Our household is unintentionally quite traditional. Kev is the provider because when we grew our family, we were fortunate enough that he had the earning potential to be so. I was made redundant from my job in the hospitality industry and so became the stay at home parent.

It was always going to be this way, because Kev had the foresight to recognise that ageing with cerebral palsy would impact my physical capabilities over time, so I should be allowed to enjoy motherhood, rather than carrying the guilt that all working mothers do.

I know how fortunate I am to not have financial worries staying at home to raise our girls. I also am determined to be realistic about how hard being a stay at home parent is. It is all consuming and even at their young ages of 3 & 6, I challenge the preconceptions that they are forming that Mummy doesn’t have “a job”. I am very clear that they are my job and that I work tirelessly at it.

But I can’t deny that I am the parent they see dealing with most aspects of their lives; meeting their basic needs, orchestrating their social lives and managing school comms and getting them to their activities etc.

This week, however, in very different situations, both my little girls have hit upon something that society seems to push, by ignoring the whole issue.

I was at playgroup with Gabster and we were all singing The Wheels on the Bus. The mummies on the bus said “Shhh-shhhh-shhhh!” (Serious point, why do mummies get put in charge of discipline, even in nursery rhymes?) but that was where we stopped.

Gabby looked at me in confusion, her little face creased with sadness. “They didn’t sing the daddies!”

“I know baby, maybe next time.”

“No!” she insisted. “Why no daddies?”

I don’t think it was a deliberate omission, but honestly, if a three year old can feel put out that her daddy’s part in this familiar exchange has been removed and we’re sat in a roomful of women, maybe she has a point? Because actually, unusually, I had spotted several dads in charge of their littles this week. And why is it unusual? Because society has made it so, putting women in charge because anywhere else, we’re underpaid and undervalued.

But putting women solely in charge of their children means that men are out of place when they exercise their equal right to do the same. Collective opinion and pressure has done this and it is ridiculous. The daddies on The Bus (should also be shh-shh-shh-ing in my opinion, but also) don’t need to be ignored to the point my three year-old wonders why she’s not hearing the customary “I love you”! It’s needlessly ignorant.

Yesterday, Squidge chose a book to read to me. It was a book she and Kev had had printed for me one Mother’s Day, a book all about me.

Halfway through, she looked up at me and said: “Hey, what about Daddy?”

My response was instinctive. “We can make a book for Daddy on Father’s Day if you want to.”

Because, yes, we each have our role to play in raising our children. Some families have a more traditional set up like mine, others work hard to do it in their own way. But being a provider is not a role that substitutes for the sacred role of parent. A mummy is a mummy, a daddy is a daddy and we all belong right next to our child as they grow. Playgroup is not just for Mummy. Daddy deserves his time to be recognised too. His little girls deserve to hear “I love you”, on The Bus. (Except Kev, who doesn’t use the bus, haha, so our two will hear it everywhere else!)

And I am so proud of my two tiny girls for noticing this injustice. Because now we can call it what it is and I can help them see just how both their parents contribute to their worlds, not just how society deems we should.