Let's Talk about Gender Issues in America

Yesterday I finished reading a book called The History of the Wife. I picked it up at the public library on a whim a few weeks ago when I saw it sitting next to another book I was checking out for comp exam reading. Overall the book wasn't that fantastic. It was interesting enough that I finished it, and it was good to have a history from the ancient Greeks to the twentieth century in one book, but the book didn't have enough depth or complex analysis for me. It also didn't tell me much that I hadn't already picked up from eight years of college coursework (I'm in the humanities, so a large number of my courses have had a gender studies element). In general, it was a decent popular history, but I found myself wishing I could read the author's academic studies instead of this, which felt like a watered-down, simplified version.

The book did get me thinking a lot about what it means to be married in the 21st century, however. One of the things the author alluded to is the fact that while men and women are now often sharing the role of breadwinner, the bulk of the housekeeping still falls on the mother. As a result, even in a family where the mother and father are both working 40 hours a week, more often than not it still falls to the woman to cook dinner, clean the house, help with homework, etc., etc., etc.

The situation keeps improving and becoming more equitable, I think, but it's still not perfect. Why? I have my theories.

The History of the Wife does a good job of demonstrating that the point we're at now has been a long time coming. The idea of an egalitarian marriage didn't just spring into being in the 1960s with the women's lib movement, although things obviously accelerated then and I'd say that it has really only been in the past fifty years that women have truly begun to be taught that we can do anything. I personally very much internalized the message I felt I received from my parents and teachers: A woman of my generation can do anything she wants to do. From the time I was a young child I was told that I could be a doctor, a physicist, a judge, the president, a CEO, a soldier. Pretty much the only career choice that was out of the realm of possibility was playing for one of the professional men's sports leagues, although plenty of women today do have careers as professional athletes (and I personally have no problem with the segregation of sports because of the simple fact that as an average woman my body will never be as big or strong as the average man's. That IS an undeniable fact). My point is that I clearly remember many of my adult mentors telling me that I could do anything I wanted to do with my life, and I took that message and ran with it. I realize not all the women of my generation had the same upbringing. There are still some cultures that insist on women's subservient role, but I think we can all agree that those small pockets of society are no longer the norm in the United States. The norm now is encouraging women to get an education, to support themselves, to break through the few glass ceilings that still exist.

What I'm saying is, we've come a very long way with women's equality in the past half-century. We still have a little ways to go, of course, but I think the time has come to begin to shift our focus from the women to the men. The last couple of generations spent all of this time teaching women about the new role we're entitled to have in society, but they forgot an important step in the process of equality: teaching men their new role in society.

It used to be easy. Men and women knew their traditional roles. True, men and women always had the ability to balk against the norms, but at least it was pretty clear what those roles were in the early centuries of this country: in upper- and middle-class society, women were expected to stay home and raise the children and keep control of the housekeeping, whether it meant doing it themselves or heading a team of servants. Men were expected to go out and work to support their wife and children. [The working class has always had its own rules, and they complicate the situation. For instance, most working class couples throughout history have had more egalitarian marriages just out of necessity: women had to work because the family could not afford to live otherwise. However, nowadays the less educated (so, often therefore the less wealthy) a couple is, the more likely they are to take on traditional gender roles. I can clearly see this playing out in my own extended family.]

The way I see it, men used to know when they were doing a good job: if you were bringing home a good income, an income that allowed your wife to stay home and take care of popping out babies and washing dishes, then you were doing your duty as a husband. You were a good man. Now, we hear a lot about women's struggle with balancing working out of the home with working in the home, but we hear a lot less about how hard it must be for the men. How does a man know when he's doing a good job these days? At this moment, I don't think men have a clear role to play.

And let me be clear as I talk about roles that I realize this varies from one culture to another and that it's increasingly difficult these days to talk about what's "normal" in America. I realize that I can only speak from the perspective of the middle- to upper-middle class, relatively liberal social world in which I was raised and in which I still circulate (and if you're a friend of mine and you're reading this, you're likely a part of that world as well). I am also only speaking of heterosexual relationships at this point.

Keeping this caveat in mind, I think I'm receiving a pretty clear message as to what it means to be a "good" wife and mother these days: a good wife and mother is one that can more or less balance a job that allows her to contribute income to the family with raising her children and attending to her husband's needs while keeping an orderly, organized home. I'm not saying this is possible (see, oh, THE WHOLE INTERNET for stories of women trying to strike this balance), but it's today's ideal. It gives women something to aim for, as impossible as it may be. Pick up any mainstream women's magazine and tell me you don't agree.

