Fatherhood work-life balance

 

 Men in earlier years have been expected to be the breadwinners of the family while a woman stayed home, took care of the children and became a housewife. In our society, parenthood is understood as "motherhood" and is thus viewed as an activity to be performed only by women. Wall and Arnold (2007) state in their article concerning involved fathering “although the word ‘parent’ appears in many articles and article titles, it is mothers who are typically portrayed and quoted in the stories. Many articles make little or no mention of fathers at all” (pg 9). The assumption that men should not have to be involved in childcare nor would desire it is still prevalent in modern social thought. This idea has explained by Palkovitz in his book Involved Fathering and Men’s Adult Development: Provisional Balances (2002), where he states that “A man becomes a biological father as a result of a relationship with the child’s birth mother.  Biological fathering is the result of a biological act with differing degrees of planning, intentionality, emotion and commitment across different relationships.” (pg 4) The previous is an interesting perspective that sheds light into the reason regarding gender inequalities for men in both the family and household role. We praise mothers for carrying an unborn child for about nine months, then giving birth to the child and then caring for it by feeding and offering emotional and physical support. We do not fit fathers into the equation because men are viewed as simple contributors of the item that in turn creates a ripple effect that creates a child, they do not have to be attached to the mother or the child in any way, as all that is needed from the father is sperm so that the mother can carry on the ‘magical’ process. This principle has not shifted but rather evolved with the new generation of parents who believe that not only mothers should care for their children but also fathers.

 

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