Isn’t it time fathers did their fair share of work at home?

We often discuss how gender roles have changed as more women joined the workforce. Women now work in every field, from low level jobs to higher managerial positions, in both the public and private sectors.

But how often do we discuss gender roles at home?

In a recent workshop in Abu Dhabi, fathers said they feel distant from their children.

During the workshop, hosted by the Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation, one of the speakers, Dr Kyle Pruett, a clinician, author and director of medical studies at the Yale School of Medicine’s Child Study Centre, said that “the men said the workshop was the only chance they had to talk about being a father, even within their own families. It is not often discussed.”

In the past, the mother would stay home and be responsible for ensuring the emotional and intellectual well-being of children, while the father’s main responsibility would be to work outside the house and provide for the family financially.

But now that both parents normally work, such traditional gender roles have not changed at home.

While we can fairly say that the father’s role as the only breadwinner began to change, the mother still plays the main role in the child’s home environment. In addition to their career responsibilities, mothers are also expected to always be present in children’s lives and take care of their emotional needs during their early life and as they grow up. They are also expected to provide them with daily guidance and help them develop strong moral principles and achieve academic success.

One can reasonably argue that a main reason for the increasing dependence on housemaids or nannies is the continuous stress women feel to fulfil their work and life responsibilities.

In the face of the weaker role the father plays at home, many women face two options: either get outside help – in the form of housemaids, nannies, or day care – or sacrifice their career for the sake of their family. Women who are financially incapable don’t even have these options, and so they suffer even more.

So, before we judge working women for seeking help from outside, we need to ask an important question: would the mother feel overwhelmed with children’s care if the responsibility was shared equally with the father?

For many women, stress levels can be higher at home than they are at work. This has been proven with studies in the West. A woman’s work doesn’t really end the time she leaves her office. There is more social pressure on her to go home and take on her full role as a mother and a wife.

Fathers, on the other hand, don’t seem to face the same amount of pressure when it comes to their involvement in children’s lives. Even though some of them do make the effort to be there for the family, the majority just depend on their wives to perform most of the parental responsibilities.

For this reason, we often ask for more official support for women (such as longer maternity leave and workplace-sponsored day care) to help them reach a balance between career and life. Perhaps what we should also be doing is to encourage fathers to share some of the responsibility at home.

But how could we make a cultural shift and promote more involved fatherhood?

Other countries have been designing family policies to increase the role of father at home. For example, Sweden’s pioneering parental leave system offers fathers 60 days of paid paternity leave. The policy successfully encourages fathers to share responsibility for childcare and domestic tasks with the mother, at least if both the parents were providers.

It even helped to make a dramatic cultural shift. While in the 1960s only 1 per cent of fathers took part in childcare when the children were young and 14 per cent when the children were a bit older, in the 1990s, 85 per cent of fathers took part in childcare, even though the effect was limited in the first decade.

We don’t have to apply the same policy here in the UAE at this point, as we have very different social dynamics from Sweden. But it’s time to think of ways to increase awareness and promote shared responsibilities at home.

Greater involvement by fathers will help solve many issues in society and support children’s intellectual, emotional and financial well-being. Fathers need to realise that their role is critical in their children’s lives. They need to cooperate with the mother in addressing the full range of a child’s and family’s needs.

In the United States, for example, the Obama administration recently introduced an inter-agency Responsible Fatherhood Working Group to “advance responsible fatherhood and stable families through enhanced coordination and collaboration across federal agencies”.

Can we start by doing the same? A cultural shift always requires policy support.

aalmazrouei@thenational.ae

@AyeshaAlmazroui