A lot of people need to validate that they're doing the right thing. You want to feel like you have someone who knows about these things. The mothers always come for the check-ups with the dad. A lot of it is my own personal experience that I'm projecting onto other people. I think, at the end of the day, if your child is sick and you have to send the babysitter to the doctor, you feel like a terrible mother.
Fathers love their children just as much as mothers do.
But there's not as much paternal instinct as there is maternal instinct. There's a lot of give and take. Dads are taking on a lot more roles. With two-income families, the parents share the sick visits. The number of dads who come to the visits, who are really invested in that, is surprisingly more than I would have expected.