Changing roles : the new phenomenon of the Maltese house-husbands

Abstract

In a context of social change, different family structures and realities emerge. Socioeconomic changes have set priority the need of women to work in the labour market therefore the role of males as fathers and husbands started to get more discourse. This study is a sociological inquiry examining the new roles of men as care givers and house bearers. These men show an alternative to the traditional Maltese family where this new family structure, the reversal-role family, inverts the traditional parental roles, where husbands-fathers are the housebounds and wives-mothers are the breadwinners. The analysis indicates that the Maltese society is still not accepting the inversion of parental roles, as Malta still persists with a sexist culture. Although men are assigning more time to housekeeping and also to childrearing, it still seems that the family stress the female role as being more suitable and committed to manage the home and the nurturing role.