Family roles
My wife and I occupy roles in our family that are a mostly opposite to the ones that have been traditionally assigned to men and women. She has a career out of the home as a public servant, earns the majority of the household income, is responsible for most of the financial decisions, and does the plumbing. I'm a stay-at-home parent who takes care of the cooking, the gardening, and most of the other household duties. Nobody wants me to touch the plumbing.
There's plenty of cross-over though. I run a publishing business out of the house, and my wife is great at helping out with the kids and the chores, and this situation works really well for us. It allows us to take the lead in our areas of relative strength and still make sure that everything gets done. It also allows us to maintain a good work-life balance, because we aren't both trying to do everything.
Our approach wouldn't work for everyone, of course. Families come in all configurations, and it isn't always optimal or even possible to define roles in this way. What I think all families need to do, however, is to find roles that allow sufficient time and attention to the family as a unit.
It's unfortunate that gender equality has too often meant women feeling obliged to disregard their families in favour of their jobs as much as men have traditionally done. It seems to me that a much healthier point of equality would be where parents of both genders are encouraged to work in such a way that they have time and energy left to grow healthy family relationships.
My wife has turned down opportunities for promotion because she felt that they would require too much of her time and energy, interfering with her roles in our family. I too have made these kinds of decisions, opting not to take a PhD, not to pursue a teaching career, because I wanted to work in a way that would allow me to be the best husband and father I could be.
Obviously each family will need to find its own ways of defining roles, but I think it's essential that we try to define those roles in the ways that are best for the family rather than allowing our culture to pressure us into sacrificing everything for some job or career that won't matter much in the end anyway.
By all means have a career, but have it in such a way that allows you also to have a family. It might feel like a sacrifice at times, but it comes with immeasurable reward.
Luke Hill is a stay-at-home father of three boys, aged nine, seven, and three. He has fathered, fostered, adopted, or provided a temporary home for kids anywhere between birth and university. He has taught college courses, adoption seminars, camp groups, Sunday School classes, rugby teams, not to mention his own homeschooled kids.
