Dads who have taken over the kitchen

It is no longer that uncommon for dad to serve as the main cook in the family. Some fathers cook through the week simply because they love it. Others do it because they want to share the household chores with their spouses. Then there are the stay-home dads, who do it as part of their work at home.

Mrs Sarojini Padmanathan, a council member from Families For Life, says the growing number of cooking shows on television with male celebrity chefs showing off their culinary skill may have a role to play in changing the perception that cooking is meant only for women.

"In fact, anyone who has a keen interest can now learn how to cook," she says. Families For Life is a non-profit organisation that promotes resilient families.

Indeed, the ability to cook is not a gendered gift, says National University of Singapore sociologist Paulin Straughan. "If you think about it, many famous chefs are men. That we delegate domestic cooking to females is but an artificial division of domestic labour that was perceived as being functional when wives stayed home and husbands were sole breadwinners," she says.

But now that the dual-income family is the norm, it is important to move away from traditional gender expectations, she says, and it is great when dads take over the kitchen because they become a good role model for the kids.

The mother of two, aged 22 and 18, adds: "My sons love it when my husband does mac-n-cheese, and grills steaks and burgers. They see it as a norm that men can cook and they too, have started to experiment."

Grocery shopping during his lunch break

There is a neat division of labour in aviation engineer Ritchie Low's family.

He says he likes cooking and cleaning. His wife, teacher Maybelline Tan, says: "I focus on spending time with our two kids." Their daughter Francesca is two and son Aldrich is five months old.

Madam Tan, 32, finds that the arrangement "helps a lot in terms of everyone's sanity". Mr Low, 33, says she sometimes chips in with the household chores.

The family shuttles between two homes. Fridays to Sundays are spent in their own home, a four-room HDB flat in Punggol, and they are at Madam Tan's parents' home the rest of the week.

Her parents, who own a shop selling toiletries and medicinal goods, take care of Aldrich, who is still totally breastfed, and Francesca is in childcare.

Mr Low cooks three to five days a week, at both homes. He says: "My mum taught me how to cook eggs, noodles, chicken and fish during my secondary school days. It's a joy to cook for my family. It's also a chance to bond with my kids.

"I plan my time at the start of the day. The chores include cleaning the table, vacuuming and mopping the floor, washing the toilets, doing the laundry. I find it enjoyable because I'm keeping my house clean and it's good hygiene. My mum trained me to do household chores when I was young."

He squeezes in a spot of grocery shopping twice a week during his lunch break, storing the fish and meat he buys in a fridge at work. While he likes to cook sesame chicken and shepherd's pie, and try out new recipes, he often cooks separate meals for his daughter, who likes "soft and soup-based food" such as chawanmushi (Japanese egg custard) and noodle soup, he says. He encourages Francesca to widen her palate by adding small pieces of fishball and crabsticks to her tofu soup, for instance, and letting her try a few sips of the hot and sour soup he makes.

Madam Tan says giving her daughter home- cooked food gives her a "better start" healthwise. Francesca ate only homecooked food until she was 18 months old - her parents used to lug around a thermal flask of porridge with pureed vegetables. She eschews junk food and chocolate milk is an occasional treat.

Caring for autistic son

For over a year, Mr Lawrence Ng, 43, cooked and cared for his 10-year-old autistic son when his wife, Madam Jen Chan, 42, was working overseas.

When she came home in October, he handed over the cooking duties to her. But when she starts a new job next month, he will return to the kitchen.

The stay-home dad, who does consultancy work in human resources and weight management, admits he was "sick and tired" of cooking.

His wife had been working in Hong Kong as a special education teacher for 15 months. She will start teaching at the Australian International School next month.

When she was away, he took their son, Kai Herng, to and from Pathlight School, which caters to students with autism and related disorders. Besides cooking, he also did household chores and shopped for groceries.

Working from home, he went to meet clients while his son was at school. He brought Kai to the meetings occasionally. Mr Ng was homeschooling the boy before he joined Pathlight in March this year.

Mr Ng says he cooks easy meals, such as pan-fried salmon, baked chicken, and rice and noodle dishes. His wife prepares "more elaborate" food, such as sushi, chicken rice and pho, a Vietnamese noodle soup.

