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Stay-At-Home-Dads Are the Real Solution Towards Gender Equality
Why are housewives a norm, and househusbands a novelty?
Back in 1989, just a year after I was born, it was probably an outlandish thing to imagine a “stay-at-home-dad.”
The global numbers were something like this — 4% of all dads were stay-at-home-dads. I come from India — a country that only knows the term “housewife” and back then knew it almost synonymous with a married woman.
Stay-at-home-dad?
What?
When asked “what do you want to be when you grow up,” a lot of the girls in class would say “I want to be a housewife like my mom.” And that was perfectly acceptable. But if I, as a boy, had ever said “I want to be a stay-at-home-dad when I grow up,” my teacher would have surely said: “Stay-at-home-dad? What?”
Fast forward to today — I am now 32 and have a lovely 2-year-old-son of my own and a lovely wife.
If I can claim so myself, we’ve both got quite successful careers in the finance industry — having achieved almost identical success at the respective points we are in our careers — my wife is a couple of years younger than I am.
And every day I come home to our son — my heart fills with so much love that…