Just read this intresting article about more and more men giving up high level jobs to spend more time with kids and the keeping or upping the women into the full time bread winner slot and progressing her career.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38637857
This is also the model in one of my freinds young family. They were in the same job (same sallery) and he gave it up to work part time (3 school hour day a week) and look after their child. His wife often says she is jealous of him because she works long hours and he gets to do a lot of the fun stuff with their child in the week. As the bread winner she has the main responsibility to keep the roof over their head and therefore is trapped in the breadwinner role and the hours away from the family. My mate cherishes the time he gets to raise their child.
Of course it's individual choice but would this be a good thing if it was the norm? Or would it become an issuse of regret for more and more women that they did not get to spend more time with their children? Who with young children given the choice would chose full time work and career progression over being a sham/part time worker and having more time with there children? Out of those who would prefer to work full time would you expect your other half to work FT if they didn't need to? Personally I think it's a shame that any parent has to miss out. But nice to see that more men are being liberated from the restrictions of gender role and being allowed to reap the benifits of more time in their children's lives. Its nice to see men seeing/being seen that their value as parents can be more than their value as cash providers. Despite the stereotypes men are not all big useless man babies and it's nice that we are more open to men getting the oppertunities to be the parent who does main parenting of young children and managing of the household. Once a position almost locked out to them by attitudes and social norms.