20/06/2021
The next few days we are going to see a tremendous overload of āhappy Fatherās Dayā posts describing most of the fathers in the world as epitome of blessing.
If your partner/husband/co-parent is involved 50% of the time in parenting then that is how it is supposed to be, isnāt it?
They are not helping you or doing you a favor!
They are doing their duty.
They are SUPPOSED to be involved with you in parenting!
Sure, Being grateful & thankful is a good habit in general. But, so much more to look into this Fatherās Day..
I feel since most of us grew up in a patriarchal society, a slight involvement from a male counterpart is usually āpraisedā as though he did a great thing, whereas in general, the narrative is that you are doing what you are supposed to do as a mother. Handling everything at home, raising children, making sure everyone is fed and so much more!! The patriarchal society have us believing that men being the bread winner is financially contributing and thatās all that he needs to do & anything more than that is praised as though he did a great favor! Why do we keep our expectations so low? There are so many working mothers who handles both work & the roles of daughter, wife and mother- this is what they are supposed to do right? Whether a mother is working or not(not the point here), she is supposed to handle everything and āexpectationā of a fatherās involvement is considerably low in our minds- that is what I want us to think about.
I often get āyou are so LUCKY & blessed to have Mr.Irene as partner! He helps you so much with Ethanā. I wouldnāt say that he is a blessing to me since he changes Ethanās diaper once a week or since he plays with Ethan for an hour/day! He is doing bare minimum of what he is supposed to be doing as a father.
This post is to encourage you to look into how GENDER ROLES are prescribed by our patriarchal society and also look into the Expectation, Understanding & Reaction that we have to the actions and roles played by men & women in every day parenting.
This is not to shame or bash men in general. This is for introspection & reflections.This post barely scratched the surface of conversation around Gender roles.
