Equally Shared Parenting

Common Sense Collaboration

2009-11-10T21:03:00.005-05:00

"Dads are the ones reporting growing concerns with work-life balance. Most men with a child under the age of one wish they could spend more time with them. And only one in four men now thinks that mothers should be the main carers of children."

This quote from the The Guardian (UK) caught my eye in an article posted this past Sunday called Yes, It's Hard for Working Mums. But Dads Want to Be With Their Children Too. The piece does an excellent job pointing out inequities in the workplace through matter-of-fact statements like: "These dated attitudes towards fathers can't last. Most of the wives (or partners) of fathers with pre-school children are now in work. In the old days employers operated in a 'buy one, get one free' labour market: you employed the man, safe in the knowledge that his wife would be the one doing the night-feeds, running to school to collect sickly children and disappearing from the world of work altogether for a few years."

Then the article follows up with the resulting impact on women: "Mothers were still expected to be the main carer - hence the endurance of phrases such as 'working mother' or 'career woman', which make no apparent sense when applied to men. Small wonder that so many quit."

In conclusion, the author minces no words when proposing the solution: "For women to have more equality at work, we need more equality at home; in this struggle for equality, fathers and feminists are on the same side."

Of course, balanced lives for both parents with equal access to all the joys of adult life is an ideal both genders can embrace. Women may like the label of ESP initially more than men, but I have seen time and again that men get as much, if not more, from this lifestyle.

What could make more sense, and contain more hope, than both genders teaming up to solve this puzzle together?

The Dr. Phil Time Warp

2009-11-05T17:18:00.001-05:00

Now I know that Marc just posted an blog entry on the great trend of including both mothers and fathers in media pieces about parenting. Well, I agree. But some people haven't quite gotten the news. Here's a perfectly awful example of what can happen when we leave fathers out of the discussion: The Dr. Phil Show. In a recent show, this supposedly enlightened advice guru somehow traveled back in time, and dupped a whole studio audience worth of people to do so with him. And he left me so dumbfounded by his choice of show topic and omissions that it has taken me a few weeks to write this blog post - mostly because I needed to find a way to address his behavior in a civil manner.

On Wednesday October 14th, the Dr. Phil Show featured a reprise of a trick he's done before - an audience of stay-at-home mothers on one side of the aisle facing off with an audience of working moms on the other. The first time he tried this ratings gimmick several years ago, he was loudly admonished by mothers everywhere for trying to pit us against each other and create the Mommy Wars that the media so desperately want to make real. And worse yet, whenever this kind of mom-against-mom battle is encouraged, all parents lose - the very real issues that all of us face about the lack of flexible, well-paid and interesting work that would allow everyone to make good family choices, the lack of high quality and affordable childcare, etc.

So here he goes again. "Gee whiz, golly," I can hear the good doctor saying. "I'm only trying to help the two sides see each other's point of view." No...he knows it makes for good ratings. Period.

The part that frosted me the most as I forced myself to watch the judgments fly from his guests was that not once did he (or any guest) mention the Other Parent. Not once in a full 60 minute show did he suggest that a child's father could take part in caring for his own children. Is this 1960 all over again????

We heard from stay at home moms who claimed that their choice, although many days very hard, was the most selfless - all for the good of the kids who should be nurtured and loved 24/7 by their mothers (fathers, apparently, are figureheads). We had working moms who provided stories and statistics about how children flourish when their moms are happy, when they are in good quality childcare, etc. (but the moms juggled it all, apparently). And we saw an emotionally tortured new mom about to return to work from her maternity leave - unable to fathom leaving her baby. The last woman's husband even came to the show (he didn't merit a chair on stage, however), but there wasn't one mention of how he might care for the baby.

All the angst and burden (and joy!) of juggling childraising and work was assumed to be a mothers only issue. All the choices - work, work part-time, work from home, don't work at all - all Mom's.

Gag me with a shovel.

Yes, there are plenty of families (I came from one) with only one parent - be that a mother or a father. These single parents have a hard road to support their children financially, mentally, emotionally, physically. But for families with two parents, well, there are two parents to shoulder the duties - of childraising, of breadwinning, of housework. Mathematically, dear Dr. Phil, the options go far beyond 'mom works and puts the kids in 60+ hours of outside care' or 'mom quits and stays home.'

Until we stop thinking of childraising as a woman's sole responsibility, we're stuck. Until we start to showcase alternatives that free both women and men from culturally imposed roles, we think things are black and white - all or none. And we saddle our husbands with second parent status (proportional to our level of control at home).

The new mom at the end of the show who was bereft at leaving her child to return to work all but admitted that the reason for her anxiety was because she wanted to remain the number one person in her son's life...and because she would just plain miss his little face when she was at work. Understandable. But it was sure ironic that, as she was telling her story, the background flashed to a picture of her son wearing a onsie that said 'It's All About Me.' Her desire to be the center of the child's world is about her - not what is best for her son. If her motives for avoiding outside childcare were child-based instead, she could resolve her anxieties by selecting a loving outside provider - or (gasp) sharing the childcare time with her husband as equals. What a gift to her son this could be!

I'm more than disgusted by Dr. Phil's mom-fight show. Has he not heard that fathers are waking up across the world to the joy of full-on parenting for themselves? Is he not interested in making the world a better, easier place for all parents to lovingly raise children? Whatever choice each family makes, it should be made for the good of everyone - moms, dads, kids. Let's fight for that, not against each other.

Get real, Dr. Phil.

Great to See You, Dad

2009-11-03T21:04:00.006-05:00

As I absorb various news articles and other media pieces on parenting these days, I'm encouraged that the trend is towards including both parents - finally. I'm seeing fewer and fewer articles that leave out fathers, and more and more like this one that focus on the beauty of both parents teaming up for the greater good. It seems increasingly presumed that more dad involvement in childcare is good for both the kids and the marriage.

One such voice of teamwork recently surfaced with the release of a new book called Partnership Parenting by Marsha and Kyle Pruett - a professor of social work and child psychiatrist team, and parenting couple. I haven't read the book yet, but I like what I've heard about it so far. The Pruetts claim that sharing the parenting duties is good for the kids and the parents. They are clear that artificially, or actually, dividing the chores to achieve some arbitrary 50/50 goal of equal tasks completed is silly. And they also speak of the importance of deciding as a team how the parenting "show" should be run.

I couldn't agree more. Just about all of the ESP couples we have interviewed refer to their relationship as a team of equals regardless of how evenly they divide any particular chore. Very few ever claim their primary goal is equal task division (in fact, they aren't focused on chore division much at all) even as they are also clear that the more they can share any domain the closer they come to their ideals.

Much of the discussion so far about the Pruetts' new book seems to focus on the benefits of accepting each parent as he or she is - not expecting fathers to act like mothers or vice versa. Amen to that! The Pruetts are also experts on the research supporting the benefits of shared parenting on the well being of children. Amy and I have intentionally avoided focusing on the facts about ESP's benefits to children since we are not academic researchers, but we firmly believe, as I'm sure is true for most parents, that our choices work for our family. It's great to have a resource for these facts now.

