A Mom Calls Her Son's Daycare 'Absurd' For Calling Her Repeatedly Despite Her Son's Father Being Listed As A The Primary Contact
Her attempts at splitting parenting labor equitably weren't acknowledged by her son's daycare.
Twitter A full-time working mom took to Twitter to call out her son’s daycare for assuming she, as the mother, is the default parent, and not her partner, who’s listed as their son’s primary contact.
Dr. Raina Brands, of London, holds a PhD from Cambridge University. She works as a professor at University College London’s School of Management. She’s one of the founders of the organization Career Equally, whose mission is to “educate and empower women and the leaders they work for to de-bias their careers.”
Her son’s daycare refused to see her partner as the primary point of contact.
As she explained on Twitter, her son has been attending daycare since the beginning of the year. She noted that whenever a situation arose at school in which a parent needed to be called, the daycare called her, despite the fact that she was not the parent listed as the primary contact. The school assumed that as the mother, she was the default parent, when in reality, her partner was the primary contact for their son.
“If he is sick and needs to come home early, they call me. If they want to give him paracetamol, they call me. If he has injured himself, they call me.” She posed the question, “So what?” and provided an answer to her question in her Twitter thread.
“I have repeatedly asked them to call my partner first,” Brands explained. “I have asked them to put a note on my file about that. I have asked the manager. Today they called me and I asked them to always call my partner first and 2 hours later THEY CALLED ME AGAIN.”
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Brands acknowledged the absurdity of receiving repeated calls from her son’s daycare, despite the fact that her son’s father is the primary point of contact.
As someone with a full-time career to navigate on top of the expectations that she’s the go-to parent, Brands stated, “What makes this more absurd is the fact that my partner has always been the main point of contact!”
She went on to say that her son’s father is the one who “filled out all of the forms, he did all of the settling-in sessions, and he drops our son off every morning. But they are incapable of viewing him as the primary caregiver.”
Photo: Twitter
“When I say gender inequality is a self-reinforcing system, this is what I’m talking about,” Brands exclaimed.
Even when a woman is working, the societal expectation is that she maintains her role as a primary caregiver within the household. Connected to that perception is the fact that women are still viewed as managers of their household duties, even when they're working.
A 2017 study out of Canada demonstrated the “persistent gendered nature of how housework is divided.” The study found that “women of all ages still tend to do more household chores than their male partners, no matter how much they work or earn in a job outside the home.”
Brands and her partner have clearly negotiated the levels of parenting labor they both complete, in an attempt to make it an equitable split, yet societal elements still seem to be working against them.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. As a former postpartum doula, she covers parenting issues, pop culture analysis and all things to do with the entertainment industry.