A common Asian gender norm is that men should go out and earn a living while women keep house and raise children.
However, this age-old standard has been turned on its head for two Hongkonger families now calling Australia home.
According to clinical psychologist Noris Ma, the traditional Asian social norm is also losing ground throughout Asia as many societies change and progress and the concept of a stay-at-home father becomes more commonplace.
“Stay-at-home dads” Heymans Chan and Lewis Tang shared their experiences both before and since moving to Australia with SBS Chinese.
Heymans Chan and his two daughters. Source: Heymans Chan
He said his wife, a nurse, currently worked full-time so the only option was for him to step into the at-home role.
Due to complex licensing procedures, returning to his career hadn’t been feasible and he had no plans to do so for the time being, he said.
“First of all, licensing is an issue for me; my anaesthetist licence was issued in Hong Kong. Therefore, I’m not qualified to practise here,” Mr Chan said.
“The procedure of converting my licence is complicated, and I don’t have confidence that I can make it; that’s why I have yet to decide to do so. I can’t look for a job if I don’t have a licence.”
In addition, he said that working as an anaesthetist was a dream job for many people in both Hong Kong and Australia and therefore, very competitive.
“For an outsider to have a ‘slice of the pie’ in this popular field is relatively difficult,” Mr Chan said.
On top of all of that, Mr Chan said his wife’s nursing position often involved her working night shifts making it even more imperative that he was available to care for their children.
“(So, really, there is) no room for me to work full-time or even (to) leave home (to) fly over to remote areas to work. These are also the reasons why I am not very proactive in finding work,” Mr Chan said.
This new arrangement had challenged him personally, he said, given Chinese family values and the fact that being a stay-at-home father still carried a stigma in Asian societies like Hong Kong.
Lewis Tang and family Source: Lewis Tang
“(Nowadays), if you ask me whether this concept is essential to me, I’d say it depends on what kind of society you’re living in,” Mr Chan said.
In Australia, as we don’t have a domestic helper, there is a bigger need for me to be more hands-on in rearing my children.
He said the fact that he saw many fathers taking care of their children in Australia had lessened his perception of the role being against societal norms.
According to figures from Hong Kong’s Census and Statistics Department, the number of women staying home to raise families in Hong Kong has dropped from around 740,000 in 2001 to 610,000 in 2019. Meanwhile, stay-at-home father figures increased more than threefold from 9200 to 32,000.
The COVID-19 pandemic had also contributed to an increase in stay-at-home fathers in South Korea, a country steeped in the stereotype that it was women’s work staying home and rearing children.
The Korean Statistical Information Service or KOSIS revealed there were 13,000 stay-at-home fathers in March 2021, a record-high number since data on the subject began being collected in 1999.
“The most important thing is men should adopt a new way of thinking in this new era,” Mr Ma said.
Heymans Chan Source: Heymans Chan
“The traditional concept (that) men should feed the family and women should stay home has its historical background because society wasn’t stable in the old days.
“People thought it was safer for women not to expose themselves to the community (and potential danger) too much.”
He said because of such circumstances, it was seen as a man’s role to go out and find ways to feed his family.
“Judging by the trend globally, being a stay-at-home father is becoming more common,” he said.
“We can see (that in) some developed countries, like many Northern European countries such as Denmark and Norway, where the salaries of men and women are equal, it’s not unusual that many men opt to stay home to take care of the needs of their children and family.”
What does it mean to be a stay-at-home father?
According to research by the Australia Institute of Family Studies, a father is considered "stay-at-home" if he has children under the age of 15, is not working, and has a spouse or partner who works some hours.
The Institute estimated there were 75,000 stay-at-home-father families in 2016, accounting for four per cent of all two-parent families at the time.
The research also found that stay-at-home father families in Australia were very diverse, with many fathers looking for work and mothers working part-time or full-time.
A sense of identity is one of the most common issues that stay-at-home fathers face according to father-of-two, Lewis Tang.
He said what started as a temporary arrangement after the family moved to Australia had since become more permanent when he couldn’t land a job.
Lewis Tang Source: Lewis Tang
“I was very happy for the first half a year when I (had) just arrived in Australia. I cooked every day, played with my children every day, and the days passed very quickly,” Mr Tang said.
But after six months, when my wife went out to work and I stayed home, I felt quite lost and psychologically pressured (because I) felt like I was not contributing much to this family.
Mr Tang, now living in Sydney, had worked as a software developer in Hong Kong. He said he had tried to find work in Australia but due to his Bridging Visa status, many “head-hunters” hadn’t been proactive in referring him to employers; in fact, they had told him to wait for his permanent residency before he reached out, he said.
“My wife did not pressure me at all, the source of pressure was from myself. My wife is an Australian citizen therefore she could get a job very quickly,” he said.
“I expected to be a stay-at-home dad for a while and I was prepared for that, it's just that (now) I don’t know for how long,”.
Mr Tang said he still felt a little pressured at times and wanted to provide more for his family.
However, he said he had made peace with himself through thinking that not working was just temporary and that staying home and looking after his family was a genuine contribution that money couldn’t buy.
“I arrived in Australia during the pandemic. Because I was working from home in Hong Kong, I had to cook and help around the house. Now, I just allocate my time differently,” he said.
“It’s not easy to take good care of a family, our house is bigger (than before), you have to look after the garden, and there are a lot of things for me to learn.”