I am looking forward to diving into Partnership Parenting.

ESP Book Spotlight: Remodeling Motherhood

2009-10-31T19:28:00.003-05:00

We have been anticipating a new book called This Is Not How I Thought It Would Be: Remodeling Motherhood to Get the Lives We Want Today by Kristin Maschka for many months. Having had the privilege of reading an advance copy of Kristin's manuscript, we knew it was going to be an empowering and very ESP-centric book. And we're happy to announce that it was released earlier this month.

Remodeling Motherhood is Kristin's own personal story of transforming her marriage from a traditional SAHM/working dad union to an ESP partnership - and how the result has given both her and her husband, David, lives that now feel so right. It is the first book we know of that describes this journey. We've gotten to know Kristin (who is a former president of Mothers & More) through emails over the past year, and she is a solid believer in equally shared parenting who walks the walk . To highlight her terrific book, we sent her a few questions so that you could begin to know her as well. Take it away, Kristin....

1. We love your story because you and David took on a world of gender assumptions about marriage and parenting and re-wrote your own rules instead. What do you think was the hardest 'rule' for each of you to re-write?

I think the hardest to rewrite were the unwritten rules that "Mothers are responsible for and best at family; Fathers are clueless" so that we could share responsibility for family work. We couldn't seem to share the responsibility even though we wanted to. Over time we realized that we struggled because we were also dealing with so many other unwritten rules in other areas - like his job being 60 hours a week, and an assumption that caring for family didn't take any time, and my feeling that my identity was wrapped up in being a "good mother." We had to remodel everything else to get at this universal challenge for couples around truly sharing family responsibilities.

When I asked David, he said that the hardest thing for him was that he didn't understand why I was so unhappy in the role of being at home and not employed. Our experiences were so vastly different when our daughter, Kate, was born - he continued his job and mine stopped - that his view at that time was that what I was doing was less stressful than what he was doing. He felt like it was a gift he was giving to me and our family, me not having to go into the workforce to deal with difficult people and to have the stress of making money and keeping a job . So when I resented him for our situation he was confused and frustrated. In hindsight he says the unwritten rule at work was his assumption that caring for family wasn't really hard work, wasn't as stressful or demanding as employment. So he thought at first, what is wrong with Kristin? He was surprised to learn that other women often have the same reaction, and that made him feel better about us because it wasn't just us or just Kristin struggling with this issue.

2. Since writing This Is Not How I Thought It Would Be, how have you and David continued to stay the course of equality and balanced lives? What has been, or continues to be, the most difficult part for each of you?

We both agree that what continues to be the hardest part is staying on top of changes in our relationship with each other and the way we share the family work week to week and month to month. We still do regular checkups - How are we feeling about our relationship? How are we feeling about how the family work is being handled? And when we face a big change, like we did recently when I took a new job, we try to be proactive about talking about what that means for sharing family responsibilities. Given the recession, I think we are in a situation many families are finding themselves in where the mother is either re-entering or increasing paid work, and the father is facing either a work slow-down or even a layoff. In our case, because we've been working hard on these conversations for years, this has been an easier transition for us than it might be for other couples. But it's still really hard both to make time for those conversations and to have them without blaming each other and pointing fingers.

For me another hard part continues to be fighting back any guilt I have for not spending more time with our daughter, for not picking her up at school every day at 3 pm like my own mother did. Even when she's spending tons of time with her grandparents and with David, I fight this assumption that it's only time with me that really counts because I'm the "mom." David doesn't share the guilt, doesn't get why I feel guilty, and wishes I would just get over it - but I'm the one who's absorbed the assumptions about what a "good mother" does and they don't disappear easily.

3. How do you think that Kate has benefited from your choice to parent her together? Do you think there are any pitfalls for children whose parents make this choice?

Kate has benefitted most by having a richer relationship with her father, and also by becoming aware of subconscious assumptions about mothers and fathers at an early age. Shortly before I finished the book she was watching TV one morning and shouted at me to come and see something. She rewound the TV and showed me a commercial for juice that featured a mother and child and a voiceover about "Motherhood means giving 100 percent." She stopped it and said, "Do you see that, Mommy? They think mommies are the only ones who take care of kids, but that's not true!"

I think the only possible pitfall for children is how stressful it can be for mothers and fathers as individuals and as couples when they face barriers to sharing family and parenting responsibilities, barriers like their jobs or assumptions from family and friends .

4. Do you see this newly-remodeled option for motherhood and fatherhood (what we've termed equally shared parenting) as a true possibility for all parents who desire it? Do you feel the barriers are more personal (such as being able to let go or re-prioritize) or external (such as those involving workplace, laws, childcare options)?

I think it is a true possibility for all parents because I think what we're really aiming for is to share the RESPONSIBILITY, not necessarily to share all the tasks 50/50. There are plenty of reasons couples might not want or be able to share all the family tasks 50/50, but I think with some hard work, and some intentional efforts to give fathers in particular lots of opportunities for practice and to help mothers "let go" sometimes, parents can make lots of progress toward sharing the responsibility.

There are both personal and external barriers to really living our lives as if we truly believed "Mothers and fathers share the responsibility and are equally capable of caring for children and home." That's why I think so many of us find ourselves asking, "Why can't we share the family work even though we want to?" On the personal side, it's really hard to recognize or admit that most of us still harbor subconscious assumptions like "Mothers are responsible for family." It took a crunchy waffle to make me see it. One morning, as my husband and I rushed through the morning routine to get our daughter to preschool, I asked him to make her a waffle. When the wailing started, I returned to the kitchen, picked up the toaster waffle, and promptly scolded my husband. "Of course she won't eat that. It's crunchy from the toaster!" For at least a year, I'd been microwaving the toaster waffles every morning so they would be soft. In that moment, it dawned on me that we did have a problem - and I was part of it. I was the only one who knew crunchy waffles were unacceptable because I was the only one who'd been preparing them. Yet I was blaming David for toasting a toaster waffle!

Subconsciously anyway, I believed "Mothers are responsible for family" so I just did everything and with so much practice, I was better at everything. Kate depended on me. David knew I would do everything and wasn't even sure he knew what "everything" was. And I silently, and sometimes not so silently, resented being responsible for everything. I felt resentment about doing it all, but because I was living up to that "good mother" ideal, I also felt a pleasant feeling of superiority from being better at it.

One of the reasons we still harbor these assumptions personally is that the world around us tends to reinforce them. For example, when in-laws and friends always talk to mom about things like playdates or parenting advice. Or when people refer to fathers as "babysitting" their own kids. Underneath those things is the assumption that mothers are responsible for kids. Another external barrier for us was that my husband was working 60-70 hour weeks when our daughter was born and my proposal to go part-time got turned down. It took us years to reshape our employment in a way that even gave us the time to share the family work and our employment the way we wanted. Because the barriers are both personal and external, I think mothers and fathers make the most progress when they remodel the whole thing together, rather than remodeling being a solo project for the mother.

