On a working Sunday afternoon at the office, I received a funny message from my husband who was at home. In the attached photo, my 3-year-old son was taking a nap lying down on top of daddy’s tummy with his face resting comfortably on my husband’s chest.

“I’ve been lying on the floor like this for two hours,” my husband said in the message, holding his smartphone with one hand to kill time and embracing the boy with the other. He couldn’t get the boy off because the slightest hint of a move would wake him up.

Kudos to my husband, who has to go through a lying-on-the-floor session for the boy’s nap every other Sunday when his wife goes to work. He makes sure the boy has enough rest before his worn-out wife comes home. In terms of child care, my husband shares responsibility almost 50-50 with me.

When I tell this story to my working-mom girlfriends, most of them get envious and start complaining about their husbands who usually panic when left alone with children for a full day. My husband easily becomes an enemy for the other men who would hate to listen to their wives preach about how much they could learn from him.

I do not intend to invoke jealousy out of this episode, but to hope that fathers, as much as mothers, take their full responsibility for parenting if they want their sons and daughters to grow up with equal respect for the abilities of men and women.

The real images and the roles of mom and dad, in the eyes of Korean children, seem to have made no progress at all, despite the great strides Korean women have made to date. Many children still perceive parenting as women’s work. A recent survey of 500 children by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family showed that children tend to associate a father’s daily activities at home with watching TV and lying down on the sofa, whereas images of a mother’s activities at home are associated with cooking and child care.

Of course, Korean fathers find it hard to carve out time to spend meaningful hours with their children, given the family-unfriendly corporate culture that comes with Korea having the longest working hours among OECD countries and the frequent hoesik, or drinking-and-dining sessions after work.

But let’s get honest about this. Aren’t we secretly resorting to the old-fashioned work culture because we regard professional work and status as superior to invisible relationships with children?

Even if fathers can’t set aside more time for their children, they can improve the quality of time that they spend with them.

Roughhousing, horseplay, wrestling, airplane-riding or whatever playtime activities that can be physically demanding for mothers are the best areas that fathers should go for. If your wife complains it’s too dangerous or the home gets messy, remind her that numerous studies say physically active children perform better in academic work as well.

Wives should also let husbands make mistakes in parenting. Many of the women I have observed have a condescending attitude towards husbands when it comes to child care. They complain men don’t have enough sense to gauge the right temperature for a bottle. Some fathers can miss the right timing to change dirty diapers. Some even send kids to day care in poorly chosen outfits. No matter how unsatisfying results may be, wives should let husbands take care of the child and learn from mistakes, unless the errors are life-threatening or intimidating to others. If those learning opportunities are taken away, men are denied their rights to engage with their children. 

In parenting, fathers can do almost everything except for breastfeeding. I can say this because my husband has proved it. He gave bottles, made and fed solid foods, changed diapers, read stories and transformed toy cars into robots.

From a child’s perspective, it is much more beneficial to get balanced care from both parents. Just like a married couple who discuss their weakness and shortcomings with each other to build a better companionship, a child needs balanced parenting between strict and relaxed, risky and prudent, or talkative and quiet.

For a child to get well balanced parenting, it really takes two to tango.

By Kim Yoon-mi

Kim Yoon-mi is the digital content desk editor of The Korea Herald. She can be reached at yoonmi@heraldcorp.com. — Ed.