On Kids/Gender Roles. (Warning: Feminist Rant)
Saturday, May 21st, 2011 10:07![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cookiecutterhttp://women.timesonline.co.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
The world automatically assumes that kids come naturally after marriage. I'd say to them: marriage is one thing, and kids is an entirely different thing.
To all women out there who experience great pressure to have kids, I feel ya, I really do. I've had countless moments when friends, relatives and even strangers come up and ask "When is your turn?" and get taken aback when I tell them, "I never want children." Their faces fall, as if to say, how DARE she have the AUDACITY to deny the chance of motherhood!
And the next question that follows will always be, "What about your husband? Doesn't HE want kids?"
Sigh.
Thank you, World. Don't you know that most of the responsibility of caring for kids are still primarily the women's responsibility? How often do men think about childcare? Or readily give up their career to care for their offspring? Or even CONSIDER how to balance their families and career? In my own sad experience, men can only think of how much fun it is to play with the child - perhaps with an occasional bottlefeed or diaper change. It's the woman who will bear the burden of pregnancy + giving birth + taking care of it. Even if the father DOES want to be involved, few of them want to deal with the day-to-day responsibility of how much hard work it is. For most guys I know, having their precious sleep disturbed by a wailing baby would be more than enough hardship to bear.
Just like when I lived in Norway. The statements the world threw in my face - OF COUSRE I'd give up my life and career and everything to be a housewife there. OF COURSE i was lucky to be able to live in Europe (nevermind maladjustment issues). OF COURSE i was blessed that I didn't NEED to work cause the hubby was earning enough. OF COURSE I should stick around with him if i cared for him. OF COURSE. No one questions anything when a woman sacrifices for a man.
And then I left him to have my own life in Singapore/Malaysia. And I faced immense opposition. HOW DARE SHE abandon her husband and leave the poor fella alone in Norway? HOW DARE SHE desire her own career. HOW DARE SHE want her own life! HOW DARE SHE not support the man she married! HOW can she NOT sacrifice for him? HOW DARE SHE be so selfish!
You know, world, if a woman stays at home and takes cares of the kids, she's a wife/mother. If a man does that, he's a bloody saint.
If a man goes abroad to work (while leaving his wife and kids behind), he's earning a living + providing for them. If a woman does that, she's abandoning her family.
Of course, with increasing equality in gender roles worldwide (although much is still left to be desired), a lot of men are feeling that the world's starting to get dominated by women.
It's like, at the very juncture women lay footprints on the wet concrete of human history and start making great strides - the moment they stopped consulting men before coming to their own decisions - that's when the men start to panic. They start to feel that they're 'losing out' to girl power/the feminist movement and what-not. Sigh. You'd think that with dudes feeling that way, they'd gain some understading of what dudettes have been through and appreciate how hard we've fought for a desire to be EQUAL. Yet men still somehow believe that they are deserving of unconditional power and that they're #1 in society just because they've got a damn penis between their legs.
To all the men out there: When you start to feel completely alienated, marginalized, and rejected by society, welcome to the lives of your female counterparts.
