In some ways I am the quintessential modern man. Every day I wake up at six thirty with my wife, while she gets our one-and-a-half year-old daughter out of her cot. We then spend a bit of time together as a family prior to my wife getting ready for work. Before my wife leaves I have my breakfast, check my online activity, and then around the same time as my wife departs I’ll change my daughter, which does include dealing with full and smelly nappies. I’ll then take a shower while my daughter sits in her highchair watching Mickey Mouse. Then I prepare my daughter’s breakfast, usually organic porridge, followed by a banana or some other fruit.
On most days I’ll give my daughter some supervised playtime at around ten, playing together with bricks or puzzles, or maybe having a picnic with her toy set. Most of all I just make sure that she can walk around freely without causing chaos, like pulling things out of drawers and moving furniture around the room. I may also do chores like vacuuming or polishing, and all this before twelve!
Now before I start sounding like a housewife, making clams that this is really hard, or that no one has sympathy for my plight, I’ll add that it is a pleasure to be involved in raising my daughter so actively. Men, historically, weren’t involved in directly raising children, instead having to bring home the bacon while women took up this role. Was this a raw deal for men? Absolutely. Men missed out on a lot, and often it was only when boys grew older that fathers had the responsibility of teaching them the ways of the world through the eyes of a man, only to perpetuate the cycle of male responsibility for the next generation.
However, unlike feminists, I am pragmatic about the roles of men and women in history. I believe that women being the nurturers and men being the providers was an evolutionary necessity, as people like me constantly keep repeating to feminist ideologues. Feminist theory paints a different picture however, one that involves the patriarchy putting women down and preventing them from reaching their full potential. The irony here is that men being given more “rights” also came with responsibility, something that MRAs also keep repeating, often in vain. It also resulted in men missing out as parents.
That which men gained through power they lost in the personal connection with those around them, like their own children. Do we have feminism to thank for a transformation that allows men to stay home, as certain people have told me? Well, I would vehemently disagree with anyone that feels this way. For starters, we have the economic factors that now force Mothers and Fathers to go out to work, resulting in more children spending time in daycare from a very young age, even in the first few months after birth. In spite of the obsession of certain groups claiming that daycare is positive for young children, there is plenty of evidence to show that the bond with parent and child in the first few years of life is integral to their self-esteem, and therefore their development.
This aside, the increased size of the workforce has had serious implications on the bargaining rights of employees. The reason for this is simple, and doesn’t require a complex economic theory to explain. If you are advertising for a job when you know there are plenty of people who want to do it then you are the one in control. This gives you an advantage when it comes to setting out the parameters of the job description, wages being one example. Thus, wages have not kept up with the cost of living, and while we can’t ignore numerous other factors contributing to the skyrocketing inflation all around us, we do have a scenario now where mother and father both go out to work to retain a standard of life similar to the previous generation.
Feminism’s biggest failure in this regard comes from instilling a modern form of selfishness in women, a sort of hyper-gynocentrism if you will. Everything around us is geared towards teaching women that they should be free to make decisions independently, to put their own needs above those of the family. Instead of modern women working with men to preserve the family, providing stable a home life for children, the opposite has occurred. Women taught that if they don’t work they are economically enslaved, or even abused, especially when we consider that it is now easy for a woman to claim domestic violence via “financial abuse.”
What is the alternative to this erosion of the family unit which has resulted in two parents going out to work? For one, any couple that genuinely wants to succeed will have to learn to compromise – both man and woman. There are numerous ways this can be done. Some examples being both parents working part-time, or the parent earning the highest wage going out to work. But most of all, it seems that the modern consumer culture we now live in has eroded the ability to make informed decisions about what is best for a fully functional family. Perhaps part of the problem is that this culture teaches us that we should aspire for the better car and the bigger house, when in reality we should be aspiring for close personal bonds with the ones we care about.
It is in this area that I feel men need to adapt for 21st century fatherhood. It’s built into men that they should bring home the bacon, but this often means that men miss out on so many experiences in life by being forced into financial servitude. This is our time to stand up and expect more from a relationship, and what better way to test the sincerity of a woman than by expecting her to pull her weight financially, or to expect men to have similar life choices to women?
What’s more, isn’t it time that the human race started to realize that there is more to life than simply earning money? I personally cannot express how much flexibility I have acquired by being a part-time self-employed father – what many people now call a “dadpreneur”. Do I feel enslaved or emasculated by my wife’s higher earnings? No, because my wife isn’t a power mad modern woman who thinks that her social status comes first, and when she comes home from work she shuts the door and focuses on being a mother and a wife.
Then again I do feel that my relationship is unique, not least because my wife and I are ideologically very similar, and this includes our views on feminism. I know that for many MRAs these ideas will be controversial, and in this regard I would like to elaborate. I am fully aware that there are only two ways that my relationship could work out.
First, I really have found a diamond in the rough culture of female entitlement. Second, my relationship could blow up in my face. There are some good women out there, despite the feminist meme, and how men can safely date in this present climate is a serious problem. However, there are good women coming forward to support the MRA, more than ever it seems.
But for those who feel that dating isn’t worth the risk, I respect and understand why men want to go their own way. Equally, there are reasons why I feel the family is worth fighting for. Children are being seriously scarred by this system of feminist governance, and this alone must be fixed if there is any hope of a better tomorrow. The biggest reason though, that many seem to miss, is this; I have serious doubts that the state will bat an eyelid if the family dies. Why? Because we’re a hair’s breadth away from humans being born in artificial wombs, so it won’t be long before the state can do away with human procreation entirely.
At this point the radical feminist dream of breaking up the family can easily become a reality given that the birth of children won’t require a mother, let alone a father. If this doesn’t send a chill down spines then nothing will. So, the way I see it, every family that succeeds is another finger up to feminism and the state – and that’s worth fighting for.
