As if Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and subsequent articles weren't enough, last month Time magazine triggered a worldwide debate with its controversial cover of a mother breastfeeding her four-year-old son and the bold title, 'Are you mom enough?' When I saw this, I was disappointed with Time, not because I'm against breastfeeding - I'm not - but because I'm so tired of the 'mommy wars'. For once, I'd like the question to be: 'Are you dad enough?'
In Hong Kong, it seems that the role of a dad varies greatly, depending on who you talk to. For most, it simply means bringing home the bacon. For a minority, it also means knowing how to fry it.
We live in a city where paternity leave is nonexistent and many fathers are 'weekend dads'. At my son's school, the staff gush over the fathers who show up to read to the children. While working mothers often get dirty looks, working dads - and really, there is no such phrase - get handshakes. And forget about stay-at-home dads; they are as rare as a clear blue sky in Hong Kong.
According to my mother, a traditional Chinese woman, that's the way it should be. Dads in Asia provide, she says. If something goes right with the child, it's because of the mother. If something goes wrong, it's also because of mom. My mother says it like it's a good thing that fathers are an afterthought.
I wasn't convinced. In a town that is crazy about academic success, when competitive schools and overzealous tutoring pretty much mandate that one parent be free to supervise homework starting at the age of four, how can the standard be set so low for fathers?
And, if all a dad has to do is write cheques and take the child for ice cream on Saturdays, how do the dads feel about this? Do they like just being ATM machines? In my quest to find out what dads here really do, I talked to a lot of them; dads with very flexible schedules, power-broker dads, weekend dads, hands-on dads, tough-love dads, and workaholic, never-around dads.