Share and share alike: Equal parenting

by Susan Wagner (Subscribe to Susan Wagner's posts) Jun 13th 2008 11:03AM

Categories: Money & Work, In The News, Childcare, Chores

Admit it: at some point in your life as a parent, you have added up all the things you do for the children and the house and the family. If you are lucky, this accounting has not been part of a larger wrangle about what's fair in your house, but it is more likely that this equity math has come up in a less-than-pleasant discussion with your spouse or partner, one in which you accuse each other of not doing enough, and then list all the things that you do to keep everything rolling.

We all do it; it's inevitable. Or is it?

This weekend's New York Times magazine features an article by Lisa Belkin about couples who have consciously chosen equal parenting -- the completely fair distribution of labor within the home. They divide work and laundry and kid duties 50/50, even if this means working less and scheduling more. And for these parents, equal is successful. But is it realistic?

Statistically, no; in couples where both the husband and wife work full-time, surveys show that the wife does 28 hours of housework and the husband, 16. That's not even close to a 50/50 split. One sociologist found that in families where the wife worked full-time and the husband stayed home, the wife still did the majority of the housework.But laundry and child care aren't the same thing -- are parents sharing kid duties equally? No: "In a family where Mom stays home and Dad goes to work, she spends 15 hours a week caring for children and he spends 2. In families in which both parents are wage earners, Mom's average drops to 11 and Dad's goes up to 3."

So how can parents make things more equal? The couples profiled in the article have done everything from changing jobs to get the best flex schedules to tracking who does what on computer programs. They have hashed out what it means to do the laundry (wash and dry, or also fold and put away?) and how to handle their children (do they have to do the same THINGS with the kids or just spend the same amount of TIME with them?). For these couples, of course, an equal division of all family labor is working just fine.

I'm skeptical, of course; my husband and I both work full-time, and we both bring different things to the table. His job comes with really good health care, for example, while mine comes with a flexible schedule that lets me take the kids to the doctor when they need to go. Is it equal? No, not really. Is it fair? Certainly. Is it working? Most days, yes.

What do you think -- should parenting (and everything associated with it) be split in a perfect 50/50 ratio?

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Comments (8)

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Nicola 6-13-2008 @ 12:02PM

I feel (among my own personal sample of friends anyway) that I stand with the majority of working moms in feeling overworked and underappreciated in the "division" of labour at home. Not only do I work full time, but I also do the entire morning routine (breakfast, pack lunch, household chores, get the boy ready for and off to school) and the entire evening routine (pick up from school, dinner, shower, bedtime stories), not to mention 100% of the indoor housework, shopping, bills etc. My husband does most of the gardening. But, we live in the midwest, so that's really a three or four month a year job! He contends that he has a longer commute (by about 30 minutes) and thus is "tired" at the end of the day. The man doesn't even begin to know the definition of tired. Have I mentioned that he also sleeps in on Saturday and Sunday while I get up with our ever early rising son?

Bet you didn't expect a personal tirade, but this whole topic has been going round and round my exhausted head in recent weeks. I just want to cry, "Its not fair!!!".

Cassandra 6-13-2008 @ 12:11PM

One thing I thought the article explored really well was the various factors (many of them cultural) that make us so naturally accepting of inequality in the home. My husband and I don’t take “equal parenting” as literally as some of the couples profiled in this piece, but we are close to a 50/50 balance. Of course, it took a lot of work and communication at first, but it was well worth the effort for us. Obviously, as Belkin points out, a 50/50 split is not going to work for every couple/family, but *if* you feel there’s a real disbalance in your home and are bothered by the lack of equity, I do think some of her points about why we tend to just accept the unfairness and shoulder the extra work are worth thinking about and discussing.

So many of my girlfriends complain about doing all the housework/childcare, but rarely address these issues and instead accept these disbalances as “reality” or “just the way things are.” I think I am especially sensitive to this because I have a daughter, and my husband and are conscious of how we model gender roles, etc. If she, as an adult, wants equity in her home, I would hate for her to believe her only recourses are complaint and apathy.

