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Here is an except from Asher’s website that explains her main claim:
“Today women outperform men at school and university. They make a success of their early careers and enter into relationships on their own terms. So it might seem that equality is in the bag. But once they have children, their illusions are swiftly shattered. Becoming a mother is a tremendously rewarding experience, but for all the current talk of shared parenting, women still find themselves bearing primary responsibility for bringing up their children, to the detriment of everything else in their lives.
Fathers, conversely, are dragooned into the role of main earner, becoming semi-detached from their families. Both men and women put up too little resistance to this pressure, shying away from asking what is really best for themselves and their children. The consequences of this enduring inequality in the home reach far beyond individuals and into society as a whole. A radical new approach is needed if we want to raise our children fairly and happily.”
I’d like to share with you some of the points that are made in the book that I hope will be taken on by governments in the world to increase the possibility of shared parenting, for the good of the whole family:
- Have fathers involved in the ante-natal care and also to stay with mother and baby if they are in hospital overnight.
- Give maternity and paternity leave so that both parents can learn to care for their baby and build family bonds, especially in the early life of the child.
- Allow flexible working for both parents. This could be both working part-time, or starting and finishing early the other late so both parents can work and take children to and from school together.
In her final chapter Asher concludes:
“The net results of our strictly gendered roles are plain for all to see: women whose skills go to waste; a large and persistent pay gap between the sexes; men who feel disconnected with their children’s lives; family breakup, and even child poverty. Women are educated to the hilt only to be severely limited in their ability to use their learning if they become mothers. The state loses its return on educational investment. And while we agonise about social breakdown, relationships within families – supposedly society’s bedrock – are put under tremendous pressure by the polarisation of men and women’s lives.”
Do you agree? Should men and women share parenting, or should it be one parents job to nurture the family? Undoubtedly, in our society there are Mums and Dads that want to be the sole stay-at-home parent. Is this because life is easier this way, with distinctive roles? Or is it because that is the way we’ve always imagined it? Do you really believe that having one parent doing most of the nurturing and the other working outside the home is best for the child?
We have had something of a non-traditional family arrangement so far: for the most part I have been the stay-at-home parent, while Andrew is a full-time student. The flexibility of his course has meant that he is not actually outside the home as much as other Dads and that has been really great. (I can’t imagine life with little ones where Dad gets up early for a long day at work – you see him for breakfast and then he’s gone until the little ones’ bedtime. Some working parents must only really see their children at the weekend, while the other feels like they never get a break from them.) Recently, I have worked part-time (which I really enjoyed) while Andrew has looked after the girls, and although he had spent a lot of time with them previously, this sole parenting time I think has really changed his outlook on parenthood, and also created a much tighter relationship with our girls. I really hope that our family can find an equality in parenting going forward, so that all of our lives will be enriched together.
What about you? What would your perfect family life look like?
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I’ll have to add this book to my never-ending list of books-to-read, Helen!
My perfect family life would look an awful lot like our current arrangement–except that a magic fairy would come and take care of all the housework and cooking and we would each have to work less!
For us, we have shifted back and forth over the years in terms of who had more caregiving responsibilities, but I’m definitely the “winner” when all’s said and done. I think it’s been possible because we’ve both been in school and/or professors, so we’ve had flexible schedules. I don’t think it would’ve worked if either of us had had a more rigid job.
I don’t think a fairy will come to help with your cleaning, but maybe you and your husband could work less if flexible working, including reduced hours were more acceptable in society and therefore more people did it, even just an hour a day would make a big difference to people’s lives – and I think would actually make most workers more productive in their time at work.
I really enjoyed reading your review Helen, and am now dying to read the book.
This subject fascinates me as it’s exactly where I’m at, trying to find that balance while keeping my sense of self and own ambitions (and embracing the selfishness rather than seeing it as a negative!!).
I think shared parenting is the way forward and Britain has already made some important leaps in terms of making that happen, ie fathers are now involved and present in much of the pregnancy and childbirth experience (although they still get sent home at night if you’re in hospital, when they’re needed most!), and the recent changes to the way maternity leave can now be shared with the partner. My husband is also entitiled to as much parental leave as I am, employers can’t offer this to women only, and if one of our children is sick we take it in turns to stay home from work.
This being said it takes courage on both parts to make use of these rights as I still don’t think our society embraces the idea of men taking time off to be with their new babies. Also, if my husband does ask for parental leave he’s often asked “what about your wife?”.
The most important lessons we teach our children are the unspoken ones in our homes. If we want a society where our daughters have all the opportunities we want them to have, we need to show them what that looks like, and make that their “normal”.