5. What one (or two or three) thing(s) would you advise new mothers and fathers to think about as they piece together their lives?

Keep in mind that these days fathers are pretty much in the same boat as mothers. They are feeling just as much work-life conflict. In trying to be involved fathers, they face a host of cultural assumptions to the contrary. So change the conversation by stopping the blame game and help each other see the real barriers - both personal and external - keeping you both from the lives you want.

Be proactive and explicit about sharing responsibility for family work. Get a list of all the work it takes to maintain family and home, there's one on my website at http://www.remodelingmotherhood.com/ under Remodeling Tools. Using an objective list to support regular conversations about "who's doing what at home" helps make it less about pointing fingers and more about "What's the best way for us to get all this done well?"

Keep at it. You are pioneers and this remodeling doesn't happen overnight. My husband and I tackled this over a seven year period, and at that point we renewed our wedding vows as a way of celebrating how far we'd come and the realization that our marriage with our daughter was fundamentally a new and different contract that our marriage before she arrived.

6. Finally, what is your hope, as you send your book out into the world?

I hope this book opens up lots of conversations: among mothers with other mothers, among couples at their kitchen tables, and among mothers and fathers with society about what we need to live the lives that are best for ourselves and our families. And I hope it gives mothers and fathers both the understanding and the tools they need to take on their own remodeling projects.

It's Amy again. Isn't she wonderful? I highly recommend Remodeling Motherhood and will be emphatically adding it to our Resources page. Oh, and if you are in the Boston/Worcester area, please join Marc and myself at Kristin's upcoming book event at Tatnuck Booksellers in Westborough, MA on Friday November 13th at 7-9pm. Click here for a description of the event.

Thank you, Kristin, for a fantastic step forward in the global equally shared parenting discussion.

Proof Positive

2009-10-26T18:23:00.003-05:00

Continuing from my last post on the Shriver Report, I'd like to focus on its essay by sociologist Michael Kimmel - a work of pure ESP gold. The essay, entitled Has a Man's World Become a Woman's Nation?, starts with a description of how women's increasing equality in the workplace and at home has led to different reactions from different types of men.

Some men, Kimmel explains, view women's expanding roles as an invasion of their own space and God-given rights. Others, the 'masculinists,' long for a world where men are men and women are women, and focus on the (very small) differences between the genders rather than all the characteristics and abilities that we share. A third subset considers fatherhood to be political; these men speak of fighting bitter custody battles to retain equal rights to their children, and of the effect of a fatherless America on crime. Each of these rather stereotypical male models actually represents only a small population of American men, says Kimmel.

The final type of evolving man that Kimmel describes is the largest sector of all. He is someone who quietly accepts the equality of women and ends up joyfully realizing how evolving gender roles can benefit his life as much as they can benefit his wife's. He supports wage equality, comparable worth, women's candidacies for public office, and dual-career families. To this male subtype, women's equality is just what is fair and it doesn't threaten his value as a man. As Kimmel says, even though we still have a long way to go to get to true equality, "without fanfare or struggle, [these men] drifted into more egalitarian relationships because they love their wives, partners, and children."

The last third of Kimmel's essay is devoted to describing what happens to men (and women and children) in egalitarian relationships. This is the really good stuff! "...when men do share housework as well as child care, the payoff is significant," says Kimmel. Research shows that, in egalitarian relationships:

Children are less likely to be diagnosed with ADHD, less likely to be put on prescription medication, and less likely to see a child psychologist for behavioral problems.
Children have lower rates of absenteeism and higher school achievement scores.
Children get along better with their peers and have more friends if they do housework with their fathers, and they show more positive behaviors. That's because men who take on domestic work teach children cooperation and democratic family values.
Wives are happier, regardless of class/race/ethnicity, reporting the highest levels of marital satisfaction and lowest rates of depression, and are less likely to see therapists or take prescription medication.
Wives are more likely to stay fit.
Husbands are physically healthier - they smoke less, drink less, take recreational drugs less often. They are more likely to stay in shape and visit their doctors for routine screenings. They are less likely to end up in emergency rooms or miss work due to illness.
Husbands are less often diagnosed with depression, see therapists or take prescription medication. They report higher levels of marital satisfaction. And they live longer.
Couples have more sex.

Anybody out there really want to pass this up?

The Parent Excuse

2009-10-25T08:37:00.001-05:00

The dynamic is familiar. Not the MommyWars but rather the battle cry of the childless against parents in the workplace. We can easily imagine a non-parent coworker rolling his eyes after hearing yet another reason why Mom or Dad has to leave early or arrive late to care for a child.

One such woman decided to capitalize on these opportunities by supplying a kit that helps create the illusion at the office of being a parent. Just set up your cube with the supplied artwork, a framed photo, or even a manufactured doctor's note and you have your ticket to head to the gym early, sleep in after a long night, or refuse to travel, yet again. This entrepreneur wisely does not accentuate the downside of such behavior - namely, lower pay (at least for mothers).

The Working Parents blog at BusinessWeek points out that moms looking for work get offered salaries $11,000 less than equally qualified childless female applicants. This discrepancy does not exist for fathers compared to childless men and, as a result, shows how our culture plays a role in nudging women to opt out of the workforce. Given the environment we currently work in, it takes extra effort to maintain equivalent careers for both partners.

If men decide to take a portion of the baby-punch on their careers, we might finally be able to free women to dedicate a bit more time and energy toward maintaining their professional passions (in equal step with men). Having two people working together to solve the family financial puzzle goes a long way to preserving the most important parts of both childcare and aspirations outside the home for each parent.

Oh, and I hope we reach the day when being a parent isn't the only excuse for not subscribing to overwork. Every one of us, whether childfree or the parent of 3 year old triplets, has valid reasons for being somewhere other than work - perhaps caring for other relatives, going back to school, and yes...simply having a fun and balanced life.

Happiness Realized

2009-10-23T19:30:00.003-05:00

It has been an exciting week for the dissection of women's happiness. First, the data on women's supposed declining happiness since 1972, discussed in my most recent post. And now the Shriver Report. The latter is a 400+ page report released by the Center for American Progress, together with Maria Shriver, and is also titled A Woman's Nation Changes Everything. It examines women's progress toward becoming (finally!) 50% of the American workforce - and the implications of reaching this momentous tipping point.

I haven't read the bulk of the Shriver Report yet, but two of its essays caught my eye immediately and I read (more like devoured) them a couple of days ago. One is marriage historian Stephanie Coontz's short essay, entitled Sharing the Load. She sets the stage for ESP as a highly satisfying way of life by stating: "Educated couples, especially those with egalitarian gender views, report the highest marital quality of all." And then she tells us, "We are no longer in the thrall of the feminine mystique, but two other mystiques continue to impede our progress."

