role sharing as an ideal for men, they are providing structural support for father's to.
take time off work and to stay at home with their newborn child (Lamb etal 1982;.
Hwang 1986 as cited in Everingham, 1994). This initiative is useful in breaking.
down the discourse that mothers stay at home and fathers go out and work. Up untill.
recently mothers were not able to go out and work due to men earning higher wages it.
made more sense if men continued to work and the realsiation that there were no.
benefits for women to go back to work. Talcott Parsons believed women are the.
natural caregivers of children; It is biology, it is a woman's destiny. It was not untill.
organisations such as Lady Gowrie opened that meant women could go to work and.
not have to leave their children at home by themselves (Sherwood, 1999).
Motherhood and fatherhood are dominated so much by popular media, from the.
commercials we see on the television to the pictures we see in the magazines. As.
Glenn, Chang and Forcey, 1994;2 state " The reality is that women still carry the.
primary responsibility for parenting''. There is also the sad reality that today a good.
mother is seen to be caring, loving, nurturing and on the other hand a good father is.
seen to economically supportive, masculine and strong. This is slowly shifting but.
with majority of women still earning only forty five per cent of a man's wage, men are.
still needed to be the provider. Some men are still needed to go out and work for the.
fact that they earn higher wages which means more money generated for the family.
Although some historians have argued strongly that the falling birth rate signals the.
degree to which women were asserting control over their lives (E'vesque, Pierson,.
1990). Meaning women are going and getting jobs and not relying so heavily on the.
dominant father figure.
Although there has been significant attention to motherhood in the popular and.
scientific press, fatherhood has been relatively neglected (Grossman, 1999).