70. What Your Husband Was Never Taught: The Expectation Gap at Home

Hey Doc ,

This month, I’m doing something a little different. Every episode of Stethoscopes and Strollers in June is for the dads.
Not because they deserve a standing ovation.
But because they’re part of the story. Your story.

And I know, this might bring up some feelings.
Especially if you’ve been carrying more than your share of the load.
Especially if it feels like you’ve had to do the emotional labor for everyone, including the person you thought would be your partner.

In this episode, I’m talking about what I now understand to be the real issue behind so much of the frustration I felt in early parenthood:
The expectation gap.

The quiet but powerful beliefs we carry, about how motherhood would feel, what our partner would do, and what we should be able to handle.
Where those expectations come from.
And why they often go unspoken until we’re already at our breaking point.

This isn’t about letting anyone off the hook.
It’s about giving you the insight (and tools) to make change — not just in your marriage, but in your household, your nervous system, and your legacy.

Inside, I share:
 🔹 What I expected from my husband… and why it wasn’t fair (or shared)
 🔹 Why we confuse socialization with instinct, and how that skews our view of “good parenting”
 🔹 What finally helped us start communicating for real
 🔹 And how this one shift can change what your kids learn about love and partnership

This one’s for you if you’ve ever felt like:
“I shouldn’t have to ask.”
“I’ve already said this a thousand times.”
Or, “I don’t even know how we got here.”

You’re not alone.
And it can get better.

🎧 Let’s unpack the load, the gap, and the truth, without yelling. (Promise.)

Listen to Episode 33 Debunking the Myth of Maternal Instinct: Why Education trumps 'Intuition' in Parenting

Listen to Episode 42 Behind the Scenes: A Raw Conversation with My Husband About Our Early Parenthood Journey

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Transcript

Hey Doc father's Day is coming up soon and this month I'm doing something a little bit different. We are doing the month of June for dads for husbands. 'cause you know, I love me my husband, right? And I know you love your husband too, even if it's deep down. So we are going to dedicate all the episodes in the month of June to our husbands, and you should know by now, stethoscopes and strollers is not anti husband. It's not anti-man. You know, it's very easy to get into that space when you're talking about the struggles and the lived experiences of moms, particularly professional working moms. But that's, that's not what this is. So if you're not really trying to hear.

About how maybe you have some growth to do and maybe your husband needs a break, and all of those things. If you are like, Hmm, you sound like a male sympathizer. As one physician mom told me, then this month may not be for you and that's cool. But if you are interested in. Really growing in love, partnership and intimacy with your husband, and at the end of the day, helping yourself because you are helping him help you by listening to these episodes and recognizing your own patterns, growing, getting some communication skills, you're doing all of that to help him help you, right?

It's, it's always about you, doc. Stethoscopes and Strollers, it comes back to the main person in your life. You part of you is married. So that part has to be tended to, and that's what we'll be doing this month.

And I just wanna be super duper clear. This is not about excusing abusive or neglectful behavior or anything like that. This is for real. Partnerships who may be on the rocks a little bit. There's still room for repair or you are great and you could be better. That's what this is for.

So the thing that plagues most of us, the problem that we have as physician moms is often the load, right? The load of managing the household, raising the children, and a load that is often uneven and unappreciated and.

It is often made worse by the fact that there's another human being right there who's supposed to be a partner, who's supposed to be helping you, who isn't. But when you go down to the core of it, the real problem is expectations and often unspoken expectations that are not being met that we have for ourselves.

That motherhood wasn't supposed to be like this. We expected him to do more. We expected him to be helpful. We expected him to know how to do this, that, and the third,

It's it's expectations For me, when my first came, my son, it was the expectation that my husband would do everything, like I said,

so I talked about this in the episode where he joined as a guest, episode 42. The link will be in the show notes. He talked about it and you know, from my perspective. He didn't have much experience with children. I had more experience than him, and I'd also done a lot of research. I'd been in doctor mom groups way before I actually had the baby, and you know, I felt prepared.

Of course, you can never fully prepare yourself for motherhood, but I felt more prepared than I thought he was. So I would tell him in all sorts of different ways that the things that he was doing. Could be done differently or they could be done better, or he shouldn't do this and he shouldn't do that, and it did not go over well because not only was it this constant nagging, and I mean, who likes to be told at every step you're doing something wrong, but.

What I didn't know is that I was telling him that I thought he was a bad father, that I thought that he was completely incompetent, and because he didn't have the tools to be able to deal with this, he shut down. Right? He dealt with it in the dysfunctional way that he dealt with conflict at that time, so it. Turned into a complete indifference to my opinion when it came to how he parented our son. And the sad thing is that that wall was up for like two and a half years. That issue only got resolved after my daughter was born

 What hit me the hardest was

I just assumed that he hadn't done any research.

Because he wasn't valuing things that I valued.

He wasn't as anal about those things.

But he had done his own research

in his own way

for things that he thought was important.

And I had very explicitly said,

you know,

"Well you didn't do anything.

You didn't look this stuff up."