The first she calls the 'masculine mystique,' which is the cultural pull some men feel to resist sharing household chores or doing 'women's work' and to feel threatened by successful and well-paid working women. Coontz tells us that men who embody this mystique suffer the most when they lose their jobs or their wives' salaries surpass their own. And she warns that couples who start out as dual earners but then adopt less egalitarian views over time become "psychologically vulnerable in their marriages."

I love this warning. It tells us to stay alert, to pay attention to what is happening (without any malice or forethought) in our relationships lest we find ourselves shifting from an equal to unequal state over time. This is why Marc and I (and all ESP couples) find it so important to talk and talk together about staying the course - and why these conversations are anything but the picky scorekeeping that ESP naysayers love to claim our beloved lifestyle means. A life examined is a life in which we have a chance at creating our own happiness together.

The second mystique mentioned by Coontz is the 'career mystique.' It tricks us into thinking that successful careers take 100% of our time and energy in our prime adult years, and that to have one of these careers means turning over the care of our children to someone else (such as our spouse). "Finding creative ways to allow men and women to integrate, combine, and sometimes alternate their responsibilities to work and to family coud be the single most effective "pro-marriage" program of the 21st century," she says. Oh, YES! She ends by listing four ways in which our government, employers and society can help realize this dream, but of course we are calling on all of you to take up the personal side of the work too.

The other eye-catching essay in the Shriver Report is by sociologist and masculity expert Michael Kimmel. And lest this post go on and on and on, I will save my comments on the Kimmel essay for my next visit to the keyboard. I'll just say here that it's a beauty - an extraordinary proof that ESP brings happiness to both women and men.

Please read both essays if you have a moment, and let me know what you think. Judith Warner did, as you can read in today's NY Times Domestic Disturbances blog. Her conclusion: When We're Equal, We'll Be Happy.

Oh, YES!

Happiness Denied

2009-10-19T18:07:00.000-05:00

Over at The Huffington Post, author and personal-strength guru Marcus Buckingham has been running a series of posts on his upcoming book, Find Your Strongest Life. I was intrigued by the premise of the first post: women's happiness has been in a steady decline for many decades.

Sounds crazy, huh? After all, back in the 1960s women led lives of overt female oppression - stuck at home as men's servants, raising their kids and scrubbing their floors - as described by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique. How could we be less happy now that we have so many more options, and now that, in many fields, we are heading to college more often than men and often earning more than our partners? Any minute, statistics are expected to reveal that more women than men are in the workforce. Even at home, things should be better now than in the 1950s - we've got the microwave, the dishwasher, the food processor, and all manner of other supposed time-saving devices and conveniences. Never mind the Internet.

Buckingham offers up interesting data from 1972 to the present as proof of his premise, and then discusses (and debunks) several theories about why women are now less happy (while men's happiness has actually increased). And why individual women tend to grow less happy as they age. He says the trend is explained not by women working longer hours than men (in general, they don't), nor by women doing more household chores than men (they still do, but this difference is getting smaller - not bigger). He suggests, instead, that the trends are there because women are generally harder on themselves than men - and that when they take on more and more roles (homemaker, breadwinner, parent, community volunteer, amateur cheesemaker, school committee candidate), they feel miserable trying to balance their lives and be good enough at each role.

His solution is to throw balance out the window. Oh no, here we go again - 'balance' as a dirty word. But wait. I read further and notice that symantics are getting in the way. Buckingham doesn't like the kind of balance that has to be one-size-fits-all, perfect, this-vs-that - a tenuous and stressful state. Neither do I. I don't choose to throw the word 'balance' away, however, but rather to define it as something much more personal and satisfying. Buckingham takes a different route to a similar idea - he uses different terminology to describe living in the moment, and living your own authentic life (not someone else's idea of what you should be doing or how much time you should be devoting to work vs home).

Several other journalists have reacted to this Huffington Post series. Here's one very good analysis of why women are less happy now - well worth the read. Here's another that's a scathing attack on the data, along with a rebuttal. I think there is a lot of truth to some aspects of the decline in female happiness, and the reasons are complex. But I don't think the main problem is our perfection tendencies. I suspect it has more to do with the fact that we are living in a culture that has stubbornly refused to catch up to our desires, and so often we find ourselves following prescribed life paths that are wholly unaligned with our hopes and dreams. As women, we've availed ourselves of all the opportunities we now have but we haven't let go of our old roles enough to enjoy the mix. And men have let us into the work world but haven't remade their definition of masculinity enough to join us on the homefront.

What to do? Buckingham doesn't venture into all the governmental or corporate policy changes that could help make it easier for every woman to be her authentic self and live in the moment. He focuses on what an individual woman can do for herself. In becoming spokespeople for equally shared parenting, we've taken a similar tact. Marc and I hope beyond anything else to give others the courage to choose the lives that fit them best with open eyes. To learn to sidestep what our society expects of us so that we can build our own ways of relating as partners, workers, parents, people. For us, that's ESP - hands down. For others, that may be a very different solution. Doing something different isn't easy. It's often really, really hard. But if it allows us to create our own personal definition of balance, it can make us truly happy - this I believe.

Challenging Dads

2009-10-17T20:14:00.003-05:00

The premise of an NPR column this past week was that men will take on more caretaking responsibilities when society both expects it and demands it. Namely, when the pediatrician, teacher, and other touchpoints in a parent's world start treating men as fully capable and involved fathers. Men will then feel society's stare of judgment and will be shamed, or at least lulled, into changing their ways.

I enjoyed the author's perspective and would love to embrace this "new" society but I'm not sure I can agree with the conclusion. Yes, I believe parenting roles are shifting and people are noticing but I don't think it's because president Obama is asking dads to do their fair share or because a nurse looked at Dad, not Mom, when sending instructions home. Instead, I suspect that society is changing "one individual decision at a time." Despite the lack of cultural support to do so, men (and women) are choosing differently from previous generations. Neither want to be pigeon-holed into roles that rob them of their ability to experience the bounty of parenthood whether it's pursuing a career, bonding with their children, caring for their home, or simply enjoying life.

The author challenges men to "step up" but I prefer to think a "step back" is in order. Let's engage our partners to structure our lives in a way that offers a sustainable chance at happiness for both. Imploring men to do more seems a little short-sighted given the complexity of the roles we have all assumed in recent decades.

Partner Swap

2009-10-10T19:09:00.000-05:00

An interesting experiment is going on over at Slate. Named Freaky Fortnight, it involves a husband and wife swapping roles for 2 weeks. Husband Michael Agger works full-time at Slate itself, and his wife Susan Burton stays at home and does part-time freelance writing in between caring for their two sons, ages 1 and 4.

The experiment involves Susan literally stepping into Michael's job - commuting to his office, attending his meetings, and doing the writing and editing he would normally do. And Michael taking care of the kids and home. At first, I was worried that this was a gimmick a bit like those wacky ESP reality switches that were commissioned awhile back for The Guardian and The Independent. But, thankfully, it isn't.

