better (at) looking after

one question from one student's oral exam:

me: are men or women better at looking after children and why?
student: men. yeah ... men. women usually get bigger after they're pregnant.
me: um, huh ... oh! no. 'looking after' means 'taking care of.' who is better at taking care of children?
student: oh. ok. women.

(note: for the past week or so, my life has been consumed by exam writing, grant writing, cover-letter writing and jonathan safran foer's writing. hopefully i'll be back and blogging with a vengeance soon.)