This is sadly not surprising. I have a rising kindergartener and you know where else I suspect this plays out? The PTA. I want to be involved in my daughter’s school - it’s our local zoned school in our liberal neighborhood in our (generally still liberal!) large city. I’ve decided I’ll volunteer for events but I won’t step up to join the board until at least one of the 6 board positions is held by a Dad.
I declined to get involved in our PTA for very much the same reason! My husband and I both went to the first meeting when our older kid was a kindergartener--they'd advertised child care (in the form of slightly older kids hanging out with your kid in the cafeteria, which is fine!) during the meeting, so I thought both parents were meant to come. Welp, my husband was the only man there, other than the principal, no one introduced themselves or welcomed us, and I felt like, well, if you want to see what work is undervalued, look for the place where it's all women doing it and opted out.
Pleased to say that our school's "Friends of" organization (closest we have to a PTA) had a man among the officers this year (my husband) and will have a different one next year (a guy who always shows up for meetings and volunteers at events and finally people were like "uh, you should be an officer" and he asked what he'd have to do and they said "pretty much what you already do?"). And we have another man who's a regular at meetings. Newly appreciating this, although also recognizing that the bar is low for level of representation.
You will probably find that there are a lot of school board positions held by men. No men on the PTA though. That is the case in my very liberal town. Half the school board is men, no men on the pta at all. To be fair to all involved the PTA is very difficult if you have a full time job. All of the opportunities are during the day for mine.
I stepped up to become the president of my older son's school PA this year and it was a completely thankless task that was entirely predicated on the availability of women during their work day. Something that was billed as "not that big a deal" actually involved a mountain of monthly paperwork in addition to running meetings and fundraisers AND a monthly district PA President's Council meeting scheduled for 9:30 a.m. that would frequently run longer than an hour! I did not seek reelection for next year even though he has another year in the school, and they don't have enough officers to run the PA, and I'm wrestling with guilt over giving up my most loathed task all year.
Meanwhile, my other son's PA descended into toxic infighting over the most petty possible bullshit. Name-calling, backbiting, multiple group chats with hundreds of messages a day, constant fundraising for fun school activities for a school community that is largely middle/upper middle class families. Both enterprises seemed like an enormous waste of women's time, energy, and sense of justice/fairness/moral outrage. My years of being a PA joiner are over now that I'll have two middleschoolers in the fall.
Hi Melinda, I read your recent post about if Dads Know How to RSVP through a number of different lenses - as a father of two grown married sons, a grandfather and as a psychologist. You're correct that there's very little research in this area of fathers truly sharing the responsibilities of running a family household. One interesting article in this area "Daytime dads and do-it-all dads: Understanding lead-dad families" from 2023 talked about the gender imbalance in running a household and different types of roles that some fathers play. I think there are a number of factors in play in why there is this imbalance. Of course we can look at the different ways men and women are socialized and how parenting issues are handled within a couple but I find in the work I do with many couples that the female partner is often the one that reads up on child development and then shares what she has found with the male partner. He then may or may not execute the parenting in the way that the female partner wishes. Some of the moms with whom I work see it as their responsibility to take on the lead parenting role and worry how others might see them if they don't take on the primary parenting role and feel judged. Also, I encourage many of the dads with whom I work to be the one who reads up on child development and parenting and then share it with their female partners. I've heard from many men with whom I work say something like "I have to go home and babysit my kids." I gently correct them that the role they have is parenting - not babysitting. Babysitters get paid a lot more than parents! Some of the single dads also report that when they reach out to some moms to make a playdate for their child, some of the moms are uncomfortable with the dad making the arrangements. You raise such an important issue as to how to get more dads involved, and I think the reasons why they do not are multifaceted and complicated and worth further exploration.
There are a couple of dads who act as the organizing parent in our nature classes—they sign up the kids, get the emails, ask for extra gear when needed. But the majority of the organizers are moms. And we make a point to always send the emails to everyone in the family so both parents have the info.
I just want to flag really valuable research on cognitive labor in the household by the sociologist Allison Daminger -- she broke the broad topic of cognitive labor into four types in a way that further illuminated what men do and don't do (on average). A JSTOR Daily piece I did about that research is here, and it may have a free link to the original article (I'm not sure when those time out, if they do): https://daily.jstor.org/the-gendered-labor-of-noticing-and-anticipating/
It's just really good stuff to illuminate how this plays out in detail.
