Lets Talk About Real Men

As a stay-at-home-Dad who handles the majority of the household and child-rearing responsibilities I take note of any article, news report or radio rant that puts men and housework in the same sentence. And the message I’m hearing as I mop the floor, or the article I read while spooning the baby some mashed this-n-that, or the program I watch as I’m refilling the toy crates for the umpteenth time, is that men just don’t do domestic.

Funny, because I’m up to my armpits in the domestic round the clock and yet I’m hearing all the Professors of This and the Doctors of That fumbling through the latest ‘research’ to tell me that my upbringing didn’t prepare me to clean and care, or that my brain’s just not wired to notice real mess, or that I can’t participate in any activity that doesn’t produce the same hormonal response as killing a woolly mammoth with a spear fashioned by my own skilful whittling.

As the media whips up a frenzy around these supposedly unequipped (but more likely simply unwilling) men I can’t help but think about several of my close mates who, while not stay-at-home-Dads like myself, take a hands-on approach to raising their children and do their share of the household chores. I also can’t help but think about my Dad – a self-employed electrician – who cooked and cleaned and got his kids ready for school when Mum, a social worker, was working or studying. The conclusion I reach every time is that the media needs to train their pens, microphones and lenses in the direction of a different kind of man, especially if the goal is to instigate change in the gender divide.

Despite its limiting nature, there’s still social pressure for men to stay aloof  – to be incapable of taking a significant role in domestic life. Pointing out how bad some men are at it, or how little they participate, only serves to further the outmoded message that it’s just ‘not men’s work’.

So let’s start focussing on the growing number of men who do change nappies, keep track of immunizations, mop floors, clean toilets, get up to children in the middle of the night, go to great efforts to support their partners in their work choices. They’re the same partners/husbands/Dads who are able to consider the possibility that a ‘nagging’ partner may just be a partner who’s feeling unsupported and overwhelmed.

We need to stop despairing about the stereotypical emotionally distant, domestically-challenged Dad, because attacking these men with your frustrations and despair will not encourage them to change their ways or revaluate their responsibilities. Better to provide a platform to celebrate the opposite.

That’s what we’ve been trying to do with the Mentally Sexy Competition that’s being run through my website Reservoir Dad. We have stay-at-home Dads, part-time working Dads and full-time working Dads entering from all over Australia and from many different demographics. But the common theme among them all is that they are bucking gender stereotypes to provide and care for their family in the way that best suits their family’s unique circumstances.

Through the Mentally Sexy Competition we are hearing from these men a clear message that what constitutes ‘men’s work’ has nothing to do with certain tasks, chores or traditional roles. ‘Manly’ and ‘masculine’ to these men is doing what’s best for their family and taking on whatever roles and responsibilities will give their family the greatest chance at happiness. These Dads are living by example to say that real men – modern men – are walking alongside the women in their life to care and provide for their families in a more complete way. 

So, after spending the last four years navigating my way through a landscape that was once only deemed fit for women – a landscape that can offer little support or acknowledgement of effort while providing plenty of unrelenting pressure, isolation, sleep deprivation and sacrifice – I’d like to offer this advice to the growing media hordes who seem to have an OCD-like need to cram our TVs and newspapers with one particular type of man:

Stop complaining about the couch-bound, plasma-gazing, child-men who pick shards of potato chips from their chests while their wives take all the bullets on the domestic front-line, and focus on the real men. That’s the only way to encourage other men, to make it okay for other men, to take on their share of the domestic responsibility.