It takes two to tango, and but it hasn’t always taken two to raise a child. It is one thing to encourage men to play a more active role in their child’s life, because without them in most cases that child wouldn’t have life, but there is a difference between father of the year and a guy who is doing the bare minimum.

There is admittedly a stigma around fathers who chose to have a more active part in their child’s life by not working and choosing to be a stay-at-home dad. In fact, that portion of our society is fairly limited, with only 6% of married American households have the mother be the sole income provider, according to Pew Research Center. We fixate on this 6% of “brave” dads that are doing what women have been doing literally since the dawn of humankind.

In recent years the number of stay at home fathers has skyrocketed, but instead of it being attributed to a sudden burst of paternal instincts sweeping across America, it was the recession, meaning they were only at home because they had to be, and according to their answers when surveyed. That “skyrocket” glass shattering statistic was still only at a meager 15%, according to Pew Research Center.

Thirty-one percent of married women earn the same or more than their husband according to Pew Research Center, yet the man is never asked how they juggle work and family because it is just not expected of them to even consider juggling the intricacies of parenthood.

The sexism is the assumption that your wife should do it. Sexism (against women) also hurts men by constraining their gender roles, as I’m sorry to hear you experienced. But it’s not *aimed* at men.

— Kim Goodwin (@kimgoodwin) July 20, 2018

Motherhood is something that women are expected to want, with such things as #babyfever spreading like wildfire on social media, it is content women are expected to want to consume. Women aren’t born knowing how to breastfeed, how to soothe a crying child, and anything else on how to raise a child, it is stressful and messy and we shouldn’t be expected to bear the brunt of children’s upbringing alone any longer, and we need to be able to rely on partners to do their job without them first being spoon fed like the baby.

Fatherhood, really and truly involved fatherhood, shouldn’t just be encouraged, it should be expected.