Why are mothers and not fathers usually the reference contact for their children?

“It happened to me that my daughter was sick on a Tuesday, which are the days her father takes her, and that school wrote to me. For the carnival, for example, they sent an email only to me. Why don’t you copy him too, if you have his contact and you know that we are separated?” asks Luciana Mota (32), who works as a freelance in marketing, communication and social networks, and is the mother of a two-year-old girl. and manages the TikTok account @mamaindignada. “In schools, contact is always with the mother. It is like this because she infers that you are the one in charge of care ”, she assures.

Mary Catherine Starr is a graphic designer from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA. She is the mother of two and runs the account @momlife_comics, where she posts comics about the challenges of motherhood and shares experiences both herself and her community of more than 270,000 followers. “A mother sent me an anecdote in which they called her from her doctor’s office to explain things about her, even though her husband was sitting in the waiting room with her 4 children,” she explains. Starr to The Vanguard.

As soon as she posted the message on her Instagram stories, hundreds of other similar stories poured in. “Many told me that the school also always called them, even when their partners were the main contact or when they had just dropped off or picked up the boy or girl”, she indicates and adds: “My followers are from all over the world. world and these themes seem pretty universal.”

She was able to verify this in her own experience. “They have always called me. Recently one of my sons’ school called me because he was sick. Since I couldn’t pick up the phone, they left me a message. They never called my husband, they never even tried! And he was the only one at home that day, with the children under his responsibility. Why are mothers the main default contact in educational and health centers?

Pía Premoli (32) is a web designer and mother of a one and a half year old baby. “Despite the fact that with my partner we are both autonomous, I have a little more availability because I do not keep fixed schedules, that is why I am listed as the first to contact,” she indicates, although she warns: “In any case, they have the telephone numbers from both. But they always call me. It has happened to me from not looking at my cell phone because I was in a meeting and then finding myself with five missed calls from the nursery because my baby was sick. They never tried to call my partner.”

Despite having asked that, when a similar situation arises, they try to contact him, so far they have never done so. “For me it is a mental load. I can’t go to the gym and leave my cell phone in the box because I don’t know if they’re going to call my partner if I don’t answer”, she explains and adds: “Mom is still considered the main caregiver, when we As a family we don’t understand it that way. We take responsibility equally.”

“In my son’s nursery they asked us for both of our contacts,” says Celina Achiary (34), mother of a one-year-old and nine-month-old boy. Both she and her partner were included in a WhatsApp group of mothers and fathers from the course where “it is true that mothers generally speak more, but they are all included”. By this means, -she indicates- “They always address both equally, to the family as a whole. My partner receives the same information as me.

If there is some kind of emergency or something specific that they need to tell her about her son, then she is the main interlocutor. “They contact me by message. They do it that way because it is a very personalized treatment, they adapt to the dynamics of each family. In our case, they know that my partner is usually traveling for work and I work from home, so I have a better chance of getting closer. I am also the one who writes to notify you of anything, more than anything because I took the first step in that direction, ”she explains.

“At my daughter’s kindergarten they make you fill out a form at the beginning of the course with the names and telephone numbers of both of you and they ask you who to contact first,” says Núria (this is not her real name), a 37-year-old engineer who She is the mother of a two-and-a-half-year-old girl and a five-month-old baby, and adds: “In addition, for day-to-day monitoring, they upload photos and all the information about what they ate, how much they slept, etc., to an app that we can both download”.

When Luciana Mota asked her daughter’s teacher for the list of contacts to send the girl’s birthday invitations, she found that they were all mothers. For her, it was further evidence that mothers are still the ones who play the role of primary caregivers.

“Some of my mother friends at the daycare don’t even give them the option to choose which of the two is the main contact, they directly ask for their mother’s phone number. In my daughter’s, they did ask us,” explains Mota and adds: “I am impressed that none of the families listed the father first. We are the mothers themselves who are making ourselves the main contact. We have very much internalized that we are the ones in charge of care.”

“From what I was able to gather from the feedback from my followers, in most cases the mothers are the ones who are at home when the child is born and, therefore, they are the ones who take care of the appointments with the doctor, of signing him up for the child care and fill out paperwork, and they make themselves the primary contact out of habit,” says Mary Catherine Starr, adding, “Also, culturally children are assumed to be the mother’s responsibility, so she is assumed to be the mother’s responsibility. the person to call for everything related to them.”

“It continues to be taken for granted that the care tasks and responsibility for the children falls on the mother,” says the journalist, sociologist and author of the book Mama disobediente. A feminist look at motherhood Esther Vivas. For her, this can be seen in something as simple as the Whatsapp groups of school families, “where they are mostly made up of mothers or they are the ones who participate the most.”