Your evite response rate seems very typical to me! Do people really get 100% response rates when they send out those things? Without sending reminder emails? I know that’s not exactly the point of the post. But, I suspect that where I live, moms and dads are sort of equally flaky. Everyone works too much and is overwhelmed.
Again, totally just anecdotal, but for my daughter’s birthday this year, my husband set up and sent the evite. He sent it to dads and moms alike (depending on which parent he knows better). The response rate has been the same for moms versus dads. Also, my husband and his male friends coordinate at least as many family hang outs as I (mom) and my female friends do.
Interesting! Maybe there are also differences between communities, depending on social norms. Maybe we should all move where you live! Although I do like prompt invitation responses, lol.
When I asked my husband (recently) about this issue. He said, “It’s really your job, and you do it so well that you don’t need me to do it.”Several attitudes to unpack in there!
I just sent out invitations for my son's birthday and deliberately sent to parents of all genders. (Double invited for households to both parents!) Dads are actually doing pretty well...
But I find that so many people just don't rsvp at all! This is one of my pet peeves - please just tell me if you can't come. It's a real barrier to building community.
I love hosting and am a huge extrovert, and I have a solid foundation of friends, so I feel like I can shake off the rejection of not even having invitations acknowledged! But it still stings, and makes it harder to feel trust in our neighbors.
The worst is when you can see they've opened the invitation but not responded. It usually feels like they're waiting to see if something better comes along. When I'm on the receiving end and can't respond right away, I like to let the person know why we're in a holding pattern (it's nice when there's a "maybe" option with a space to send a note to the host).
In LA, at least, we've learned to assume that the people who don't respond within a day or two are Nos. And we also expect a few last-minute no-shows.
Thanks for writing this. I have so many party RSVP stories....
But what I'll share is how I wish email invitation platforms made it easy to group guests by family so you don't accidentally get double responses or send endless RSVP reminders to someone who's already been accounted for in another adult's response. As far as I know, I think Paperless Post (which is quite $$$) is the only one with this option.
I always send out invites to mom and dad but usually mom replies. My husband would always assume I would reply if it's about my kids. However like a lot of people I think in recent years everyone has got worse at replying. I myself am very type A and these things get lost in my inbox or I don't get them. Email is so bad these days. so much junk. the days of sending home a paper invite in your backpack were better maybe.
I think there can be many valid reasons that either a dad or a mom might wait to RSVP til closer than 2 months or 1 month out from the date of a kid birthday party.
In our family, and community, these reasons include parent work schedules with variable required weekend shifts & travel; multiple sports teams where practices and games are scheduled or changed at shorter notice; visits to and from relatives who live in different states/countries, etc.
This newsletter is usually objective and thoughtful, so I’m a bit surprised at the judgmental tone of some of the points and comments that seem to assume negative intent or ineptitude from dads.
When someone doesn’t RSVP far in advance, we never know if the reason is ‘I’m deliberately ignoring this to inconvenience the sender’, ‘I’m totally clueless about what to do with this’, ‘I can’t be bothered to take action now’, or ‘I’m waiting to hear about other high-priority commitments that won’t be firmed up til closer to the time,’ etc.
This post seems to assume the first few reasons only, but lives are complicated and some families can’t or don’t plan as far in advance as others.
And finally, there can be emergencies. One of our kids was unexpectedly hospitalized for a month, and we fell behind with all regular stuff like evites. Grateful to be part of an accepting community where lack of timely RSVPs will be understood.
This is sadly not surprising. I have a rising kindergartener and you know where else I suspect this plays out? The PTA. I want to be involved in my daughter’s school - it’s our local zoned school in our liberal neighborhood in our (generally still liberal!) large city. I’ve decided I’ll volunteer for events but I won’t step up to join the board until at least one of the 6 board positions is held by a Dad.
