Norma Barrett: Deakin University public health lecturer on the new study examining passenger parenting

A new study out of Victoria's Deakin University has coined a new term describing a newly-emerging parenting dynamic.

The study explains that while fathers are becoming increasingly engaged in family life, many are taking on a backseat role and leaving mothers to carry the majority of parenting duties.

'Passenger parenting' was coined by public health lecturer Norma Barrett and she says it's a tricky dynamic to navigate.

"It's really tricky for fathers, I think, because in those early stages their first kind of feeling of being a parent can often be after the birth, whereas mothers biologically feel like they're already on the parenting journey...and trying to slot into the journey can be tricky."

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now when you study on fatherhood has coined a phrase

(00:02):
passenger parenting. Now, a passenger parent is the parent, usually
the dad. It just comes along for the ride, but
doesn't actually do that much, leaving the mum to do
all the heavy lifting. Norma Barrett from Deacon University and
Victoria is the co author of the study High Norma, Hi, Heather,
Whose fault is this? Is it the mother for taking over?
Or is it the father for being slack or Heather?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
It's not that simple. We know parenting is a complex game,
so I'm not going to go into picking favorites. But
I can say, look the way things play out when
we're parenting and how we expect it's going to be
and how it actually happens in reality can often be
quite different, and it can be a tricky time when
we're trying to work out our new rules as parents

(00:49):
and young children.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Norma, is it fair to say it could be? It
could either It could actually be any any of the
three possibilities. It could be the mother's too overbearing, or
the father is two hands off, or it could simply
be that they're doing both of the things at the
same time.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
There could be a bit of both, that's right. I
think to try and boil it down to that, I suppose,
you know, would discount a lot of the subtleties in
terms of how things play out. And often we're learning
this on the fly. You know, we don't get the
manual for the child at the beginning, and we don't
know how we're going to feel about things later on.
So often we think, oh, I'm going to have this

(01:27):
parenting style, but in reality, when we're presented with situations,
we adopt different approaches. Often we start out and we think, oh,
I'm going to be a stay at home parent or
I'm going to be a working parent, and sometimes we think, actually,
I'd rather have more time either at home or at work.
And so it's changing all the time, and it can
be difficult to try and negotiate that when you don't

(01:48):
know what you're going to feel like when it actually happens.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Okay to talk to me as a mam, right, So
as a mom, I'm probably let's not sell the song.
Let's not be soft to that. Okay, I do I
do basically everything right as a mom. No, that's not
fair either on him. I'm doing it now, aren't I? Okay?
As a mom, I do a lot, and sometimes I
can feel a little bit resentful. But what I'm now
realizing is that while I don't like having all the

(02:13):
mental load and all that stuff on me, he might
not like the fact that he's being cut out so much.
It sucks for both parents.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
It's tricky because often when the parent, who you know,
is trying to carve out space to actually be more active,
sometimes they might feel like that they're stepping on toes.
And we have to think about, Okay, if I don't
want to carry all the load, am I comfortable with
handing some things over to somebody else? And am I
going to be accepting of how they do things? Because
we all do things in different ways. Are we accepting

(02:44):
of how somebody else prepares the lunchbox? You know? So
it's interesting the dynamic, and it's really tricky for fathers,
I think, because in those early stages, you know, their
first kind of feeling of being a parent can often
be after the birth, whereas for mothers, biologically, you know,

(03:04):
they're typically you know, they're they're already kind of feeling.
They're more on the parenting journey and at the center
of that, and rightly so with their health care and
everything that's attached with that. But for fathers, they're kind of,
you know, this responsibility tends to kick in based on
the conversations I've had, you know, at the birth, and
so trying to work out then to kind of slot

(03:26):
into the journey at that point can be a little
bit tricky. And the other thing that's a bit tricky
is that typically mothers, you know, working mothers, and if
they get a break from work, often they're the parent
that takes that chunk of time in the very early days,
so they get to do a lot of their training,
they've got time kind of put to one side, whereas
father's typically, you know, these days, fathers tend to get

(03:46):
a bit more time off of work, which is great,
but often return to work quite soon after the arrival
of a child, so they don't have that time to
kind of grow into the role. They're kind of rushed
back into everyday life again. And then naturally the mother
tends to pick up a lot of the duties and
the caring duties, and then you know, you have this
dynamic setup already who the primary carer, who the main

(04:10):
carer is, and trying to transition out of that is
really hard if that's something that families want to do
without stepping on tools.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Norma, thank you very much. I really appreciate Norma Barrett,
who is the co author of the study from Deacon University.
For more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to
news talks. It'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.