These days fathers are more involved in parenting than the fathers of any previous generation. An example is at my home only, my husband. He can do almost everything which I as a mother can do for our son. I really appreciate that he himself took charge of playing a pal of our parenting team. And this father-involvement has a directly proportional impact on kids as well. Studies have proved that kids whose fathers were involved 40 or more percentage in family’s care, showed better academic performance than kids whose fathers were less involved. Obviously, more involvement by a dad also means less pressure and dependence on mom. However, there is still a long path to cover. Despite of this change in fathers' nature, there exist families where males are proud breadwinners and females are theoretical housewives. I personally know few males who think non-working wives are better with kids. So why aren’t we closer to gender equality in the home?
We have seen that our society plays a big role in making, influencing and changing people. This stereotyping is still in our new age crowd because as this society’s representatives, a few people comment in such a way that it is enough to pull backward a few new age males from the mission of gender equality at homes. So what can we avoid doing and saying to help move away from the huge disparity in gender roles?
- “So, you are babysitting..”: Excuse me, but when a father spends time with his kids, it’s called parenting. A babysitter is someone unrelated to the kids and he/she gets paid to take care of them. A father is never a babysitter and in fact, spending time in absence of mother improves his bonding with the kids. So stop giving such nasty comments.
- “Oh, you change diapers”: Okay, I can understand that breastfeeding is something that only mothers can do. But changing a diaper is no rocket science. A father can do that easily. There is nothing shameful in changing the diaper of your own kids. You think changing diaper makes you less as a Man? This is foolishness.
- “Maybe, you should call their mother”: It often happens when a baby is crying inconsolably in public, people simply ignore the father’s effort in easing the baby. They keep on giving advice about checking with baby’s mother. Come on! dads can make babies happy. Dads can take parenting decisions too. So why give more weight to one parent over another?
- “Parental leave? What would you do for more than a week’s time?”: Let’s talk about how it’s usually assumed that the mother will be the one staying home with the newborn and father is not needed there. And then let’s talk about how fathers love their babies too and want to watch them grow and walk and finally learn how to focus their eyes. Fathers do need parental leaves for understanding the baby same way as a mother does.
- “Your wife is out of town, seriously?”: We need to stop treating fathers like they are an artless accessory to parenting. Fathers can dress, feed and take care their kids in absence of mothers. If a wife is out of town, she would have consulted the husband and with his due consent, she has gone out. Such queries only put question to father’s abilities.Don’t you think so?
- “What kind of MAN you are?” : In our country, if a father is helping a mother in raising their kids, people often make fun of his feelings. Being a man doesn’t mean only making money, it also means protecting the family and being with family in every moment. I hope this is not that complicated to understand.
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