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Expat spouses are generally expected to be women. However, there is a growing trend for women to be employed as expatriate staff, which means an increasing number of accompanying partners are now men.
Various sources estimate that approximately 20% of all accompanying partners are male. Though this figure is a sizeable percentage of all expats, the wide distribution of expats in general can mean that many trailing males know few, if any, of their counterparts. Because the majority of spouse support groups have been set up and run for women, trailing males can find that they do not have a ready made support network when they arrive overseas and consequently have a tougher time establishing themselves and finding a peer group they can identify with. By taking on the role of supporting partner, trailing males are also assuming many of the traditional female roles such as homemaker and childcare. In the US and the UK an increasing number of men have assumed these roles over the years, though they are still something of a novelty and magazines run feature articles about them as they do other unusual news items. A few years ago a parenting magazine in the UK published an article I wrote about my experiences looking after my son while my wife was at work and called it ‘Jobs for the Boys.’ This attitude, that a man looking after the children and keeping house is rather strange, still persists and can add additional stress to what can sometimes be a difficult role-swapping arrangement. Men acting as primary child-carers in their home country, as well as trailing male expats who take on the role, have reported that they sometimes face resistance and resentment from women (other than their partners) and their families to them taking on this function. This can mean that fathers can feel left out from the social groups of mothers in playgrounds, not be invited to coffee mornings and not feel welcome at women dominated Expat Wives Association meetings. Research carried out by university researchers has shown that some women feel that the advancement of equal opportunities for women has left them with few roles they can claim as their own and so resent men assuming one the few that has always been theirs. This resentment has resulted in men in the UK and the US creating their own support groups, playgroups and social events. There are also a number of newsletters and websites dedicated to ‘stay-at-home’ fathers. |
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