Your ex (and every other mother on the planet) is being discriminated against, too, when people assume that because she’s The Mom she’s in charge of everyone’s schedule. Husbands VERY OFTEN leave details like this to their wives, so why would that change when they divorce?

Before you get offended at being ignored as a dad, maybe you should consider how tough moms have it when they’re expected to be all-knowing minutiae-absorbing superwomen.

Our society has become so accustomed to divorced families and the fathers being absentee, just walking away after the divorce, but the fathers that do stay and take care of their kids still get blocked, get treated poorly because of all of the fathers who walk away.

I wish you the best of luck in getting all of these issues resolved.

kat´s last blog post..All hooked up, still no signal.

I have conversations with him that i couldn’t have with my mum. N i think that dad’s really are under-rated in today’s society.

N even though sometimes we annoy each other because we are so alike … he makes up a very important part of my life.

So this one is to all the dad’s out there …. I don’t know of how many well rounded girls there would be out there if it weren’t for all the dads =)

Hot Alpha Female

That is, most families have two spouses as senior members. The most common role model has the husband working and focusing on out-of-home affairs. The wife focuses on keeping the home and supporting the husband – playing supportive spouse at company functions, entertaining, etc. Most of the time the wife’s role includes monitoring bills, correspondence, and tracking kids activities outside school. For full-time mothers, it is assumed (right or wrong) that their schedule is easier to break to bits to accommodate schools, doctor appointments, dentists, and all the other outside activities and contacts that assume ‘business hours’ are an acceptable imposition on the community. They all assume that Mother has time to accommodate them.

The reality is different. Whether Mom is single or working, usually she is the one to hack up her career and work day to accommodate schools, etc. So a teacher would be very diligent in making sure that every kid’s mom was on the list – for the mundane reason that Mom is responsible for being the contact, and the one most likely to be available. The next pass would identify kids that don’t live with Mom at all – Dad is single.

And if you think Schools seem to present a balanced gender-neutral social structure example to your kids, just count the number of women teaching at third grade and below. I invite any men interested in substitute teaching – the credentials in many states are quite easy to meet (in Oklahoma you need a high school diploma). And keep an eye out for the subtle and not-so-subtle biases entrenched in the different schools in your district.

No, I think you are looking too deeply, taking this too personally. This is an administrative oversight, not a parental role bias. Most men would face issues at work, penalties of position, wage, or perhaps get fired, if they were the school’s primary contact. Which is why many companies still lean toward married men for executives. They have wives to keep the ‘domestic’ stuff out of the dude’s worry list and thus not impose on the company – or at least, that is the underlying assumption.

The world is changing, but we still have some fundamental concepts to address.

Oh, and blame Cathouse Teri for pointing the way here!

Then I followed up by sending an email to the teacher and she wrote back. In fact, she and I exchanged emails a few times during the year.

But when she set up her parent email list, she left me off. Who knows why? Maybe she had her husband input the data, or a kid, or a secretary, or she just blew it. Apparently when she sent these emails she put the parent email addresses in a bcc field, so no one knew who was or wasn’t getting it. No one bothered to tell me the emails were going out, including my ex. And I had no reason to suspect, because the teacher was otherwise emailing me.

I will say, though, that the onus is on you to make sure that your info is given to the teacher. I didn’t read the comments, so I don’t know if this was addressed. But teachers have their plates VERY full. Even the best intentioned of them can’t possibly keep up with knowing everything they need to know about a student. There are grandparents who need to be informed because they are under their care a lot. There are nannies. All kinds of situations.

If you want to be informed about your child, then you must go the distance in making sure that your information is in the hands of the right people. And to make the proper checks to be sure the contact information is being used. Like… emailing the teacher for instance. Or sending her a note and asking for a regular, weekly email telling you what is going on.

I don’t know what communication is like between the ex and you but it’s likely falling short there.

If you want to make a change, you gotta make it. No need in getting disappointed or feeling victimized or disregarded by a woman who has forty kids to look after. She’s got them while they are in school. And that’s a lot.