Our home is our own private government

My mother-in-law raised boys to become men. Today, he's more traditionally conservative in-laws look at him and say: He's one of those 'hands-on dads'.
Like, he can change a diaper!!
My mother-in-law didn't do gender stereotypes. As far as she was concerned, in her home, everyone chipped in to get the job done. Her husband, who couldn't even make himself a cup of tea before he married, soon learned not only to cook a Sunday roast, but to do a pretty damn good one too. Shocking, I know.

After posting the questions about equality-definition the other day, I realized that it really doesn't matter much what the government does to help families create balance in the home. If we are not up for changing our attitudes within our own personal sphere it's not gonna work anyway. It has to start in the home, from the beginning, otherwise it's a lost cause. We can get all the paid paternity leave, job-shares, shorter working days and cost-affordable day-cares we want, but if mommy is still doing all the ground-work in the home, it's not gonna change the signals we send our kids anyway.

So you're a woman and your fed up with being stuck in the trap of home-making and being a full-time mother. You'd like to work? Earn yourself a little money? A little independence? Would like to send a positive message to your kids, shake up the gender-rolls a bit?
Good.
But your children won't applaud you for suddenly turning in to a regular Erin Brockovitch, what they will remember is that you came home from a long day at work and still cooked their dinners, washed all their clothes, always made their beds and helped out with the homework, falling a sleep at the table when daddy was surfing on the computer or said goodbye as he left for tennis-practice with the mates.
Guess what your son will be looking for in his future wife? Guess what kind of wife and mother your daughter will become?
Policy change starts at home, in the family.

Every one is being hit by the crunch, but who will get back up again?

'The face of the recession is not a woman's.' But fact remains: he recession is hitting women harder than men. Women are the double-losers. Not only will they often stand a bigger chance of loosing their job than their male counter-part, but once lost, it will also be twice as hard for them to get back in again.

Women have been fighting too hard for the right to work outside the home, so let us not lose out to this man-made crunch, the operative word being 'MAN'.

We need to stand by each other

It's yesterdays news- today's fish-and-chips wrap, but I am still mulling over the french justice minister and her baby. I want to applaud her and at the same time I am stunned. Mostly because I wonder if she can manage to up-hold her perfectly immaculate self so soon after the birth. Does she actually have time to do her hair and make-up in the morning before going in to the office or is it all breast-pumping, Abercrombie comfy's and steeling another five minutes of sleep? Personally, I had no use for any other clothes but my pyjamas for the first three months after my daughter's birth.

Having said that, I shouldn't even blog about this as I think it is important not to turn a woman's personal decision in to a public debate just because the woman in question happen to have espresso and croissants for breakfast with President Sarkozy (I'm sure it's not all just work, work, work even in French high office). I have read some very unfavorable comments - almost all of them made by women - about Ms Dati and her choice, but shouldn't women support each other in our decisions whatever they might be?

So women who wants to go back to work are bad mothers and mother's who don't end up raising Norman Bates but we tend to forget that those of us who do have a choice, whatever it might be, are very lucky, and those who don't, well, they need all the support they can get.