In American society, it is often assumed that the mother is the default parent and the first contact for schools and other caregivers over children’s fathers.
It probably has something to do with patriarchy. For a long time, men were the traditional breadwinners, and women remained at home to take care of the children and the household. Therefore, they were the logical choice for schools to contact when a need arose.
This is no longer the case, of course, but the legacy remains.
Other factors probably contribute to this that I have yet to even consider.
But it’s true:
In a heterosexual parenting relationship, schools perceive mothers as the default parent over fathers.
In one study, researchers posed as fictitious parents and emailed 80,000 school principals, saying that they were searching for a school for their kid. The principals were 40 percent more likely to call the mother than the father listed in the experiment.
Even in experimental cases where the “father” sent the email and specifically indicated he was more available than the wife, principals still called the mother 12 percent of the time.
This, of course, is crazy.
Right?
Here’s my only question:
Do most women and men prefer this arrangement? Do most mothers prefer to be the default parent, and are most fathers happy to defer this role to their wives?
I don’t think so, but again, I might be wrong.
Given that email and text messages can be sent to more than one person, maybe we should just eliminate the notion of a default parent altogether.
After all, who wants to speak on the phone anyway?
