Low expectations

My eldest son was ill this week. I had a phone call from the school right before a really important meeting at work - he'd thrown up in the office and obviously needed collecting.

I called my ex, and he was off work, so he went to collect him. He also had him the next day so that I didn't need to take any time off.

Does that make me lucky?

A couple of people have said that to me this week - "Oh, that's nice of him." or "You're lucky that he will do that for you."

I don't usually say any of the responses that are running through my mind, I usually just say "Well, he is their father."

Does anyone say to a working Dad, whose wife takes days off work when the kids are sick that he's lucky? Or when she works part time so she can pick up the children after school - is he lucky that she's doing that so he doesn't have to?

In my mind, this is part of a wider problem - we have low expectations of fathers, and even lower expectations for single mothers.

Society expects that a single mother will have troublesome children. It expects that she will be on benefits. It expects that she is responsible for all the 'feral' children (And don't even get me started on that load of claptrap).

No one seems to be expecting anything of the single fathers. (Who, for the record, don't stop being fathers just because they leave the family home.)