posted November 11, 2015 08:25 PM            

The first thing to come to mind is culture. Mothers are SUPPOSED to unconditionally love their children...and for this they can be condemned more for even just allowing child abuse to happen by the father because a woman who doesn't is seen as some sort of gender treachery. And for a long, long time, the only thing that was seen as belonging to a woman was her wedding (aka, "her special day") and then her children (an attitude that lingers, though often more subconscious), which I can see contributing to that.

The mother is supposed to be supporting, but the father either protective (for his daughter, which can be frustrating for her) or tough inspiration for his son (and showing much less affection than the mother), both because women are supposed to be more emotional and sentimental (a trope that showed up in the Walking Dead where men gathered survival supplies while women grabbed family photo albums), and because people mistake sentimentality for weakness (I've even seen it on LL, like this one assuming a woman who is strong can't be sensitive and soft spoken, or how here it was considered "contradictory" for a man to be "Confident yet sweet"). A man can love, but he must--according to the often unexamined notion of many--be tough, and that means less loving (at least expressed love, which many people considered to be one and the same), even to his own children.

And it's seen as a woman's primary function to nurture her children (such as when touted by America's most popular news network, explained here ) while a man puts providing over nurturing (which is reflected from covers of the song Cat's in the Cradle to how the default position of divorce court is that the man provides child support while the mother raises the child) while also supposed to be harsher ("wait until your father gets home!"). Both men and women try to live up to these expectations, and if they don't then both are likely to be shunned for it.

And I wish I could recall where this came from, but I was unable to find a source for this before running out of time (but I remembered this saying by itself):

posted November 12, 2015 02:43 PM            

Because I'm sure stay at home dads get as much or little love and respect as stay at home mothers.

Are you talking about the act of nurturing being valued over providing?

Are you talking about who the children value? Values are taught. The first teacher is the at-home parent during those formative years. If it's mom, mom has to show appreciation for what dad does in order for the kids to learn to appreciate it. In the traditional (increasingly rare) setup children don't understand what the parent working and earning brings to the table. They have to be told.

posted November 13, 2015 05:36 AM            

Mothers sacrifice much more than fathers do. This is fact. Mothers carry the child and give birth!! The father stands next to her and holds her hand yeah, or he cheats.