Monday, November 21, 2011

Paternity Leave: A forgotten right of being a father in Indonesia

Many times i asked my Indonesian friends (men), “Do you mind to leave your job temporarily just to take care of your daughter or son?”

The major answers you could expect are, “What about my job? How can i feed my family?”
Few of them will undoubtly said,” I won’t hesitate. I simply work from home”, maybe because they are freelancers.

Many of us (mostly men) have this question in their mind, “We have mother’s day but we never have a father’s day here in Indonesia?” (now we have, do you really want this kind of day?)

Feminists might say that women just have one special day out of 365 days in a year. The rest are mostly devoted to the men since the world system in general is following paternalistic pattern. Because of that why there is still such question appears?

I want to put aside the job and salary issues in order to answer aforementioned question. Moreover, let’s stay focus on how we describe the meaning of being a father. Being a father is not merely about earning money, isn’t it? We are human beings. Father, mother or children are human beings. I guess i do not have to remind you that as a human we have several aspects of life: physical, emotional, psychological, social and spiritual. If so, why should we bother only one aspect “economy” to be called as a father?

I hope you (men) don’t find this article as an offensive one. But please, just grasp the idea behind. Just focus to the fact of being a human. As a father, do you think that you spend less time than your wife or even with your babysitter with your children? When did your last time hug your children? Listen to their stories? Read fairy tales for them? Feed them? Change their diapers?