Daddy can too!

I went grocery shopping on Friday morning. Well, it was late morning and the supermarket was full with Friday shoppers, mainly women and quite many small children. A father was pushing a shopping trolley with his baby son sitting in the baby chair and a small boy around three years old was walking next to him. Suddenly the three year old says loud and clear: ”Daddy, I need to wee-wee”. No immediate reaction from the dad. ”DADDY, I NEED TO WEE-WEE” shouted the boy. ”Do you really need to wee-wee right now?” asked the dad. ”YEEEESSSS, RIGHT NOW DAD! I WILL WEE-WEE IN MY PANTS SOON!” Shopping women around him started to give good advice to the the father who looked stressed and as if he were searching for a toilet to magically appear next to the meat deli. I kept on walking so I don’t know if the little boy did wet his pant or not. 

I wonder how come a father get so much sympathy when he’s on his own with two children? How often don’t we see mothers with two, three children? Children who are crying and screaming? Do we rush to their aid with advice or help them out? Probably not. I might give the struggling mother a faint smile while in my head I’m thinking ”just get your ill-mannered kids to put a sock in it”. Why are we mothers expected by other women to manage the children by ourselves while we take pity in the men and offer them help as if the men are not capable of taking care of their children? Taking a kid to the bathroom for a wee-wee is a piece of cake. It’s a whole other deal when you need to go to the restroom and you have small children. I’ve been to public toilets many times with my youngest in a Baby Björn, the oldest being only two years old and too little to wait outside for mommy. Half standing over the porcelain chair, lifting the youngest daughter in the Baby Björn a little with the left hand, holding the oldest daughter with the right hand so she doesn’t touch anything in the toilet or tries to open the door. Sure, a little help with the children would have been nice but I managed. 

When our youngest was about ten months and our oldest was two and a half years old, I decided to take a couple of hours off to go shopping by myself downtown Bangkok and leave the girls with my husband. It was Saturday and the maid wasn’t working so he was really on his own.  At 13.30 he calls me, sounding desperate. ”The girls have been crying for one and a half hour now. Something’s wrong. You have to come home right now.” ”Have you tried giving them lunch? They eat at 12 every day.” I asked. ”Eeehhh, no. I didn’t think of that” replied my husband. He fed the girls, they stopped crying and everything was fine. See, a father can take of his children too! I never went shopping without the girls ever again though, but that’s another story... 

                                            Family lunch some 10 years ago....