Both Susan and Michael are wonderful writers, so the writing is thoughtful and wry. Neither is bent on playing out any bumbling stereotype - the dumb wife who can't handle the work world or the stupid husband who can't manage to feed the kids and get them dressed. Both have moments throughout their days when they realize little poignancies. Susan lovingly steps inside her husband's head as she sits in his office chair and tries not to rearrange his desk. Michael gets in-the-moment with his kids - able to be there for the tiniest discoveries such as a new word one of them learns on a particular day. They appreciate the difficulties of each other's usual roles, and each finds out new strengths of his/her partner.

I'm really enjoying Freaky Fortnight (entries are posted for the first week so far). Unlike those other swaps, this one both fully acknowledges, and also manages to get past, the unfair expectations that anyone can plop themselves into a new role and instantly excel. That's not what Freaky Fortnight is about. It's about sharing and intimacy and partnership. Walking in each other's shoes.

Just one of the perks that ESP offers every day.

An Equal Future

2009-10-07T19:52:00.003-05:00

Over in the UK, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is tackling the issue of making sure that there are adequate numbers of skilled workers available to meet the demand as more people reach the standard retirement age of 65. Of course, this predicament is not unique to the UK - there are similar concerns in the US and elsewhere. However, I find it refreshing to hear public discourse on the topic.

I like the concept of companies tweaking the "standard" work week to attract and retain skilled employees. Maybe baby-boomers will want to stay in a workforce that allows for more flexibility while encouraging meaningful contributions. Perhaps caregivers, parents and down-shifters would like the same options? I see potential for creating a vibrant, dedicated, flexible workforce comprised of all types of adults that companies could embrace.

The Guardian (UK) ran a column recently outlining the scope of work for the EHRC. Here are some of its goals:

"Britain cannot afford to go on asking people to fit their families around the demands of ever-more intense 24/7 global competition, and marginalising or rejecting workers who fail to fit into traditional and inflexible working arrangements."

"As part of the first phase of Working Better, which focused on families, we found that today's parents want to share work and family more equally, and that there is extensive unmet demand from fathers for more leave with their children."

"We have proposed the current model be replaced with a world-class policy of gender-neutral parental leave by 2020."

"The challenge for government and for employers is to take advantage of these changes by showing a real commitment to flexible working. Only then will we be able to capitalise on the full diversity of talent available to us in 21st-century Britain."

The UK is apparently getting comfortable with the discussion of real, normal, flexible workplaces. And I am encouraged that the policies being discussed are often without reference to gender or parental status. I firmly believe it is possible to establish a workforce that can meet both the demands of business and the desires of all workers.

Unhealthy Kids? Blame Mom, of Course

2009-10-01T20:18:00.003-05:00

The BBC News aired a segment on Monday that examined data from an Institute of Child Health study of 5-year old children. The study looked at the eating habits and physical activity level of 12,500+ kids, breaking them into those with stay-at-home mothers and those whose moms worked at least part-time. The findings? Working moms make kids junk food snackers and couch potatoes. The study's lead author hypothesizes that working moms don't have as much time as SAHMs to devote to providing healthy snacks and limiting TV watching.

What about the dads? The researchers wave them away as background noise. They didn't examine men's work hours because these haven't seemed to change whereas women's work hours have. This argument doesn't make much sense to me, unless they really mean that they could not find a large enough cohort of stay-at-home dads to include in the study.

But the bigger issue is why this kind of research continues to be conducted and then promoted as 'blame the moms' fodder. Father employment levels may not have changed as much as mother employment varies, but father involvement sure has changed. And what if parental involvement counts more than a 'yes/no' response to a "Do you work?" question?

Parents who haven't got time, or energy, or knowledge, or inclination, to care what their children are eating or doing will probably raise children who eat more chips and log more tube time. Parents who have chosen to balance their lives (regardless of whether this includes working) and care about these issues will take the steps to teach their kids to lead healthy and active lives. With ESP, for example, both parents have plenty of time with their kids (together at least as much as a SAHP would have, in most cases), and they are both equally competent to handle the nutrition and exercise issue every day.

Can we stop blaming the moms and ignoring the dads?

Hat tip to Melissa for sharing this news.

Angry Wives with a Plan

2009-09-24T20:21:00.002-05:00

If you recall, Parenting Magazine published a piece in January called Mad at Dad. They did a good job riling up the masses of women who are fed up with their lives in large part because they feel burdened with the roles of primary parent, homemaker, and often co-breadwinner as well. I have to admit that this would get me mad as well. At the time, we blogged about this piece with some suggestions for moms.

Since then, Parenting Magazine has garnered their own advice for moms to get past the anger. We were honored to toss in our opinions and really like the resulting piece released this week. Here are a couple points from some of our favorite mentors:

"First, recognize that equality is an attainable goal," says Francine M. Deutsch.

"You want to feel like you're solving things together instead of having dump-on-Dad time," says Pepper Schwartz, Ph.D.

Luckily, we don't sound too shabby either:

"Involve your husband as your partner, not your employee. Ultimately, this is a gift to your children," says Marc Vachon. "Moms and dads are different, but they both need to be equally valued," he says.

"The more you can build the sharing into your schedule, the less it becomes a contentious issue," says Amy Vachon

Hopefully, this will get people focusing on the solutions instead of the problem.

In the End, What Really Matters?

2009-09-21T20:25:00.003-05:00

Warning: I'm feeling rather philosophical - make that downright spiritual. I've just finished reading Arlie Hochschild's The Time Bind (her 1997 follow-up to The Second Shift), which of course I should have read long ago but, well, didn't. I'm actually not sure I would have appreciated it as much if I'd read it a few years ago, so I'm happy to have devoured it now. Or rather, I'm glad I waited to have the nightmares I'm now having.

The Time Bind is like that old horror movie (and book) about conformity, The Stepford Wives, in many ways - only it's real. It follows Dr. Hochschild (sociology professor emerita at the University of California, Berkeley) into a seemingly ideal, top-rated Fortune 500 company she re-names Amerco to protect the innocent. There, she is granted in-depth interviews with anyone she wishes to meet, from top brass to midnight assembly line workers. She follows them home and interviews their spouses, observes their children, and offers a therapist's view of what is really going on in their heads as they work themselves to the bone and sacrifice the well-being of their families at the same time their company offers them all sorts of work-life balance perks they generally ignore.

"What's going on here?", Dr. Hochschild sets out to answer. Not what many of us might think. The answers are chilling, and so completely sad. The Amerco employees work because their company has become their real home - much simpler, much more instantly gratifying or at least palatable than dealing with the messiness of home, kids and partner. They work because the work culture at Amerco has brainwashed them into thinking that work is w-a-y more important - often the only important thing in their lives - than the stuff that really counts. They've drunk the KoolAid that proves they are devoted workers first, and that...oh, well, yeah I have some kids but that's beside the point. They think that a balanced life is a crazy notion - or something they'll find a way to have at some future date, with some fictitious version of themselves they cling to but don't value by actions.

