Equal care not always preferred way to go

By Betsy Hart

I’m always curious when I find incredibly well educated, credentialed people, very often women, who think that women are really stupid.

So I marveled as I read this week’s New York Times cover story,

“When Mom and Dad Share it All” by Lisa Belkin. The bottom line? Truly evolved married couples split all childcare, household work, and paid work, equally. Period. That might not “work” for every couple, but it should be the high hope of all.

Literally.

Francine Deutsch, a psychology professor at Mount Holyoke College and author of “Halving it All: How Equally Shared Parenting Works,” believes, according to Belkin, that “equality in parenting should be every couple’s goal.” Equality being defined as equal time, sharing of tasks, etc.

I asked a dear friend of mine, a married full-time mom of 5 whose husband is very involved in their family’s life and the chores it takes to keep it going, what she thought of the piece. What about literally, equally “sharing” everything, from paid work to childcare?

Her answer? “Are these people nuts — why would I want to do that?” Among other things, she fully admits she wants to be the one who is most responsible for her home and kids right now.

Apparently, my friend is SO unevolved.

Influence

Then again, responsibility confers influence. Is that really such a bad bargain? Like I said — we are not stupid.

(Oh, did I mention she has an engineering degree from one of America’s foremost engineering schools, and an MBA from one of its top business schools?)

Men are doing more around the home than 30 years ago, but Sampson Lee Blair, who studies the division of work in families, says that what’s amazing (read: horrifying) is that the ratio of work that men and women do when it comes to child care in particular has not changed much in 90 years.

Memo to Belkin, Blair, Deutsch and friends: I’m not suggesting that the division of labor isn’t a source of conflict in many homes, but we women are not stupid, and if we, en masse, actually wanted total and complete “equality” when it comes to dividing household and childcare chores, the situation would change.

No women in history have had the choices that middle and upper class American women do today. Work? Family? Both? High powered job or, far more likely, something that will free us up to take care of kids (i.e., it’s no accident most teachers are women), the choice, in the main, is ours.

Do you hear that? Choice. Gasp. And the vast majority of us who can afford to choose will choose to be the primary caretakers of our homes and families, particularly when our kids are young, and whether or not we work for pay, because that’s how we are wired and that is what we want to do. These things give us incredible satisfaction, whereas men are more wired to derive satisfaction and sense of worth from their paid work. (Does anybody really need a study to back this up, or can we all just offer a collective “duh?”)

I am all for women working for pay, by the way. I think when we women don’t do that at all we may pour too much of ourselves into our family life in a way that isn’t healthy. And I am REALLY all for guys helping out around the house and with the kids. More than anything, it’s a way for a man to be connected to and integrated into his family’s life.

(As a single mom of 4 who does it all the time, I personally think household help would be awesome.)

Figure it out

But mostly, I’m just for people figuring out, or trying to figure out, what works for them, and being allowed to choose what most of us are wired to choose without being condescended to by the elites and told our choices aren’t “enlightened.”

Of course, I can’t help but wonder what the elites would say to our friends across the pond that recently looked at the same issue, but from just a slightly different perspective. Forget the enlightened male. A few weeks ago, The Times (of London) on-line reported on a study focusing on married men. Pay attention, guys. The headline of the piece was directed to you: “If You Want More Sex, Do the Dishes.”

X Betsy Hart hosts the “It Takes a Parent” radio show on WYLL-AM 1160 in Chicago.