Posted on 08/26/2010 1:03:49 PM PDT by fathers1
Here’s yet another piece that lauds equality between mothers and fathers in childrearing, but uses some very questionable “facts” and figures to do it (Chicago Tribune, 8/20/10).
The writer, Alexa Aguilar, wants to think of her marriage as non-traditional enough that both partners work and both do childcare. But she notices that, when push comes to shove, she’s more likely to control childcare and housework while her husband does the more traditionally male tasks around the house. She even refers to herself as the “gatekeeper,” and I wonder if she knows about the social science that refers to mothers’ control over fathers’ access to children and childcare as ‘maternal gatekeeping.’ If she does, she doesn’t let on.
While Aguilar is interested in the concept of equally shared parenting, she still feels the need to detour through some very carefully selected numbers before she does it.
The University of Wisconsin’s National Survey of Families and Households show that today, the number of hours a woman spends on housework still outnumbers a man’s by almost 2 to 1, and that’s when both partners work outside of the home full time. When it comes to child care, such as feeding, clothing and bathing the kids, women spend 15 hours a week tending to children. Dads spend two. In families where both parents earn a paycheck, the mother does an average of 11 hours of child care a week, while the father does three.
Those figures by themselves are accurate enough. But that’s the problem, those figures are by themselves; they don’t include all the other figures that show that, when men’s and women’s paid labor is added to their domestic chores, their total time spent is statistically identical. So her words “where both parents earn a paycheck” suggest rough equality in time spent at work. That in turn leads to the conclusion that men are laggards because they don’t do as much childcare.
But of course that’s wrong. As the Bureau of Labor Statistics data regularly show, even when men and women work full time, men still spend about 50 minutes a day more at gainful employment. And overall, far fewer women work full time than do men, resulting in 56% of the total hours worked in the United States being worked by men (see here, p.10).
So, although Aguilar may not know it, while women are at home with the kids, men are at work earning. And, like seemingly every other article written on the subject, Aguilar adopts the attitude that men are in some way deficient for not doing more childcare, but doesn’t criticize women for not doing more paid work.
Aguilar moves on to the website set up by Marc and Amy Vachon, the equal-parenting mavens, and that’s a good thing because they provide a close look at what is actually required to increase dad’s part in his children’s lives. Tellingly,
[w]hen it comes to equally shared parenting, the Vachons say, a woman has to “abdicate her dictatorship” and fathers can’t take refuge in the stereotypes of a bumbling dad who gets applause if he changes a diaper or takes the kids to buy new school clothes.
That’s that old maternal gatekeeping problem again. Aguilar and the Vachons are right to point out the part dads sometimes play in that. After all, the same culture that tells mothers they have to be everything to their children, tells men that they’re incompetent at and uninterested in childcare. So, if they’re to be equal parents, mothers and fathers both have to be able to set aside those prescriptions they see every day for how to be a woman and how to be a man.
Unlike Aguilar and the NSFH, the Vachons realize that equal parenting requires equal “breadwinning.” By that they don’t necessarily mean that each spouse earns the same (although that helps to keep one job from becoming “better” than the other), but simply that each spends about the same amount of time doing paid work. In other words, the Vachons do what I’ve never seen done, by Aguilar or anyone else (except here); they admit that if one person spends more time at work, he/she likely will spend less time on domestic chores, and vice versa.
It’s a simple concept that, in our culture’s enthusiasm for disrespecting dads, goes mostly unmentioned.
We didn’t see it at the time, but the shared or equal parenting thing was just a societal forerunner for homosexual parenting.
Oh, both myself, and several other Dads I know, could comments all day long on this.
Family Courts are a racket for attorneys, and the “best interests of the children” is just the punchline for all of its/their misdeeds.
I completely disagree. Where is it written that, by default, a mother is superior to a father in parenting?
I think the Judge should have to live in childrens shoes changing houses every 3 or 4 days dragging Clothes , School books. sports equipment etc. back and forth. Its not about the Children for sure.
Bullsh!t.
Of course, they talk about the “housekeeping” and “child rearing,” but they never allow time/hours for all the work that husbands DO accomplish around the house.
I don’t wash dishes very often, but my wife NEVER paints the house! I may not have (as none of my kids are still in them) changed as many diapers as my wife, but my wife NEVER, not ONCE ever climbed under the house and repaired leaking plumbing pipes! She never pulled a toilet and reseated it with a new wax ring! She never changed the oil in the truck or rebuilt the weed-eater or replaced the lawn mower starter, etc...
Since those tasks aren’t a “daily” thing, they get dismissed! But those items take time, knowledge and effort to accomplish and we men are supposed to simply add those to our list of chores AND wash dishes AND take care of the kids! And if we don’t then our wives here on TV and read in magazines that their husbands are lazy, laggards who should be ostracized and they should expect more, More, MORE! And it is BS!
Huh? My point is that for gay parenting to be accepted, first society had to do away gender roles.
here on TV = hear on TV
However, when it came time to mow the lawn, clear brush, scrape and paint the house, chop firewood and carry it up three flights of stairs, these all fell to me alone.
Although my sister and I are only a year apart in age and both athletic, there is still a great difference in strength (despite what liberals say about a lack of any real difference between the genders). Based on capabilities alone, I had to do 100% of the heavy work. We split the stereotypical housework 50/50. This is the feminist idea of equality.
—”We didn’t see it at the time, but the shared or equal parenting thing was just a societal forerunner for homosexual parenting.”
—”Bulsh!t”
It may be the way the post was written is confusing, but it isn’t “Bullsh!t”.
The comment wasn’t on the contribution of fathers, but on the equivalency of the sexes in parenting as a pretext. The homosexual lobby is saying that a mom and a dad were not the most desired form of parents for children and that any combination is essentially the same.
The Finding of Fact section of the Proposition 8 ruling goes into great length in supporting gay marriage by showing there is no gender difference in parenting.
I would agree with the poster in that the destruction of gender roles serves both the feminists and the gays in the destruction of the basic family unit. The destruction also serves the left who wish to replace the God and the family with the control by the state.
Thank you for your apparently unique ability to read and comprehend.
It does seem at times that people trip over their own preconceptions and never reach a fact.
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