I recently saw a post about a class teaching dads how to do hair. I thought this was an amazing idea, one that is long overdue! For some reason, as social media posts tend to do, it triggered me.
I began to fall down the rabbit hole of thoughts. Thinking of all the times my husband (who is a great dad btw) got away with saying, “I don’t know how.” I mean he never did our daughter’s hair because he said he didn’t know how. When things broke around the house, he simply stated he didn’t know how fix them. When our children needed a button sewn on or a costume mended, he could easily say, “I don’t know how” and no one would think anything of it.
It left me thinking about how different it is if I say “I don’t know how.” As a mom, it seems that I’m not allowed to say those four simple words without judgement. There are women out there that don’t know how to comb hair well … they use a stylist, and there is no shame in that. Some young girls are busy playing sports and do not learn how to cook. I mean I firmly believe everyone needs to know how to a fix a meal or two just for survival, but we aren’t all Ayesha Curry in the kitchen. There are countless things I don’t know how to do or may not be the best at, so why as a mom do I feel amazing guilt when I don’t have the answer?
Surprise!
We do not know everything, and guess what? That’s okay!! It’s time for some of these double standards to be addressed. There’s nothing to be ashamed of if you have to say “I don’t know how.” As a parent, men and women are equally responsible for the care of the children. In our society, moms work outside of the home. We’re in school. We own businesses. Gone are the days where only mom has to do for the children. It’s time to sign dad up for hairstyling classes … and cooking and sewing too. We are all out here doing the best we can.
Shake off the self inflicted mom guilt sister. There are questions we don’t know the answers to, braids we can’t do, and dinosaur facts we don’t know! This is why we now have Google. (LOL)
