I live in Sweden and this experience is alien to me. I often see other fathers playing with their kids at the playgrounds. When I'm with my kids I've only ever been met by smiles and comments about how adorable kids are.

A large reason for this is that it's very common for fathers to be on parental leave. For each child born, if you are two parents, you get 480 days of paid parental leave to distribute among yourselves. You get half each, can transfer days between one another, but 90 each of these cannot be transferred.

And yet! Even in Sweden, when the daycare, healthcare, or some other institution calls the phone number they have registered for the parent, they fully expect to reach the mother. Sometimes when greeted with a male voice claiming to be a parent, they even put up a fight, claiming they must have dialed it wrong and that they definitely have a mother on file.

My wife is a manager and sits in meetings all day long. I'm still half individual contributor and I'm the one who can easily take calls most of the day. I don't have to explain this very often, but it still feels like once too many.

I haven't had this experience at all. We have my number registered everywhere because my wife works at a lab and often can't pick up. I've never had anyone calling about the kids seem surprised or ask to talk to the mother.

Edit: actually, those places usually ask for a list of name and number of the parents/guardians. Maybe the number you pick up on was registered as being that of the mother?

Here in Finland I've been treated largely well by other people, when taking our son out to play. Though I think the times when things have gone badly I suspect language barrier was to blame as much as gender.

That said I remember when I took the child to an annual health-checkup, and the first question I received from the doctor was "Where's his mother?"

This has never happened to me. My wife hates talking on the phone so we always register my number. Always been treated 100% well. (Also dad from sweden if that isn't clear).

Yeah I really don't like it, but it's not surprising considering (at least here in Czechia) who are the teachers, it's like 90-95% women, I think I've never seen man working in kindergarten, you can found few in primary school and then it improves from high school and higher, but that's way too late for male role models.

We just had recently sleepover in school which was called "We will sleep in school, we will help mommy" which quite enraged me since I'm doing most of the things around house and can't even think about ocassional case of single parent fathers, why they just can't name it "we will help parents". It's same thing with poems/books (mostly momy tells story, mommy this, mommy that, so when you are reading to them you must replace word by yourself to balance this nonsense), same thing now they done for mother's day pictures, gift (painted mirror) and other crap, do you think they will be doing something for my father's day? Good luck with that.

At least when they contact me they have option between me speaking local language or my wife where they have in brackets (English only), which makes everyone think twice whether they will call father or mother. :-)

Had some American friends visiting me in Sweden. After a few days of being out in the city one of them paused and looked worried at me, asking if the economy here was tanking - because they saw so many 'unemployed' men with kids in the city during daytime.

The economy is doing so well, that even men started to care about other things in life.

Yes, it's very much the opposite experience as a Swedish dad. If you go to a playground often the great majority of parents are fathers for the kids between 12 and 18 months. That's usually when fathers take time off. At one point I was at a playground with 8 other dads and an old woman came up to us gushing about how things had changed from when she was young and it was so nice to see.

Point is, it just has to be normalized, but without significant paternity leave, it probably won't.

The fascinating thing is that when we were deciding how to plan our parental leave we hadn't talked to any other parents or asked advice from anyone. We just decided that, based on what we wanted from it and practical concerns about breast-feeding and recuperation it made the most sense for her to be home for a year and then me for half a year.

Turns out most Swedish couples I've talked to since reach the exact same conclusion.

To be fair, I'm an Australian and this experience is alien to me!

The reality is that we don't really experience the world outside of our bubbles!

But I can totally believe this description.

It's horrible this happens :-(

I'm having trouble figuring out what you mean by 480 days. Per year? Per child? Per couple, for the duration of their marriage? What if one parent doesn't work? I guess it doesn't work how I first assumed (per year), because if you transfer all but 90 days, then one parent has 370 days off in a year, which is both far beyond the number of work days in a year and slightly more than the number of days in a year.

Per child to be used before they turn 12, though only 96 days can be saved past their 4th birthday.

Edit: what we have done for both kids is that when a child was born we first took two months off together, then my wife stayed at home for a year, after which I stayed at home for half a year. At 1.5y they started daycare.

The remaining days we use as emergency vacation days because the generous Swedish laws make them impossible to deny if requested a few months in advance.

I am not trying to be annoying here but I always love to explore edge cases. If you had a kid every year for 10 years does that mean one of the parents could essentially be paid to stay home for 10 years in a row?

Where I live, another Northern European country, we also have this, and the answer is yes. Parents can take up to 2 years off work, so only 5 kids needed.

The company doesn't pay anything, but your salary is paid for by the government. However the amount they pay is limited to €2000/mo, and it decreases based upon how long you take off. If you take the full 2 years, you will only be paid €800/mo.