I can lend you the book if you like :)
I think you are spot on, and the UK is moving towards shared parenting, but in the book Rebecca thinks they maybe aren’t making bold enough progress and that if we really want shared parenting in the UK then we need to, for example, say that some parental leave can only be taken by Dad so that they either take it or lose it, to enable more Dad’s to use their leave without their colleagues or bosses saying stuff like “what about your wife?”. I think a lot of the men in our society have been raised with gender equality, just as the women have – but it’s the actual doing something about it, changing the way things have been done bit, that is difficult. I think our governments policies could really help with enacting that change.
Yes please, I’d love to borrow it!! I have one you may like about the changing face of motherhood over the past three generations?
I think the changes are happening very slowly but surely, and I’m VERY interested to see how the roles of mother and fathers continue to progress over the next few generations. We are headed in the right direction, but I’d agree that progress isn’t particularly bold. I agree that you have to compromise if you want to work part time – I work where I work because it’s flexible and the pay is good, and not because it’s by dream job/career path, or anything to do with what I studied for my degree! Like you however I make the choice because I want to be at least a part time mother.
There is also an attitude towards working parents that they somehow get preferential treatment over colleagues when it comes to time off, not putting in a lot of overtime etc. In reality, I find that I get no preferential treatment and I have to book time off just like anyone else (already this term I’ve missed an Easter concert and a class assembly, because there was no available holiday, and to me that’s fair enough), and have taken work home in the past to ensure I’m pulling my weight. I think it’s easier to change legislation than it is to change attitudes like these. I can only hope that we’ll look back at such attitudes in the same way we look back at women not having the vote and men not being allowed to be present for the birth of their children.
An interesting link for any women in the UK.
First, I don’t think this author is giving child-rearing the same economic value as working. This mindset tends to view people as oil wells, out of whom value can only be extracted. The author states that women’s skills “go to waste” as mothers, which is a pretty narrow view of the skills one acquires in college. I feel like the author ignoring the inherent value that a dedicated child-rearing parent bring to our society and economy. That seems pretty un-equal to me.
Second, is being the same analogous to equality? I am certain that my wife wants equality within our relationship, but equally certain that she doesn’t want to be the same as me. That men and women are different is an inescapable fact, and I feel that the author of the book implies that every mother not adding to the GDP is pathetically pining away under a crushing burden of laundry. I find that somewhat insulting.
Would it be better for men to have paternity leave and share the parenting more? Undoubtedly it would. Is it difficult to measure the impact a stay-at-home parent has on the economy? Of course. I realize that economics is a dismal science, but I’m sure we can bring more creativity to this calculation than Ms. Asher has.
I can’t remember all the statistics now, but most mothers do go back to work these days, mostly part-time work (and we’re not just talking about before a child starts school, but after too) and those mothers, tend to have lower paid jobs than men that don’t reflect the education that they have. When she talks about their skills going to waste, I think this is what she means. Also, for me, although motherhood is very rewarding and should be given larger value in society, working has helped make me a better mother, because I get more time to be me, instead of 24/7 mum. However, although I have a Masters degree in Engineering for the past year I have been a general admin worker/receptionist working for the council.
I don’t think equality means the same, I don’t want the same job as my husband, but I do want us both to share the parenting, both to have time to socialise, both to have the opportunity of work outside the home. I actually don’t think that men and women are as different as most people seem to think.. of course all of us are different from each other, can we really split the whole population in two and say that half would be great at staying at home and looking after the kids and that other half would be great to bring in the money by only looking at one chromosome or by the way they look? When she talks about mothers not adding to the GDP I don’t think she’s implying that they are pathetic for not, she does think parenting is important, but she speaks of the women working in under-qualified jobs and that if the government put shared parenting practices in place then they would benefit too.
I would love to hear your more creative solution to shared parenting.
I don’t disagree with you in that one’s life choices constrain available career paths, but this applies to male parents as well as female. Having a baby (or adopting, or getting a dog for that matter) is a life choice, and many families make it work, indeed are required to make it work due to wage stagnation and education costs that far outstrip inflation. I applaud you for your dedication in earning your Masters degree, and if you are unhappy with your job, you should get started finding another one. There will be a cost to that, however, and no amount of legislation will add more hours to your day.
I don’t think the system my family has settled into would necessarily work for another family, but I can think of no way that involving the government in the raising of my children would help. I’m involved in my children’s lives a great deal more than either of my parents were involved in mine, (both my parents worked, btw, and my mom owns her own business to this day) but in the end the choice came down to my wife, and she chose to stay home. Of course, she is influenced by the culture we live in, but no decision is made in a vacuum.
In the end, we depend on the network of extended family to help with the monumental effort of raising our children. It is difficult and wonderful and we are happy. If there is a crisis for women in our economy, it is lack of community. It still takes a village to raise a child, not just a couple of adults. The measurement we need to get creative about now is personal happiness, and I am certainly not waiting around for the government to regulate that.
