The BBC shared a heartwarmingstory yesterday about a group of Yorkshire dads who’ve come together to learn how to do their daughters’ hair. ‘Isn’t that lovely?’ you’re encouraged to think. Big blokes doing fiddly braids on their daughter’s hair. Really sweet.
Only, it’s really not.
The issue isn’t the men learning how to do hair. That’s all well and good. The problem is the sort of gold star mentality we have about these men. It’s part of the same culture which praises men for ‘babysitting’ when they take care of their kids, or tells women ‘gosh isn’t he good!’ when he offers to change a nappy.
It is not amazing, or heartwarming, astonishing or brilliant that a group of men have sought out instruction on how to contribute to a basic aspect of parenting – keeping your child tidy and well groomed. It’s just, well, parenting.
Just as people with straight hair who have curly haired children have to learn how to wash and style curls, and white women who have mixed race children need to learn how to do protective styles, dads need to know how to do hair, not because it’s amazing and brilliant to do so, but because it’s a standard part of looking after your child.
Treating these men like superheroes for learning to do what women do (often while answering the phone, pouring a bowl of Weetabix and deworming the dog) is a problem. It adds to the perception that men are these hapless creatures with no idea how to take care of their offspring, who are only able to do the fun, silly parts of parenting.
Women learn a laundry list of new skills when they become parents. If men doing hair are going to illicit this kind of reaction, then there should be a daily viral sensation glorifying women who come together to learn to breastfeed through the agony of bleeding nipples. No one is on Twitter calling it heart warming that a woman has worked out how to function on 90 minutes of sleep a night because she has a colicky baby.
Women don’t know how to do hair through pink osmosis. We have to learn. Lots of adult women haven’t worn braids since their mum did it for them, and FYI, doing hair on someone else is completely different from doing it on yourself. Being able to style a child’s hair – especially a wriggling grumpy one who doesn’t want to be near a brush – is something that you have to learn, even if you do have long hair yourself.
There is a parenting theory called ‘glitter and glue’, which espouses the thought that in every parenting duo there is one glitter parent who does the Disney Land, Father Christmas, bags of pick and mix at the cinema parts, and one glue parent who does the school shoes by the front door, homework back in your folder, lunch made parts. No prizes for guessing which gender is usually assigned to which. This glorification of men for doing something basic and quite enjoyable plays into that mentality.
Men getting together to spend time with their children and learn how to do complicated hair is fine. Not bad, not toxic, not problematic, no need to call the cancel police. But it’s also not brilliant or magical or life changing. It’s just a neutral. A perfectly sensible way to approach parenting, which doesn’t need, or deserve, a gold star.