Additionally if you have two kids you get an extra day of PTO each month, and if you have three, it's two days.

Ah, of course. I was assuming the company would pay whatever your last salary was before the paid time off. It’s much easier for me to comprehend when the government is paying a fixed amount.

Pretty sure it's not fixed. It should be dependant on your last salaries with a ceiling (which is probably the mentioned 2k, but I have no clue). Not sure if there was a floor as well, was never relevant to the people telling me about it I guess.

This is precisely how it works here in Sweden.

that's how it works in Czechia, except you can stay at home 3-4 years (!), so once one child is old enough to be accepted in kindergarten (age 3), you are usually having the other one, so essentially mothers usually stay at home 5-6 years with two kids

mind the parental leave welfare (literal translation Maternal vacation / materska dovolena) ain't that amazing, although it's also not that low - first 27 weeks it's paid by your employer (if you had one prior giving a birth), that one is pretty high based on your salary (I think only mother can take it, not sure) and then you are eligible to receive parental allowance (rodicovsky prispevek) - 300K CZK (12K EUR) which can be used as fast/slow as you want up to 4yo kid AFAIR, so it will essentially cover 2 years of decent income or 3 years lower welfare

since my wife wasn't employed in EU prior giving birth, we were not eligible for Maternal vacation welfare, only for parental allowance, which we applied since birth for both kids and I was actually the applicant since they don't distinguish between gender of recipients of alowance

after these years then if you don't have high enough income you are also eligible for child allowance (pridavek na dite), but that one is not worth mentioning, it makes like 20-40EUR per kid per month, so makes really difference only for poorest families, since you have to go to bureau 4 times a year to prove your low income to get this joke

edit: updated terminology to better distinguish between welfare kinds

If you had 10 kids a year after year, then you would need stay at home parent and that parent would need significant help. There is literally no way to deal with 10 kids and a job.

But also, the woman's body would likely break with that schedule of being pregnant.

> But also, the woman's body would likely break with that schedule of being pregnant.

Bach’s wife had 20 children. Only 10 of them survived. I literally can’t even imagine having one.

My wife went through several and would have cheerfully had many more but her autoimmune system turned against her. She’s a self-admitted bad mother, but absolutely loved being pregnant.

> Bach’s wife had 20 children.

Which one? Cause he had 13 children with Anna Magdalena Wilcke. If he had 20 more children with another one, it would amount to 33 kids by Bach.

Loving being pregnant or not does not make pregnancy year after year for 10 consecutive years less difficult on body. That schedule means you are constantly pregnant, often pregnant while breastfeeding and sleep deprived from baby. While having two toddlers. It takes toll on the body.

It was a total of 20 with both wives. Weirdly I didn’t know about his first wife, Maria. I thought they were all borne by Anna Magdalena.

https://www.oxfordbachsoloists.com/2018/06/16/bach-husband-f...

And of course I agree completely about the toll that takes on the body. As I say, literally unimaginable to me.

> She’s a self-admitted bad mother

This gave me a chuckle — I'm curious about what sort of autoimmune conditions were eventually triggered, and if they came suddenly?, slowly?

Also, while I have you: what types of investments are you interested in/made in the past?

A pregnancy induced condition in which not enough white blood cells are manufactured. By the time our last one was born, she was producing none. She needed a transfusion while the birth was happening. She also has ongoing autoimmune conditions separate from that, and the medicine for them costs $50,000 a year.

My most successful investments were a couple of businesses I started (one with a 129x investment on $100k), Precious metals when they were far far cheaper than they are now (Silver was five dollars an ounce when I bought) and also domain names.

I lost money investing in a local gym, and a whole lot of money trying to compete with craigslist. Never put in more than I could afford to lose. Translation: I never lost so much that my wife complained.

I am theoretically at retirement age so I converted a bunch of cash into real estate without mortgages, I hold a fair amount of cash in case an opportunity arises, and I still invest aggressively in slightly risky tech index funds.

I'm on a path with what I'm hoping are a lot of parallels — including my lady having the same class of medical considerations.

Are you doing any mentoring, or direct investing? Asking for, well, me!

I'm going to have to dig up those risky tech index funds, probably some super interesting companies in those portfolios!

> Are you doing any mentoring

But of course. Check my profile.

With the looming demographics crisis, it could actually be a great deal for society if parents did this! The problem is that despite all these child friendly policies we are still below replacement rate.

Yes but they will tank their future pension payments, and current pay raises. So there is a cost for those that do. If you're unemployed it doesn't matter much though.

Because pension only comes out of your private salary, as opposed to the public stipend?

