Conrad Liveris wonders if LGBT parents can serve as role models for families looking to abandon outdated gender roles
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Parenting is the ultimate juggle between having your own life and managing that of another, guiding them through the trials and tribulations of learning and development. Men and women are facing an opportunity to re-think how to parent in the twenty-first century and perhaps they should take some advice from the LGBT community.
LGBT parents already exist in an environment that is labelled “non-traditional”, thus their discussions around parenthood are already strikingly different. With only 54.1% of Australian women working full-time equivalent and 59% for American women, the onus is often still on women to be the primary, non-working parents while men are often still presumed to be the secondary, more career-driven parents; the same cannot be presumed for the LGBT community.
A good friend of mine and his husband are fast facing this predicament: while they’ve spent the entirety of their career being financially capable in their own right, they’re looking to adopt in the next year. What they’re struggling with is—who takes the career break? We discussed this recently, and I asked them if they had made any headway on this issue. They were dodging my question, so I suggested that they could both take a career-break.
Taking a career break for women is expected in most cases, but, for men, it can still be viewed as a sign of weakness, a prejudice that can be confirmed if you talk to the men who are always there to pick their children up from school or regularly attend parent-teacher nights. However, for our LGBT friends, rather than falling into traditionally defined gender roles, it is largely up to one parent to choose to take “the fall” and become the primary parent.
So, when we take gender out of the parenting equation and abandon traditional assumptions about fatherhood and motherhood, it begs the question—does the discussion become fairer? Would more fathers choose to become the primary, perhaps non-working parent?
We only need to talk to children about what they want from their parents to see that they desire a healthy balance between their caregivers and having the vast majority of their interaction with only one parent can be limiting. Along these lines, Martha Fineman has pushed the idea of removing parental responsibility from that of an individual, to that of shared responsibility.
However, for this to happen, we need to be more aware of what we can bring to the table and what we can’t. When I have children, I plan to sit down with my partner and discuss what is the right thing to do for our family—that means being aware of our financial opportunities, being aware what we can both gain or lose from a career break, and really looking at our best options about which parent might work and which might stay at home. It’s a discussion that is required for LGBT parents, but is often taken for granted in heterosexual households.
Hopefully, potential parents will start having more discussions like this in the twenty-first century and they’ll be able to chat with the gay-dads or lesbian-mums in their lives for practical advice on how to manage both careers and families without falling into the trap of outdated gender assumptions.
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Credit: Photo—Jerome Marot/Flickr
After a recent discussion with my wifes niece regarding her divorce, perhaps the reason women are more prone to take on the ‘traditional’ role is becuase of the huge amount of benefits it gives them regarding their children. The primary parent (still viewed by the court system as the mother) will still get custody of the kids, get child support , will be able to wield that power with impunity and will be able to pick and choose when/if their now ex husband sees the children. Even the large feminist orgs like NOW oppose presumed shared parenting and are quite… Read more »