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I’m half of a very traditional, mother-does-most-everything-around the home marriage. I recently tabled my career because I wanted to stay at home and do the mommy-freelancing-volunteer thing. My husband, meanwhile toils away at the office working hard to support us. I do the lion’s share of cooking, cleaning, taking care of our son. I’m lucky that we were able to make such a decision, and now I see being a mom as my main job, with everything else that I’m supposed to get done as second fiddle. And that’s ok. I expected nothing less when I left the working world.
That’s why I was intrigued by the recent New York Times article about the “equally shared parenting” movement. For me, this concept is totally out of whack. The notion that my husband and I would make lists, and charts and color code our life seems absurd. It would never work for us. And it isn’t the arrangement of 99% of the people I know. While I’m not convinced that social norms have dictated the fact that I do more laundry and dishes, I can say that leaving my job was a lot easier since the majority of my friends don’t work. We’re all living the SAHM life together.
But what about those who sign up for the equal parenting thing? Admittedly, even though I know it wouldn’t work in my household, when I read about those families for whom this concept works I got a little twinge of jealousy. I can’t imagine having my husband always being on the hook for doing the “whites” or making playdates.
Although the mantra of equal parenting is out of whack for me, I like that those involved in the concept realize this and admit that it’s not for everyone. I admire that one of the movements’ founders tries to find ways to redesign our inflexible and antiquated workplaces. However, I see the coverage and resulting discussion about it as just another way to stir up the mommy wars pot and make mothers (and fathers) continually question and fear the decisions they make about the difficult choice between balancing career and family.
The media is constantly drawing our attention to the perils of putting family before career. You never read about stay-at-home mom success stories. We only hear about the stay-at-home mom who sacrifices everything to raise her kids only to be left “vulnerable,” and in financial distress.
One of the moms in the article even admitted her fears, stating:
I was scared that if we had kids, I would be left home with the cooking, the cleaning and the children.
It makes stay-at-home motherhood seem like a wasteland of dirty laundry and hellion kids. I’m not saying being a full-time mom isn’t scary. It’s weird to think that my well-earned master’s degree is now being used to teach my son to count to 20. But six months into life as a volunteering-freelancing mommy I have no fear.
I think if equally shared parenting works for you, great. But I would hate to see people using the concept as a Band-Aid for their fears about full-time mommyhood. To those moms out there who are making excel spreadsheets about who will do the laundry next Tuesday when all you really want to be doing is reading your kid a book on the couch in the middle of the afternoon: don’t be scared. Delete the color-coded chart, and if you’re lucky enough, try your hand at being a mom in the traditional sense. It’s a whole lot better than the media portrays it to be.
Any equal parenting parents out there who think I’m out of whack?
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 1:24 am and is filed under Uncategorized, career, moms in the news.
Tags: equal parenting, equally shared parenting, Lisa Belkin
June 19th, 2008 at 3:51 am
Thank you for posting this side of the issue. I’ve been married for 15 years now. For the majority of that marriage my husband and I have had very traditional roles. This is not because of any chauvinism on his part or because I’m not standing up for myself. That division was the result of us looking at all the things that needed to happen to make our lives run the way that we wanted, then we divided up the pile according to who was best equipped to manage a particular task. When my husband left his corporate job so that he could work from home, we had to reconsider the division of labor. I started picking up some of the administrative tasks on his business, he started picking up some of the jobs around the house.
The real key is that none of it has ever been his work and my work. All of it is our work, and we decide together which pair of hands needs to get it done.
June 19th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Sandra - i think you hit the nail on the head when you said this
“All of it is our work, and we decide together which pair of hands needs to get it done.”
Every family and household has work that has to be done. As long as it gets done to everyone’s satisfaction and the family is happy - the method in which it gets done does not really matter!
i like the idea of a chart and schedules to get things done, but i know i wouldnt stick to it all the time or take the time to MAKE the schedule. if someone else handed it to me and said ‘here are the rules, follow them’ then maybe. but i have enough to worry about with 1 child and two full time working parents!
btw, am i weird that i seriously do not know anyone that stays home? i was so isolated when i was home for maternity leave with my son because i didnt have any friends who were home, or that have kids, actually… i think it would have been harder to go back to work if all my friends were home too!
