Are fathers more accident prone or careless with young children than mothers?

[Anonymous]

For instance in my family, when my niece was 7 months old, she fell out of the bed while under her father's (my own brother) care. Prior to the accident, his wife (my sister-in-law) told him several to never take his eyes off her for a second not even to pick up a wipe, to leave him on the crib, strapped stroller or hold her. My sister was in the kitchen making breakfast for the baby and she came back to the room, only to see her baby fall and cry loudly. He took his eyes off her for a second to clean up a spit-up and she rolled over fast, falling. Meanwhile my sister never had that happening to her.

They took her to the clinic and luckily nothing happened. Other cases I've heard about where an actually tragedy did happened was about a father carrying an older baby in an upright position over the shoulders with only one arm at a mall (when going up the mall's moving escalators) the baby arches backwards and falls to his/her death.

Then when the kid is an older toddler, several men do the stunt of making the kid sit on his shoulders, not realizing the risk of the kid falling too.

Generally are men more careless and accident prone with babies and small kids than women?

[MrChinaski]

My children have variously broken fingers and noses, stress injuries in their elbow and multiple stress injuries in their lower backs, torn ligaments in their ankles, and scarred foreheads by dancing into table edges.

When they were about 10 years old they would walk to the shops to buy the odd grocery item... which admittedly was only one block over.

And, yes, I carried my children on my shoulders for as long as that was feasible. They loved it and it was quality bonding time.

It's called well-spent youths. It's how you produce confident and well-adjusted children.

Children aren't museum pieces to be admired from behind glass.

[SamIam96]

Fathers are more willing to let children experience the world around them. In that context, there are bound to be accidents. The children are also having unstructured learning and will be more confident and intelligent.

If a mother raises a child in a bubble, there will never be injuries. The cost for that safety is that the child will have a life that's void of meaningful learning. She's likely to give the kid an iPad and let it scroll all day long. That is completely "safe".

[SamIam96]

Thank you for the MHO.

[Anonymous]

I don’t think so. You would need to do like an actual study to prove that.

[ohsheeT]

No what they are is a loving parent that know the limits of there children and they allow there children to take things on to experience what ever it is they are taking on

A mom would stop it before it even going an father will let the go. And teach then as there going he believe in his kids and he knows there is a limit if anything gets out or

[OlderAndWiser]

One incident does not prove that your brother was more careless than his wife. It only proves that the odds caught up with him before they caught up with her. Every parent who has a baby sustain an injury is not careless.

[AviatorTom]

Probably. Fathers tend to take more risks than mother's. Which parent typically teaches their kid to rude a bike? Or drive a car? Or go sledding down a steep hill? The Dad, of course.

[msc545]

I don't think that men are anywhere accident pro and careless with young children than women are and arguably. I think men in general tend to be more protective than women do of small children. That's pretty much in our DNA. We are also more protective of women than other men are in general. Your experience with your family members is not necessarily representative of anything other than your family members. It certainly is not representative of all men.

[jshm2]

No. But fathers tend to either overcompensate for risk, or undercompensate.

It's why female "mothering" tends to be more productive and safe than men doing the same thing.

[RingOfFire]

Men are more risk takers than women by natural design. So it is probably generally true that they would on average allow the children to do things that are riskier than mothers would.

[888theGreat]

Mothers worry too much and fathers let kids break bones as a lesson and that kids won't do that again and be more careful. Women are coddlers and men allow mistakes.

[whosnumber_1]

No. Absolutely not. I am very particular about my kids

[Sal_Monella]

Mothers are more suffocating and controlling than fathers.

[CupcakeTheDestroyer]

No, it sounds like your brother is just unlucky

[thegreenyogi]

Not in my experience as a daughter.

[Anonymous]

Some of them are, unfortunately..