When fathers lose their jobs
On Monday I am on Woman’s Hour discussing the issue of fathers losing their jobs and being pitched into full-time care of children. I will comment on their experiences. So what should I say?
It seems to me there are two key factors. First there is the burden of social expectation - which is very hard not to internalise. Men should work, women should look after children. So when a father loses a job and the mother is earning most of the money, there is often a mother who feels guilty at not caring enough, and a father who feels inadequate at not earning enough. This is bonkers - with earning and caring both essential to a family and with both mothers and fathers equally capable of doing both (on average, at least) it should not matter; but we have boxes in our heads which make us squirm when it is one way round but not the other.
Another factor is the largely unacknowledged burden of earning money for a family. There is a widespread narrative about the burdens of looking after children and the home, but the pressure of earning enough money for a family is huge - ever since we lived in caves, mobilising all the resources needed to bring up children has been the hardest challenge for human men and women. So when a father (or mother) has been inhabiting the role of main earner, suddenly being cast out of that role, by unemployment, illness or disability, is bound to be traumatic. Of course one is going to feel a failure. What happens to the family now?
But let’s look at the positive. If you are kicked out of a box, you discover things outside that you did not know were there. When I suddenly found myself caring for a baby on certain days of the week all by myself, it was a transformative experience. And let me be honest, we would not have chosen this way of doing things had we had a choice, such was our ignorance of anything outside the box until we were ejected from it. The kind of intimacy you get in sole care of a child is normally the privilege of mothers only and I certainly had never heard anyone talk about it like that.
Work is fluid these days and mothers and fathers are equally qualified to do it. Similarly, both mothers and fathers have evolved to be good at caring for children. Both parents will move in and out of employment, unpredictably. The best we can do to create a resilient family is ensure we are flexible - competent and confident to take up any role when the time comes to do so. At every point in the process, there will be factors that distress us and factors that delight us, so perhaps it is better not to stay too long in any one pattern.
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