Amerco is American business. It is all the well-meaning but capitalistic-success-driven companies that offer flex schedules and work-from-home options and reduced hours that maybe 1% of employees dare sign up to take. It wants workers to be happy, and it feeds them its own brand of happiness in a 'workplace culture' that makes us forget we are people, parents, brothers, sisters, lovers, friends, neighbors too. It values face time, not results (even as it often says differently). It forgets that sometimes the best workers are those who are actually free to see their kids and cultivate happy marriages. And in this downturned economy that has those of us who are still employed working scared, it is alive and well.

Along comes the President of France. As described in the terrific new Work.Life blog over at True/Slant, Mr. Sarkozy is challenging nations (nevermind simply corporations) to think completely differently about their value. He's suggesting that instead of measuring the success of a country by its economic output, we also measure this by the general well-being if its citizens. In other words, happiness could possibly count for something! Imagine a world where the end goal wasn't how many things we buy, consume or produce. A world where a 'rich' country afforded its citizens more leisure and time with our families rather than a chance to work yet harder with each passing year.

Mr. Sarkozy's brilliant ideas will probably come to nothing. They'll end up in some metaphoric landfill somewhere, buried underneath the stuff we've consumed that took long hours at work for us to earn. After The Time Bind, I'm cynical.

But, at least for each of us personally, I'm very hopeful. With ESP, we chose differently every day. It gives us a chance to do good work, the ability stay connected intimately with our families and remember that this is our greatest joy, and the option to align our lives with what we each truly value most.

Feminism and the Immersed Parent

2009-09-15T20:32:00.004-05:00

What a joy to read a recent post by Backpacking Dad called Feminism and the Immersed Parent. He cleverly argues that women who continue to perpetuate either the myth, or reality, of their bumbling male partners actually do a disservice to the goals of feminism. I couldn't agree more! He utilizes an analogy of men ridiculing women in the workplace a couple of decades ago and how that behavior has uniformly been rejected by society to the point of being used as a grounds for determining a "hostile work environment." I would suggest that the effectiveness of this terrific analogy proves the persistence of gender inequality: men own the work domain and women own the home domain.

Obviously, culture plays a huge role in the behavior that we each consider daily despite our wishes to do otherwise. Women in the US without shaven legs do so intentionally regardless of the expectation and men don't tend to wear skirts partly due to similar expectations. However, being genderless doesn't necessarily "solve" the problem either. Many same-sex relationships can attest to that. If gender isn't the deciding factor for family decisions perhaps earning power, geography, interest, or expediency will be used instead. Without the unemotional framework of what equity might look like we are likely to miss the mark for any number of reasons.

Unlike the ESP model, Backpacking Dad doesn't continue to push equity down to the details of our lives but instead allows the intention of equity to suffice. "An immersed parent doesn't have to be the one doing the cooking or the cleaning, but will care that the child is receiving good nutrition and living in a clean environment. An immersed parent doesn't have to be the one singing lullabies at night, but cares that the child sleeps well. An immersed parent doesn't have to be the one to attend school board and PTA meetings, but cares about the quality of education the child receives."

Of course, these statements are mostly true. Sure each parent should be fully emotionally invested in his/her role as parent in all aspects. But if an "immersed parent" never cooks, cleans, sings lullabies OR attends PTA meetings, full equity has little chance of prospering. Time is the frontier feminism could embrace. Equivalent time pursuing a career, equal access to experience the wonder of childcare, sharing the responsibility for the home and jointly creating opportunities for rejuvenation.

I expect that there are quite a few men, and women, who could embrace that model.

Parent of Record

2009-09-10T18:16:00.003-05:00

Now that we're in the thick of the back-to-school season, it's time to fill out all those forms sent home with our children that ask for our names, addresses, cellphones, emails and places of work. Oh, and that determine which parent will be the lucky recipient of those automated phone calls alerting us to our children's tardiness, absences, the school spirit day family gathering, the next PTO meeting, early release days, the start of the book fair and bake sale, and any number of other announcements. Who to pick? Mom, as usual? Dad, just to freak out the school secretary? Both (but that could be rather inefficient for you)?

We've typically defaulted to me as the parent of record, only because our work schedules mean I currently do more of the drop-offs and pickups than Marc does. But that does leave me either holding the responsibility for taking care of the news, or feeling petty for passing on this job to Marc when it is so easy to handle myself.

At T's school, we're both listed on the general contact list. And at M's school, I'm the auto-call recipient but both of us appear on the class contact list (the only set of parents on the list, by the way).

Today, one of T's friend's parents called Marc's cellphone with a birthday party invitation. Since calls like this usually come to me, he hesitated a few seconds before diving in to check our schedule, tell me about the event, and then respond with a "yes, T would love to come" and book the date. His hesitation? Men don't own this stuff - they pass it on to women to do. Recognizing his slight urge to pass it on was interesting for Marc to observe and then push past.

How do you handle the 'parent of record' issue?

Can We Say "Enabling"?

2009-09-07T19:53:00.003-05:00

Oh, no! Mom is going away on a business trip. How will Dad ever make it at home alone without her direction? Will the kids go hungry? Eat only junk food? Leave for school unwashed, uncombed and in badly matched outfits? Be abandoned at the end of the school day because Dad forgot to pick them up?

These are the worries of a female work/life balance expert in a recent Working Parents blog entry (a parenting blog we usually love). To combat her fears, she suggests that moms plan ahead before boarding that plane. Start with a well stocked pantry - one full of fully prepared meals rather than individual fresh ingredients so that your hapless spouse can simply heat them up. Then, make sure you've got plenty of paper plates and plastic utensils on hand, because God knows a man can't be expected to wash dishes and feed the kids. Next, leave out explicit instructions about when each child needs to be where every day. Add in emergency contact numbers because, well, he surely should not be expected to know or find these on his own.

Then, prepack the diaper bag and kids' backpacks (he would never do this right). Wash the kids' clothes so, heaven forbid, your poor kids won't be without their T-ball shirts on game day because your husband couldn't possibly be expected to think ahead for this responsibility. Then, and only then, you'll have a shot at relaxing during your business trip - knowing that the kids are okay because once again you held up their world.

The blog author actually forgot a few useful tips. She should have filled up his car with gas, laid out her husband's outfits for the week, called his work colleagues to make sure they reminded him to get to the office on time each morning, left him messages explaining how and when to brush his teeth, and alerted a neighbor to stop by the house each day to make sure he's moving his bowels.

Pardon me...the lack of subtlety in the Working Parents blog entry carried me away for a minute.

This work/life balance writer seems proud of her tips. I'll bet she also hopes for an equal partner in raising her kids. Yet she sabotages her chances at such by treating her husband like a child so that she can relax on her business trip - because she remains in control. She takes on a huge amount of extra work, but the work is easy compared to the discomfort of letting go and actually allowing her husband to take on any decent parenting responsibilities.

