by Christina Lynn

Created on: March 28, 2009

Gender roles are thankfully a thing of the past. Women can vote, have a career, and wear pants. So there is no reason why men can not cook, clean, and take care of children. Men are just as capable as women at caring for children.We are not giving the male gender the credit they deserve when we say they are incapable of being the at-home parent. That is essentially the same thing as when men thought women could not have a career. We can not be sexist against the male gender anymore than they can be sexist against the female gender. That would be hypocritical.

A marriage is a partnership between a man and a woman. In a partnership everyone should handle the task that they are best at. If the male is better at caring for the children and enjoys the job more, than it is a great situation for both the child and the father. If the female prefers to be the breadwinner, then everyone benefits. The family is happier as a unit if everyone is doing the job they enjoy most.

There will always be bad fathers and good fathers; just as there are bad mothers and good mothers. Gender does not necessarily determine parenting skills. A mother's intuition is a great thing but who is to say that a father can not have intuition as well? We are all humans, therefore we are all capable of emotion. Birthing a child does not make a great parent any more than fathering a child. That is all just biology. Parenting takes more than that.

When I was growing up my Father worked full time and my mother stayed at home. My Mother was a great Mom. She took good care of us. That does not mean she was the only person who took care of us. I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease at 10 years old. My father would come home from work, change clothes, and spend the night at the hospital with me. The reason for this was that there were two children besides me that needed cared for. My parents split up the job of child-rearing to insure that all children involved were equally cared for. My father was not concerned that he was having to work and be a parent. He was concerned that my Mother needed help with some of the tasks of her role as caregiver.

It does not matter who is the primary caregiver and who is the breadwinner. With a family, everyone must contribute and be there for each other. There is no need for traditional roles being the norm. A family must do what works best for them. It is time that society opens their minds and realizes that children benefit when the family unit is happy as a whole. No matter who is assigned what job.

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