But what sort of message is my boyfriend receiving from society about what it takes to be a good husband and father? I'm glad to see that there are a number of books and campaigns now aimed at getting fathers to take an active role in their children's lives. But for every one of those books and campaigns, there is an equally vocal force that says that staying home with your children is emasculating, makes men "depressed" because they don't have enough adult interaction or a sense of purpose (as if it's EASY for a woman to get full emotional satisfaction from being a stay-at-home mom, but don't even get me started on that). And let's talk about housework. I searched the inernet today for books on men and homemaking, and do you know how many I found? Zero. There are some cookbooks for men, but any book on cleaning and general housekeeping seems to be completely geared toward women.

So there are all of these sources that imply that it's pussifying (and, dare I say, even emotionally dangerous) for men to fully engage in taking care of their children from infanthood. And there are even more societal messages telling men that they are "whipped" if they pick up a broom or a roll of paper towels and some Windex. Even worse, our American society persists in telling men that they are too stupid to do work that traditionally belonged to women. There are plenty of articles about the copious amount of TV shows featuring competent wives and humorous, idiotic husbands. But it's not just TV and movies, it's women ourselves. I'm guilty of this. Case in point: last night Anna and I were out to dinner and we were talking about how we should have a girls' night out and leave her 3-year-old son with Penn and Nicole's boyfriend for the night. We were laughing about how funny that would be but, really, it shouldn't be funny at all. The men are perfectly, 100% capable of taking care of a little boy for the night, and there's no reason the idea of leaving a child with a couple of men as babysitters should be humorous. It should be NORMAL.

Women, it's time to shift our focus. Let's continue to encourage women to support themselves, to find fulfilling careers, to be senators and CEOs and department heads. At the same time, let's encourage men to be active fathers and housekeepers. Let's tell them that they CAN cook, that they CAN sort laundry, that they CAN wake up at three in the morning and soothe a crying baby just as well as a mother can. This isn't going to happen overnight. It has taken a few generations of feisty, fighting women and an entire lifetime of people telling me, "You can have any job you want!" for me to believe it. It's going to take the same generational shift and a lifelong "You can do it! You can nurture your children!" mantra for men to really believe it. But they could come to believe it.

I know what you're going to say, those of you that want to argue about this. You're going to say "But men and women can never really be equal in the way you want them to be, because women are the ones who carry the babies and nourish them." You're right about the pregnancy thing. There is no way around the fact that women are the ones that get pregnant. And, unfortunately, pregnancy does slow women down, particularly the ones that have complications and have to go on bed rest. But the vast majority of women can and do work right through their pregnancies. As for nursing, if a woman opts not to nurse her baby there is nothing, literally nothing other than carrying the baby in her uterus that a mother can do that her husband can't. And in a lot of situations even a mother that opts to nurse can pump bottles so that a husband or other caregiver can feed the baby while she works.

Right now, the main thing keeping women from earning the same amount as men is that women are the ones that take maternity leave and lose income in the process. This situation can quickly become more equitable if paternity leave becomes as common as maternity leave. More and more companies (and the government) have adopted paternity leave policies, and I think that's wonderful. Still, currently it's hard to take paternity leave. Men worry about getting behind at work, losing money, losing promotions, etc. Women worry about the same thing, of course, but society is telling us we don't have a choice. Despite our worries, we HAVE to take maternity leave. We're stigmatized if we don't ("What sort of mother goes back to work when her baby is ten days old?!") Men haven't traditionally taken paternity leave, so for them it's the opposite. Men are often stigmatized if they do use their full paternity leave. We need to start working to change that situation. Currently, most maternity and paternity plans provide 3-6 months of leave time. I hope that it eventually becomes the norm that when a woman has a baby she takes her 3-6 months off right away when the baby is nursing most. Then, after her leave time runs out, her husband could take his 3-6 months of leave. At that point the baby would have had at least six months and up to a full year being solely raised by one of his or her parents. That's more than many, many babies get right now. It would be amazing if men taking paternity leave was just the norm. That's how it should be, and I don't think it's an irrational pipe dream to think it can and will happen. We're very slowly heading that direction already.

