HC: If there can be housewives, there can be house husbands
K.Kaushik@timesofindia.com 25.09.2026
Madurai: Madras high court endorsed Thursday the idea of “house husbands” as a way to ease pressures on career-oriented women, saying “homemaker” is gender-neutral and such a shift could help preserve marriages. “If there can be housewives, there can be house husbands also. Let this become a new normal, as it would help preserve the institution of marriage and family,” a bench of Justice GR Swaminathan and Justice MD Sumathi said Thursday while dissolving a doctor-couple’s marriage by mutual consent.
“Unlike the modern western societies, in Bharathiya culture, it is the family and not the individual which is the foundational unit,” the bench said. The judges said traditionally, husbands were responsible for financial resources while wives handled domestic responsibilities, and both roles deserved equal respect.
But women had increasingly become career-oriented over the past half-century, they said. “We note that this is taking a toll in many relationships. Marriage is not proving to be a win win proposition for career women,” the bench said. It added that some women viewed marriage as an impediment to their careers and chose to remain unmarried, suggesting that husbands opting to become homemakers could “probably” help remedy the situation. “House wives are not ‘little women’,” it said, referring to Louisa May Alcott’s novel and her line, “I would rather be a free spinster and paddle my own canoe.”
