Por Inspiración Femenina
Un interesante artículo del New York Times nos
muestra cómo la elección de quedarse en casa a cuidar del hogar y criar a los
hijos está empezando a ser cada vez más frecuente entre los hombres.
Nos dice que en los últimos quince años se ha
duplicado el numero de padres que adquieren este rol, y que este aumento se
debe a aquellos que toman esta decisión como elección personal, no por
desempleo o por enfermedad. Esto muestra cambios estructurales en los roles de
género dentro de las familias y en el trabajo.
En 1989 había 1,1 millones de padres en casa en
EEUU, a diferencia de los 2 millones en 2012. Y una quinta parte de ellos toman
esta decisión para cuidar de la familia.
El 35% están en casa por enfermedad o discapacidad;
el 23% por desempleo; el 22% estudian o están retirados. El numero de hombres
que se quedan en casa como decisión personal debe de ser superior a lo que se
sabe, ya que muchos hombres no lo dicen por los prejuicios sociales que aún
existen hacia los hombres que se encargan de la casa.
Las razones del cambio son muchas: Las mujeres,
(actualmente el 47% de la fuerza laboral) están teniendo cada vez una mayor
educación y ganan mas dinero que sus maridos. También puede estar atribuido al
cambio de roles dentro del hogar, y que los hombres cada vez participan más en
las tareas domesticas y el cuidado de los niños.
La mitad de los padres que se quedan en casa viven
en la pobreza y tienen el doble de posibilidades de no tener los estudios de
secundaria. El 14% de los padres que cuidan de sus hijos no tienen educación
secundaria, mientras que el 3% de ellos tienen estudios universitarios. Pero el
aumento está viniendo por parte de aquellos con estudios universitarios,
mientras la cifra de aquellos que no tienen la secundaria permanece igual.
Este artículo nos hace reflexionar mucho. Por un lado, nos da cierto gusto saber que hay hombres capaces de quitarse los prejuicios sociales, y que no se les caen los anillos por quedarse en casa. Por otro lado, tambien nos hace pensar que probablemente cuando un hombre se encarga de las funciones del hogar y de la crianza de los hijos, esto no va a ser considerado como una funcion inferior. Lo mismo ha ocurrido en multiples ambitos: en la cocina, por ejemplo, las cocineras de toda la vida, eran ciertamente inferiores. pero al incorporarse los varones a esa funcion, se convirtió en el arte culinario y en algo de caché. Lo mismo ocurrio en la moda, de costureras a diseñadores; y en la peluquería, de peluqueras a estilistas. Y en el hogar, de amas de casa a padres modernos.
Nos alegramos de la dilucion de prejuicios, y nos alertamos también ante estas nuevas situaciones.
Aquí os dejamos el artículo, que nos ha de hacer reflexionar.
Veremos….
More Fathers Who Stay at Home by Choice
JUNE 5, 2014
Otis Johnson said he never fathomed becoming a stay-at-home
father. But soon after he was laid off from his factory job in 2009, his first
of two children arrived. And even when his job prospects improved, he made the
calculation that millions of mothers had made before him: “By the time I get a
paycheck, it all goes to day care, or I can stay home and raise my own
children.”
Mr. Johnson is hardly alone.
Despite a recent small decline in the number of fathers who
take care of children full-time, their numbers have doubled over the last 15
years, according to new data from Pew Research Center. And the main driver for the growth is the increase in men
staying home by choice, not because of unemployment or injury. That shift
reveals a structural change in gender roles in families and at work in the
United States.
The number of stay-at-home fathers spiked from 2008 to 2010;
it was mainly attributed to the recession and rising unemployment, which hit
men hardest. So when Labor Department data showed that the number of full-time fathers began declining after
2010, people assumed that the men had found work and hadn’t intended to stay at
home in the first place.
For some men, that was true. But taking a longer view shows
a marked increase in the number of stay-at-home fathers, to 2 million in 2012
from 1.1 million in 1989, according to Pew. Even if fathers who can’t find jobs
are excluded from the data, there is still a notable increase since 1989 in
stay-at-home dads, said Gretchen Livingston, a senior researcher at Pew and an
author of the report.
The most telling change is that just over a fifth of at-home
fathers say the main reason they are home is to care for family, up from 5
percent in 1989, and that segment is the fastest-growing.
Thirty-five percent say they stay home because they are ill
or disabled; 23 percent are unable to find work; and 22 percent are in school
or retired. (The share of men staying home by choice might also be
underreported because of remaining societal expectations of men and work,
according to Karen Z. Kramer,
assistant professor of family studies at University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, who has studied the issue.)
The reasons for the shift are many. Women, now 47 percent of
the work force, are increasingly getting more education and earning more money
than their husbands, so economic calculations like the one Mr. Johnson made are
more common. (His wife, Amy, is a nurse on her way to becoming a nurse
practitioner, so they decided she has higher earning potential than he does.)
The change can also be credited to evolving notions about
gender roles at home, Ms. Kramer found in her research.
Now that men do more with housework and child care than in
previous generations, equal numbers of men and women
report trouble balancing work and home life and say they would prefer to stay
home if they could afford it.
Money explains some of the trend, but in an unexpected way.
Nearly half of at-home fathers are living in poverty, according to Pew, and
they are twice as likely to lack a high school diploma. Fourteen percent of
fathers who live with their children did not graduate from high school,
compared with 3 percent of those with a college degree.
But the increases are coming from those with college
education; the share of less-educated fathers has stayed the same.
Jamie Willett is one of the fathers in that growing segment.
He has a college degree, did some graduate work and was an independent film
producer, modern dancer and photographer. When he and his wife, a
“Ours was a conscious choice,” said Mr. Willett, who lives
in San Francisco and has three children, aged 8 to 18.
Public opinion lags the rise in fathers who stay home. In a Pew survey last year,
just over half of people said children are better off having a mother at home,
while 8 percent said the same about fathers.
Mr. Willett has observed other signs of bias.
“I now know why women are so angry,” he said. “For people in
the work world, their opinions on anything are considered more valid than those
who just take care of children. Here’s the great line: ‘Well, all you do is hang
at the park all day.' ”
“The gender switch has been difficult because of the outside
world, but very rewarding in my internal world,” he said.
Mr. Johnson, who cares for his two children and three
stepchildren in Asheville, N.C., has a similar point of view.
“I don’t care what people say about men staying home, that
it’s wimpy or other explicit words,” he said. “My daughter a couple weeks ago
learned how to hop on one foot and she was just so excited about it. Men who
don’t stay home are missing out on some of the crucial moments in the child’s
life, and I’m blessed to be able to witness it.”
