How to hate your husband

Want to read a just plain weird Mother’s Day article? Try this:

You Will Hate Your Husband After Your Kid Is Born

This is some of the strangest drivel I’ve read in a long time. We are informed:

On this upcoming day of celebrating mothers, here’s a cautionary note, something many mothers-to-be don’t expect when they’re expecting: If you have a husband, you will hate him when your kid is born. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Don’t be fooled by the pictures on your social media feed of your friends serenely beaming with their infants. When they’re not letting you know they’re #SoBlessed, they’re probably fighting.

(First of all, note the phrase, “IF you have a husband.” Now you know the direction this is coming from.)

“Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise,” says the author. Um, sweetheart, I’m here to tell you otherwise. You’re treating your husband like dirt, and it’s your fault.

So new parents are stressed, overtired, and having trouble adjusting to the constant demands of a seven-pound helpless human being. Um, what else did you expect when a new baby came into your formerly kid-free lives? That you’d be able to treat it like a puppy, lock it in the pantry, and go out to dinner?

The article seems to center on the shocking reality that women are much more attuned to the needs of their baby than men are (“A baby’s cry was the No. 1 sound most likely to wake a woman, it didn’t even figure into the male top ten, lagging behind car alarms and strong wind”). Again, duh. The author acts like this is something scandalous and disgraceful.

Men aren’t mothers. Men don’t carry the baby in utero. Men don’t breastfeed the baby. Men are protectors and defenders, not nurturers. (Please don’t misunderstand, I know men care for their babies; what I’m saying is, their biology is geared for defense/protection, not the sensitive nuances of infant care.)

The author of this article seems to spend a lot of time explaining why her man is scum because he’s not as responsive to the immediate needs of a newborn as she is (she terms it “colossal asymmetry”), and why she decides he’s nothing more than a knuckle-dragging caveman:

I thought I had married an evolved guy—one who assured me, when I was pregnant, that we would divide up the work equally. Yet right after our baby was born, we backslid into hidebound midcentury gender roles as I energetically overmet my expectations.

Sheesh, sister, suck it up. What on earth did you expect? Biology doesn’t conform to feminism. Women are mothers, not men.

My advice: Get some immediately counseling for postpartum depression before you send what sounds like a very decent man fleeing into the night. Then read this article.

Okay, rant over.