Whilst Christmas shopping yesterday, I heard a lady shout this at her child as I was barging my way through the shop with the pram. It’s the first case where I’ve noticed the assumption that it would be a woman with a pram rather than a man.
Or maybe it’s just that I look a bit like a woman.
I don’t think this is a problem particularly, and its an assumption that I would have made in the past. I got his riddle wrong first time I was asked it:
http://www.ecenglish.com/learnenglish/lessons/english-riddle-can-you-answer-question
What this means I think is that we’ve got a long way to go before paternity and maternity leave are anywhere near to be considered equal. I realise this is a hell of an extrapolation from a single sentence from a single woman in Swindon, but that’s the way I see it.
The riddle link says “page not found” – is it a special initiative test?
I was told by my late mother that your paternal Grandfather pushed your Father (me) as a baby in a pram through the streets of Glasgow in 1949 to general cries of “See yon sassanach Jesse!” and worse. So we have progressed some way along your line of extrapolation.