My son’s father once wrapped our baby in a tea towel to take him to the local supermarket because I was at work and he’d forgotten to buy any nappies. He knew he had to make sure his little boy was fed but somehow it had escaped him that he might need to change him more than once, too.
In my experience, men often struggle to think about/do more than one thing at a time. It’s not intentional… at least, I don’t think so. (Although it does enable them to get out of chores because they’ve ‘only got one pair of hands’.)
It’s the reason why yesterday at our local playground there was more crying than usual as children fell off/fell over at an alarming rate. At the sudden sound of bawling their dads would swing round in astonishment, apparently suddenly remembering that they were in fact supposed to be watching their kids and not simply chatting about the football or rugby results with the other fathers.
And it’s also, presumably, the reason why my teenager can play on the X-box but can’t remember to put his dirty washing in the laundry basket.
written by Liz Jarvis