Fathers Babysit and Mothers Work

by Mahwash Badar

Ever wondered why stayathome father blogs attract a different sort of an admiration?

People give positive comments telling the stayathome dads that theye doing a great job! In our society, being a stayathome father is something you'd probably see in a sitcom only.

In a sitcom, this is usually shown where the woman's sick in bed and it just so happens that the man ends up taking care of three kids  and what a comic situation that is.

Islamic societies generally look down upon the idea of a father providing for his family anything other than finances. It's his job to be the 'breadwinner', his job to be the 'man' and bring home the bacon, as they say in the evil, evil, West. Under Islamic system, it's the prime responsibilty of the 'man' to go out and work and since women cannot mix with men, so the duty of taking care of the kids ultimately falls on her.

As a result of this genderbased role division, women end up employing fulltime nannies and maids to help them take care of the kids, and perform other household duties etc. Consequently, the psychological balance that comes from a dualparent unit is missing in most of our households. Young children end up learning more from their maids and nannies than they do from the man who contributed to their DNA.

I strongly feel the need to question our society's clerics, mothers, fathers, inlaws, children and thinkers that why such antiquated traditions still exist

At what price are we allowing this genderbias to continue? Fatherhood is a beautiful and wonderful experience and we're denying it to our men. We think that it is unmanly for a man to babysit; we find it funny that he has to do a woman's job  while we perceive a woman needlessly forward for it if she has to choose a career over marriage.

How can we call this division of duties fair if a man is being ridiculed for being a father and a woman has to choose a life where she is either a mother or a wife?

The United States Census Bureau considers being a stayathome parent a full time job. Pakistan, on the other hand, is ranked 133rd out of the 134 countries on the 2010 list of women economic participation. This means we don't let our women work and we would rather see them tending to our children and never contributing to the economy. Our work force (female) is somewhere around 20%. Doesn it seem that our whole system is flawed. It's okay for men to enjoy phases like aughty forty?or go through idlife crises?or marry a woman much younger than his own age  but when it comes to a woman asking her husband to babysit the kids so she could go out for a walk or have coffee with her friends, we promptly start quoting the Holy Quran.

It no wonder why we can't get the world to take us seriously. This is because we consider over fifty percent of our population a mere joke.

You read Forbes and New York Times and they tell you how much women are paid today to do a man work. Oprah Winfrey, Anna Wintour, Christiane Amanpour and Jill Abramson are one of the most powerful women in American media at present, and their paychecks prove that they went out to do a man job and are extremely successful at it.
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