Is the key challenge of sharing the care of children in fact stepping out of one’s culturally determined earning or caring role rather than the challenges of the new role?
The Daily Mail is still at it, with yet more excellent articles about motherhood, fatherhood and family life (see my earlier blog on The Daily Mail). The latest is a confessional piece by a mother, Diana Appleyard, about her struggles to let her partner into her territory in the home: I hate being the bread winner says resentful working mother-of-two. She found herself constantly on the attack, feeling bad about not having the primary caring role, and he found himself forever on the defensive, feeling it impossible to prove himself on her territory.
There have been 24 books written by fathers about new fatherhood in the last six years – men trying to produce a road map having travelled through unchartered territory. I wonder if they miss the point – the key challenge is perhaps not how to be a hands on parent – that is not rocket science, it just means rolling up one’s sleeves and doing what needs to be done. There is loads of advice and help at hand…. so long as one does not feel such a social misfit that one dares not access it.
Is the key challenge in fact stepping out of one’s culturally determined role? For a mother to step out of the primary domestic role and for a father to relinquish the main earning role can be a really difficult experience, accompanied by intense feelings of inadequacy, guilt and fear. Fathers and mothers can start inventing fantasies about how the sky would fall down if they moved away from their prescribed roles – he might lose his job, even if he asked to leave early from work just one day a week; she might lose her primary attachment to the child if the father becomes competent.
And with more sharing, perhaps inevitably comes more argument – two parents active in the house and two parents active in the care of a child will have two different styles and their weaknesses will be clearer to each other. When a mother criticises a father’s way of caring, or when a father criticises a mother’s way of caring, one can expect strong currents of emotion!
That this debate is warming up in the recession is no coincidence. The recession is tipping families into patterns of work and care that do not correspond with cultural prescriptions.