You'll still have your base pension, but that isn't enough. Most employers do a x% private pension fund payment on top of the salary.

Essentially, yes. I know some people who have effectively been gone from work for years because hey had several kids in a row.

Yep. Mom was home from late 1990 to early 1997 thanks to 3 children spaced around that timeframe.

Fascinating, thank you.

As an Aussie living in Sweden with a toddler I don't think I'll ever move back to Aus if people are going to harass me for the crime of playing with my son.

this is not the case in the USA either. this sounds either exaggerated or the OP is leaving something out.

This might be one of the most appalling and depressing things I've read in a long time. How did we get here as a society? The frequent moral panics, like stranger danger and the satanic panic, whipped up by the media?

With OP being disabled, there might be an element that "movies say the ugly and disabled are the villain, and this guy looks like a movie villain". Gross and disgusting, but it is what it is.

Well, after the Cold War was over, some people needed a new boogeyman. So they chose literally everyone who doesn't think or look exactly like them, and then tried to get their kids to do the same. And now, here we are.

It sounds like there’s a torrent of gossip in your neighborhood about you, and I’m really sorry you have to suffer the consequences. Have any of the parents at the park ever just…chatted with you while the kids play? Its very strange that everyone seems to recognize you and have the same, unhinged opinion of you.

This has happened living in multiple places (in AU), we move lots. Yes I've had some nice people too, usually more curious chats about a stay-at-home dad being odd. I've run into other SAHD's and they've all shared similar stories.

Maybe stop wearing the Hey Dad! t-shirt

Where are you? I know a few stay at home dads in LA and they didn't have this level of difficulty. Sounds like you might be in a more closed minded region of the world.

Sorry should've said that, I'll edit the comment, but I'm in Australia and these stories happened while living in both Sydney and Melbourne (have sinced moved to a more rural city and doesn't happen "as" much, but still happens).

I was about to question your anecdote, but when I heard you lived in Australia it made a bit more sense. To use the parents comments phrase, “closed mindedness” does seem to fit.

As an Australian stay at home dad who knows many others, I've never heard of or had anything close to these experiences hapoen. And I'm not aware of Australia having a paticularly closed minded reputation?

You maybe should question that anecdote.

I've seen a lot of what you've noticed, I don't have my own kids (yet) but I look after my nephew a lot when he's up in Brisbane from the Gold Coast over an entire weekend every month or so.

I can't say I've had your entire experience, but I've seen it at least three times. And considering the amount of time with my nephew (1 weekend in 4-5 at best), that gives you an indication how rife this issue is here.

That’s simply awful, I’m really sorry to hear that!

I spent a year as a stay at home dad (with our son who was 1 yr old at the time). The first few months were spent in Palo Alto, CA, and the rest in London, UK. We would go out to parks all over the place, and I never had any problems like this. Other parents always seemed happy to chat. I did expect problems since my son looks very different to me (fair skinned and blonde, whilst I’m a typical Pakistani Asian guy, brown skin, black hair - this kid inherited a lot of his looks from my wife). Often I’d get questioned by immigration officials when flying alone with him, and I’d have to take a letter from my wife attesting to our trip being known about and approved by her. But that was the only time it was an issue. I don’t think I would have lasted long if I encountered what you have, and I can’t imagine how you’ve dealt with it for as long as you have. If there’s anything I can do to support, please let me know.

Thanks for the kind words. We’ve moved to a more rural city where it doesn’t happen nearly as much anymore (eg less people at the parks in general), and we have a larger property now so the kids play in the yard mostly.

Is this an Australia thing? I live in the US and regularly took our toddlers to the park since I was working from home. Never had a single experience like what you describe. I actually became part of the social circle at the park even though I was the only dad there.

Australia has an extreme nanny state mentality for a lot of things. The image many have of chill surfer bros who don't play by the rules is no longer accurate (if it ever was) the average Australian is extremely uptight about adhering to rules in general.

There are some advantages to this as a level of competence does filter down to the street level (as a small example having lived in multiple AU cities as well as US cities, far far more people litter in US cities than Australian ones) but it does have negative impacts.

A recent example is the appalling treatment of overseas Australians by their government during Covid where the border was closed and many Australians were effectively barred from returning to their country for over 2 years.

As a Brit living in australia for 10 years, I think relating to Covid people generally just see the greater good and accept. There are vocal groups against lockdowns and a decent chunk of people break rules.

I remember the 2 hour queue for my second jab. Chaos in some ways but people acted superbly well, and the marshall was in awe and excited for me that I was getting shot 2 so soon (compared to other people in australia).

