"Attention Moms"

Brian, Oliver and I were shopping at Babies R Us the other day when an announcement came over the store’s speakers. “Attention Moms...” it began. We bought spoons and bowls a few weeks ago in preparation for Oliver’s first attempts at solids (which will hopefully occur in the next couple of weeks) and the spoons package read: “Long, thin handle makes feeding baby easy on Mom.” The bowl packaging read: “Great for mom to feed baby.”  Not “moms and dads” or “parents” ... just moms. Brian’s been facing this mom bias since I got pregnant. Almost all pregnancy books are written solely for the mothers and the ones that are written for dads end up being pretty offensive in how much they talk down to the expectant father. And the cultural assumption that mom alone is the one who is going to feed, clothe and care for the baby (the assumption that is implicit in all of the above examples) erases the experiences of fathers like Brian who are more involved or who choose to stay home with their children (you don’t see many commercials aimed at stay at home fathers). It just annoys me when the assumption is made that I am or should be the primary caregiver for our son just because I am his mother. Now, I’m not arguing that I’d be much happier if all of the marketing materials in Babies R Us or on the spoons and bowls read “Mom and Dad” because then I’d surely be writing a blog post about how such phrasing assumes a heterosexual couple as parents but how hard would it be to just say/write “Attention Parents”??? Wouldn’t that cover all the bases?