Darcy Lockman

I would recommend this book to anyone, not just current and prospective parents -- as evidenced by the fact that I, a twenty-four-year-old with no immediate plans of starting a family, got a lot out of it.

Be prepared to be distressed and depressed by the facts that Darcy Lockman lays out so methodically. She writes in a simple and compelling style, using the results of sociological and psychological studies, countless interviews with parents, and her own personal experiences to make her points.

I'd be very interested to know how many fathers end up reading this book, and what they think of it.… (mais)

I became aware of this book when the author wrote a New York Times column based on it. It got passed around Facebook, and my friends who are mothers were all largely in agreement with it.

Luckily, the book lived up to the idea. Darcy Lockman has written a great assessment of the continuing gender gap in parenting, and how our talk of egalitarianism has not borne out in reality. It's a journalistic, not terribly long book, but while she does weave in her own experiences, she summarizes a lot of research in the field as well as interviews with other mothers. Given the length, she obviously can't go into great detail, but the amount of ground covered is substantial, and she makes sure that she doesn't just talk about middle class white mothers.

What drives inequality, in Dr. Lockman's view, is a system of interlocking parts. Men and women are socialized into gender roles regarding parenting, but are still bombarded with messages that these roles are innate. Women "choose" to do more... except that choice occurs because they know that if they won't do it, it won't be done. Men have it all because they have it on the backs of women's labor, but women cannot rely on men. If they want to "have it all", they need the paid labor of other women (as women's income increases, they spend more on outsourcing household tasks--men don't). Meanwhile, women face pressure and judgment to be perfect parents that men don't face.

Men, meanwhile, don't really want to change, and have little incentive to do so. They exhibit a range of strategies to avoid more work--assuming their partners will do it, passively refusing (and portraying it as maternal gatekeeping), strategic incompetence, and denial. If they break free of stereotypes, they are penalized by both their employers and their peers.

The US, moreover, is not alone. While our lack of societal support has an impact, all Western countries see a gap in household labor. Even in Sweden, the most equal country surveyed, has men doing less. Subsidized childcare has the greatest impact on women--Danish men spend the same amount of time with their children as American fathers, but Danish mothers spend less time than their American counterparts. (In terms of paternal involvement, the US does reasonably well.)

In order to change this, MEN need to change. What good would it be for women to let it go if the consequences will just fall on the kids? That's precisely why women keep doing it and allow the resentment to simmer. There's no use to women changing their expectations of themselves if men don't step up to the plate. The constant arguments about women choosing to work less and biological determinism are an attempt to sidestep this reality--that women can't choose to do otherwise unless men change. Their only option, as an increasing number of American women are doing, is to stop having children.

There's a constant litany of infuriating facts--the amount of time fathers spend on housework drops after their 2nd child; the same jobs are described as more flexible when women hold them--and some infuriating fathers. Not everything here was new to me, but she did an excellent job of putting it together.

Highly recommended, and men should try reading it.… (mais)