By: Erum Kazi
The millennial generation saw an absolutely phenomenal rise in female empowerment, women were told you can have it all, you can have a thriving career, get married, have kids, become CEO, look fantastic, and be kind empathetic leaders for other women to follow suit and WANT it all. Everything.
The millennial man also subscribed to the idea, there was an almost sigh of relief where financial burden was shared and ‘responsibilities’ of ‘providing’ was suddenly a two way street where the female was bringing in a contribution. Suddenly the rishtas started demanding girls who work and WISH to work after shaadi, someone who talks nicely is presentable, has an identity of her own and wishes to strive for what most of us women have been conditioned to strive for in this generation: The Everything-ness of Everything else.
This should have made for easy cruising through life for women but the reality is FAR from it. What happened was, when the memo was written, someone forgot to mention to the dudes that when financial responsibility will be shared so will everything else. What ended up happening was, the women in their strive to want more, do more and simply BE more (because let’s face it this is perhaps the first time in a LONG time that it became ok to do so), broke their backs. But somehow it simply wasn’t enough. The reason is simple, tasks and responsibilities need to be divided to ensure equity in responsibilities. Women and men need to become partners, the starting line and finish line for them needs to be one that is uniform.
So while the females are now being raised to this new fantastic ideology where they strive to reach their absolute potential and dare to dream of having it all, we need to get another thing in check, we need to start raising our boys better.
A fabulous quote by Gloria Steinem quite encapsulates the crossroads we are at in raising the next generation of boys. She says, “I’m glad we’ve begun to raise our daughters more like our sons, but it will never work until we raise our sons more like our daughters.”
Children absorb what they see their parents do, they learn about agency, consent, kindness, tackling with emotions the way their parents MODEL it out for them, not by what they listen too. That’s the thing about ritualistic patriarchy and why it is so hard to rid society’s fabric from it- it’s passed down from one generation to the other merely by observation.
Thus the only way to remove it is by being better, by conscious parenting where we cancel privileges that come due to gender, where we ensure kindness and empathy are frequently practiced muscles in our boys and MOST importantly we teach them that there is no chore, no work, NOTHING that boys don’t do.
Just like we told our girls that there’s nothing they can’t do. They subscribed to the formula and the result was spectacular is getting better. We need to do the same for our little men, they can do it all. Have thriving careers, get married, actively be involved in raising their children, keep the house clean, do the laundry, make food and look fantastic. It’s time to change the conversation and have the boys strive for the everything-ness of everything
