Men’s Roles

            During the holidays I attended several gatherings of Korean people and was reminded of the old tradition of the men’s table and the women’s table (all the men at one table while the women were at another). In both America and Korea, the husband’s role has traditionally been to provide money. Sometimes husbands worked on the family farm, sometimes at an outside job. In many cases, the men must leave home for long periods of time in order to find work to provide the money necessary to keep the home running. Women, on the other hand, have traditionally been in charge of raising children, cooking, and keeping the house. In many ways, these traditional roles make sense, work outside the home was often physically demanding and men generally have more muscular bodies and childrearing can involve breastfeeding the babies. This distinction, however, does not make as much sense as it used to.

These traditional roles were thrown out of balance in America during World War II. So many American men were overseas fighting the war that there were not enough left to fill all of the jobs and women were required to step up. A famous poster from the era shows a strong woman flexing her muscle (nicknamed Rosie Riveter), encouraging women to take these traditional male jobs. Women did great and the war would have turned out differently without their support. However, at the end of the war the men returned and expected their jobs back and most women had to return to their traditional female roles. This experience, however, was the direct predecessor of the women’s rights movement in America in the 1960s.

In Time magazine a few months ago there was an article about the changing responsibilities of men and women in families. More and more men are taking on more and more of the domestic chores and childrearing responsibilities. I think that my household is an interesting reflection of these changes. First, I am better at doing laundry than my wife (I’ve been doing it since I was eight years old) and I don’t mind doing it too much, so it just makes sense that I would do it. Second, I generally drop the kids off and pick the kids up from school because my schedule is more flexible than my wife’s. Both of these jobs are traditionally women’s jobs, but I don’t mind doing them. However, I don’t want to do any kitchen work because my wife is a good cook, definitely better than me. This is not completely true though, I always get the job of shredding all the vegetables (a huge job when you have 20 people over and you serve spicy mustard salad) and I just spent the last two days helping my wife make a huge batch of Gimchee. My wife on the other hand, also bucks the traditional role and has a full time job outside the home (though I think she should learn to change a light bulb!). Whatever needs to be done is better done by whoever is better at doing it, regardless of whether it is the husband or wife. That’s what makes sense and there is no shame in it.

I firmly believe that a marriage should be based on equity, with equal inputs by both husband and wife. Many of these inputs into the marriage involve work outside the home. But, in my opinion, if one spouse does not have a job outside the home, then they must take primary responsibility for housekeeping, regardless if they are the husband or the wife. The problem that often arises is men’s pride and prejudice about their roles, based on the traditional concepts.

I observe that many Korean men are stubbornly trying to hold onto their traditional roles despite radical changes in the world. Some seem to feel as though they deserve special respect just because they are men. However, earning money in today’s society is not a role reserved only for men since earning money does not necessarily mean hard, back-breaking, work that only men can perform. The world is changing, greatly in America, but perhaps even more so in Korea. We need to start rethinking our traditional roles and change them to fit the changes in society. Fathers, it is our job to teach our sons what it means to be a man in the 21^st century.