Monica

There’s been plenty of recent press around the rise in stay-at-home dads in the UK. Now, in this shiny new modern age, men now make up nearly 10% of Brits who have chosen to stay home and look after their children. From 1993-2014, the amount of dads staying home jumped from 111,000-229,000.

In an ideal world, this sort of thing wouldn’t be news. Ideally, it wouldn’t matter who stayed home or who didn’t, because that gender stereotype of the male breadwinner wouldn’t exist: both parents would just simply be, well, parents. Unfortunately, we’re yet to get there. But this very hype might just help us along.

At the moment though, this is legitimate news. Against a long history of women traditionally staying home to tend to the little tykes, this change is, well, a change. Change is new. Change is news.

It can take decades, at the very least, to change collective modes of thought. For stigma or a stereotype to dissipate, it first needs to be addressed. For this to happen, it needs to be socially acceptable to address said stereotype. And the ways these sorts of things are thrust into that very same social spotlight usually tend to be a tad reductive.

But once something is in the spotlight, it means we’re all looking at it. And from here, we start to think. When people get used to an idea it ceases to be new(s). When this happens we’re able to look at it ...