He stares at his three-year-old son, Chris, who has been bawling for quite some time now. He tips his head as he examines his youngest son from head to toe, and his forehead scrunches up as he notices that one of Chris’s arms is noticeably longer than the other. Unsure of the cause of his son’s misery, he picks up the phone and calls his personal 911, his wife.

“I think Chris might’ve broken his arm. You have to come home,” says Craig Thunem, who is responsible for watching the kids while his wife is at work. It’s the middle of the day, but the protective mother rushes home from working at Macy’s to find poor Chris with a dislocated arm and tears streaming down his face. Patty Thunem turns to her husband and glares.

“You think he broke his arm?” asks Patty sarcastically as she rushes Chris to the emergency room.

“I didn’t realize he had his arm broken,” says Craig—who has two sons and two daughters—as he remembers the event that happened sixteen years ago. “I had overlooked or missed it…she noticed something that I missed.”

Craig and Patty are the parents of Jackie Thunem, an [X]Press Magazine staff writer. Men are often labeled as insensitive and inattentive to detail, two reasons people often frown at the idea of having a father who stays home and a mother who works. “I don’t think men have the built-in maternal instinct,” says Patty as she shakes her head.

In the 1950s, for better or worse, women’s roles were defined more clearly. Girls were expected to grow into housewives and mothers; they were responsible for cooking the meals, doing the chores and raising the screaming babies. Pop culture of the era only reinforced this set-in-stone regressive mentality.

In the new millennium, the roles of women have become more diverse. Many women have challenged the traditional norm of being a stay-at-home wife by getting a job. Some even go the extra mile and reverse roles with their husband by becoming the sole meal ticket in the house.

“[Men] were raised to be the breadwinner, but that was a generation where you can get by with one income,” Craig says.

“I think the trend of women working started because of the need for financial independence,” says Kasturi Ray, an assistant professor of women studies at San Francisco State University. “Jobs are insecure and I think a lot of women think they can’t rely on men to take control and want a say about the money use in the household.”

“My goals are to have a steady income and be able to raise my family comfortably,” says Peili Li, an Academy of Art student and a waitress at the Cheesecake Factory. Li is in a three-year relationship with her boyfriend. As a waitress, she is much more financially independent than her boyfriend, who works an on-call schedule as a caregiver. “I like to be independent and I don’t like to rely on anybody else’s money,” says Li, who has been working ever since she was fifteen years old.

Sarah Newman, a twenty-two-year-old senior at SFSU, has a different philosophy than Patty and the many career-hungry women out there.

After the day she says “I do,” Newman is planning to be a stay-at-home wife. “I like the idea of a housewife,” says Newman. “I guess I’m traditional and I want to be there for my kids when they are growing up.”

Li has a different opinion. “I don’t see why just because I have kids, I have to stay home,” she says. “I’m a free spirit and I don’t like boundaries. Being a full time mom will not satisfy my interest.”

Patty feels the same. She comes from a generation of working women, and it wasn’t unusual for women in her family to be hard-working. When her husband was laid off, however, she was challenged to work full time and be the only source of income for the house.

“It was a very odd thing; a lot of people didn’t understand,” says Patty. “And they said, ‘A man should be working because that’s a man’s job.’”

“I think there is a different type of authority when a man runs the house,” says Ray. “But it all depends on the family’s values.”

Having four young children who needed consistent attention and rides to school, the Thunems didn’t have much time to think of an alternative option. “We lived check to check and we didn’t have a big bank account to fall back to,” says the fifty-four-year-old Patty. Although some family members, such as the uncles and aunts, frowned at the idea of reversing parenting responsibilities in the Thunems’ house, Patty and Craig knew that it was the best decision for their children at the time.

“I never thought that I was the breadwinner,” says Patty. “I always see a family as a unit. As things happen in life, if you have to step up on a plate, then you step up on the plate.”

“I felt it in my heart that [Craig] being there was not a life-changing thing for my children,” Patty goes on, “and I didn’t think it was going to affect them in any negative way.”

Newman, who is now supported by her parents and boyfriend, says she believes mothers should be solid rocks in their children’s lives and that a child’s growth should not be interfered with by a babysitter who will come in and out of the child’s life.

Besides the incident when Chris broke his arm, Patty says Craig has been a wonderful stay-at-home dad. “There are other things he brought to the table like his patience, intelligence and his ability to connect with his children,” says Patty. “I knew he was going to make sure homework was done and I knew having him at home was a safe bet.”

Today the situation of the Thunem family has changed: the four children are grown up and Craig has found a steady job as an elementary school teacher in Daly City. Nonetheless, some things have remained the same.

It is Wednesday night and Patty has just come home from another long and tiring day as a manager at the Estee Lauder cosmetic counter at Macy’s. She sits and tries to relax in her tidy and quiet living room as one of her daughters is busy making her own dinner in the kitchen. Today, Patty is still a working wife and mother.

“I love to work, and I have no plans to not work,” says Patty with a confident and satisfying tone rumbling in her voice.