This is a long one but I loved answering this question, and I think it’s so important. I wish more men would ask questions like this, and I hope they really listen to the answer. If the response in my DMs from women is anything to go by, this answer deeply resonated with them and their experience. So many of us feel/felt SO LET DOWN by the lack of true partnership we received after we became mothers.

We’re told to be a mother is “the most important job in the world”, but this isn’t at all reflected in the way motherhood itself is actually viewed and treated. It’s “the most important job in the world”, and yet it’s also “not that big a deal, women do it everyday, get over yourself”. Maternity leave is a big old bludge, right? We just sit at home and watch TV and have a nice holiday!

WRONG.

Pregnancy, birth and caring for a newborn are some of the most demanding and gruelling things a person can put their body through. If you feed your baby from your own body, you’re looking at around 8-10 hours a day of milk feeding and production. That is labour, and it’s been valued at $3.6 BILLION a year to the Australian economy. Motherhood is work – and just because it is unpaid (convenient!) it does not mean it is meaningless or unchallenging.

So one of the most valuable things new fathers can do to support their partners \*and their babies\* is recognise that this is work. And when they leave to go to their jobs every day, they are taking a break from that work. That means when they return from their job, their work starts. Not just caring for the baby, which they must do as soon as they walk in the door, but taking on the bulk of the household work too. Do not ever chastise the mother of your child for the house being messy. How dare you, especially when I \*know\* from listening to women talk over the years how many of you also “won’t let her” pay for a cleaner – because you think \*she\* should do it all for free. Do the laundry, mate!

And let’s talk about sleep. Men’s sleep is not more valuable. Yes, I understand there are circumstances where men in labour intensive jobs may need to have sleep to ensure safety – but until Australian workplaces provide adequate paid paternity leave (that all men are also willing to take), they will have to be willing to negotiate this in a way that is fair and equitable to both parties. Mothers need sleep too – they’re doing “the most important job in the world” after all.

But more than anything, if men don’t recognise these truths, they need to accept that women will one day leave them. As soon as they’re able to, as soon as they aren’t crushed by the intensity of caring for a newborn and then a toddler, they will leave. Because they will feel so fundamentally let down that they won’t be able to bear it anymore. The resentment will begin to poison them and everything they ever thought was good about that person, and all they’ll feel is rage and hatred.

So I ask men: do you want your partners to hate you? Do you want them to feel let down by you? Do you want them to know that, when it really counted, you failed them?

If the answer to those questions is a resounding no, I urge you to listen to this advice. And if you don’t believe me, listen to other women. Because as much as you might not believe me here, I don’t hate men and I don’t want them to suffer. I just want them to be better. For women. For children. And for themselves.