In case you missed our Six Work Life Predictions for 2010, here’s a repeat of #6:
6. Mr. Mom issues. Fathers will increasingly reassess their roles in the workplace and family. Women now make up 50% of the workforce, and more of them became the primary household breadwinners after recessionary layoffs hit men in disproportionate numbers.
Studies show millennial men and women are equally career-focused, meaning traditional gender roles will be less defined in younger households. And men are already winning primary custody in half of all disputed divorces. We’ll see greater awareness that work and childcare conflicts are a family issue, not just women’s concern.
Now jump over to yesterday’s The Juggle at the WSJ: Do Work Life Policies Discriminate Against Men?
But the problem isn’t so much that men are officially excluded from these policies, it’s a perception….a perception that these policies are for mothers only and that men (and all non-parents for that matter) belong at their desks, clocking regular hours.
That’s just not the reality of today’s modern family. Fathers are active parents. Fathers are often primary parent. Or, fathers may be the primary parent on Tuesdays and Thursdays and every other weekend. Get it? The family has changed.
And if your workplace culture perpetuates the assumption that women are the primary caregivers and therefore the only ones who really need flexibility, then you’re alienating and undermining the other half of your workforce.
It’s an issue dads need to step up and get vocal about. From “Work Life Balance is not a Woman’s Issue” in The American Prospect last fall:
We have to stop using “work/life balance” as coded language for “working-mom stress.” Despite ample evidence that men are served by investing more time and energy outside the workplace and coming out as fathers while in it, there are very few men who are taking on this issue in a substantive, political way.
So keep speaking up, fellas. But you have to do more than write angry blog comments on The Juggle. You have to be an advocate at work and you have to model the way.
This makes no sense. It’s nothing more than some kind of politically correct wishful thinking that men are equally involved in childcare. I guess next you’ll be telling men that half of all nannies or baby sitters are male. Yeah right. It’s funny that at the same time men are being routinely bashed and stereotyped as lacking the superior qualities that women supposedly possess, we’re also being told that there is no difference in the desire of men to spend time with their children.
Oh, and did you forget? Men are responsible for every thing that goes wrong. Aren’t they? I mean that’s what women/feminists have been saying for the past 30 years or more. Oh how the world would be so much better if women were in charge. How many times have I heard that? But now all of sudden you want men involved. Well so we need men after all? Imagine that! I thought women could handle every thing far better than men. Don’t you remember, “Woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”? So I would think you would be happy not to have men involved. Now all of a sudden, men “have to model the way”! Well that’s a switch isn’t it?! Women need men to model the way. What a joke. Did you forget that men are all rapists, that trhey’re all too “macho”, that men have ego problems, that men are the source of all that is wrong with the world? Now all of a sudden men are the “models”? Yeah I’m sure men will fall for this.
And since when is “alienating” men a bad thing? I mean shouldn’t someone have spoken up about that long before now? I mean there’s been a hell of a lot of anti-male bigotry being spewed for years now, so it’s more than a little late to suddenly decide it’s a bad thing to alienate men.
So now just remember what you’ve been saying for years: who needs men. women are independent. women do a better job than men.