The other day I celebrated my 33rd birthday, albeit several weeks late. After enjoying a delicious home cooked meal of steak, ice cream cake and liquor, my mother placed a present in front of me. Encouraged by the gaggle of onlookers, including my mother-in-law and her hardworking, gruff- talking husband Ed, I reluctantly opened the femininely decorated gift bag.
Out came a frying pan, two sets of dish towels and a tin of coffee. Flushed red with embarrassment, I attempted to rationalize the affront to my masculinity. “My eggs won't stick to that pan” I reasoned. I took a look around the room. It was obvious from the grin on Ed's face that he was imagining me prancing around the kitchen, cooking apron tied around my waist and Martha Stewart on the TV.
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| The Stink Eye, Clinton style. |
I scoured the bottom of the gift bag hoping for an item of masculine redemption. “What's this?” I questioned as I brought up a tube of hand lotion. “For your dish hands, of course” my mother assured me. “Of course” I responded awkwardly as I nonchalantly slid the items back into the bag beneath the pink and purple tissue paper.
Funny thing is, until I decided to try a stint as a stay-at-home dad I received gender appropriate presents: things like drills, plaid shirts, and movies with lots of automatic weapons and lines like “tell my wife I love her”. But recently I've been getting a sense that not everyone is okay with a man keeping house.
Given, the majority of hammer swinging men view stay-at-home dads as pansies. And most women look at them as inferior provider types. Perhaps these are gross miscalculations and insecurities on my part, however reality tends to bear this out. Traditional gender roles exist because they are the default composition making up society over the last 10,000 years.
Men cannot bear children, can't breastfeed them, and usually make fairly poor laundry folders. Besides, all that puking and crapping is probably the single most effective method in keeping a man out of the house. In fact, for the first few years of a child's life I think it is best that the kid's mother be at home.
But does that mean men have no place being in the home? Are gender roles so ingrained and inflexible so as to say “men should work, and women stay home and raise babies”? Do women not go to school and entertain careers? Then why the double standard?
As a result of the feminist movement, as well as factors like single-mother families or two-income households, mothers and wives have entered the workforce en masse. And while not equal, the gap in pay equality between the sexes is steadily shrinking. Women increasingly find themselves out earning their male counterparts. Partnered with an increasing number of job opportunities favouring traditionally female vocations – everything from administration to health care – and a reduction of traditionally male jobs (things like a shrinking automotive industry), it's not uncommon to see men heading home to roost.
So the seasons change. My parents generation (baby boomers) do not view gender roles the same as their parents generation did. To generalize, both my grandmothers expected my grandfathers to bring home the proverbial bacon while they tended to the home. And that was that. My parents generation however, schooled in their parents “male as provider” mentality, represents something of a hybrid archetype – one that places an increasing emphasis on increased living standards (ie: new hardwood floors or camper). And I think it is this factor that is at the heart of the matter.
I'm guessing that until the waning of our views toward traditional gender roles, women will tend to resent their lower earning spouses, and men and women alike will resent the man who doesn't work (at least those not earning a paycheck). Ingrained in us as a species, we are unable to look past the physical, financial benefits of work. As the book of Genesis puts it, God cursed Adam to toil, and women to childbearing.
But we also live in an extraordinary age. Whether we can define this effect as a Post-modern revelation or not I don't know, but society does seem to find itself in the midst of a paradigm shift, where gender roles are being stretched and redefined. After all, who cares who makes the money as long as provisions are provided for, right? And if one spouse has a greater earning capability than the other does it not reason that the family unit would be better off with that member earning the keep?
The makeup of both the family unit and the global work force in the 21st century is radically different than it was even twenty years ago. And these structures will only continue to change, making it likely that at least for the next little while homemaking men around the world will continue to get the in-law stink eye.
