Why Moms and Dads Get Judged Differently: What I’ve Learned Watching Parents at School
Every Thursday afternoon, I stand by the kindergarten door and watch parents arrive. Marcus is always a few minutes early. He’s a contractor, and there’s usually paint dust on his shoes. He kneels down by the bench, takes his daughter Ruby’s worn sneakers, and reties them into a double knot because she’s still learning to do it herself.
Last week, a mom standing next to me nodded toward him. “See?” she said. “He’s such a good dad.”
I agreed. Marcus is a good dad. But something about the comment sat heavy with me. Because Ruby’s mom, Dana, does the exact same thing at 8:15 every morning. And in eight months of school, no one has ever turned to me and said, “See? She’s such a good mom.”
The difference became clearer the day Dana forgot Ruby’s library book. She was holding the book, actually, but it slipped out of her hand onto the wet pavement. She picked it up, saw the dirty cover, and spent a full minute apologizing. I said it was fine, no problem, really. But she kept explaining herself, saying how work had been crazy and she felt terrible, and would I forgive her?
Marcus once sent Ruby to school in two mismatched shoes. He laughed when he noticed, said his brain must have been still asleep. The other parents laughed too. “At least he got her here,” someone said.
Dana forgot a book once and apologized like she’d broken a promise. Marcus forgot shoe coordination and people called it adorable.
I’ve taught first grade for eleven years, so I’ve had a front-row seat to this particular double standard. It’s not about who loves their child more. It’s about what we expect from moms versus what we celebrate in dads. And the more I pay attention, the more I see it showing up in small, everyday moments.
It shows up in how we talk to parents. A mother arrives at school with a permission slip and I don’t think twice. A father arrives with a permission slip and I’m somehow impressed. A mother says she’s exhausted, and I assume she’s overwhelmed. A father says he’s exhausted, and I say something like, “I bet, you’ve got your hands full helping.” That word—helping—comes up a lot. When a dad drops off homework early, someone calls him “so involved.” When a mom does it, it’s just Tuesday.
I’ve also caught myself doing it. At the beginning of the year, I noticed Ruby’s medication schedule had changed. I sent an email to Dana, even though I knew Marcus usually handled mornings. Without even thinking, I defaulted to the mom. When Dana forwarded the email to Marcus, he came in the next day and said, “Hey, I can take these notes too. I’m on the same team.” He wasn’t annoyed. He was just pointing out that I had assumed.
That moment stayed with me, because it wasn’t about being fair to the adults. It was about what the kids learn when they watch us.
Children pick up on these patterns earlier than we expect. In class, I once asked a small group to help wipe tables after an art project. One boy said, “No, that’s a mom job.” Another day, a girl looked at a picture book about a father cooking dinner and asked, “Where’s the mom?” She wasn’t being rude. She was trying to fit the story into what she had been taught.
That’s the thing about parenting double standards. They don’t just affect moms and dads. They teach kids a script about who takes care of people. When we praise a dad for tying a shoe, we’re not just saying he’s doing well. We’re saying that kind of care is unusual from him. When we treat a mom like a manager and a dad like a guest, kids hear that too.
So I’ve started changing how I talk, and not in a big showy way. Just small adjustments.
Now when Marcus drops Ruby off, I’ll say, “Thanks for getting her here this morning,” the same way I would to Dana. If a dad says he’s taking his daughter to the dentist, I try to say, “That’s good she’s got you handling that,” rather than acting like it’s a rare gift. If I hear someone say a dad is “babysitting,” I try to respond with something neutral: “I think that’s just called parenting.” It sounds simple, but it sparks a little pause, and that pause is where the shift happens.
For parents, the most useful thing is to notice who gets asked what. At Ruby’s house, Dana and Marcus decided to audit their own routines for a week. They wrote down who signed permission slips, who packed lunches, who emailed the teacher, who bought the gift for the birthday party. Marcus was surprised to see how many small tasks landed on Dana by default. They both thought they were sharing evenly, but the school-related mental load was mostly hers.
They didn’t turn it into a spreadsheet or a battle plan. They just started saying “we” when talking to teachers. “We’ll check the classroom schedule.” “We can bring snacks next week.” That might not sound revolutionary. But it changed how teachers talked to them—and how Ruby talked about them too.
There are days when I still catch myself slipping. I’ll see a dad at a school play with a camera and think, “How sweet that he came.” And I have to remind myself: of course he came. He’s a parent. Just like the mom who’s there holding a toddler on her hip, waiting for her older kid to wave from the stage.
The kids are always watching. They’re watching who feels comfortable in the classroom, who gets asked the questions, whose presence is treated as optional. That’s why these small language shifts matter. They’re not about being politically correct. They’re about making sure every child grows up believing that any grown-up—mom or dad—can be the one who ties the shoe, remembers the library book, or shows up.
Marcus still has paint on his shoes every Thursday. Dana still forgets things sometimes. No one is keeping score perfectly. But I’m trying to watch what I praise and who I assume. The truth is, I don’t have this all figured out. Sometimes I still feel that old reflex kicking in, the one that says moms are responsible and dads are helpers. But I’m noticing it now. And noticing is a start.
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