I know what else you're going to tell me, arguers: "But women and men have certain instincts! Men don't have the instincts to nurture a baby the way that women do! Men don't care whether the house is clean, that's a woman thing!" Bull. Yes, instincts exist. I think it's fair to say, in general, that men are more aggressive and competitive and messy that women are more gentle and nurturing and neater. But instincts aren't everything. Instincts can and often are controlled. As a woman, I can learn to be more aggressive and competitive. I HAVE learned to be more aggressive and competitive, because this is another one of those messages I've been taught since childhood. I have to fight my instincts to avoid conflict and I have to get into the mix and be a competitor because it's the only way I'm going to get ahead in my job. If women can go against their so-called nurturing, peace-making natures to be successful in the workplace, then why can't men go against their supposedly messy, aggressive natures to learn to appreciate a tidy home and cuddle a baby? They can learn to mold their instincts. Of course they can! If women can do it, men can do it, and women HAVE done it. So men need to get with the program and stop using "It's against my instincts!" as a crutch. And the more men make a place for themselves as active homemakers, the less these things will be seen as "instincts" and the more they will be recognized as the historical cultural constructs that they at least partially are.

Women had to work throughout the 20th century to get rid of the stigma against them working in the white collar world. In the 21st century, I think we'll have to work equally hard to get rid of the stigma against men who take a truly active role in rearing their children and doing chores around the house. But I think we'll get there.

In my mind, in my ideal world, it all boils down to this: Husbands and wives should be pulling equal weight in all areas of the marriage. It will be much, much easier for women to achieve the above-mentioned "good" wife and mother ideal when men begin to pull equal weight not only as breadwinners but also as housekeepers and parents. Plus the goal of pulling equal weight gives men a goal to strive for, a measurement of what makes a "good" husband and father, and this goal is something I don't think men have right now but something they need to make their lives easier, too.

I do realize that in some cases one party has a much busier career. Take my current situation, for example: Penn is out of the apartment for 40 hours a week. I am only physically at a job for 20 hours a week. I also make much less money. Therefore, things break down accordingly: because I'm home more often, it makes sense for me to do more of the housework simply because I am the one that is physically here to do it. Also, at this point it makes sense for us as a couple to prioritize his job because it's more stable than mine and he makes twice as much. This is why, for example, when I graduate we are planning to stay here to allow him to keep his job as opposed to potentially moving somewhere for me to take a full-time job. It just makes sense. In our future, I imagine that if I continue to work part-time as he works full-time, I will spend more time at home with our children and more time doing housekeeping. But he will also have to do his share of the housekeeping and child rearing. I'm not going to be the only one awake in the middle of the night. I'm not going to be the only one cleaning the bathrooms. I also expect that if I eventually choose take a full time job as well, we will split the housekeeping and childcare time right down the middle. And I expect that whether or not to take a full time job will be my choice: a choice I will make with the well-being of the family in mind and with my husband's input, but still ultimately my choice. Who knows how I'm actually going to feel once I have children, but I do know that I'm not going to have a husband who demands that I be a stay-at-home mom if I don't feel like that's in my best interest as a mother. (On that note, there are a lot of studies now that show that children with working mothers are not at a disadvantage, and in some ways they even fare better than children with stay-at-home mothers. Also, a father who insists that a child needs a stay-at-home parent can and should be that stay-at-home parent if he feels more strongly about it than the mother who wants to work. If a woman wants to stay home she should be able to, but it's her choice.)

I know that I'm going to have to struggle throughout my life to get the egalitarian marriage that I want. Even with an intelligent, thoughtful, liberal husband, it's sometimes going to be a fight. And that's not my hypothetical future husband's fault. He's certainly not a deadbeat, he's definitely already doing everything society tells him he needs to do. It's just that, so far, society isn't convincing men to do enough in the home. This going to be a fight for almost every single woman in my generation who gets married, no matter how forward-thinking our husbands are (and some of us will end up with terrific, forward-thinking, respectful husbands). There are very, very, very few people who are strong enough to go against what society tells them day in and day out. And right now what society tells men is that, sure, they need to help out, but it's still primarily the wife's job to take care of the kids and the house, even if she's working just as much as he is. And why is it the wife's job, according to society? Because she just does it "better".

It's going to be a long, uphill battle to change that message. But can we women agree to try? It's time to stop disparaging our men. It's time to start building their self esteem for a while. It's time to tell them that they can do it. I for one plan to raise my future children with the message that women AND men can do anything. A woman's place is in the home and office. A man's place is also in the home and office. I'm predicting that many of the other women of my generation will do the same thing. I know it's too late for my generation to have truly egalitarian marriages. We have too many entrenched systems and too many presumptions fighting against us. But we can make it a priority to try to raise nurturing men, just as our mothers made it a priority to try to raise strong women. My hope is that by the time my grandchildren get married, it will no longer be unusual for men and women to equally share childcare and housekeeping duties as well as the duty of bringing home a paycheck.

I can hope.