inner city alleys, and that it is mandatory to don beachwear everywhere. Behind them a bunch of (presumably) their friends would be doing choreographed hip-hop, with inverted pee-caps and dark glasses. And to think that we used to laugh at Bollywood dance numbers! This kind of dance form and of course the concept of cheerleading during games, has caught the World's imagination. The Indian Premier League brought it into vogue and it has touched new nadirs with the ongoing Cricket T20 World Cup in Sri Lanka. We have been exposed to cheerleaders that can pour misery on any man's happiness. Now why would a nation that has centuries of music and dance history, go down this route?

 

Look at the sari - as elegant and versatile an outfit as any can get. My mother used to wear it to work every day. Worn one way it is a modest garment that is often used to portray the mother or sister in Indian cinema, and worn another portrays a vamp to titillate the masses. But somehow the cropped blouse and short slitted skirt (with obligatory high heels) won the favor of Indian women. One hardly sees a sari being worn nowadays. I am not complaining, just making a point.

 

Coming to food - who decided that Japanese food was high cuisine? I see people (including my wife) relishing raw fish wrapped in boiled rice and seaweed. Seaweed!! These are the same people who will baulk at eating veggies, but will savor seaweed. How is seaweed not a vegetable? Maybe it is the salt or the fortune that one pays for sushi that fools them. Indian food got the short end of the stick. I am sure they would be piling into ‘aloo gobi’ if it was served by a grim faced overdressed waiter, and cost an arm and a leg!

 

And why is it that we think nothing about imitating the urbane set, imitating the Chinese eating with chopsticks, but will shudder to eat Indian food with our hands?

 

Talking about chopsticks makes me think of the time when as teenagers we had gone to a Chinese restaurant for dinner, after a volleyball match. We were all hungry lads with huge appetites, with little sympathies for the slow or the fastidious. A friend who had just returned from the UK, felt the urge to show how much class he had picked up while there, and asked for chopsticks to eat with. I think I would be stating the obvious to say that fingers are more effective to eat with, than chopsticks. He was faced with a stark choice; either to continue picking at his food with chopsticks and go hungry or, drop them and get full value for the meal that he would contribute towards. Neither his quandary nor his chopsticks lasted long!

 

To date I refuse to use chopsticks in a Chinese restaurant, but would gladly wade into a South Indian Thali with my fingers.

 

And by the way which moron in the Developed World decided that toilet rolls are a better way to clean oneself with, than water? Ok let us not go there!

 

I imagine a hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humor and English wine - Peter Ustinov.