The NYT magazine has a big piece about "Equal Parenting" that is pretty interesting for any parent to consider, and perhaps more so for a trailing spouse.
The story focuses on a family in which father and mother split responsibilities and time spent taking care of home and children. Each parent works professionally for about 30 hrs per week and they endeavor to share childcare, grocery shopping, cooking, and housecleaning. In the web video accompanying the story (an effective summary of the long piece, if you don't have time to read the whole thing), the dad explains that to equalize laundry-washing, he does the dark loads and she does the light loads.
Blaine and I certainly reflect how different our responsibilities are in Tokyo vs. Seattle. Here, he often wakes up to deal with editors around 7 a.m. before the Post is put to bed the previous night in D.C., and sometimes (or, recently, often) writes on deadline at night to get a news story on the Web. My days, meanwhile, are governed by the kids' schedules: school dropoffs, pickups, swim lessons, playdates, birthday parties. Some days it seems, and feels, very unequal from a feminist point of view because I spend so much more time with the kids. But the truth is that, on the whole, I have more time to myself (more than Blaine does, that is) when the kids are at school to see friends, have coffee, or exercise, while he picks up the slack when I have editing or writing deadlines.
What will be really interesting, then, is how we shift our family responsibilities if (or, more likely, when) I'm also working full time at some point in the future.
What do you think of equal parenting? Possible? Desirable? No way?
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2 comments:
As a new parent and the working member of the family, I feel pressure on both ends. I want to share in the parenting as much as possible. In reality, I have settle for what I have time and energy for around my job.
If/when my wife goes back to work, I believe we will have to make a decision as to who focuses on "career" and who takes the primary role as the "parent". I would prefer to take 3 years on, 3 years off between those roles. Perhaps that is equal parenting, in a different way?
PS-Go Sun Devils!
Andrew Parcel, Class of '95
I like that the couple in the NYT article are more focused on the philosophy of being teammates than on what I've often read about in other essays/mommy-lit pieces which I'll call "tit for tat parenting". Tit for tat is a notion of "equality" which is constantly keeping score of who does what for how long and on a day by day basis, which seems to me like being on opposing teams, not on the same team.
I worked with a woman who did a few years on a few years off back and forth with her husband as Andrew described above. It worked very well for them as neither of their professions allowed for par time work. Their POV was that equality could be measured over longer time spans.
As for us, we are figuring it out, and it will be interesting if/when I go back to work, but that's not on the horizon any time soon.
Maryam
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