What I'm saying is right,

or whatever.

And he is like,

How do you even, like, you didn't even ask me.

So I could see how it was just very hurtful for him and,

and why he responded

in the only way he knew how to at that time.

Like, what that could look like

in your household is that he just stops doing stuff.

It could look like stonewalling

for all these other men

who all don't know how to deal with their feelings

because they all were not...

they all were not socialized

to put value on the skills

to manage their emotions in a healthy way.

 So I want you to think, you know, how often are you doing that? This assumption that you know best without giving him a chance to try and dismissing any efforts that he may give because it doesn't look exactly like yours, right?

And this isn't judgment. This is just for you to acknowledge something that may be causing tension and may be responsible for

some of the discontent in the relationship,



But

 I wanna talk about

the expectation gap.

The difference between

the expectation that you have

and reality that is the most common, right?

Is this expectation that

he would be more helpful

than he actually is.

It's like,

But I keep all these things in my head.

I keep track of everything.

You can see that this thing needs to be done.

Like, "I know how to do it.

Why don't you know?"

But I want you to take a pause, doc.

Think about how you know these things.

Was it really just something

that is innate to you

because you are a perfectionist

and you love organizing?

That may be true,

but could it also be true

that a lot of the things

that you are irritated about

that he does not know that you know,

is because you were taught?

You were socialized to be a homemaker,

to take care of a house,

take care of children,

regardless of what else you were raised to believe.



  📍  📍 For the majority of us, especially if we come from a different country with

different cultures that have more fixed and firm gender roles. Even if you were told you can be anything you wanna be, you could be a doctor. I believe in you. At the end of the day, most of us were still expected to marry. To have children and to be able to know how to do those things. We watch our mothers raise our little siblings, we watch our aunts sisters.

We are in mom groups naturally, we form mom groups. We do the research. It is a socialization, and I think the faster we realize that and accept it, the faster we can move through. Sure make culture changes, but also accept that this is our reality and now what are we gonna do about it?

Because all of those things that we were taught, he was not right as we were taught to care for the home and the children. It was not thought to be a priority to teach the sons. These things, right? Their priorities, their socialization was different. and as messed up as that is, it is the reality. So in episode 33, I talk about this myth of maternal instinct. A lot of what we call instinct is actually learned behavior. So don't get me wrong, I do believe we have a instinct. We have this connection with our children and we probably just more observant as women in general, but I digress. a lot of this maternal instinct is learned.

but.

There are many of us that really hold onto this instinct idea. I remember seeing this post in physician community where the poster was anonymous because she wanted to protect her husband because she was so ashamed for him that he didn't have parental instinct because he didn't know how to play with a baby.

He didn't know how to care for the baby. She had to tell him exactly what to do with the bottles and the diapers and you know, he does know to engage in tummy time and all this stuff. And nowhere in there did it say he was unwilling. He was giving her a hard time. It was just the fact that he didn't know.

And I actually commented, I was like, but just tell him what to do. 'cause it seems like he's doing it. And also. This idea that it is instinctual to know how to engage with a baby is not only false, it can be a little bit insulting to people, even women who don't have the personality to sit and engage with a baby.

'cause let me tell you, babies before, like three months are quite boring. They don't do much, so I don't know that anybody knows how to play with a baby. We talk to them and we do all this stuff because we are told that it's good for brain development and we are overachievers and we want our children to be as such.

No, I, I do not believe that is instinctual to know how to play with a baby. There is a lot of personality. In that and also a lot of learned behavior. So at the beginning of the comment before I said Babies are boring. 'cause I was actually trying to be helpful. I told her what I'm gonna tell you now , just tell him, tell him what the expectations are.

Tell him how you want things to be done. Yes, there are ways to tell him in a way that's gonna be effective, is gonna be respectful. It's going to actually affect the change that you want and not make him feel like shit. They are ways, and we are gonna talk about that. 

But before we do, I want to address a very prominent thought that may be in your head right now. I have said it. I have told him over and over and he's still not doing it. He's still not getting it. I know. I know. You've told him. I know you've probably told him many, many times.

You've probably said it nicely. Said it while yelling, shouting, crying. This is not saying try harder or diminishing the effort that you have put in , it's really to understand why it may not have worked, right? Because we are undoing years and years of unconscious conditioning, right?

It takes time and it takes work and. That's what this episode is about, the understanding, but then also the tools to make it effective. Because the goal is not just to be like, Hey, well this is the theory of why this is happening, but also how are we gonna make it better?

 So if there's a wall of resentment, my goal is to soften it a bit so that you even have the desire to work on these things. Let some of the bricks fall so you can kind of see the light through and. I want to encourage you to look at that light and to keep going because it is worth it so let's get into it. 

If you don't have the baby yet, you are currently pregnant, you are thinking about getting pregnant, you haven't even met the man yet. Perfect. This is the time because when you meet the man, when you get pregnant. Before the baby comes, you want to have these conversations because it's one of those things where you don't even know that this will be an issue until it's an issue, or you have this very one-sided view of why these issues arise and nobody ever broke it down to you like this.

