Again, this choice of wording begs the question…is home care part of both adults’ responsibilities or is the man “helping” the woman? With my husband, I was kinda like, look. There are things that need to be done around the house (and later with the kid). Neither of us want to do them but they have to be done. So what is our strategy going to be? And if you have any idea that it will fall on my shoulders because I have the XX chromosomes, I suggest you think again, since there is nothing in those chromosomes that make me have any affinity for home care.

So I didn’t approach it as if I needed his help. (Because that would make the primary responsibility mine.) I approached it as if this was a problem we had to solve together. And if it required complicated charts and schedules, then so be it, because if I decided instead to own the responsibility, then there would be no way to later attempt to share said responsibility.

Now had he said that he didn’t plan to do anything in the house, I would ask (and ask and ask and go to couple’s therapy and keep asking) what his plan would then be for completing his half of the household responsibilities?

Perhaps if we changed our language, our attitudes and actions would change? Is that what you find problematic? Totally agree. I was thinking that you were talking about policies. Same for programs for the poor; it’s not that the programs aren’t available to men, but we are less likely to talk about a dad needed such programs to care for his family.

This is exactly what I’m getting at. By making the word “parent” or “family” generally equivalent to “mom” we do grave disservice to all of us, both men and women. Attitudes will not start to shift until we begin to frame the dialogue in different language and emotionally give either gender the same access to family choices rather than saying moms are entitled to protections and leaving out fathers.

I’m a big fan of the Equally Shared Parenting site. I think it is eye opening for many couples. Thanks for the dialogue!

Great point! But there are those situations where the men simply do not help out.

Getting divorced certainly eliminated my “…and I want you to do it the way I would do it” blues. Being on his own with the kids meant my ex had the freedom to do things his way…and it also required him to step up in ways he would not when we were married.

**So my question is why is there no feminist advocacy for equally shared parenting and home care?**

I believe there is. I believe it happens in homes, on a micro level, and in women encouraging other women in this direction. I don’t know what it would look like on a macro level. Let’s find out!

I Googled:

feminist parenting shared division of labor

…and here’s some of what I found:

http://divisionoflabor.blogspot.com/2008/08/one-more-reason-people-think-unequal.html

http://divisionoflabor.blogspot.com/2008/08/feminist-motherhood.html

http://www.businessweek.com/careers/workingparents/blog/archives/2007/04/the_elusive_505.html

http://equallysharedparenting.com/blogger.html

Here’s an excerpt from http://family.jrank.org/pages/408/Division-Labor-Contemporary-Divisions-Labor.html which points to the existence of feminist critique of the status quo division of labor:

“However, feminist critiques claim that these theories [that women are predisposed to housework and childcare] have flawed logic and methods, and cite historical and cross-cultural variation to show that divisions of labor are socially constructed (Thorne and Yalom 1992); only women can bear and nurse children, but the gender of the people who cook or clean is neither fixed nor preordained.”

Thorne, B., with Yalom, M. (1992). Rethinking the Family: Some Feminist Questions. New York: Longman.

Again, I think the issue is that there are a diversity of voices that call themselves “feminist”. Some more marginalized or mainstream than others.

**Like parenting leave. If a man wanted to take leave and be the primary caregiver for 6 months, he too would need similar protections for his job. So it is more about the leave itself and the employer’s response to it than the gender of the parent taking the leave, right?**

Yes, and FMLA isn’t gender-specific. How people talk about the issues (as you say, semantics), may be gender-specific, but the policies are not. Perhaps if we changed our language, our attitudes and actions would change? Is that what you find problematic? Totally agree. I was thinking that you were talking about policies. Same for programs for the poor; it’s not that the programs aren’t available to men, but we are less likely to talk about a dad needed such programs to care for his family.

My fiance has 50-50 custody of his daughters. His employer has given him leeway and he’s enjoyed job protections of the type that are typically associated with what women need in terms of child-care issues and such. I read somewhere that men have a harder time than women do asking for and or being granted the protections that are legally available to them when it comes to family leave and flexibility.
.-= Deesha´s last blog ..“When Do You Introduce Your Kids to ‘The Next’?” =-.