This Latina TikToker Is Giving a Master Class on Parenting Roles in Child Rearing

Often, social media become a crossfire of opinions. That was precisely what TikToker Danila Vasallo experienced in the comments of a video she recently uploaded. The content creator with more than 630,000 followers, a mom herself, voiced her opinion about parenting roles.

Vasallo said what many mothers have always thought: fathers don’t “help” with children. They simply fulfill their role as parents.

The creator’s words opened a necessary dialogue about how we perceive and experience the roles of father and mother in raising children.

A discussion on gender stereotypes and parenting roles

Throughout history, the woman’s role in marriage has always been to stay home with the children and take care of the household. And we say “history” because this was true until the mid-20th century.

And as is often the case with bad habits, archaic ideas are hard to shake. We see this often in Latino families, where a father who feeds his children gets a “thank you” as a reward, as if he has done something out of the ordinary.

For Vasallo, this is a stereotype of parenting roles that need to be broken.

In her original video,  which has now garnered over 95.6 thousand likes, Vassallo posted the text: “How fortunate you are. Your husband helps you with the baby. You are blessed.” In the same clip, she added her response: “He doesn’t help me. He fulfills his role as a father.” 

And her followers had many thoughts.

Dotting the i’s

The Puerto Rican TikToker stayed firm in her thoughts. In a response video, Vasallo continued to express her opinions on the matter. 

“My husband, my daughter’s father, doesn’t help me with my daughter,” the creator said. “He fulfills his role of fatherhood.” 

“There’s a big difference between a helper, whether it’s a friend or my mother who could help me, and my husband, my daughter’s dad. He doesn’t help me. He fulfills his role because it is equally his responsibility.”

A normalized reality

Vasallo is trying to explain the normalization of gender and parenting roles in child-rearing. Many studies have attempted to explain the difference between the bonds children form with their mothers and fathers. In fact, specialists claim that this influences how children approach life and face the world.

“We have so normalized that we mothers have the responsibility for our children completely, that if our husbands, the fathers of our children, are involved in their lives, it’s a help,” she said. “And it’s really not.”

And it’s not a matter of gratitude. In fact, Vasallo explains that she and her husband recognize each other’s efforts. After all, they are a team.

In the end, she says she understands where the comment comes from but that, in general, it’s not a “help.” She says that it’s not a woman’s job to take on more than 50 percent of the parental chores, as it’s stereotypically expected from gender norms. 

Her followers praise her opinion. Sometimes, they’re even playing the audio to their husbands to knock sense into them. 

If it takes two to make a child, it should be their equal responsibility to raise them too.