The first PaPaBlog in Armenia tells about caring fathers

About a year ago, journalist Grigor Harutyunyan created the first father’s blog in Armenia – PaPaBlog, through which he tells about the daily life of father and son, gives advice on how to take care of the child, and distributes various publications about parenting. The blog is still only on the Instagram social site and has not been moved to other platforms simply because of lack of time, journalistic work is full, says Grigor Harutyunyan in a conversation with WomenNet.am. He says that with his blog he tries to oppose the biased opinion that fathers do not participate in the education and care of children.

– The blog will be one year old in July, there are still not many followers – 1000-1500. It is noteworthy that the main audience is women, but I see a trend that recently fathers have also started to take an active interest and join.

– Perhaps, however, this is due to the fact that men in Armenia still take very little part in child care…

– I don’t think so, because in reality men participate, one a lot, the other less… Simply, our problem is that our fathers do not show their participation in public, it’s a problem of complexes caused by stereotypes… Fathers are traditionally always more reserved lovers, therefore their emotions they don’t express it much, they don’t talk about it and they don’t see it much in their surroundings or even more so in the media. Maybe they avoid expressing their love so that the children don’t turn their backs, or they are afraid of what the people around them will say, I don’t know. I think that’s why there are so few loving dads out there, and I strongly believe that the number of dads who take care of their children is actually a lot…

– Your baby will soon be three years old and, as far as I understand, you have done everything related to his care: not sleeping at night, changing diapers, taking him for a walk, etc.

– Yes, I didn’t just breastfeed (laughs – ed.). As long as time allowed me, I surely tried to share all the worries related to the child as much as possible.

I took a leave and took care of my child for a month, while my wife went abroad for training courses. We live with my parents, but I haven’t seen any problems from them. My wife regularly goes on various business trips, sometimes my son stays only with me for days, and I consider it a completely natural process…

By the way

According to the report “Men and Gender Equality in Armenia” conducted by the United Nations Population Fund in 2015-2016, about 12% of men and 10% of women surveyed in Armenia stated that they organize child care together, 57% of women surveyed % and 2% of men said they do it alone.

6% of men said that they change the baby’s diapers and clothes one by one, 4% of women said something similar. 0.6% of men said that they do it alone, 45% of women.

7% of men said that they bathe the child together, 4% of women said something similar. 1% of men and 51% of women said they mostly do it alone.

Full text in Armenian