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This weekend I perused Lisa Belkin's NYT Magazine Cover Story, "When Mom and Dad Share it All," a piece that explores the ways that couples are devising work and childcare beyond the traditional gender-delineated lines. Belkin, you may recall, wrote another intriguing piece in 2003 about the (possibly) emerging trend of highly educated women who stop working in favor of full-time maternal duties.
Despite the fact that I have no children, I find anything about work, women and childrearing fascinating, perhaps because a big reason for my own childlessness has to do with not having settled on a solution for having a career and children that I can live with. I've seen the effects that raising children has had on my friends' careers. While some willingly give up their jobs for motherhood, others struggle and never quite rectify the decision in their minds. My sister, for one, opted to do both with full fervor and found herself disappointed with her performance at both. Friends who fully embraced motherhood I found myself silently and unfairly accusing of never wanting a career in the first place.
I haven't figured out how to make both a consuming career and childrearing "work" in tandem, or probably more accurately I haven't been willing to yet address the inevitable compromise that I would need to make with both, so I sift through articles like Belkin's, hoping to glean, I don't know, HOPE perhaps that one can truly have it all. Or that, at least, I can choose one because I have proof that trying to do both is fruitless.
This article, which focused on a number of couples in various arrangements--one income, dual income, straight and gay--illustrated some of the potential pitfalls behind each. For instance, one couple who split childrearing duties down the middle, while maintaining a dual income, realized that attempting equality didn't make sense for the lower earner, who would have spent her salary on childcare alone. Another couple realized that there are specific compentencies that conformed with more traditional gender roles, and they had to stop being so rigidly insistent on parenting equality that they didn't do the tasks they preferred. The non-gestational parent in lesbian couples often felt left out of the parenting process because of not having a physical bond that biological mothers experience naturally.
I found the most inspiring couple for me, personally, were the Vachons, who met and had children in their late 30s, after having experienced careers and other relationships. They fit what I characterize as the couple who have, like me, had time to overthink parenting and career. So many friends of mine who had kids earlier in life say that if they had worried about how they would make it all work out--kids and career--they may not have had kids at all. And some, like the Vachons, almost didn't, but had enough experience with poor relationships and the meaninglessness of myopic focus on fast-track careers that they'd come to a place where making less for flextime wasn't seen as a sacrifice.
Initially, they tried to split all duties, but over time they realized that some traditionally "male" or "female" duties were, in fact, desirable. I agree that a common misstep of couples who insist on equality end up bleaching out the natural desires, and thus, the passion, in their relationship by always striving for fairness.
My own domestic partnership has formed an unspoken allocation of duties, interestingly, in a direction opposite what most would expect. While my husband, Jesse, "sees dirt quicker" that I would, to coin a phrase used by one of the women in Belkin's article, I see the longer-term. Jesse tends to handle much of the day to day housecleaning, cooking, and home repairs, while I pay bills and make vacation and social plans. I know my husband isn't always happy with what has become his role, just as I am not always thrilled to stay up late on Sunday nights to ensure our bills get paid that week. But overall, we are happiest with these duties. As my husband says, "It's not always 50-50, but it's teamwork, nonetheless."
Mom and ParentDish columnist (and BlogHer Contibuting Editor) Susan Wagner would agree:
"...my husband and I both work full-time, and we both bring different things to the table. His job comes with really good health care, for example, while mine comes with a flexible schedule that lets me take the kids to the doctor when they need to go. Is it equal? No, not really. Is it fair?
