After I got home today I was sent out to the grocery store by my mom to pick up a chicken for dinner tonight. As I wheeled into the Zehrs parking lot, I saw this big black F-150 being driven by a burly dude with a beard and tattoos, backing up into an “expectant mothers” parking spot at the front of the busy store.

When I saw the guy taking up this spot with his massive truck, I thought to myself, “Gee! what a jerk! It’s 6 o’clock on a Monday, which is prime time for single mothers and working wives to be getting home from work and picking up their groceries. What a moron.”

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought this. As the guy started getting out of his car, an elderly lady walking by with her cart of food poked at him. “pregnant?!” to which he quickly responded, “Nope! But trying.”

I parked a few rows back and got out of my car to walk past this guy’s truck and see if there was anything else I could hate him for, when I saw him standing at the back of his cabin, pulling out a child in a car seat to put into a grocery cart.

Wow.

Boy did I feel guilty.

I had just judged a book by its cover, and applied some out-of-date stereotype that men can’t be the main caretaker in the family to this situation, and painted this guy in a completely unfair light.

Even after reading lots of stories on Quora about guys who fulfill the childcare role in a family (anyone who follows Quora User has probably read a few of these stories), I still rushed to conclusions based on a double standard that women can be primary caretakers, but for some reason men cannot.

And I hate that.