Moms complain, not dads

Samantha Rodman writes a Wash. Post op=ed:

One thing I have noticed as a clinical psychologist in private practice is that men are increasingly less able to voice negative feelings about parenting, even ones that are entirely understandable. Imagine being at a play date and hearing someone say, “God, I needed a drink all day today. The kids were behaving terribly, I couldn’t deal.” You’re picturing a mom, right?

However, what if the speaker is a dad? The question is moot because I have yet to hear a dad complain this openly and honestly about his kids, and this is not for lack of trying. Dads don’t even take the conversational bait. If asked to commiserate about parenting, the average mom breathes a sigh of relief and sits forward in her seat, but the average dad looks around like he’s on Candid Camera and gives a vague answer about having lots of fun sitting around watching dance class through a two way mirror for the 15th week in a row.

Here are some comments:

But if a woman is looking for someone to listen to her endless string of petty complaints and histrionics, she should go find another woman (or a group of women), whereupon she can emote and complain at length. Don't bother me (or any other man) with your endless issues, complaints, emotional tantrums and angst.

I'm a man. Men solve problems. Problems aren't solved by whining about them.

Men do a lot of things without whining. Most things actually. A lot of the jobs men have traditionally taken in order to support their families are really not a lot of fun, and they're tiring, and stressing, and sometimes dirty and/or dangerous. Yet men don't walk in the door after a full day of not-especially-pleasant work and commence to whining for the next hour and a half.

Men created civilization and all our modern conveniences. They did it to get the women to stop complaining. If they only knew.....

Yes, this is a difference between moms and dads. The moms are forever complaining about stupid stuff.

Speaking of parental complaints, here an Amazon official in an interview trying to give an example of why you will want drones delivering your packages:

GK: I have three kids, and once when my wife was on a business trip one of the little ones woke up in the middle of the night screaming for a pacifier, which I couldn’t find. I had a moment of panic. Do I wake up the other kids, load everyone into the car, and drive to a 24-hour pharmacy — if I can even find one? I got lucky and found the pacifier. But the better solution was for the pacifier to come to me. I imagine myself pulling out my phone, pushing a button, and 30 minutes later the pacifier shows up.

I do not think he is joking. His name is Gur Kimchi, and I have no idea what ethnicity that is, so maybe there is some weird cultural issue. Surely there is some better example for the utility of drones.

No one is going to order a drone delivery of a pacifier in the middle of the night. The kid will have screamed himself to sleep by the time the drone arrives. No one is going to wake up the kids to drive to a 24-hour pharmacy for a pacifier. Was this the first time his wife left him with the kids? Is this some kind of Uzbekistan humor?

Sometimes I hear stories like this, and I wonder how parents manage. Pacifiers are useful sometimes, but they are never necessary and are not even worth looking for in the middle of the night. Just go back to sleep and forget it. If that is a crisis, then he must have 20 crises a day.

It sounds like a comical plot line about some stupid Hollywood movie about incompetent dads, such as Moms' Night Out: Official Trailer. Or maybe Amazon is signaling
that is just some silly keep-up-with-Google research project that is never intended for commercial reality.

Here is a mom complaining about sleep, in an NPR interview:

GROSS: When somebody has a baby, they're always told you're not going to get any sleep for a long time. But you point out that some people truly can't deal with sleep deprivation, and that it is sleep deprivation. I mean, there's going to be a period of time when you're just getting a few hours of sleep a night, if you're lucky, and that for some people, that's fine. For some people, that's - you know, it's difficult, but for some people, it's just kind of impossible to handle.

SENIOR: ... I was like a banana boat. I mean, I was just terrible on no sleep. And I thought I wasn't going to be because I was a veteran insomniac. I mean, I was a very practiced insomniac. I prided myself on knowing how to conduct my affairs on two to three hours of sleep. But it turns out to be different because it's very stressful, interrupted sleep.

So she could conduct her affairs on 2-3 hours of sleep a night, but was a basket case with a kid because that was being interrupted.

Newborn babies typically sleep 15-18 hours a day. How could a new mom possibly be short on sleep? Again, I don't think that she is joking. Is she spending a lot of time looking for lost pacifiers? I don't get it.