Louise Roberts: Even in a pandemic, the gender wars rage on

Working from home may not be what we’d choose if given the option, but fathers around the world have thrived with more time at home. If only more people were happy about it, writes Louise Roberts.

A common scenario in this current work from home life has been the sight or sound of an excited child ricocheting towards Dad who meanwhile has to act all business as usual on his video call.

A precious cuddle with the effervescent son or daughter is often seamlessly included in the ongoing business discussion and all parties carry on as normal. But have you ever stopped a meeting to acknowledge a colleague looking after his own child?

No.

And do you think more favourably of men who are surviving the juggle of work and childcare in the home since lockdown? No, they are simply being a parent, why should they deserve any special praise?

A number of self-appointed experts have lately been at pains to tell us that COVID-19, thank goodness, has applied a blowtorch on fatherhood because blokes are finally experiencing a taste of what women have been subjected to for decades.

You know, the tyranny of sending an email to a client while squabbling siblings spray cornflakes and milk over the kitchen floor.

Maybe, the protagonists wonder, this pandemic can help normalise the fact that, yes indeed, men are caregivers.

Sadly it had to happen. Yes, even the coronavirus got gendered. And the narrative is in full sarcastic flow.

Yes, even the coronavirus got gendered. Picture: iStock

“The fact that men are now plopping their babies in their laps while taking conference calls, showing that men, too, do this work, is really important,” observed Caitlyn Collins, a Washington University sociologist who studies families and gender.

So basically men have been delivered this terrific and unexpected opportunity to step up to the plate and do what they are supposed to be doing when clearly they previously hadn’t been pulling any weight at all.

Men are finally waking to themselves, is the battle cry. But do they need to wake up to themselves?

Then there’s Scott Coltrane, professor emeritus in sociology at the University of Oregon who said: “This might be an opportunity for men to own up to how much they’re doing. But they have to actually do the work.”

Australian Professor Lyn Craig told the ABC this week that “shoving everybody into the house makes more work, especially for women.”

Professor Craig has been researching with a university colleague the behaviour among families in lockdown and according to a report, this pandemic was an opportunity to see how men chose to operate once the shackles of commuting and office life vanished.

“So far, we’re not seeing that if you take away the constraints on men from the workplace that it just suddenly becomes more equal,” she was quoted as saying.

Men have “stepped up” but it’s still not good enough. Picture: iStock

“There’s something going on, but it’s not just the structure. They certainly are participating more but it’s not rewriting the gender relativities.”

But could it be that some modern feminists are getting what they said they always wanted?

Men have “stepped up” but it’s still not good enough. Of course.

But there is a crucial counterpoint, thankfully in the form of a Wollongong University research unit which this week began asking for dads to contribute to an online survey about how they have found parenting in lockdown.

There’s no bitter agenda to push the hackneyed narrative about lazy men and women paralysed by the mother lode.

Instead, says Associate Professor Jane Herbert who is leading the research, it is simply an opportunity to ask men direct what they think. How refreshing.

The results will be filtered to a study but also to community groups to support the majority of men who are already parenting anyway.

“Dads have been really ignored,” she told me. “We don’t know much – we know they’re really important and they contribute something unique to children’s development.

“Doing research with children means mums who are typically more available and enjoy engaging in these conversations with us. This is like a first attempt to see if dads even want to talk to us.”

Many dads have talked about how special their time at home has been, despite its challenges. Picture: iStock

So far the anecdotal information that has surfaced include dads talking about seeing their child’s first steps in lockdown, sharing their love of nature but also men admitting they feel like failures because they can’t do both jobs – work and parent – perfectly all the time.

Sound familiar?

Associate Professor Herbert added: “We have to be careful judging those behaviours based on someone saying ‘you need to step up’ when some of them maybe already have or have never been asked to.

“Some dads are telling us, I’ve decided I will end my office day a little bit earlier so I can be home with my children.”

Parenting in the age of coronavirus is not an opportunity for sarcasm-rich monologues about how having men at home just creates more work.

In isolation some of us have thrived, others have found every moment a challenge and a struggle, while others have rediscovered the things that really matter to them.

In the past few months we have all had to learn to be empathetic listeners, household job sharers, assertive but responsive and aware of showing our appreciation.

This is not a time for culture wars but a time for all parents, as well as other carers, to pat each other on the back and say, ‘we have survived’.

@whatlouthinks