Lisa 6-13-2008 @ 1:19PM

It seems that among households where both parents work in my age group (mid-30s), things are split fairly evenly. It tends to be expected that both spouses will do their fair share unless one parent works less (and there seem to be many parents who both work reduced hours or at least keep a very balanced work/family lifestyle). I'm from the Midwest, but even among my friends and family from the east coast and the South, it appears to be the same. Of course, there could be many factors - age, socioeconomic status, education - so it's hard to say what the greatest predictor of a 50/50 split is.

Pavlina 6-13-2008 @ 1:50PM

I couldn't even imagine being married to a man who didn't do his 50%. We both work full time and we take turns at the doctors, the preschool meetings if we must, but we both try and be there for everything. I do most of the cooking (I'm better at it) and HE does most of the cleaning. He cuts the grass, rakes the leaves, and shovels the snow, I clean the floors. I do the shopping. He does the laundry. We take turns bathing and putting the kids to bed. I think it is ridiculous to let men get away with any less. So what if he works full time? So do I (and that goes for ANY mom stay home or other), and if I do half the household duties, by goodness he WILL do the other half.

Pavlina 6-13-2008 @ 2:00PM

Oh, and I forgot to add, I don't clean bathrooms unless DH is away on travel.

Rob O. 6-14-2008 @ 4:09PM

MLW & I have a fairly uncommon arrangement in that we do split up the workload roughly 50/50. The 'roughly' part comes with natural variances that will occur - obviously, there'll be times when one has to work late, run and errand, feels lousy, has out-of-town company drop in, whatever. But we divvy the work up pretty evenly.

I like to joke that she's management and I'm labor - and it sorta pans out that way. She handles almost all of the billpaying and paperwork stuff, whereas I handle nearly all of the chores around the house. I do a fair bit more than half of the cooking, but that's something I enjoy. She does a fair bit more than half of the laundry these days - which is something I do not enjoy.

We split the parenting duties up pretty evenly too - I'm the "get the kiddo up, fed, & ready to go in the morning" guy and she's the "winding the kiddo down at the end of the day and getting him into bed" gal. Works well that way since we're morning and night people, respectively.

I've seen far too many marriages crap out because of the "good ol' boy" redneck mentality that seems to subscribe to the old cliched notions of marriage from black & white TV shows.

My brother and some of my 'buds' have given me crap about being whipped. But, y'know, this isn't 1950. I'm not, for good and bad, my dad. I got married because I wanted a mate and a partner, not some kind of drone. I would never treat my wife as some kind of subserviant grunt. And I don't get treated like some kind of strong-backed but weak-minded doofus like the prototypical TV hubbies.

Anyway, sorry for the rant but not all guys are created alike...

Melina 6-18-2008 @ 11:48AM

I am a young mother (21 years old) to a 6 month old baby. My husband and I got married a year and a half ago. I work 30-35 hours a week and go to school about 20-25 hours a week. My husbands hours vary because he works construction. Some weeks he only works 10 hours, some he works 30. But yet, I am the one that cleans the house, does laundry, takes care of the baby, and so forth. But when I try to talk to my husband and tell him I feel I am doing more of the work, he tells me he feels like HE IS. When, I know hes not. He plays his PS2 and watches TV while Im up doing housework. I don't really know how to get him to help out more.

cassandra 6-24-2008 @ 3:14PM

Melina, I suggest you take a stand. Tell him, in no uncertain terms, that you both need to come to some kind of agreement, set a schedule, etc. Obviously working it out like partners is the ideal way. But if he won't discuss the situation like an adult, then simply stop doing all the work!!! What will happen if you stop washing his dishes, doing his laundry, etc? Either he'll learn, or he'll be wearing an awful lot of dirty underwear. In my opinion, by being the one who always "cleans the house, does laundry, takes care of the baby, and so forth," you are enabling him to not contribute. The longer you let yourself be taken advantage of, the harder it will be to break the cycle.

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