Gender Rant, Vol. 1
What you’re about to read, should you choose to continue, is a rant about how the forces that prop up traditional gender roles can make people feel elbowed out of the parenting world and/or workplace.
When we moved to Switzerland and I was totally ready to embrace being a full time Dad (at least for a while), I was looking forward to taking the Integration Courses that the city offers for new arrivals. The “Living and Working” course is designed for people that moved here for jobs, while the “Daily Life in Zürich” course, which offers free childcare during the class and thus was the only type of class that I could take, is designed for people that moved here and will be managing their households. I was eager to learn about Swiss recycling, taxes, healthcare, insurance and what not, but disappointed to learn that men are not allowed to enroll (despite there being no equivalent class for men). It wasn’t an entirely new experience for me as I’ve seen plenty of “Mommy and Me” classes etc.., but it was the first time that I had seen a governmental service that would be very beneficial to Hausmänner but explicitly is only available for women (with or without kids).
I don’t want to be mistaken for a “Men’s Rights” nutjob, but for there to be inclusivity and gender equality in the workplace, there also needs to be inclusivity and gender equality in the extended universe of domesticity. For moms with demanding jobs to be able to perform as well as their male peers that have delegated most domestic responsibilities to their partners, women must be able to delegate these responsibilities to their partners. In an ideal world, breadwinning moms wouldn’t be pressured/shamed into feeling that they are somehow less than mothers that are primary parents, and breadwinning dads wouldn’t be pressured/shamed into feeling that they are somehow less than fathers that are primary parents (as if that is a thing that regularly happens). Further, dads that are primary parents wouldn’t be pressured/shamed into feeling that they are somehow less than dads that are primary breadwinners, and moms that are primary parents wouldn’t be pressured/shamed into things thinking that they are somehow less than moms that are primary breadwinners.
In the world that we live in, however, we’re exposed to gendered marketing tropes about moms “knowing best,” being in complete control of the household, having secret knowledge about children and cleaning, and being married to clueless husbands that show up after work expecting dinner to be served shortly after they’ve finished their “Honey I’m Home” scotch. For me, these stereotypes aren’t a huge deal (in my capacity as a white man, I have plenty of stereotypes working in my favor already), but it’s not difficult to imagine how they can hold people back by reinforcing and encouraging people to stick with traditional gender roles that would be disastrous for some families.
Parents need to decide how they are going to make things work for their kids and themselves, and since everyone is different, the ways that they do things aren’t always going to fit cleanly into a 1950s-America style mould. If a mom has the potential to significantly out-earn a dad and is passionate about her work, it would be silly to have her be the one that stays home with the kids when the dad would be happy to be doing so himself. Likewise, it would be silly to have the dad stay home if he enjoyed working more than the mom and also could provide enough for the family financially. Having both parents work while the kids go to daycare/school and the parents try to split the responsibilities equally, or in some other way, is also the right thing for many families (it’s how my amazing parents raised me!).
I don’t think that many people are maliciously against gender equality, but I do think that for parenting, homemaking, and breadwinning responsibilities to be distributed more equitably, women and men need to feel welcome and seen in both professional and domestic settings, and for that to happen, a lot of consciousness shifting work must be done.
End of rant.