I declined to get involved in our PTA for very much the same reason! My husband and I both went to the first meeting when our older kid was a kindergartener--they'd advertised child care (in the form of slightly older kids hanging out with your kid in the cafeteria, which is fine!) during the meeting, so I thought both parents were meant to come. Welp, my husband was the only man there, other than the principal, no one introduced themselves or welcomed us, and I felt like, well, if you want to see what work is undervalued, look for the place where it's all women doing it and opted out.
Pleased to say that our school's "Friends of" organization (closest we have to a PTA) had a man among the officers this year (my husband) and will have a different one next year (a guy who always shows up for meetings and volunteers at events and finally people were like "uh, you should be an officer" and he asked what he'd have to do and they said "pretty much what you already do?"). And we have another man who's a regular at meetings. Newly appreciating this, although also recognizing that the bar is low for level of representation.
You will probably find that there are a lot of school board positions held by men. No men on the PTA though. That is the case in my very liberal town. Half the school board is men, no men on the pta at all. To be fair to all involved the PTA is very difficult if you have a full time job. All of the opportunities are during the day for mine.
I stepped up to become the president of my older son's school PA this year and it was a completely thankless task that was entirely predicated on the availability of women during their work day. Something that was billed as "not that big a deal" actually involved a mountain of monthly paperwork in addition to running meetings and fundraisers AND a monthly district PA President's Council meeting scheduled for 9:30 a.m. that would frequently run longer than an hour! I did not seek reelection for next year even though he has another year in the school, and they don't have enough officers to run the PA, and I'm wrestling with guilt over giving up my most loathed task all year.
Meanwhile, my other son's PA descended into toxic infighting over the most petty possible bullshit. Name-calling, backbiting, multiple group chats with hundreds of messages a day, constant fundraising for fun school activities for a school community that is largely middle/upper middle class families. Both enterprises seemed like an enormous waste of women's time, energy, and sense of justice/fairness/moral outrage. My years of being a PA joiner are over now that I'll have two middleschoolers in the fall.
Hi Melinda, I read your recent post about if Dads Know How to RSVP through a number of different lenses - as a father of two grown married sons, a grandfather and as a psychologist. You're correct that there's very little research in this area of fathers truly sharing the responsibilities of running a family household. One interesting article in this area "Daytime dads and do-it-all dads: Understanding lead-dad families" from 2023 talked about the gender imbalance in running a household and different types of roles that some fathers play. I think there are a number of factors in play in why there is this imbalance. Of course we can look at the different ways men and women are socialized and how parenting issues are handled within a couple but I find in the work I do with many couples that the female partner is often the one that reads up on child development and then shares what she has found with the male partner. He then may or may not execute the parenting in the way that the female partner wishes. Some of the moms with whom I work see it as their responsibility to take on the lead parenting role and worry how others might see them if they don't take on the primary parenting role and feel judged. Also, I encourage many of the dads with whom I work to be the one who reads up on child development and parenting and then share it with their female partners. I've heard from many men with whom I work say something like "I have to go home and babysit my kids." I gently correct them that the role they have is parenting - not babysitting. Babysitters get paid a lot more than parents! Some of the single dads also report that when they reach out to some moms to make a playdate for their child, some of the moms are uncomfortable with the dad making the arrangements. You raise such an important issue as to how to get more dads involved, and I think the reasons why they do not are multifaceted and complicated and worth further exploration.
There are a couple of dads who act as the organizing parent in our nature classes—they sign up the kids, get the emails, ask for extra gear when needed. But the majority of the organizers are moms. And we make a point to always send the emails to everyone in the family so both parents have the info.
I just want to flag really valuable research on cognitive labor in the household by the sociologist Allison Daminger -- she broke the broad topic of cognitive labor into four types in a way that further illuminated what men do and don't do (on average). A JSTOR Daily piece I did about that research is here, and it may have a free link to the original article (I'm not sure when those time out, if they do): https://daily.jstor.org/the-gendered-labor-of-noticing-and-anticipating/
It's just really good stuff to illuminate how this plays out in detail.
Yes! She's great! That's why I recommended her Substack at the end of the piece. I wrote about her work in detail in this newsletter I linked to: https://melindawmoyer.substack.com/p/why-women-bear-so-much-of-the-domestic
D'oh! I missed that link, sorry! Love her work so much.