I'd be embarrassed to be treated this way.

Letting Men Into the Experience

2009-09-06T19:58:00.002-05:00

We've said countless times on this blog that women who want to share in the work of parenting with their partners need to let go of running the show at home and with the kids. Don't make more than your share of household or childraising decisions, don't direct your husband or belittle his way of handling the kids or chores, etc. In fact, we've said more than once that there are only a couple of things that you can't share as a mom: pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding.

Well, maybe you can share these too. Not physically, of course. But sometimes the most important things aren't confined to the physical. Take pregnancy, for instance. It's pretty common for pregnant women to kind of fold in on themselves and take in all the changes going on in their bodies - the wonder of those first fluttering movements, the cravings and repulsions, the careful eating, the strange aches and odd proportions and unique clothing requirements. Sure, they might involve their partners peripherally by letting them know when the baby is kicking or inviting them to join in at an ultrasound visit. But they typically focus on the pregnancy as theirs alone - later, the baby will be shareable.

All of this woman-focused baby-making is understandable. Yet, in a very small way, it sets the tone for the future - or at least it can. "My baby" can become a way of thinking that extends past birth. And it allows the woman to slowly become better prepared, emotionally and mentally, for motherhood over 9 months - while her husband can more easily ignore the enormous life change in store until, say, he attends childbirth classes with her. Or maybe until the day their baby is born.

Joe Kelly, aka The Dad Man, advocates in a recent blog post that men and women think of their baby as 'theirs' from the first moment they know they are expecting. He suggests using language like "we're expecting" and even "we're pregnant" rather than "she's expecting" or "I'm pregnant." You may object - in fact, I can see pregnant women out there rolling their eyes and saying, "Hold it right there, honey...we're not pregnant...I am." And then sending their husbands out for mocha fudge brownie ice cream. But Joe is onto something. Yes, for the next few months, a baby is growing inside of one of you and not the other. But if you want that baby to grow up in the equal care of both of you, perhaps the experience of anticipation can be a primary focus for now...and this can be fully shared.

Score and Win?

2009-08-26T19:19:00.000-05:00

Working Mother magazine has a new online 'test' that allows you to compare how much housework you are doing with how much your lazy...I mean, sweet...husband does. In Cosmo style, you're invited to add up your points on such tasks as:

Tossing the two-week-old takeout from the refrigerator. 1 point

Scooping up scattered toys. 2 points

Washing the funk out of a sippy cup you found in the backseat. 5 points

Scouring splattered tomatoes sauce off the stove. 2 points

Walking the dog. 1 point

Walking the dog in the snow. 5 points

And so on. Then, you're invited to tally your score against that of your spouse and the veil is lifted. Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner!

Now isn't this just what we don't want to do if we're aiming for equally shared parenting? Who actually "wins" when one partner proves she's doing more? This kind of scorekeeping may serve to shed some light on a problem that both spouses already know deep (or not so deep) down, but it sure doesn't set the tone for solving it. Besides being a cute, far-from-validated test of unequal household labor, it takes a partner-based lifestyle like ESP and turns it into a he said/she said contest. Blech.

The rest of the article that contains this test is actually pretty good. It enlists the help of our beloved mentor, Francine Deutsch, who points out that couples should aim for equal time spent doing chores rather than picky individual chore division by so-called expertise. Dr. Deutsch also advises skipping old gender assumptions when choosing chores, approaching the issue with a spirit of cooperation rather than fighting, pointing out the benefits to your spouse of equal housework, not micromanaging his involvement, and meeting together to evaluate how things are going to tweak them over time. Amen to all of this.

p.s. One more nagging thought. Granted, the average person might consider walking the dog in the snow to be more onerous than doing so on a beautiful summer day. But is the weather really the sole determinant of our ability to approach a task with joy? I can imagine someone (not necessarily cat-loving me) who might actually like strolling down a quiet, snow packed street with his dog. As the saying goes, "One man's trash is another man's treasure." Time is the only impartial measure of dividing chores. Go ahead and make the best of your own to-do list.

What Do Women Really Want?

2009-08-24T19:59:00.008-05:00

I was flipping through the Harvard Business Review at work today when I found an article called Understanding the "Female Economy." It was written by a man and a woman who wrote the forthcoming book, Women Want More: How to Capture Your Share of the World's Largest, Fastest-Growing Market. The article documents the main areas of opportunity for businesses to sell their wares to women who apparently make the purchase decisions for "94% of home furnishings...92% of vacations...91% of homes...and 60% of automobiles."

The authors also conclude that women "have too many demands on their time and constantly juggle conflicting priorities - work, home, and family." Their solution is for companies to focus on "time-saving solutions or for products and services designed specifically for (women)."

The strategies make perfect sense from a business perspective but from a practical or personal view none of these supposed products or services will help women or men get what they really want...a partner. Sure, they can save a few minutes with some fancy new gadget or streamlined grocery or dining options but if they continue to own most of the major purchase decisions around the home, not to mention much of the actual work that needs attention, satisfaction will continue to be elusive.

Henry David Thoreau weighed in on this issue about 150 years ago in Walden: "I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes."

The Name Conundrum

2009-08-23T20:07:00.002-05:00

After we had turned in the first draft of our manuscript, our editor asked us how we wanted to print our names on the book's cover. Would we be Amy and Marc Vachon, Marc and Amy Vachon, Amy Vachon and Marc Vachon? Seems like a simple query, but we know it is actually a mini-minefield.

Over these past few years, we've gotten used to the occasional question about why we've placed one of our names before the other, or why Amy chose to take my name when we married. After all, we're all about bucking tradition. So why do we sometimes sound like Ozzy and Harriet when it comes to our names?

There's been plenty of discussion elsewhere about how no perfect naming solution exists for parenting couples (either for themselves or for their children). Many ESP couples indeed do buck tradition - giving one child a mother's surname and the next a father's, or making up a new last name that combines the two names, etc. Many ESP moms keep their maiden names, some take their husband's last name as a new middle name (with their husbands doing likewise)...and some do as we have done by appearing to stick with tradition. Truth be told, our shared last name of Vachon just felt right to both of us. Amy had several reasons for wanting to shed her previous name, and genuinely loved my family's surname. We both like the idea, for us, of sharing a last name. It's our team name, and ESP is all about being a team together.

So back to the 'simple' question of how to appear on our book cover. Do we go with the classic feminist (and in this case, alphabetical, too) approach of 'Amy and Marc Vachon,' or do we perhaps separate our names to retain our individual identity, or is there something meaningful about my name appearing first...something that might draw attention to the idea that equally shared parenting is not just a woman's desire (as so much of the parenting literature is positioned) - that it appeals equally to men.

In the spirit of Team Vachon, we decided to go with joined rather than separate names. But who appears first? This book was written by both of us. The order of our names doesn't matter to either of us; what's inside - our message - is the key. And our equality message is neither 'women first' nor 'men first.' In the end, we took a very scientific approach. We got out our highly calibrated equality data collection instrument and flung it high in the air. "Heads," we called.

