Before I got derailed talking about webcams in the classroom, we were talking about equity in marriage after children. How do you make sure that you don't stuck with the lion share of thankless drudgery after the kids come around?
Some say the solution is to work full time, that way the guy is forced to pick up his dry cleaning himself, and other tasks are outsourced to nannies and maids. You have to making serious cash to afford all that help. Most women have their kids in daycare and still have to do the cleaning themselves. Even with nannies or daycare, there is still much shuffling that has to be done. Many of the full time paid labor moms still do a majority of the work at home. They race around all weekend taking the kids to soccer, arranging the parties, buying the clothes. Remember Arlie Hochschild's book, The Second Shift
Many women stay home with the kids full or part time for a variety of reasons -- the expense of childcare combined with a low paying profession, a strong vocation to be with children, boring paid work, the lack of job flexibility, whatever. How do you prevent becoming the doormat if you stay home with the kids?
I guess there's no one right path. These are just some suggestions that I've accumulated.
UPDATE: Thanks to Pajamas Media and to Blogher for the links (Thanks Allison and Mary!). Nice commentary at Blogher.
1. The decision for one person to stay home has to be a joint decision. It should never be framed as "it was your choice." It should be understood as "this is something that we both think is best for this or that reason."
2. It is not "his career," it's "the family career". If you stay at home, you are investing in his job. Make sure you understand what goes on there. He is not free to accept whatever promotion or job change without mutual agreement. His job has an impact on the whole family. You made career changes to suit the family, and so must he. It's amazing how many strong women don't think that they can tell their husband, "no".
3. You must call him four times a day and tell him in detail every mundane event. Junior refused to eat potatoes. Junior used the potty three times today. Junior refused to nap. There's no way that childrearing will more appreciated, if you don't tell your spouse about it. Besides, it's fun stuff and your husband should get to be involved.
4. Send your spouse to all the evening events at the school. They need to see the classroom and meet the teachers, too, in order to have a better understanding of their kids' lives.
5. A majority of weekend events must be your husband's responsibility. Religion classes, sports, dance, birthday parties. He must do the shuffling and be responsible for remembering that he's supposed to bring the snacks to soccer on the third week of October. With boys, it may be easier to delegate some of this stuff, but he's got to take the girls to ballet, also.
6. Actually, the most important thing is to marry a good guy. Should have made that number one.
7. There must be parity of leisure time. If he goes to a Bruce concert on Friday night and is too tired to deal with the kids Saturday morning, then you get the same amount of time to yourself the next weekend. But if you spend most of the week playing tennis and eating lunch while you've got a babysitter, then you've got no hand.
8. Try to figure out how to carve out some time to do some career maintenance. Get a babysitter or work during evenings. Don't ever throw those options away. You may be able to get things ramped up again in the future. Besides, you have protect yourself, too.
I guess the bottom line isn't that you need to force your husband to be a good guy. He probably is one already and just needs some guidance. A good life involves a balance between home life and paid work life, and both partners benefit from having this balance. In a perfect world, the business world would be better suited to accommodating a family. It's not. So, we have come up with our system of negotiations and compromise.
