All Men - and Many Women - Still Have a Long Way to Go

First of all, thank you so much for the feedback and comments on the blog. I appreciate it immensely! I am not surprised that some of my closest friends share many of the same opinions I do. I wonder about those who are critical about what I write. My views should not come as a surprise to my friends, though.

A friend of mine from Sweden agreed that I share part of an email she sent to me. It's incredibly insightful, and slightly depressing, so please read:

Found out today that another mum who had planned to go back to work in January isn't - because "it didn't work out with her husband's job". Of the 4 mums I've met who were going to go back to work in jan I'm now the only one going through with it. One has quit her job, one is going back in August and the other has just put it off by a month. Shows how hard it is to change behaviours even in a place like Sweden where all the support is in place to enable gender equality in the family... We had a discussion in my parent group today and I found it quite hard to argue the gender equality line when the people who are staying home most of the time say: "I can't believe nowadays people make you feel bad for wanting to stay home with your child" (and these are all women with full time jobs!) . Feels like the line - "In order to contribute towards greater income equality and overall gender equality in society we need to start splitting the care of our children more evenly - what about your husbands why aren't they staying home?" - isn't really going to hit home with those people. I guess I should've said something like - maybe it's good for the baby to spend some more time with his dad too? And vice versa for dad. - but didn't come up with that line at the time! Think I need to prepare my lines for the future cos I really do want to contribute to the debate and not just stay silent. What do you normally say when these discussions come up (or maybe they don't come up in Germany so much?!).

This is the same friend I mentioned in a blog a few months ago, who is indeed returning to work, and where the father is going on parental leave soon. Another friend's husband has just done the same in the US. A third in Cambodia. My husband took parental leave for a year after our second child was born, while I worked. Maybe it's happening to my closest circle of friends for a reason: we are close because we share the same values and ideals, and one of these is that fathers should be active parents, should allow for us to get our foot back in the work world (even if it comes at a price of their own careers), and we have married (or are partners) to these people because we expect them to want to have children in order to spend TIME with these children.