The Hunter and the Dirty Diaper

Life has gotten too complex for the old division of labor by sex to prevail -- an order that reduces roles to simple provider vs. care giver. It is rather unfortunate that that old division of labor by sex is very much well and alive, even here in the U.S., particularly among Arab American families.

That order may have been fit for the old days when men were hunters and women were gatherers, but notice here how even then, women were not care givers period, they actually provided 70% of the food intake of their families out of what they gathered. Hunting did not always put food on the table, so there had to be stables to fall back on in the absence of bloody meat.

The reality is that there are some men who are more caring than some women and that there are some women who are smarter and can provide better than some men. It does not have to be an either or and I'm not calling for role reversal here. I'm just saying that it's time for some who claim to live by the morals and rules of an abstract culture to reassess the reality. It is time for some men who think money buys everything including women's labor to roll up their sleeves and go change that dirty diaper. It is time for some women to stop measuring their worth by how sparkling are their cookware or if they have a son or not.