DINA and Eddy are an ordinary educated middle-class Indonesian couple in their mid-30s with two young children - except that Dina is doing a PhD in anthropology.
Eddy, who has degrees in religious studies and strategic studies and used to be a journalist for the daily Republika, is now a househusband - and will remain one until 2010.
A typical day starts with Eddy dropping off the children at school and Dina at university. At 8am, he makes his way to the warehouse where he works part-time as a forklift operator. At 4pm, he picks up the children from school and Dina from university and they return home together. In the evening, they cook and do household chores together but Eddy does most of it while Dina studies. Right now he is taking care of everything because she is away in Aceh for a few months, doing fieldwork.
Eddy sees their domestic arrangements as perfectly natural. 'Family members,' he says, 'should take turns to support each other, especially husbands and wives.' Now it is Dina's turn to be supported, because she has the opportunity to further her studies and career.
A good Muslim, Eddy says that everybody has a right to advance himself or herself. In fact, according to Islam, to advance yourself in knowledge and education is more than a right. It is a sacred duty, and an obligation on both men and women.
You may think, well, Eddy comes from a progressive, modern background. You would be wrong. Eddy's parents are just ordinary farmers working on padi fields in Padang, West Sumatra. But in his family it is common for the boys to cook, wash and clean up as part of their training to become independent and self-sufficient adults.
This probably has something to do with the matrilineal traditions of his ethnic group, the Minangkabau, but Eddy sees it more in terms of his own personal family values: If you are part of a family, you put the interests of the family first. So, if an opportunity opens up for any family member, male or female, they should be supported, to advance the family as a whole.
I asked if his arrangements with Dina are unique. 'No, no,' he says. 'We've got many friends who do what we do.'
He is right, of course - the househusband phenomenon is increasingly common, although it is still far from being recognised socially. In Indonesia, as elsewhere in the world, family structures are changing as education and work opportunities increase for women, but also because of economic necessity.
In the Philippines, for example, the number of children in the care of their fathers has hugely increased since the 1980s, as more and more women leave for work in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
For these women, their role as nurturer is changing to that of provider. There is a growing number of men who are, conversely, claiming their right to nurture. These are often not pro-feminists, but simply ordinary blokes who want to be fathers and husbands and support their children and partners at home.
It is a humanising phenomenon, the other side of women claiming their right to a role outside the stereotypical role of wife and mother.
This is the case with Timbo, a classmate of my son Aditya at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. Timbo used his degree in industrial design to work in that field for a few years, but now his wife Jodi has a higher-paid job as a medical doctor. For the last two years, he has been a full-time househusband.
'It's a challenge,' he admits. With two infant children, he had to learn child-rearing while handling the demands of running a household and supporting Jodi, the provider.
He admits he needs to feel valued as a supporter, but he gets that, together with much personal satisfaction, in his role as a care-giver.
Parents and extended family members are also supportive, but socially he feels it is still assumed that men head all households.
He told me of an incident when Jodi's credit card statements were sent to him, when in fact he was the supplementary card-holder, just because he is a Mr, not a Mrs.
The reality is still that whatever gains feminism may have made, most men still think of themselves as meant to work - outside the house.
The stereotypes are so deeply ingrained that even Nena, an ardent feminist friend of mine, has mixed feelings about househusbands.
She tells me that her journalist husband's dream is to stay at home, write, tend to the garden, and not worry about bringing money home, leaving all that to his wife. Nena admits she is not sure she would be happy to shoulder all the responsibilities for keeping the family finances afloat.
And Nena is right. Reconfiguring gender roles is not always easy. Just imagine: If Mrs Hillary Clinton becomes president of the United States, then Bill - once the most powerful man on the planet - will become the most prominent househusband on earth. How will he adjust to supervising the White House menu? I hope he has been watching the popular TV series, Commander In Chief, to pick up a few tips from Rod Callaway, the screen husband of Mackenzie Allen, the 'first female president of the US'.
Well, like it or not, Mr Bill Clinton as househusband will probably make it a bit easier for Eddy and Timbo and all the other househusbands of the world, adored in private but neglected in public. Who would have thought Bill would turn out be a feminist after all?
The writer is the author of Sex, Power And Nation.
