Scrolling on TikTok, I’m greeted in one video with a robotic AI auto voiceover saying “Let’s make my wife a coffee”, as the first 2-seconds show milk jump-cutting to fill a fancy coffee glass before shots of coffee are poured in, swirling through the milky mixture. The man videoing hands the finished coffee over to his wife, who is sitting on the bed, her suspicious face uncomfortably close to the camera lens. She pauses and frowns “what did you do to it?”.
I scroll down, still on the hashtag #healthyrelationship, and the next video shows a father making his bed before waking up his toddler. “I’ve got up with our daughter 90% of mornings since she was born and that’s what works for us, quite literally the least I can do is get up early and party with our girl… plus I love knowing that mama gets the extra sleeps she deserves”. I like this video automatically, and save it for the weekly round up of positive, silly and moving TikTok content that I share each Friday on my Instagram stories. But then I pause, and un-save it.
TikTok content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Out of curiosity, I wonder if there’s a TikTok corner dedicated to fatherhood and decide to look it up. Streams of videos showing touching moments between fathers and their kids are served to me, but I notice a slightly different type of content: Good Guy Demonstrates Basic Kindness To Wife And Goes Viral For It. There’s something worth exploring here.
Over the past five years, the conversation around masculinity, gender roles and accountability has become far less of a ‘gender studies degree topic’ and more of a cultural dialogue. Instead of reminding women they can “have it all” – a 40 hour a week job, do the majority of the domestic household labour, be the emotional regulator for their entire family, have a side hustle, friendships and hobbies, and look good – mainstream discourse has began to note that having it all is quite literally a batshit, and impossible, plot of a movie you’d actually never want to be in.
It’s fair to say that “Do you! But also! Do everything else for everyone!” doesn’t work. Mothers live under a compounding burden of lack of parental rights and gender inequality, and you can’t reframe-your-mindset or make-better-decisions yourself out of that structural inequality, but having a partner, community or support system around you that share the burden of the every day makes a hell of a difference. So, it’s understandable that we’ve seen more and more women in heterosexual relationships speaking out about the gnawing stress of “kin keeping” AKA the invisible work women do that often goes without credit; from remembering and organising gifts for the wider family networks birthdays and creating the magic of Christmas, to booking appointments, cleaning, creating a cosy, comfortable home and reminding family members of tasks.
A few of these emotional admissions went big time viral on TikTok, where the hashtag #kinkeeping has 13.4 million views and, in response, there’s been an increase in content of men demonstrating how they are trying to “step up” in terms of domestic labour, thoughtful gestures and caring for their kids (and sometimes, but rarely, their own emotional literacy and development).
Some of these videos are considered: men share, candidly, their personal realisation that they were socialised into a gender role that was damaging their relationship and their family dynamic and how they’re trying to grow, but most are just, like, making their wife a cup of coffee or showing them waking up before their wife and framing it as a selfless sacrifice.