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My friend once heard his son's friend say "We have a very weird family. At home, my dad is the mom and my mom is the dad." Hearing this, her son ran over to where she is sitting and asks her how it is possible that his friend got everything mixed up. Now, my friend thought How on earth could I explain to a 3 year old that this kind of situation is not actually weird but is part of the changing world.'

It is often say that the only permanent thing on earth is change itself. And truly, the world really has evolved big time! Just imagine, 10 to 20 years ago children were taught in school that in a family the father goes to work and earns the money for the family while the mother stays at home, cooks the food, cleans the house and look after the kids. Plain and simple, with a definite barrier between that the mother does and what the father is expected to do. Whatever is taught in school is what kids also see at home day to day.
Now, children really are perplexed. Why wouldn't they be with all the changes there is to the parenting roles that they see at home.

First in the list Mom and Dad goes to work. Times now are difficult (money-wise especially), a reason why both parents have no choice but to work at the same time. They also have to share the load of household chores (though sometimes that doesn't seem to be the case as mothers still do most of it, but let's not dwell on that topic because that will result in a never-ending debate). Whenever this is the case, both parents seem to have equal power at home. No issue of who the bread winner is because both parties bring in their contribution.

Another scenario - Mom works, Dad stays at home. This is no newbie, might not be as popular as the first on the list but it does exist. And there are 2 different cases on this: one, Dad stays at home full stop, does household chores and look after the kids (a complete role reversal), and the second one Dad stays at home most of the time but goes to work whenever possible when Mom's at home and shares a load of housework with Mom. Now, this is what I call raising the family together. This scenario happens for many different reasons, could be Mom's job would pay off better if done full time, or the nature of Dad's job is really just part time and allows him to stay at home more, or Dad just loves Mom enough that he puts Mom's education and career first more than his (mind you, this does happen it's not a figment of my imagination).

The third, and becoming increasingly popular, is same sex parents. If you don't think that it falls in the description changed roles of parenting', then I don't know what else does. More and more countries are now being open-minded to considering same sex marriages as valid and it's not impossible that this kind of relationship could turn into what we call a family with the inclusion of kids. Bizarre but true! There's is no clear identification of who the Mom or the Dad is, but somebody does perform the job. Nevertheless, the adults still take on the responsibilities of raising a family and parenting their children.

Amongst others, there are also single parents who by themselves take on the responsibility of two individuals or relatives and friends who act as surrogate parents to children entrusted to them.

The roles (of being Mom and Dad) may have already been mixed up, interchanged or transposed from one person to another, but this doesn't change the fact that parents have a role to take on in the family especially with raising their kids. No matter who is in charge of disciplining the children, taking care of household work, earning money for the family and keeping the family together the important thing is every aspect is being taken care of.

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