We all do make our own choices in life, and they obviously impact the rest of our lives. I don’t know how different things are in the US to the UK, but over here women are given a years maternity leave with a minimum amount of money provided by the government, men are given 2 weeks paternity leave. We can make whatever choice we want, but do you not agree that currently most families would opt for the women to give the first year of care over the father? because that’s just the way it is.. and once that first year of full-time care is given it is the mother that has learnt how to take care of the child – I personally don’t think it is something mothers are born with, I think mothers like fathers love their babies and if they spend all day everyday with that baby for a year they are going to understand more about taking care of the baby and have a stronger bond than a father that is away from home for a significant portion of the day. I just think it would be great if mothers and fathers were given the opportunity to share in their child’s life as the sole carer, because that is a very different experience.
The problem with many educated women finding jobs that match that education is that there aren’t many of those jobs that currently offer part-time of flexible working options, at least here in the UK.. so I could get the job I want, but only see my young girls at the weekend, but I would rather work a crappy job and get to be the sole carer for half the week.. but even better would be a world where people were able to work more flexibly whether they have children or not, and that be the norm. Governments can help with that.
Yeah–flex-time jobs are still pretty hard to come by, I think. When my first two kids were born, I was a public school teacher. After my first was born, another teacher and I cooked up a plan wherein we would share one full-time teaching position. There were seven periods in a day. A full-time teacher taught 6 classes and one planning period. So we came up with a proposal wherein we would each teach 3 periods and have one conference period. And we would split the salary. Neither of us was requesting health benefits because we were both able to be added to our husbands’ plan. We thought we had it all worked out! The school district would actually have come out AHEAD monetarily because they weren’t going to be chipping in on any of our health care benefits.
The school district summarily rejected our proposal, saying, simply, that “job sharing is not done.” :( I kept working full-time, but the other teacher quit. And it was the school’s loss–and the students’, especially–because she was an outstanding teacher.
I can’t believe they wouldn’t let you job-share, that is just crazy!
I think Colin makes a good point about how hard it is for two adults to raise a family without a support network. However, I am not a fan of using the differences between men and women( which IMO are small) to force individuals to make decisions. When my husband and I prescribed to the very polarized gender roles I know that it made both of us miserable. A big part of this was a lack of understanding about the other person’s daily life. The other day for my in a sociology class we discussed how before the industrial revolution men and women typically had to combine their efforts in order to provide for their family, and that they often worked side by side. A lot of our current ideas about the roles of men and women are very artificial.
Completely agree. A support network is greatly needed, and what better place to start than between husband and wife. I kind of wish that we could just forget the labels man and women and just be people – wouldn’t that make life easier?
Yes, Helen. Whenever I’m at church (because frankly, I don’t have to deal much with traditional gender stereotypes anywhere else), and someone starts talking about what “women” or “men” need to do, I always think that while I often don’t agree with the ADVICE, I think it would be just as good–if not better–just to talk about what “parents” need to do. I’m exhausted when I hear that “mothers are primarily responsible for nurturing their children.” Both parents are responsible for that, right?
Would anything be lost by stripping all the gender-specific language out of those articles/talks/discussions about parenting and just say “parents”? I don’t think so . . .
Have you read the story of the parents who are not going to tell anyone whether their child is male or female so that they have no gender stereotyping. I wonder how long that could last? and whether it will work.
I’m jumping in having only read your post & not the comments (yet), but I had a thought on separate roles… for me, juggling work and parenting means that I’m always coming up short in both areas … but that doesn’t mean I need to drop one or the other. I spent time as a stay at home mom and I loved much of it. I spent time as a part-time teacher and at home mom and loved much of it too. By far, the hardest gig for me has been full-time teacher and single parent … an experience which has illuminated for me that the difficulty comes not from me being a mom NOT at home all the time, but me being an adult who only has so much energy, time and brainpower.
Having another adult of either gender in my home to help would be enough. In fact, some friends came to visit last year, and I invited them to live permanently! They declined, since they have a home elsewhere, but boy, it was so nice that weekend. Between the three of us (mostly them!), the floors were swept, tables wiped, food served and kids put to bed. It was great!
I think parents need to share responsibilities & build on their respective strengths. If making a more formal designation within a family helps those family members better focus on the tasks at hand (rearing kids, growing a garden, fixing the water heater), then more power to them. And yes, it is tough when you have two parents both balancing work and home. But it’s tough when you have only one parent balancing work and home. I have friends trying to live on one income & I imagine they experience just as much stress, even if it comes from elsewhere.
But I get really frightened when people suggest that what works for their family MUST work for mine!
p.s. I love the idea of expanding paternity leave. I think it validates the need for dads to be involved right from the start.