With the pandemic changing all facets of our day-to-day lives, the workplace has changed immeasurably from what we’d known of it prior to the twenties. One particular change we’ve seen has been for the better in terms of families.
No longer do we have to adjust our work schedules around our children. As long as the work is complete, we can work from anywhere at any time more often than not. That is why in the US and the UK, we’ve seen a considerable increase in stay-at-home dads since 2019.
Where perhaps childcare has (wrongly) been stereotyped as something more feminine, it goes without saying how positive it can be for child development to receive care from both parents, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. So how can we continue to support this positive trend?
Making paternity and maternity equal?
It’s an interesting debate regarding parenthood, especially when all kinds of factors come into play regarding the importance of fatherhood and motherhood. For instance, widowed or single parents can exist across the gender spectrum – circumstances do not discriminate based upon this.
Furthermore, as mentioned above, parents may be of the same sex or gender – why shouldn’t they have access to the same rights as those on maternity leave? In any case, the modern working environment is conducive to more freedom around office working, though of course there are jobs in which remote or hybrid working isn’t possible.
With all of this in mind, the fact that stay-at-home dads are becoming a regular occurrence should undoubtedly be celebrated. Gender conventions and stereotypes that can perhaps be more harmful than we may have initially thought are being shattered.
It is always worth keeping in mind that human beings only get one childhood, and this inevitably shapes the rest of our lives. If you’re able to play a part in ensuring that children have the absolute best in terms of childcare and parental support, then you’ll very much be onto a winner.
How else can we support this continued blurring of stereotypes?
Flexibility is the key to offering your employees the best in terms of how they work. You should aim to be a company that supports families as much as possible, and that goes for both fathers and mothers. Flexible workplaces In London From BE Offices could be a means of offering just that, given how outdated a lot of offices these days tend to be.
You want to make sure your office is somewhere employees will want to commute to at least a few times a week, given that we all have our own needs and requirements. With virtual offices and hybrid working environments, that is now possible. No longer do we have the great albatross of leasing a single office space for a long-term period – now even bosses have flexibility.
Either way, this notion of increased opportunities for families to balance their personal and working lives to an even greater extent should undoubtedly be encouraged. After all, a world that’s conducive to families bodes incredibly well for the future, where perhaps we need some light given all the gloom that stalks us at every term regarding that future.
