Househusbands, unite
I prefer the term “stay-at-home dad” to “househusband,” but the truth remains: I’m married, I’m a parent and I stay home with my kid for a good part of every day.
Perhaps this is why (at a friend’s suggestion) I read with great interest a column in today’s edition of The New York Times. The column, which appeared as a “conversation” between NYT columnists Gail Collins and David Brooks, was titled “Why Househusbands Are the Future.”
The piece wondered aloud whether, with women getting laid off at a much lower rate than men, now is the time for more men to stay home with the kids. At the very least, it was an entertaining read.
My favorite moment in the column was when Collins noted, “In the grand sweep of American lifestyle choices, stay-at-home fatherhood is possibly the only one that doesn’t get eulogized in our popular culture.”
She continued: “I want to see the Bachelorette questioning her suitors on how many years they’d be willing to set aside for full-time child-raising. I want a movie in which Matt Damon stays home while Beyonce goes out to work. He can capture an escaped terrorist during the hours when the kids are in preschool.”
I hear you, Gail. And I’m sure hundreds of other “househusbands” do, too. Whether or not these dreams become reality is a different story all together.
Interesting. Now why do you think we should encourage men to stay at home, after years of discouraging women from staying at home? How can we tell men it’s a great thing to stay at home with out a career, when since the ’60s we’ve been telling women the exact opposite? That is, we’ve been telling women how essential it is to have your own career and be independent. How can we now say that your gender should determine your career, after years of saying it shouldn’t? In this era of insisting on treating both genders equally, if we’re encouraging men to stay at home, must we also encourage women to do so also? Just some questions to ponder.