Also, in the fact that “they are the ones who, in general, are in charge of organizing everything that has to do with the creatures, from thinking about their menu, preparing their clothes and scheduling visits to the pediatrician,” he points out. Although men are increasingly in charge of care work, such as accompanying or picking up children from school, theirs tends to be more “carrying out certain tasks, while it is the mothers who do the planning, which is what carries the most burden.” mental supposes”.

According to a 2017 report from the Malasmadres Club, women were the main ones in charge of being aware of tasks called “invisible”, such as school or nursery requirements, in 72.3% of cases, and in 67 .3% of the medical follow-up of the children. According to a Procter study

Belén (this is a pseudonym), is 38 years old, is a pediatrician and has a five-month-old son. “As my partner was the one who took care of making the first appointment at the primary care center, his contact was noted and it is he who is notified of the visits by Whatsapp. But, every time he receives a notice, he forwards it to me so that I keep it in mind ”, she explains, adding:“ I am the one who usually remembers when we have the next appointment ”.

In her work as a pediatrician, she was able to see how, until recently, the medical follow-up of children seemed to be the exclusive province of mothers. “Now it is less and less, but until about five years ago every time children came to the emergency room or to the consultation with the father, and you asked if the child was up to date on vaccinations or if they had reached a specific milestone in their psychomotor development, They always told you: ‘I don’t know, that’s what my wife wears,’” he says.

For Luciana Mota, “The mother is the one who knows when the holidays are, when she has a birthday party, when she has to go to school dressed up for carnival, what clothes to wear, when to take her to the pediatrician, when and how food has to be introduced”. In this sense, she points out: “It is inferred that you are the main contact in the same way that it is assumed that you will be the one who will go to the adaptation or the first day of the course. If you both have to work, the one that will be asked for the day will surely be you.

“When my daughter’s father went to the adaptation, it was a complete surprise and it is something that is celebrated. When I went, nobody told me anything,” says Mota. “When a mother cares for her children, it is considered normal and it is taken for granted that he should take care of it, whereas when a father does it, it is something extraordinary and makes him a good father. We see this in the language. It is often said that the father ‘helps’, when in fact he is responsibility of both”, explains Esther Vivas.

“Some school representatives I’ve talked to about this say the reason they call mothers first is because they tend to be much more receptive when they get a call from the school,” says Mary Catherine Starr, adding: “ It is also the case that, since mothers are often the main caregivers, they are more likely to know what is wrong with the child or what to tell the school representative when they talk to them.”

“There is that blind confidence that the mother will be there. The same is not expected or demanded of the father. We are still surprised when we see a father carrying a cart. If we continue to applaud that the father makes the minimum effort, it is because there are no expectations”, says Luciana Mota and explains: “In addition, we want to take care of ourselves. First, because we are more into the details and it will surely be more difficult for us to miss something. There is also an issue of guilt, that we continue to feel that if we don’t we are worse mothers. We are expected to do well, to like it, to be happy and to work. It is impossible”.

A year ago, they had to admit the eldest son of Núria’s sister, who was about two and a half years old, due to a very high fever. “She had to keep her youngest daughter of six months, because she was still breastfeeding. Then her father took him. Due to COVID-19, they allowed very few visitors”, explains Núria and adds: “When my sister went to see him a couple of days later, the nurse told her: But you are the mother and you are not here?”.

“We have to care as if we didn’t have paid work and work as if we didn’t have dependent children, and this is impossible. We have an unrealizable and toxic maternal ideal, which causes us discomfort and guilt. We didn’t get to everything and we feel like bad mothers”, says Esther Vivas and adds: “We ourselves must question this patriarchal story and begin to give up space. Maybe my partner will not cook or dress the boy or girl like me, but it is important that he assumes this responsibility”.

For Luciana Mota, “Men are taking more control, but it is also because of a struggle that is taking place at home. I have about fifteen mother friends and they all have to tell their partner what chores to do many times. It is not that the man wants to do more, we are the mothers who are beginning to delegate…That the word delegate is already problematic”.

For Esther Vivas, the fact that schools and doctors tend to take mothers as the main contact by default is not a minor thing. “In doing so, it is assumed that the primary responsibility for parenting rests with the mother. This reproduces this hegemonic social gaze that reduces maternity to a female responsibility”, says Vivas and assures: “We need society as a whole to understand that in heterosexual couples, care for the responsibility of both equally and that therefore the interlocutor must be both the mother as the father. We have to start looking at parents not as someone who helps the mother, but as co-responsible”.