This is what the Swiss educationalist Margrit Stamm calls for in her new book "New Fathers Need New Mothers" and does not spare us women. Your conviction: It is good if we question role models and take care of a fair division of labor. But it doesn't mean that fathers should be like mothers.
Ms. Stamm, many mothers today no longer want to live the lives of their mothers and grandmothers. And to do this, they need committed fathers who can relieve them at home. Do they do that?
First of all, it has to be said that fathers are not a homogeneous group, just like women or couples. That's why I can only speak of average values that we obtained from Swiss, German and Austrian studies. Fathers are much more involved now than they were 15 years ago. It is also the goal of many men not to become like their own, often not particularly present father. That is, the mental care has grown. In the directly visible household, however, relatively little has changed.
This means that the mothers are still emptying the dishwasher – although they too are often at work. Don't you have the heavier chunk to play with?
I take a critical view of this glorification of the reconciliation achievement: It has become fashionable in recent years for women to emphasize how much they suffer from psychological and physical stress due to the coexistence of job and motherhood. We all know it's exhausting. But it is forgotten that men also have compatibility problems. Women are optionally stylized as heroines or victims and men as those who don't have to do anything other than walk to the office in the morning. But that is a view that is not true.
Rather??
There are also very many women who work part-time, but still take their child to daycare and thus have time for themselves. Of course: you have to do the housework during this time. Nevertheless, they can still go to work for an hour or meet up with a friend. As a rule, men cannot do that.
Do you think the fathers are being wronged?
I would say that their qualities as good fathers are judged very one-sidedly: Men are measured primarily by their presence at home and whether they take father months. There are many other tasks and other welfare services that fathers perform. Filing the tax return for the family is also care.
In what way?
Because they are oversupplied and their development slows down if they are controlled all the time and showered with affection that they may not need at the moment. And if the fathers also join in, at some point we will have completely over-cared for children who can never become independent. Parents, mothers and fathers should be good enough – that is more than enough.
So fathers who do fifty-fifty with their wives at home aren't necessarily better?
Let's take the father who works in the home office for two days in order to be more present at home: It doesn't automatically make him a better father. He may be under stress, has a customer on the phone at dinner in the evening … The man who may come out of the office early on Friday afternoon may have more time for the children. That is why my warning is not to use equality or presence as a quality feature of a good father.
Nevertheless, you see more and more fathers taking their children to daycare on the way to work or pushing buggies through the park in the afternoon. That's good, is not it?
Yes, something is changing right now: Men are now also out and about alone with their children and are very professional at the same time. But that's still not the norm.
Because in companies with a patriarchal structure, it is still considered unmanly to say that you have to go earlier and fetch the child from daycare?
Yes, but also because sometimes mothers don't really allow fathers to become professionals at home. Because they are very convinced of their maternal instinct and make their partner's place difficult at this point.
You are really strict with us mothers! It is often the case that fathers do not see a lot of things. They are a bit silty and don't take the family organization at home with daycare parties and packing spare clothes so seriously. Just like the dirty bathroom. They don't see that. We mothers are often more picky about that. Perhaps another legacy from the 1950s, when the worth of mothers was measured by mopped floors and preppy kids?
Maybe – but that way the men don't get a chance. I call this maternal “gatekeeping” because they act like a kind of bouncer. We found three types of fathers in our father study. Among them is one guy who is relatively passive and aloof at home. And one can clearly show that the partners of these men occupy a fairly dominant position and also determine how the family is organized and how care for the children works. The result is that at some point the fathers feel like babysitters who are given long lists and who are supercritically cleaned up in the household. The father is accepted as part of the family, but not as a caring person. But then he definitely loses the motivation to tackle.
But what do mothers and fathers do now with this knowledge? What do you advise young couple who is about to give birth and says: We have different roles than our parents. And other needs. One thing is very clear: women who want to invest in their jobs have to learn even more to let go. The mother image they practice no longer fits in with the new equal opportunities efforts. Dad isn't mom, he cares for the sick child differently than she does – and that's a good thing. Fathers, on the other hand, have to dare to initiate debates about reconciliation in their companies. There is already this quiet trend that young men in aspiring positions in particular take parental leave and then talk about it. And: Couples should agree even before the birth about who's turn to start their careers and who's back for a while: sometimes one, sometimes the other, as if on a kind of rocking principle. This is the right way.
Margit Stamm
Margit Stamm was Professor of Education at the University of Friborg in Switzerland until 2012. Since October 2012 she has been the director of the Swiss Education research institute based in Aarau. Her current research interests are early childhood educational research; Talent development and educational careers.
This article originally appeared on Eltern.de.