June 19th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Sara,
Hi! I appreciate your point of view and completely respect it. But I’d love the opportunity (again and again) to clear up the misconception that ESP is about spreadsheets, color-coded charts, tallies, exact 50/50 expectations, onerous discussions or scorekeeping. It just isn’t.
Thirdpath.org may advocate couples sitting down and outlining their work and childcare options using a chart initially. But it really stops there (and we never actually did this).
Anyway, you are absolutely right that I don’t advocate ESP for all couples. My passion is to make equal sharing an option that couples can discuss and consider and work toward IF they feel it is right for them.
For lots more information about ESP - both the benefits and challenges - please stop by our website (www.equallysharedparenting.com)
-Amy (of the Vachons featured in the NY Times article)
June 19th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Sara, so glad you expressed this side of SAHM-hood. You’re so right: you never hear SAHM “success stories”. Being a SAHM–and thus taking on most if not all of the household management/childcare work–is very difficult, but I get tired of always reading about it in the worst possible light, i.e., a waste of brain-power, pure drudgery, thankless, etc. Sure, it feels like that sometimes, but that kind of perspective also insults those of us who have chosen to do it and are enjoying its own unique rewards. I, like you, really can’t imagine the 50/50 model, but that doesn’t mean my family is suffering or that I’m unhappy. Tired, overwhelmed at times, frazzled quite a bit, yes–but not unhappy. In fact, a lot happier than many working moms I know who feel guilty and stressed about only seeing their kids for 2 hours a day!
June 20th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
My partner and I “co-parent” — and I thought I made that term up! No, it isn’t easy, and yes, I do end of still in some mommy-roles (nursing, grooming, finding things), but it’s worth it to me as a WOHM that is also a full-time mom to have a full-time dad on the hook, too. No spreadsheets required.
June 21st, 2008 at 6:37 am
Me and Hubby both work and have a wonderful beautiful daughter that’s about to turn three. The way we handle house work is very simple if your home and the baby’s napping or other wise occupied and you see something that needs done do it. Its a very simple method that takes no charts and becomes second nature.
June 21st, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Our household is so casual, we could never live by lists or spreadsheets. We just do what needs to be done. Admittedly, I “see” what needs to be done more often than my husband does.
Schedules and lists don’t work for us, but my husband does pitch in. He’s a terrific cook (much better than I am) and often cleans the kitchen after dinner. Laundry? Forget about it. One time, being nice, he washed everything in our laundry hamper. Most of it was my work clothes that I’d typically hang up right out of the dryer. I wanted to cry when I saw them lying on a heap, completely wrinkeled. So I do the laundry.
We have a good relationship of mutual respect, but I think it would take too much energy for us to figure out what exactly equal would mean.
June 21st, 2008 at 5:24 pm
I believe I became a SAHM partly out of fear of the juggle required to do it all (the other part was the desire to be with my infant). If a one-year maternity leave, good part-time options, and equity on the homefront were available to me, I would’ve made some different choices. I’d like to see our society get to the point where our choices in either direction are based on preference rather than fear.
The descriptions of equally shared parenting that I’ve seen have been very off-putting — spreadsheets, color-coded charts, and endless discussions about who does what. It sounds like it would be hard to avoid scorekeeping, and I can’t see many people voluntarily signing up for such a system.
Rather than trying to divide things so that each person is doing 50% of the cooking, laundry, etc., it seems to me it would work best when each partner has full responsibility for different areas — one cooks dinner, while the other is responsible for laundry, for instance.
The tough part for any woman who isn’t in an equal parenting situation is how do you persuade your husband to take on more of the housework and childcare? My husband cooks dinner every night, but he chose to start doing it on his own — if I had “assigned” it to him or had long discussions to convince him to do it, it would never have worked.
June 21st, 2008 at 9:51 pm
If I created a spreadsheet of chores and responsibilities for my husband and me, I’d add lots of color and maybe some cool graphics - because after about a week it would just be a piece of art. My husband means well, but… Nope. Wouldn’t work.