The family prefers home-cooked meals because "they are healthier and more cost-effective", says Mr Ng. They eat out once a week, after attending church on Sundays.

"Cooking is but a very small facet of being a stay-home dad," says Mr Ng, who blogs about his experiences, which include occasional episodes of "depression and isolation", at stayhomedadandson.blogspot.com

He has been the family's chief cook and the primary caregiver for Kai since 2011, when they were living in Adelaide, Australia. "My wife was feeling depressed at that time, over the challenges of dealing with Kai's autism," says Mr Ng. "I manage him better. It's a big challenge just to get him to do his homework, shower and go to bed."

When the family was in Australia from 2010 to last year, Kai had meltdowns, shouting and throwing things about four times a week for up to an hour each time.

Mr and Mrs Ng introduced him to cooking from a young age. "We wanted to teach him a lifeskill. I taught him to scale a fish when he was five," says Madam Chan.

Mr Ng recalls how Kai fried potato chips under his supervision. "He stood on a stool beside me. He didn't dare drop the chips into the hot oil, where they splashed and sizzled, but he told me when they turned golden brown."

Today, Kai can cook dishes such as char siew (barbecued pork), chicken wings and pasta. At least Mr Ng will have a little helper in the kitchen when he puts on his apron again soon.

He designed own open-plan kitchen

Mr Abdul Shukor Ramli started cooking for his family when he was a teenager. The 44-year-old food lover says: "My mother would tell me to cook whenever she felt too tired. I didn't mind because I enjoyed it."

His mother was a housewife, and his father, a sailor, was often away. He has an elder sister and two younger brothers.

In 1992, he started work as an instructor at the Outward Board School and learnt how to cook. "We were often out on expeditions and you had to cook well or you'd be eating instant noodles all the time".

In 1994, he attended a cooking course sponsored by the National Youth Achievement Award where he learnt to whip up a nine-course Chinese dinner that included kailan cooked in oyster sauce, fish and vegetable soup. He also watched culinary shows and learnt how to cook steak and simple Indian curries.

After he got married in 1998, he naturally became the one to cook for the family.

His wife, Monaliza Amid, 42, a freelance copywriter and translator, admits she is an average cook. The couple have two daughters aged 14 and seven. She says: "When he is at home, he prefers to cook, and my daughters and I always look forward to it." She does the washing up. "It's team work," she says.

Mr Shukor, who now runs an outdoor adventure company, cooks dinner for the family three to four times a week when he is not travelling for work.

He finds cooking therapeutic and relaxing. "I enjoy building things and for me, cooking is a way of building things up from raw materials into something you can eat. I find it very satisfying."

His children sometimes ask him to cook certain dishes but otherwise, he does not plan meals in advance. He goes marketing with his wife at the wet market on weekends. He buys whatever appeals to his tastebuds, which veer towards spicy and sweet, and a little sour.

Home-cooked dinners are simple, consisting of one or two Malay dishes. A favourite of his daughters is an Indonesian sweet, sour and spicy soup.

Once every two months, he hosts dinners for friends and relatives. He then cooks more elaborate dishes such as chilli or black pepper crab, or sup tulang (mutton bones cooked in a red spicy stew until the marrow inside gets soft). But he says he tries not to overdo the "salt and fatty stuff".

He loves his kitchen space so much that he created his own design for his five-room HDB flat six years ago. It comes with an island, a central countertop and a workspace consisting of a stove and chopping board.

Although he prefers to cook alone, with rock music blasting in the background, he opted for an open-plan kitchen and living area so that he can socialise with his guests while cooking.

He welcomes his children into the kitchen. He says: "I'd like them to learn to cook. Cooking is a life skill and it's part of being an independent person."

Cooking also gives him the opportunity to teach his daughters about patience (waiting for a dish to be ready) and cleanliness (keeping the kitchen clean).

His elder daughter, Nadia, can cook a few dishes now, he says with pride.

He does not think that cooking should be the responsibility of a wife. "Whoever enjoys it should do it," he adds.

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This article was first published on Dec 14, 2014.
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