Now 17 years on, it’s finally happened. I’ve nothing to say for this year’s Fathers Day! (Or so I thought when I began writing this a few days ago)
Regardless, the “fun” is seeing if I can still wrangle a blog post out of thin air. After all, having blogged faithfully for over seven years, these writing muscles ought to be able to work out something from nothing.
So here goes. (Don’t worry. I’m only kidding. The title should tip you off that I’m not leading you down any rabbit holes!)
Past Fathers Day Thoughts Revisited
For the longest time, I’ve been writing about how it’s important to acknowledge the contribution of fathers in the family. Especially stay home fathers like me who have taken visible and concrete steps to prioritise family over what society deems as the conventional route for men and fathers: being every household’s main/sole breadwinner.
Along the way of course, I’ve gotten flack or cold treatment for my decision. Many of my peers (and older) — typically the ones with a more narrow and antiquated view of a father’s role — don’t understand the decision for men to be the stay home parent, and have either diss-ed me or looked at me with disdain.
I get it. I, and other fathers like me, are counter-cultural and “unknown” entities. And what’s unknown is usually viewed by the unenlightened with either fear or avoidance. Whichever, the outcome’s always the same: stay home fathers like us are ignored and unseen.
To be fair, I also get an equal share of bouquets, so it isn’t all brickbats. People have come up to me to congratulate me for such a courageous decision. Or to tell me how much they wish they too could take this road less travelled.
Still, after more than seven years of being a mostly stay home father, you would think what others perceive of fathers like me should matter less now than what I (and my immediate family) think of fathers like me.
Yet that didn’t quite explain the “thrill” I got last night from watching an interview where a moderator was ticked off for asking a tactless question of a stay home dad!
Tactless But Oh So Telling Of How Society Sees Fathers!
Watching a special live panel interview on TV last night, I was reminded how poor choice of words often stems from a lack of cultural sensitivity and awareness. And how it betrays one’s own unconscious prejudices!
In this mandarin news segment on local TV to showcase fathers (ahead of Father’s Day tomorrow), two fathers and a female family consultant were invited to offer their views of the changing role of dads in today’s modern society. One where dads have become increasingly more hands-on in the home than past generations of fathers.
Slightly past the mid-point of the interview (from minute 39.39 onwards), the female moderator (far left in above picture) asked how one of the dads (dressed in blue in picture above) felt about being a stay home father and, in her own words, asking each time for a ‘financial handout’ from his working spouse!
Yes, that’s right. I didn’t translate wrong. It was asked in pretty much that tactless way!
To his credit, the other dad on the panel (dressed in beige) cut in to chastise the moderator and defend his fellow panelist. Being a former actor and local celebrity (now retired and a grandpa), he was clearly media-savvy and knew how to pushback and expose how insensitive the question was phrased, and the embarrasment it caused that father.
While that awkward moment was smoothed over, it once more showcases the underlying prejudices of how society views gender roles in the home.
Society Must Do Better To Embrace Intentional Fathering
And that brings me full circle to what has been one of the primary reasons I launched this blog back in 2019.
For me, it’s so important that society today does a better job of embracing fathers like me who have picked family over career. Wives and children over business trips and awards. A relational path over a task-based & corporate one.
Against the outdated conventions of the past. Or rather, a return to the pre-industrial age when dads were always around. Mentoring their sons and daughters in a skilled manual trade. Even as they work from or very close to home, be it a blacksmith workshop or them cotton fields. In fact, during the prehistoric age, fathers were very much equal to the task of caregiving, thus helping to fuel population growth.
In the panel interview, the ex-actor and grandpa said he was envious watching his own son playing with his grandson. He wished he could rewind the clock and be around for many milestones back then. Milestones like his son’s first step or word.
However, thanks to the convention back then that fathers ought to be out working, he had missed many such moments. Moments he’s now trying to recapture vicariously as a grandpa.
Fathers Who Are Present Should Be Our “New” Role Models For Manhood
For me, the message to society-at-large is clear: fathers who are intentional about prioritising parenting should be celebrated, not denigrated. In fact, the panelists (and even the chastened moderator) last night concluded that such dads are the “true men”! They should be revered and lifted up as role models for manhood in general, and future fathers in particular.
I couldn’t agree more.
And I realise too that perhaps the reason I was “thrilled” watching the segment last night was because deep down, it still matters to me how society views fathers like me who have taken the unconventional path.
Perhaps it always will matter, though as the years past, it’s less about me and more about laying the foundation better for society to include future fathers who choose a similar path.
Which means that the ‘fight’ continues to make ourselves be seen and accepted by society. So tactless questions like the one asked last night by the moderator, will truly be a thing of the past.
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Thank you so much!
And amen to that.