Many women would argue that the right of total motherhood and custody of their children should automatically fall on the biological mother, as it is they who have been through the arduous tasks of pregnancy and childbirth. Men arguing for the right to be ‘mothers’ would retort saying that having been through all that, surely the woman could do with some rest and peace of mind. However, it has always been that in court, preference is given to the mother first for these reasons.
Looking back in history, the traditional role of mother has always been placed with the female. It has never been reversed until today. So, going against tradition is something that all people should have to adapt to. The role of mother being taken on by men is one of the changes that must eventually come about if we are to consider ourselves a liberal society, which presents individuals with equal rights. Now that women have the right to vote and are considered by (most) men to have equal intelligence, they no longer retain the label of the ‘weaker’ sex. However it is still the woman who often chooses the jobs of taking the children to school and ensuring that they have a good education – not the man, because the society we live in still has certain standards of inequality and overt sexism.
Now, we must ask ourselves – why do we view motherhood in this way? What is motherhood? The raising of a child requires an experienced adult in order to provide a base for that child to grow up. Also, a child should be surrounded, especially in its earliest years, by the warmth and security of a family. Now we must define ‘family’. In order to state that a child must have a mother – one must first state the role of the family is vital. In answer to this question, another question is asked -What is a parent? A parent is someone who has the responsibility of raising a happy child. It stands to reason in that case that a parent who is happy acts as a good role model and imparts joyfulness to his/her offspring. Shared parenthood is a definition of ‘family’. If, to be a ‘good’ parent, one should have a positive, happy outlook – does the sex of the parent limit this capability? The answer is almost assuredly no. The sex of a person does not interfere with his/her capabilities as a parent. In that case, why do we rely on the word ‘mother’ as the primary guardian of children? Would it not be fairer to refer to ‘male mothers’ as ‘fathers’?
Despite all this, there is still a great deal of sexism in the world around us. Recently, during the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, those who then saw the plight of the women expressed great horror at the regime’s sexism. Especially in the Islamic world at large, the women is considered a second class citizen, not able to vote, or even to leave the house without the written permission of a man. The woman is a vehicle for the man to achieve the honour of fatherhood. Of course, in Britain, no such thing like this exists, but the sexist prejudice that is so deeply rooted in history has yet to be scoured from our present-day society.
In our modern world, women have different roles to those they would have had one hundred years ago. You are likely to see women in nearly every type of career – from accountancy to the army. For men, no job is safe – and being subordinate to a woman inflicts great damage to their ideas of masculine superiority. I think this is one of the reasons for the amount of sexism that is still alive in our society today. In our world, it is not always the man who is the breadwinner, and this reversal of women’s roles in society is not yet reflected by the government or indeed by many workplaces.
Women are under such pressure to prove their worth in the workplace that it is not uncommon for women to delay having children, in order not to lose their chances as professionals. It would be unfair to expect a woman who has just completed seven years of hard labour in Medical school, to give it all up because she wanted children. That is why it is important for men to be given the equal opportunity of being a parent.
Our society is such that a man wishing to have a more instrumental role in raising his children is scorned and lambasted. Where as women are given the chance to have flexible ‘maternity’ leaves in most jobs, men are not to expect a great deal of sympathy if they have not got ‘paternity’ leaves at all. Our society is heavily biased against the ‘father’. I also think that men should, instead of being given the right to be ‘mothers’, be given the right to be ‘fathers’. The role of ‘father’ is almost defunct today – and this is the most major problem in the man’s argument to be a ‘mother’.
The government could make it easier for men to be better fathers. Allowing them to take equal paternity leave, and campaigning for equal rights for both men and women cannot be a bad thing. However, it is important to stress that both men and women must accept this as a positive initiative against sexism, in allowing individuals the freedom to do what they want to do. So long as the parent is a good role model and fulfils the criteria to be a good parent, the sex should not matter. Let men be real fathers, and women evolved mothers.