It will be 'Marc and Amy Vachon.'

Taking Responsibility for Equality

2009-08-21T20:03:00.006-05:00

Last month, I happened upon a blog entry at The Momoir Project from an ESP mother who is very thankful for her arrangement. It was a pleasure to read, but I was even more moved by one of the comments left on her entry. The comment was from another mother who has found herself in a much more traditional relationship. But rather than simply complain, she is extremely thoughtful about how she might have gotten there. Here is her comment, which I think is so beautifully written that I don't want to paraphrase it:

"Somewhere between dropping my wedding dress off at the drycleaners and extracting myself from the cocoon of my warm bed to nurse [my son], I lost a piece of myself. I stopped listening to Ani DiFranco and my dreams of taking down the system were exchanged for conversations about sleep and aspirations to find time for myself. I became wife and mother. Like stepping into a pair of yoga pants, I fell into the comfort of my roles. I took motherhood seriously and appointed myself chief caretaker queen without stopping to assess how this would all play out.

Now, two children under four later, I sit uncomfortably on my throne and I feel the hot orange wave of resentment as I drag my knackered spirit out of bed to get up with the kids by myself for the 250th day in a row since [my son's] birth. I've talked to friends who report that whoever hears the kids first gets up with them or that they simply take turns. I muse over what kind of miracle needs to take place in order for me to be able to sleep in. I sit silently and wonder where it all went wrong and how I ended up being the one who is constantly giving to everyone else around her at the expense of her own sanity. When did I become this person who can't negotiate her own needs? When did I become the kind of wife that lapses into the role of mother to her husband? I can't count the number of times I have said, "shh, Daddy's still sleeping." Somewhere between loads of laundry and wiping noses, I embarked on a journey to take care of everyone else's needs leaving my own almost unfulfilled. Should I be surprised that nobody has magically appeared to take care of them for me?

What is probably the most baffling part of all this is that I'm not married to some kind of uncaring lout who is unconcerned with my happiness and well being. Far from it. I'm married to someone who loves me deeply, someone who is happier when I am happy. And yet, somehow we have been delivered to a place that serves neither one of us. When we play the game of kid swap on weekends, we come together beautifully as a parenting couple. But recently when I listened to Ani DiFranco, I had my own mini Aha moment. She sang "and you will take the heavy stuff. And you will drive the car. And I'll look out the window and make jokes about the way things are." If I have misplaced small parts of myself then it is up to me to find them. If I want a tag team approach [meaning ESP approach, in this context] to parenting 100% of the time then I need to take the wheel and stop making jokes about the way things are."

It's Amy again. I love this mother's writing because it exposes how most of the world tends to approach why ESP is so rare - as a rude joke against women. "It's not fair that we're stuck with all the burden!" so many women and mothers scream or cry or laugh with sarcasm. Yet the problem is far from that simplistic. We are not just victims - of our husbands, of men in general, of even our culture. We're part of why things are not equal. No need to blame women, of course. But we do need to be at least half of the solution. We need to take responsibility, take action, take the wheel - and stop passively accepting the standard path for couples...it will lead to inequality, of that we can be sure. It is up to us, together with our partners, to turn that wheel toward ESP.

Child's Play

2009-08-16T20:14:00.003-05:00

Our 7-year old daughter, M, came home from camp the other day and excitedly showed us a new hand-clapping game she'd learned. The lyrics started with:

A-B-C

It's as easy as 1-2-3

My mama takes care of me

My daddy watches MTV

Really?

We joined in her enthusiasm, and she taught us how to clap along. But later, we laughed together as a family about how those words don't make too much sense for us...how maybe 'my parents take care of me, sometimes we all watch TV' might work better.

It's a silly rhyme - not worth mentioning, right? In the grand scheme of ESP, probably not. But when our kids are subtlely buying into the idea that it's perfectly normal for moms to do all the caregiving and dads to tune out the family, we're setting up the next generation to unconsciously act out this age-old inequality (with both parents missing out on a lot of fun).

Book Update

2009-08-12T20:38:00.003-05:00

We began writing the ESP handbook about a year ago. Much of the doubt, false starts, and anxiety are distant memories as we enjoy the march toward publication, scheduled for January 5, 2010.

Back in June 2008, Lisa Belkin brought ESP up for discussion with her cover story on the NYT Sunday Magazine called When Mom and Dad Share It All. We heard many of you excitedly weighing in saying that you lived this way too. In turn, we interviewed close to 50 couples who wanted to share their flavor of ESP in hopes of bringing the priorities of an equal partnership and a balanced life to anyone who wanted to listen.

We are honored to have Lisa Belkin kick off the topic again with the Foreword and are happy to reveal the cover that was recently approved by Perigee, an imprint of Penguin Books.

Guest Blog: Don't Let Old Gendered Power Trip You Up

2009-08-05T19:58:00.005-05:00

In the wide, wide blogosphere, there's something for everyone. Countless parenting blogs are now entertaining us and giving us a glimpse into the private family life of so many. But it is a special treat when you run across a blog that fits so perfectly with your own - matching thoughts, same concerns, similar ideas. With respect to this Equality Blog, we haven't run into such an animal (although we follow a growing list of wonderful blogs)...until very recently. Anne Mahoney, Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of Denver, has started writing together with Carmen Knudson-Martin, Professor and Director of the PhD program in Marital and Family Therapy at Loma Linda University, at Equal Couples, and we are so happy to welcome them to the world of blogging. We've recently reviewed their new book, Couples, Gender, and Power, and now welcome Anne to ESP.com as a guest blogger. Anne...the microphone is all yours!

Don't Let Old Gendered Power Trip You Up

by Anne Rankin Mahoney, PhD

In the 21st century when most women, including mothers, work beside men in the labor force, it seems obvious that men should also be working beside women in the family. Nevertheless, this part of the change has not really happened on a large scale. Research shows that men do more family work than their fathers did, but still way less than their wives. Why hasn't the shift to equally shared families happened with the same speed as other 21st century changes like Internet shopping or textmessaging?

A big reason is that family equality involves a major power shift. For generations, families have been organized around gender. Women took care of the home and this "women's work" (in spite of all the nice things everyone said on Mother's Day) was considered lower status. As long as men just "help" women with housework or kids, they can keep a distance from women's work. When they "share parenting," they're doing it. Men who have overcome this old-fashioned attitude about family work have discovered that the shift positively affects them in a variety of ways. Marc regularly regales us here about the joys of equally shared parenting.

If we want an equal relationship and equally shared parenting, the first thing we need to do is become aware of the ways old gendered power can trip us up, despite our best intentions. For generations, men have been and felt entitled and women have served. If we want equality, we can't just say we are equal. We have to understand how the system has been, and still is, stacked against equality. And we have to do a lot of talking together to search out the ways in which those old gender roles are still stuck in our heads.

Then, we have to throw them out.