I work full time right now, but in January I’ll become a SAHM (yikes!). We already have a sort of informal plan in which I take care of the cooking, cleaning, good portion of the child care and he handles the mowing, the garbage, the house maintenance, the cars… It’s traditional (yawn), but it works for us.
I agree that SAHMs don’t get enough credit in society, and it’s not something I believe will change any time soon (uh oh, am I getting cynical?). Like Sara, I’m going into it expecting my role as mother to be top priority. My own mother gave me two pieces of advice. One, know and accept that being a SAHM is largely a thankless job and, two, maintain adult friendships or you’ll go bonkers. I’m a little nervous about the latter; unlike Sara, most of my friends work, so I’ll have to do something about that!
Great post. Great topic. Thanks.
June 21st, 2008 at 11:12 pm
I don’t know what equal parenting means to some people, but I personally believe it has nothing to do with color coding and spreadsheets. In my household I cook, clean, and take care of the children, but I also work full time. Which simply means if Cameron needs a bath and Daddy has a minute or two, Daddy can bathe Cameron. If Mommy needs to go to the store but there is a load of clothes that needs to be put in the dryer, Daddy puts the load in the dryer. If Daddy is reading Cassidy a bedtime story, Mommy can tuck Cameron in. I just don’t get this calamity of ideas society wants to put in our heads…do you think I have time to sit there and make a chart when one child needs a diaper change and the other can’t find her shoe, NO! I try to keep the weight off my husband, but my husband tries to keep the weight off me…(Hello it is called support) our children are not burdens and let’s be honest here…assigning one spouse to do a “task”, doesn’t that sound a little demeaning? Equal parenting in my household doesn’t always mean a lighter load, but it does mean a smoother course…without the charts.
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Amy, thanks for clearing up the misconceptions. Sometimes it’s hard to digest everything you read in a magazine article!
June 23rd, 2008 at 2:22 pm
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June 23rd, 2008 at 3:46 pm
I’ll cop to the fear. I work because I’m afraid of the economy. Its true that my family could probably swing it if I didn’t work. But that work, even after child care, puts over $1800 net in the bank. To me, that is solid money and is a good chunk of savings. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to do many fun things that are worth it to me. We don’t live a very extravagant lifestyle either.
It helps that my husband really does do about half the work and that with the money, we were able to hire someone to clean, which neither of us likes. Its probably a 55/45 split…seriously we are that close. that said, I’m not sure the idea of a list or “scorekeeping” is so terrible if you are the kind of people who respond to that. We don’t do it, but I would be fine with it as a reminder.
If he left me with all the responsibility for the afterwork care for our daughter he’d miss out and I’d have tried to find part time work or quit…not a doubt.
It has to work for both of you. Good luck everyone.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:13 am
Hey Sara, thanks for your heartfelt post.
It was actually the power of what my mother did staying home and raising 5 children that helped me “invent” shared care.
I knew I wanted my children to have the same experience I had had growing up - someone whose job was to really prioritize the family needs. I guess that’s why I looked for someone like Jeff (he cooked a 3 course meal without opening a cook book on our second date!)
Interestingly enough, Jeff and I would both tell you that parenting young children can sometimes feel like the harder job. And of course now that my kids are older, I look back nostalgically, and get all the hand holding I can with my 11 and 17 year old children.
So … I hope it’s been cleared up, ThirdPath (www.thirdpath.org) is less about 50-50 parenting, and more about supporting each couple to find the right balance for them.
And if there is one bias we add to the mix, it’s the importance of having no regrets. As one dad wrote in a ThirdPath email update, “If you are feeling conflicted about your work family balance, always err on spending more time with family.”
July 23rd, 2008 at 4:19 pm
I could relate to this post in a round about way. Although I don’t have two parents to equally share duties with, I can relate to the pressures of society labeling thing (SAHM’s, as well as single mothers) as being a certain way and making you feel like you’ve been damned.
I know I’ve only heard bad statistics about being a single mother. Children of single parent homes have more behavioral and learning problems. Children of single parent homes, in short, are ultimately less productive then those coming from America’s ideal family unit.
I have finally gotten to a point where I refuse to accept any of these generalizations as fact. Family life is what you make it. Your future is in your hands, and no statistic or social norm can tell you otherwise. Thank you for this post, is was very informative!