Parenting Roles Change and Kids Benefit

With the never ending battle about same sex marriages, the customary role of who is breadwinner and who is the caregiver has also undergone a dramatic evolution, as the roles of ‘married couples’ become more and more blurred. The days of the father-figure as a distant, ‘gone to work’ person whom the children barely had time to relate to, are long gone.

Three major factors have created this evolution:

In America more than one-third of wives bring home a larger salary than their husbands
due to the current world-wide financial crisis ‘lifetime male employment’ is now a thing of the past
the increasing insecurity in the work force.

Females are experiencing what it is to have to take the major responsibility for the family’s finances, while the males are discovering the full and often overwhelming responsibility of having to be the care provider 24x7. Numerous men find themselves staying at home and doing toddler duty, while their wives scurry off to the work place.

Even in same sex relationships, there is often a strong orientation to distinct masculine and feminine roles. It is becoming more and more necessary in any relationship, that both partners are capable of instantly taking on the other partner’s role. For both roles to thrive, they need to be in a constant state of negotiation.

Which partner is the breadwinner is still depends mainly on:

what the economic situation of the nation is
what a couple’s economic circumstances
what the couple’s cultural background is.

Nearly eighty percent of all jobs lost in the worldwide financial crisis have been male held positions, as male dominated industries are hit the severest. Yet, for either partner, the task of attempting to maintain the balance between being both a caregiver and a provider, results in high levels of stress. Perhaps circumstances are now causing the stress to be spread a little more, as more and more couples move towards sharing the roles.

While the initial caregiver must be the mother, that can alter rapidly when the newcomer is merely 6 weeks old, if the mother is forced to go back to work, either by choice, or so she can to keep her job. Either way, the changing roles are of benefit to the children, who get to form a closer relationship with their father, than was the norm a couple of generations ago. No longer is it looked on as being wrong for young boys to play with dolls, or young girls to play with trucks.

The celebration of Mother’s day (caregiver) and Father’s day (provider) may need to undergo a change also. Perhaps they should now be renamed Caregiver and Provider Days, to enable everyone to keep up with the evolving changes.