Fathers and fatherhood

Yesterday I was chatting to my soul-sistah, whom I've now known for 17 years and with whom I've gone through singlehood, boyfriends, marriage and motherhood. Her husband too is an old friend, from the time the three of us met up at bschool. If you were to look at her life externally, she has everything to be envied for. She's gorgeous, talented, bright, has two lovely daughters, a superbly run and gracious home and an extremely good marriage. She's a high-powered exec at an MNC bank which appreciates her work so highly that they've given her a deal in which she has been able to work from home for the last 5 years - pretty rare, I can tell you. Her husband is doing brilliantly at work, just got promoted, is a nice guy despite raking in moolah like it's going out of style.

Here's the problem - everything connected with the home or the kids is her department. It began innocently enough because he had a job in which he was constantly required to travel, but somehow over the years, it's become the course their relationship has charted. He thinks his job as father ends with taking them out once a week, and that the rest of his weekends/ spare time should be spent getting in some much needed sleep and R&R. Fine, no one grudges anyone R&R, but hey, how about someone giving his wife the same right to R&R? His solution - hand the kid stuff over to the domestic help! That's something my friend just is not happy doing, so she runs herself into the ground managing everything - job, home, kids...

It's not unusual to find women having to cope with this, be it in India or overseas. Women do end up doing the bulk of housework and childcare regardless of whether they are SAHMs or WOHMs, and regardless of how well they may be doing at work or how stressful their jobs may be. Somewhere in the whole feminism and equal rights debate, it became understood that the woman who was equal was the superwoman who got to do her job and the man's job, while men, having granted women the right to kill themselves from overwork, happily basked in being called 'liberated'.

This attitude is something that really bothers me, especially when I see it among my male friends, because many of them are pals from bschool. They saw a whole lot of us women beat out all kinds of competition to make it into the same hallowed portals of education, they saw us work as hard or harder to perform at bschool and at work, they treated us as equals back then. But suddenly, after the M word ( marriage), they go right back to the parental generation's attitudes about who's responsible for what in the household, and women are left holding the baby, the bathwater and the job.

A and I faced a pretty major decision early this year when we conceived our third child and had to take a call on whether or not we would go ahead with it. Having decided to be gung-ho about it, I find a lot of my friends calling me 'superwoman' because I've managed to have full-time job along with the 2 kiddos we have. But honestly, I would never have been able to be in the position of wearing my underwear over my pants if it hadn't been for A doing such a fantastic job as father and husband.

No matter what I decide or do, he's always right there, not just cheering me on but taking on whatever additional load needs to be taken on so I can make my way easily. There was a time when I had to quit working and stay home, though our finances were at bankruptcy point - but there was never a grumble from him. Nor when I decided to work part-time for 3 years. In the interests of my being able to work, i realised something had to give in the system, and that something was a home that was spick and span. I'm not a neatnik by nature, and add to it being away from home and kid all day and the last thing I want to spend my time on when I'm home is cleaning up - I'd rather hang out with the kids and teach them how to make paper planes. A is a neatnik and I'm sure it bothers him when the house is a mess, but he's absolutely ok with my sense of priorities.

He takes on a huge load of parenting as well. I'm not saying it's a chore and not fun but the fact is that he willingly does it for his kids, both because he believes that's his role as a father and so that I face less pressure. Whether it's getting Chubbocks ready for school or telling the kids bedtime stories, washing potty-bums, changing diapers, feeding them or walking a wailing baby up and down outside the theatre when I was desperate to watch a film, he's done the whole lot. Worrying about their health, being the strong man during their vaccinations while I cringe outside the doc's office, sharing the task of taking time off when they're ill, taking them to the park...all this is part and parcel of our life together. I never have to think twice about leaving the kids in hs supervision or leave instructions about their well-being. He's so involved in the process of raising them that he knows what to do.

In fact, there are times when I think I'm taking advantage of him and not doing as much as I should in the process of raising the kids. Despite his humongous commute ( 50 km each way, every day), his very senior job and the fact that he puts the bread, butter, jam and cake on the table, while my contribution amounts to maybe a dhania patta, he takes my need to work, and his role in building our life together as seriously as mine. We operate very much as a team in building our life together, including bringing up the kids.

What makes me sad is how many men, even in this day and age, carry a poker up their a@#$ when it comes to their roles in personal life. There's such a strict division of labour and both the men and the women in those relationships end up losing out on a much richer bond that they could have with each other and their kids. And if they do occasionally step out of the self-defined boundaries into an active role, it's almost like a favour they are doing for their spouse, not something they feel they should want to or enjoy doing for their own children.

I have great memories of my childhood, when dad used to be an involved parent - telling me bedtime stories, some of which are now passed on to my kids, taking me to various docs for my asthma treatments, taking us out to Children's Park or India Gate, bathing me or my sister...just the regular gamut of activities that are routine occurrences in daily life, not a series of specially orchestrated events designed to demonstrate that 'dad cares'. I think I would have been in for a rude awakening if A hadn't held similar views to dad's on how to be involved as a parent, and I suspect many women I know have gone through this shock when their hitherto egalitarian relationships with their husband progressed into parenthood.

Thanks, dad, for being involved. And thanks A. I don't know if the kids realise it now but they will have a lot to thank you for when they grow up. And thanks for being a genuine life partner!