The Netherlands is known for being liberal. So why is that the publicly-run playgroups, designed for toddlers and preschoolers, explicitly exclude fathers and other male caregivers? According to Dutch mama Ingrid Robeyns, it's to accomodate mothers whose cultural practices preclude them from participating in mixed-gender social groups. Robeyns admits that there may be reasons to support such a policy, even as it comes at the expense of men.
I was once involved in a playgroup in another place known for its liberality--San Francisco. Originally comprised of stay-at-home moms and mothers on maternity leave, our group was soon faced with the inevitable: someone invited a stay-at-home dad to join us with his child. And I'm sorry to report, he wasn't well-received. After he attended one of our gatherings, a flurry of emails went out and much hand-wringing and clutching-of-cruelty-free-pearls took place. Suddenly we were divided into three camps: those of us who thought of our group as a safe, woman-only place where we could discuss vaginal discharge, those of us who didn't realize it would be out of line to discuss vaginal discharge in front of a married father who presumably was familiar with the concept, and those of us who must have been in the kitchen getting a coffee refill at the time everyone else was discussing vaginal discharge because they couldn't recall that it ever came up anyway. I don't think any of us had the clarity to see that we were depriving a father of a parenting resource that we were lucky to have found ourselves--unlike the Netherlands, San Franciscans have to find their own parenting groups. Long story short, that dad got the shaft.
As time went by we eventually changed our position on the matter. One mama went back to work and her husband became the primary caregiver, and was welcomed at playgroup with open arms. Another stay-at-home-dad soon followed. But the point, and I do have one, is that we failed that first guy. A bunch of tree-hugging, protest-sign-waving, wishing-we-were-old-enough-to-have-voted-for-the-ERA San Francisco liberals, and what do we do the first chance we get? We tell a stay-at-home-father that he's not welcome to share our parenting experience. And as valuable and supportive as we all were to one another, for that we sucked.
