2) Happy Families

So here we were with our family again. Claudia and Lauren had grown so much since we had last seen them, just as kids are prone to do. They were so full of energy and I got tired just looking at them. We were able to go to the end of year functions at their schools and enjoyed that a lot. After all this was one of the main reasons for us to come and live in Australia, to be near our family and to be involved in their lives.

Claudia was going into her third year of school and seemed very bright to me. (Maybe I am just a tiny bit prejudiced) Her reading was excellent, she could read anything without any help at all, her spelling was not so hot. I thought that maybe she is just taking after me in that but she has now overcome that problem and spells as well as any other child her of age. We went to her end of term concert that was held in the hall of another school in Berowra, as the Cowan school is too small to have a hall of their own. I think every child in the school was included in the concert and they amused us all and made their parents very proud of them. It was obvious that the influence of America had crept into the Australian education system as the children “graduated” at the end of the year and were presented with certificates. No one failed, just some passed better than others. But the pupils all seemed bright, happy and well adjusted so I suppose it is working well.

Lauren was due to go to ‘Big’ school in the New Year and she was certainly ready for it as far as I could tell. She knew her letters and could count; she was (and still is) a sociable and friendly little girl. She had been at Pre School for a year and we went to see the concert that was put on by her little school in Brooklyn. It was good to see the class of four and five year olds singing their little songs and rhymes. These little ones also “graduated”. We were treated to a delicious morning tea and the parents chatted with the teachers and each other. It was here that I met for the first time a phenomena that I suppose is pretty wide spread but I had not met it before – The Home Husband. It was good to see so many Dads were able to attend this function and support their children. I assumed that they were men who worked shift work or on leave but Sian told me that some of them were men who stayed home to look after the children while their wives went out to earn the wage. This was almost unheard of in South Africa. It is obviously the most sensible arrangement when a woman can earn more than her husband but many of these couples seem do it for many of other reasons too. I think it is great that fathers now have the chance to have a closer and more meaningful relationship with their children. I have since, come across men who looked after the children because they can work form home, other men who just could not get suitable work and others who just choose to be the principle carer of the offspring and it is accepted as right and normal here in Australia. I am no longer surprised to see a young man in a supermarket with a little baby strapped to his chest and another in the trolley while he does the family shop but it did make me turn my head when I first came to live in here. Just one of the many little ways I was to find that Australia differed from South Africa.

I now think that in many ways it was South Africa that was different as I realise that some of the strange things I found in our new country are normal throughout the Western World. I had just lived in Africa so long that I did not know what was going on in the rest of the world.