Stay At Home Dads: Why is this sooooo surprising?

This morning on The Today Show they had a story about stay at home dads. With all the job losses these days, a lot of men have ended up spending a great deal of time at home while their wives continue to work or even go out and find new jobs after some time spent as stay at home moms/wives. Now personally, I've always loved the idea of having a stay at home husband. I'm not terribly fond of homey type work and while I love having a comfy, cozy house I am usually pretty bad about maintaining one. Having someone who around who is happy to do that work would be a lovely thing and I have no problem being the breadwinner. Alas, my career makes this highly unrealistic since I chose to be a do-gooder rather than a money maker but nevermind. That's not what this is about.

The tone of the story was almost congratulatory. As if saying "OMG! THESE MEN ARE SO AMAZING! LOOK AT THEM DOING THE EXACT SAME THING THEIR WIVES HAVE DONE FOR THE PAST 10 YEARS! THEY DESERVE COOKIES!"

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Yeah, not so much. It bothers me that our society still holds these gender role stereotypes so closely that the second someone steps outside of those roles it looks like some kind of iconoclastic revolution. Why shouldn't men be allowed to stay home and tend the hearth if they feel like it? Why shouldn't men be allowed to spend lots of time caring for and nurturing their children? And why shouldn't women be allowed to go out and make the money if that's what they prefer to do? Why do we insist on maintaining these roles to the detriment of everyone involved?

I think this story stood out because lately I've seen several posts about women's roles regarding marriage and motherhood and it annoys me that after all this time we still insist on holding women to old standards of success, i.e., being a wife and mother is the most important thing a woman can do with her life and everything else is frivolous. And before anyone tries to turn this into "Marie hates children and Moms" let's clarify things. I have much respect for Moms and I do actually like kids. I have a mom and I was once a kid so yeah, I'm not hating here. However, I do not buy the party line that I am a failure as a female human being because I have not reproduced and that my 14+ years of experience as an STD/HIV prevention worker mean nothing because I have no kids. If you want to start a fight about it, move along. What I am saying is that while we as a country continue to harp about women's rights in other countries, we better not forget that we aren't exactly past the sexism that started the American feminist movement in the first place. When the time comes that a man staying home and caring for the household and children is no longer worthy of a news story THEN we can stop looking in the mirror and focus ALL our attention elsewhere. Until then? People in glass houses and such...