Seems to me that’s kinda like the people who congratulate a “house husband” for the same things a woman would be expected to do as a matter of course…just the usual “day in the life of…” People who make those kinds of statements don’t think about the messages that lie underneath them.

Tho I suppose there’s another unacknowledged statement, “I can’t imagine that I [or my spouse] would be able to do that, so it seems heroic to me.” In other words, as you say, the hardest part is assumed to be the identity issue. That is, the response says more about them than it does about you.