"It doesn't make sense that only women are saying 'How can I combine career and family?'"
I heard Gloria Steinem say this in an interview today. First of all, I would love for her to be the next President. Just saying. She's awesome.
But anyway, this is such a great statement. Today we still don't think of men as responsible for childcare. Yes, there are more men choosing to stay home with the kids, but pay attention to the key word: choosing. For many women, staying home is not a choice. It's a practicality and an assumption; daycare is too expensive, so someone has to stay home, and many families assume that someone will be the mother.
Recently, having a conversation with a soon-to-married friend of mine, he was joking around about his future wife staying home with the kids. I asked him, "Well why don't you take the time off and stay with the kids?" He said "Done! That would be awesome!" He made it sound like a vacation, something exciting. And yes, many people love, love, love, staying home to raise the kids, and I'm not knocking it, but no one who has done it would say it is easy. It is difficult, exhausting, all-day unpaid work. And while men may see this (before they do it) as a vacation from work, a year off, a choice they can make or not, too many women deal with it as work, as an obligation, as a choice they didn't get to make.
My mom often talks about what it was like for her when she and my dad were still married. He helped with us a lot; she often had friends mention how impressed they were with his involvement. But he always expected to be thanked. This shows that he fell into the same trap of thinking that raising the kids was just women's work. She was expected to do it; if he deigned to do it, he should be rewarded. Her obligation, his choice.
I don't mean to say that this makes my dad a bad father or anything like that. This is just a personal example of how these cultural assumptions really affect our personal lives. We have to stop seeing stay-at-home dads as these wonderful, self-sacrificing people who are giving up on a (masculine) career to be a (feminine) stay-at-home parent. Or rather, we should start seeing all stay-at-home moms as the wonderful, self-sacrificing people who are giving up on a career to do very real work at home with their children. All stay-at-home parents are sacrificing a portion of their lives for their children, and they all deserve equal credit.
Penises don't make men better parents; they shouldn't get them more praise either.
Let's also remember, especially in these economically uncertain times, that time out of work makes any person--male or female--less hirable in the future. Right now, people who have not been employed for any reason are finding the job search even more difficult than those with no employment gaps. Also, women with children are perceived as less capable on the job because they are more likely than their male partners to use personal time to pick up sick kids from school, take them to doctor's appointments, and stay with them if they have to miss school due to illness. Men with children are perceived as more capable because they are "stable" and have the ol' ball and chain(s) anchoring them to the physical location.
ReplyDeleteYears out of work means years of retirement savings not accrued. Fewer promotions means lower savings rates overall, and smaller contributions to IRA's, 401k's or pensions. For women, who are both likely to outlive their male partners, and more likely to die in poverty than men, having children can have severe long-term economic consequences. I'm all for women staying home to raise their children, but I would much prefer that employers provide paid leave for men AND women, for up to two years. Unfortunately, the U.S. is far behind the developed world on this one. Most women have no paid leave at all, and have to reapply for a job after they figure out childcare (and no wonder many stay home). Of those who have paid leave, most have only six weeks. It's pathetic.
This is a really good article. I read one the other day by a woman whose husband would constantly be praised when he took the kids to the grocery store or the park, but when she did it? Nothing. Random ladies would stop and tell him he was SUCH a good dad, but it's just expected from her.
ReplyDelete