(Links will be inserted later. Running)
It is totally unfair that women spend so much time agonizing over work/family decisions, while men free ride. Yes, there are some very enlightened men out there who put some thought into the matter, but the numbers are hardly equal. How about a little gender equality on the home front?
There must be errand parity. Both parties need to be responsible for picking up the kids after childcare, arranging for holiday gifts for the kid’s teachers, and drilling the kid on his spelling words.
There must be nurturing parity. Both parties need to snuggle the kid on the sofa while reading the train book.
There must be big picture parity. There should be regular discussions about whether both parties will work at low stress jobs or whether one person will assume the high stress job. (Keeping in mind that it is really hard to switch jobs and that poverty really sucks.)
How do we get more men to do more at home? Well, there’s the stick. Bitch and Amanda have two good posts on bitching at men to pick up around the house. Really excellent advice. In terms of house cleaning, I don’t think that there is any way around the bitching tactic. I could never try to spin cleaning as a fun task. I hate it too much. Gentle nudges don’t work either, because then they’ll just tell you to relax your standards. Then you give up, and assume that they are morons. (Exhibit A -- My father who hasn’t done a load of wash since 1964 and who pretends that he’s too stupid to run the spin cycle.)
Bitching is the only way to go with housecleaning. What about things that relate to the kids?
You could go with passive resistance. You could go to work and forget to get your kid’s speech therapist a gift, and see what happens. You could stop reading stories to the kid at night and see what happens. Make the guy take responsibility for those actions. Being so responsible allows him to free ride.
This is a dangerous game. You could end up with a situation where the speech therapist doesn’t get any gift and takes it out on your kid. That wouldn’t be good. You could end up with an illiterate kid. That wouldn’t be good, either.
Bitching is definitely an option, but it should be a last resort. How much better to entice them into helping raise their kids? We could spread the news about how much fun it is to hear the kid chatter about his day, as you pick him up from daycare. How you heard him say his first word that morning and you almost cried. How you have invented a new game called “Supermom” which involves running around the kitchen and kicking each other in the ass. (It really is a marvelous game.)
Sure, homelife is isolating, repetitious, unappreciated, risky, and involves a certain amount of housecleaning. But being with the kid is just great.
The danger with the new Wall Street Journal feminism, aside from its rejection of economic liberalism, is that it shuts that door. If we say that all home life is unfulfilling, grunt work and that women should have no part in it, then we have no hope of bringing in the men, except by bitching. How much better to say that caring for kids is great and both should share in that fun.
