Fathers are the head because they protect and provide—but also, they still are even when they don't.

There’s a common saying: “The man is the head, the woman is the neck,” which essentially means men lead while women support. Though it attempts to patronize women by implying they still matter—after all, the head can’t stand without the neck—it ultimately reinforces a subjugating role, masking inequality as complementarity.

Why men are the head that needs balancing from a woman being the neck is never truly explained—we just know that men lead while women support. And this has been one of the biggest structures of patriarchy: the one in the family. Anthropologists even argue it might have been how patriarchy and women’s subjugation came about in the first place.

Anthropologists found that in early human societies, humans lived as hunters and gatherers with a division of labour—men typically hunted due to their greater physical strength, while women mostly gathered. Because of their reproductive roles, women were often confined to child-rearing, a reality that men eventually exploited.

Over time, the idea of owning private property developed, which led to the the creation of marriage as an institution, allowing men to claim women as part of their property, and thus patriarchy was born, with men positioned as the “head” of the household.

Patriarchy was further solidified and institutionalized by religions that instruct women to submit to men as their head in scriptures, particularly in Christianity. While men were asked to “love their wives as Christ loved the Church”—even though the Church did not exist during Christ’s lifetime—this was seen as the greater task. Loving one’s spouse was and still is considered more difficult than surrendering one's autonomy, simply because it is men who were asked to do it.

Today, men remain the “head of the home” because they were given the roles of protectors and providers—when, in reality, they created a system that restricts women's freedoms, making women dependent on their so-called protection and provision. Even so, women have continued to protect and provide for their families as well

But our society has reduced protection and provision to physical strength and hard labour, so much so that it overlooks the ways in which mothers have protected and provided. Mothers protect their children by consistently showing up for them and even putting their careers on the line to care for them, but it's never considered protection, since she's not a man.

Mothers have always given more time and resources to their children than fathers, both in the past and present. Yet, we rarely view this as provision, just because again, it isn't done by men. Ironically, even with all this taken into account, mothers are still not considered the head of the home—while a man who fails to fulfill his own version of protection and provision is still automatically regarded as the head.

It goes to show that it was never really about protection and provision, but simply about not deeming women fit, just because they are women. Even in households with absent fathers, it is preferred that the succeeding male child, if any, becomes the “man of the house,” rather than allowing a woman to lead. Why, you may ask? Another reason is that women are apparently *too emotional* to lead.

Men, on the other hand, are seen as logical, not emotional beings, qualified to head the household and make decisions, even though men are more likely to exhibit aggression and pride to the point where society tells women to shrink themselves, just to avoid bruising their egos and setting them off. Further proving that it's not truly about emotions either, because we are all capable of being emotional. Some emotions are simply expressed less often across the sexes due to gender socialization, not natural inclination.

Either way, by patriarchy’s standards, women should be able to qualify as the head, yet they are not. But even more importantly, why should there be a head to begin with? People believe marriage cannot work without a head in the relationship, but somehow, these same people can't reasonably explain why that head can’t be a woman. That alone shows how meaningless the idea is. Marriage is a partnership, not a dictatorship.

The titular “head of house” only creates a power imbalance by placing men above women. Men take advantage of this position to abuse women, and to prevent this, we need to dismantle the concept of the “head of house” entirely, not fight for women to hold the title as well, because the power imbalance will still remain.

Many will argue that this is how things have always been, and that it’s worked, but that doesn’t stop us from changing it. After all, there was a time when women had zero autonomy over anything, and we worked to change that rather than accept it as the way things have always been—and will always be. So now, we can work to change the lack of autonomy women have in marriage.

Conclusion

The question “Why can't mothers head the home?” wasn’t about requesting an inherently flawed title built on power dynamics, but rather asking why the title exists at all. True partnerships don’t need rulers; they need mutual respect. The idea of a “head” implies subordinates—and in a home built on love, that shouldn’t exist. The future of family isn’t one where mothers replace fathers at the top, but one where there’s no top at all.