From comments by other dads I know, and online (some here when I’ve brought it up, and elsewhere) it does seem to be an Australia-plus-a-few-US-states thing. Mostly in places where people are comfortably middle class and/or live in major cities.

The novelist Will Self wrote about a similar experience when he was out with his children.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2396222/Branded-pae...

Sorry to hear about your experience.

For what it is worth, I have never experienced anything similar here in the UK.

If anything, it seems that people like to see the dad doing kid stuff (especially baby/newborn stuff) - I've lost count of the number of times I've been out and about with my son and now also newborn daughter in a baby carrier/wrap and have received either direct positive comments, or indirect admiring looks/cooing/etc. (just yesterday I was at the Zoo with my excited toddler and my daughter in a wrap and there was an audible "gasp-of-cuteness" (for want of a better phrase) from some women standing nearby when I turned around and revealed the baby in the carrier - there was zero negative vibes).

It is very common to see dads in the playground - especially at weekends but also during the week days too. Mums seem very comfortable to stop and chat when we're at the sandpit or just waiting in line at Starbucks or whatever.

I'm sorry what the actual fuck?? I would've thought this sounded insane if it happened 50 years ago, but today?!? Looking at sibling comments it seems this luckily isn't too common, but still very fucked up. It sucks that this isn't being talked about more.

I am sorry you go through this. I wonder where you are as in suburban Sydney I have never had this issue for 9 years of parenthood. And I have taken the kids all kinds if places even in the centre of Sydney. Had more issues walking dogs than taking kids out.

I believe your experience. I just want to contribute the anecdata that I am a stay-at-home dad to my 2.5 year old, and I have spent most days for the past year and a half talking him out on walks, to parks, downtown, etc. in the Bay Area suburbs, more or less following him around and letting him do whatever he pleases. The only experience I have had where someone bothered me in public was some woman in a car who really wanted me to put a hat on him.

I would be interested to hear from other people to understand why this happens in some places and to some people, but not others. I always wonder if I am going to start getting harassed in public, since it's a common complaint, but so far -- nothing.

I am sad to read how you have had to experience these horrific scenes of extreme paranoia.

Please, keep spreading the good energy

THe cops are wise enough to have entries in their journals to know its again a false report against a good man, playing with his legal own children

Wow. Sorry to hear that you've had to experience that.

For what it's worth: also Australian with a relatively fresh human (toddler). My partner and I try to share care relatively evenly so I get a bit of playground/park time in and I'm yet to experience anything like this. I truly hope that continues as that sounds terrifying.

There's a whole set of other societal aspects, particularly support services in the lead up to and after birth, that are completely asymmetric or non-existent for fathers though.

I suspect GP is exagerating. I've been an Aussie stay at home dad for years and know many others, and I've never seen or heard anything remotely close to this.

There are for sure social gaps and service gaps, but assaults in the street like the GP is describing seem... far fetched.

That is crazy.

Curious where in Melbourne as I have never encountered this with two under 5.

I work part time and now, since covid, from home and always regularly take my kids to various parks around the inner north. Usually a sprinkle of other dads, grandparents and lots of mums. No one has ever even suggested I am suspicious.

I did get a lot of "a dad at the playground. Wow, so progressive" when the first kid was small, which was pretty amusing/ disappointing for 2010s.

Mostly St Kilda area, and around Prahran. It was way way worse in Sydney (inner suburbs) but still happened enough in Melbourne that it was a known thing among parents I knew there. Could be some stereotyping based on looks (I’m a big guy with tattoos), who knows. Whatever the reason, it’s common enough I’ve seen articles written about it and met plenty who confirm it’s not just me.

I was about to say you should move to Australia then saw this is where you live. I’ve never had this experience in oz.

Are you attractive?/not unattractive?

> force me to wait for them to arrive

Too many of them blocking your way such that you couldn't leave without physically shoving them?

You should probably start reporting these people to the police. I don't know how things work in Australia, but you should file complaints specifically against these individuals. Publicly calling you a pedophile is slander isn't it? I don't see how it's not illegal.

Wow - that's absolute madness. I would have never imagined it was like that.

I can see maybe someone, kind of subconsciously thinking ill, and double a 'double take' ...

... but almost anyone can see whether or not the kid knows the adult they are with.

And what kind of kidnapper steals kids to take them to the park to play with them? My god.

That's a horrible story and I wish you the best. Makes me appreciate my own situation even more (partner and I divide care 50/50, and I enjoy taking my 6 month old for a stroll so much!).

That is honestly disgusting. I'm so sorry you're forced to put up with that shit.

That horrific, I’m sorry you go through that.

If I may ask: what country do you live in?

Australia. This happened living in various suburbs of both Sydney and Melbourne.