But if you have children, you cannot choose whether or not to parent because your presence or absence will be experienced as parenting by your children. The way your children experience your involvement in their lives, or lack thereof, has an extraordinary impact on what they come to believe about themselves and how they relate to the rest of the world. The relationships that children establish with their parents provide the foundation for every other relationship they will ever have. Changes in Expectations. Referring to fathers as babysitters is absurd.
Babysitters are people who get paid to fill-in for parents who are unavailable.
Fathers are not fill-ins or filler. They are the real thing. Seeing fathers doing their job in public as well as private should be treated as the norm, not a novelty. Changes in Language. Language is powerful.