Equally Shared Parenting
21st Century couples working hard to keep home; kid duties evenly split.
Call it a Mr. Mom backlash. For couples eschewing stereotypical division of household duties, sharing responsibility isn't about role reversal; it's about role sharing and thinking like teammates or co-pilots instead of gender-bending pioneers.
The New York Times Magazine's cover story this coming Sunday (already available online) profiles several families where designated "mom" and "dad" duties don't exist, at least not as society generally defines them.
In the Vachon household, for example, parents Marc and Amy both work jobs with flexibility so that childcare and housework is equally divided. The parent whose day it is at home with the kids cooks the evening meal. When Amy felt she was handling a greater share of the laundry, they set up a system: he washes darks, she washes lights.
While the creation of systems and schedules to enable equality seems to take a good amount of work, the goal is to save on problem-solving at a later date would either partner become discontent with his/her roles at home and in the marriage. The Vachons set up a web site, equallysharedparenting.com, for those interested in learning more about "optimizing life" by "scaling back on career," which is just one of the hurdles they've willingly jumped for their gender-equal, "ESP" lifestyle.
Amy voiced a personal challenge that I think many women, and certainly mothers, can relate to: not acting like the director of the household, and instead letting go and trusting Marc to do stereotypically mother tasks, like planning birthday parties or making Halloween costumes.
Whether nature or nurture is responsible for Amy's urge to act as "CEO of the house," ESP and same-sex couples' abilities to take on mom, dad, wife and husband duties equally (and willingly) certainly score one for the nurture team.
Discussion
For many parents, the workplace is set up in a way that makes it hard to do equal parenting. A family may find that they need at least one person working full-time and following a traditional career path to make ends meet. In my opinion, this is one of the biggest barriers to parents sharing child care equally.
The other big barrier is that more women want to put parenting above career then men. This goes beyond wanting to make sure he does it "right" as often happens. Women are more likely to just not want to leave their baby. So when the world makes it hard to have two well-paid, interesting, flexible, part-time jobs with telecommuting, women are more likely to be the ones who end up doing the parenting.
I can relate to what Amy pointed out about women wanting to be 'directors of the household' I know I sometimes get bothered when my boyfriend does things around the apartment that I usually do for us. I have in my mind that I'm supposed to take care of certain things as a woman around the house and he has his areas as well. I know he sometimes gets a little flustered too when I try to do something "handy". But I do believe that in the end we have a pretty balanced and equal division of what we do around the apartment.
It's great that they are proving ESP works. It helps to put down the stereotypical nuclear family idea that is still prevalent in society. I am single, so I can't say I have any personal experience in this area, but when the time comes, I definitely want to have an equal partnership with my spouse.
Funny, without realizing the Times article was coming out I posted recently about how my husband and I share responsibilities:
http://www.hippiedippiebebe.com/attachment-parenting/marriage-sharing-re...
I believe we've stumbled upon some very important principles to sharing duties that go beyond checklists and schedules and get to a way of approaching every day life that simply leads to a sense of excess rather than need, similar to the Vachons sense of "optimizing life" but with a bit of a twist. In any case it helps that I have a generous husband who has no qualms about crossing "gender barriers!" Check out my site for our "two little secrets" to add to your bag of tricks!