Care work: where are the men?

It is around midnight. I am sitting in the rocking chair in my son’s room. I see his little stuffed animals on the shelf. I feel his heart on my chest while I shoosh him gently to sleep.

I am a brand-new papá, filled with the fears and hopes of not knowing what this journey will bring, like standing outside the classroom the day school begins. 

Fatherhood did not happen to me, I chose it. I remember this clearly: I am seven years old, sitting under a big mango tree at my grandma’s house in a small town in Colombia.

My cousins and I are playing to be a family and while they fight to decide who the mom would be, I keep thinking to myself: “one day, I will be the papa and I will change diapers and cook meals and play with my children”.  

As I stare at the mango tree my partner and I painted on the wall behind my son’s crib in our home in Boston, my mind is filled with memories from my mom: the smell of sweet fried plantains for dinner, the soft touch of her hand on my forehead, the birdlike songs she sang to me as a I fell asleep.

My mom is fluent in the language of care. She taught me about it by taking care of me, so I learn that care is about daily action and daily practice.  

Choosing to be a present dad was my first act of disobedience against patriarchy, a system that teaches man-identified folks like me and my dad that showing emotions is bad, domestic work is for women, using violence is okay and money determines your value. It tells men that manhood and care don’t go together: care is something women do, something women are in charge of. Something women are good at, like my aunts serving lunch while my dad and his five brothers drink and laugh watching the game or my mom, taking time off from work on a Saturday to attend parent’s day, joining a room full of women in an all-boys catholic school.

As men, we learn these lessons at home with our loved ones and then, we replicate them in other spaces of our lives.

This is how power works: men get to decide which work is worth time and money, women don’t.

Because of COVID, homes became the epicenter of the world. The division between school, work, private, public, in person, online is blurring. In this reality, sometimes our lives are reduced to small rectangular boxes in a zoom call. Yet, these changes are increasing the care demands for all, but especially for women and girls. Care work provided by women is like air, invisible to many yet indispensable for life.

It has been almost two years, listening and learning to see the ways care emerges in each of our stories, like a flower growing in the spaces between the pavements. Stories of long days and short nights, stories of dreadfully revisiting decisions that were once taken for granted: is it safe to see each other? Should we send the kids to school? The more we learn about each other stories, the more we care about each of us.

This is what care work is about, showing up for each other every single day. Like my mom taught me, caring for others means action. Not tomorrow, not when is convenient. Daily action, daily practice.

As men, we are doing too little too slow. Men’s reluctance to provide care work every day means that women pay the price for it. Women are rapidly drowning under the tyranny of domestic work and care, while men stand and look. While men wait for women to tell them, to tell us, what to do and by when.

The cost for women is burnout, the state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress.

Today, many men are working to learn the language of care, pulling out from their gardens the toxic weeds of White supremacy, transphobia, and violence, seeking to nurture tenderness, solidarity, and compassion, with the hopes that someday, they will bloom.

I am in that journey too.

As I put my son back to his crib, I place my right hand on his chest. I am learning about love through his eyes, and he is learning about care through my actions. I am new at this. I am still clumsy providing care, I get overflown with emotions, like a pool after a storm.

Every day, I choose to get on that same bike, sometimes relentlessly, sometimes reluctantly. I find in care work a path to redemption against patriarchy and privilege, a way to heal in my life the absence of my dad and the presence of harmful gender roles, a way to move men to ride with me and address the unequal distribution of care in our homes. Daily actions, daily practices.

What are your daily practices made of? What does care look like in the inner spaces where you are present? What is the absence of care creating for others?

Men are you there? Are you ready to step up?

Care is a language and as such, it requires practice, humility, and willingness. For men-identified folks this might not come naturally, I see you, I have been there too. I am still clumsy and sit on my privilege from time to time, yet the more we evade our fair share of the work, the more we are putting it in all the women around us. What kind of man does this? A man who does not care.

Actions define priorities. Actions have the power to liberate precious time for women and girls, so they can catch up with a friend, sleep in, work out or sit down and do nothing, plan nothing. These actions have the power to change you.  As men, we are denied the chance to learn how to provide care by toxic gender roles. Yet care work is what makes us human.

Today, my ask to each of you, men-identified folks as parents, siblings, co-workers, friends is to act. Care is a skill, like talking a foreign language, you learn by doing. So, grab the mop, open that cooking book, google what emotional labor is, start the list of gifts for the holiday season today. As men, we need to change and start now to do our fair share of the care at home. The time to care for you and your loved ones is now. Are you ready?