Your evite response rate seems very typical to me! Do people really get 100% response rates when they send out those things? Without sending reminder emails? I know that’s not exactly the point of the post. But, I suspect that where I live, moms and dads are sort of equally flaky. Everyone works too much and is overwhelmed.
Again, totally just anecdotal, but for my daughter’s birthday this year, my husband set up and sent the evite. He sent it to dads and moms alike (depending on which parent he knows better). The response rate has been the same for moms versus dads. Also, my husband and his male friends coordinate at least as many family hang outs as I (mom) and my female friends do.
I had the same reaction. Moms in my neighborhood seem just as bad at RSVPing as dads.
That is not to say that I don’t 100% believe the evidence about unequal labor when it comes to child & family logistics.
Interesting! Maybe there are also differences between communities, depending on social norms. Maybe we should all move where you live! Although I do like prompt invitation responses, lol.
When I asked my husband (recently) about this issue. He said, “It’s really your job, and you do it so well that you don’t need me to do it.”Several attitudes to unpack in there!
😬
Ohhhhh myyyy. Wow
Exactly.
Oof.
Ooh, big side-eye for that comment!
This is so good!
I just sent out invitations for my son's birthday and deliberately sent to parents of all genders. (Double invited for households to both parents!) Dads are actually doing pretty well...
But I find that so many people just don't rsvp at all! This is one of my pet peeves - please just tell me if you can't come. It's a real barrier to building community.
I love hosting and am a huge extrovert, and I have a solid foundation of friends, so I feel like I can shake off the rejection of not even having invitations acknowledged! But it still stings, and makes it harder to feel trust in our neighbors.
The worst is when you can see they've opened the invitation but not responded. It usually feels like they're waiting to see if something better comes along. When I'm on the receiving end and can't respond right away, I like to let the person know why we're in a holding pattern (it's nice when there's a "maybe" option with a space to send a note to the host).
In LA, at least, we've learned to assume that the people who don't respond within a day or two are Nos. And we also expect a few last-minute no-shows.
So glad to know I am not alone in feeling this way. The skill of being able to RSVP is a core "how to raise kids who aren't assholes" skill. 😂
Thanks for writing this. I have so many party RSVP stories....
But what I'll share is how I wish email invitation platforms made it easy to group guests by family so you don't accidentally get double responses or send endless RSVP reminders to someone who's already been accounted for in another adult's response. As far as I know, I think Paperless Post (which is quite $$$) is the only one with this option.
*screams into void*
I always send out invites to mom and dad but usually mom replies. My husband would always assume I would reply if it's about my kids. However like a lot of people I think in recent years everyone has got worse at replying. I myself am very type A and these things get lost in my inbox or I don't get them. Email is so bad these days. so much junk. the days of sending home a paper invite in your backpack were better maybe.
Love this experiment. Shared this post with my colleague (a dad) who just wrote this really thoughtful piece on dads that unlocked something in how I think about the division of labor (though, as a solo parent ... it's ALL on me) : https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/family-relationships/article/are-dads-doing-enough-what-the-data-tells-us-about-the-state-of-modern-fatherhood-123054015.html
I think there can be many valid reasons that either a dad or a mom might wait to RSVP til closer than 2 months or 1 month out from the date of a kid birthday party.
In our family, and community, these reasons include parent work schedules with variable required weekend shifts & travel; multiple sports teams where practices and games are scheduled or changed at shorter notice; visits to and from relatives who live in different states/countries, etc.
This newsletter is usually objective and thoughtful, so I’m a bit surprised at the judgmental tone of some of the points and comments that seem to assume negative intent or ineptitude from dads.
When someone doesn’t RSVP far in advance, we never know if the reason is ‘I’m deliberately ignoring this to inconvenience the sender’, ‘I’m totally clueless about what to do with this’, ‘I can’t be bothered to take action now’, or ‘I’m waiting to hear about other high-priority commitments that won’t be firmed up til closer to the time,’ etc.
This post seems to assume the first few reasons only, but lives are complicated and some families can’t or don’t plan as far in advance as others.
And finally, there can be emergencies. One of our kids was unexpectedly hospitalized for a month, and we fell behind with all regular stuff like evites. Grateful to be part of an accepting community where lack of timely RSVPs will be understood.