Nobody has told you about the expectation gap as the core issue for a lot of. The problems that men and women have when they become new parents. So start with curiosity. In these conversations, you need to find out what is their baseline, ask, have you thought about how it would be when the baby comes?

You know, a nice, broad, open-ended question, just like a patient interaction. You know, ask specifically about how it was in their own home. How did your parents handle things?

And then so that you don't end up like me, you can ask what research have you done? Like, how have you prepared for the arrival of this baby? It may be like, nah, I haven't done anything. That's fine. But he may be like my husband and has looked up things or you know, talked to his friends. You never know. I give him the benefit of the doubt and start with curiosity.

Most importantly, just have the conversation so that you can get the ideas and beliefs out and talk about how you want it to be, because now you know the things to look for and to talk about and to avoid.

So if you are in it, like the baby's here and you're trying to talk to him and you are like, but I did talk to him. I told him, you know, you may wanna consider doing tummy time. Or being irritated that he's not listening to you like, Hey, why aren't you doing the tummy time? try this instead. You know, tummy time is important for core and neck control. I would really love to make it part of our routine. Are you open to that?

So you are stating the evidence, stating the reason for what you want, stating your desire, and then that question, that doesn't sound like a command and that opens the space for discussion. And you can be direct. You don't have to sugar coat or apologize. You can be very clear about what you want, still be respectful and be effective. And the truth of the matter is not every man is gonna respond well,

but many will respond better when we communicate in this way

and if you are like, I already can't stand this, man. I'm in this very negative place, this would've been great to know before. I'm not trying to hear all that. I wanna tell you that it's not too late. As I mentioned, this took two and a half years to resolve. In my household, right? That's the age difference between my son and my daughter.

And it was really more because it was not until I had my postpartum crash and burn and we really got into our issues surrounding parenthood that this was resolved.

So if we can do it, you can do it. It takes intention, it takes effort, but it is possible. You have to communicate and say what you need, say what your expectations are. The expectations cannot be just in your head.

They have to be said out loud.

You can still take time to explore what his beliefs are and how they can change to make it a true partnership. It can be better than it starts with communication and hopefully the communication is not shouting like it was for us, but effective communication, which, you know, I cover in different ways throughout the podcast, and I will continue to do that because I know the communication between. Husband and wife, especially when the kids are very young and the tensions are high, can be a problem.

But it is important and it is worth the effort, and you have to be explicit and be able to ask for what you want and explicitly say what the expectations are because he cannot, in fact read your mind. And sure, somebody should have taught him all this stuff, but they didn't. So what are we gonna do now?

So

 I want you to think like

when you're frustrated at him

for not doing something,

ask yourself,

is this expectation fair?

Have I said this out loud?

Am I using the best language to be effective and

can I give him some grace?

It may be really difficult for that last one,

but I promise you it is very important. It's probably one of the most important ones when you have the context of the socialization of maternal instinct, right? Your husband likely will garner a lot more grace when that is a reminder and the last thing I'll say is that you may need to let go of perfect. Of the expectation that you have, and we'll get more into that in another episode. but it is important .

And I I know you may be thinking, you know,

Why is it again, my responsibility to fix this?

To fix our communication problem,

to get him to do more,

to fix society's problem of socializing him

to not know how to do this stuff?

Like, Why is this my problem?

I have one more thing to do.

I see you.

I feel you.

I know.

And you can also take responsibility.

For the life that you are living,

the choice that you made in this husband,

and make the effort to make the change

because it is worth it, right?

Once things are better and expectations are known,

and they have an opportunity to be met,

the communication is better.

Everybody is happier.

The home is happier,

and it is a form of growth for you and for him.

And the good thing about it is that

growth begets growth.

  

 So things will continue to get better if we put attention on these things. Because let me tell you, love is not enough. I recently told my best friend this, yes, you need love.

To make a marriage work, but an individual commitment to personal growth for each person is essential. In my opinion. Love is not enough. It's good, it's necessary, but it takes more, and it is all worth the effort. 'cause I want you to imagine a household where you have an all in partnership.

It feels true and real and imagine that kind of example for your children of what a partnership looks like without falling into. These outdated gender roles or really without having the false expectations about what it means to be married and to have children, that will be amazing for them to have that redefined so they don't have to do all the unlearning reconditioning that we are now doing.

So it is worth the effort. So I want you, if this episode made you think, even if you are like. This man ain't shit you are not talking about. Your husband is different, but maybe, maybe you're right. If you're in that, maybe share this episode with another physician mom. Let her have that same little spark that I may be onto something because it is my mission to get all of our marriages in tip top shape because again.

It feeds us. It feeds our soul. It feeds our happiness, our sensuality, everything. And it also benefits the children.

I just want to leave you with this. There's a chance that he is trying and doing the best that he knows how to do, and I know that just as I know that you are trying too,

all right, so all this month we'll be talking about husbands and fathers, and I cannot wait, and I'll see you on the next episode of Stethoscopes and Strollers.