SOCIAL STUDIES
Is equal parenting really better?
February 12, 2011
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Andrea Gordon
FAMILY ISSUES REPORTER
Amid the chattering-class angst that’s raging over Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, one question stands out: Where was Tiger Dad?
Chua is the Yale University law professor whose book about raising two daughters as a coercive, perfectionist “Chinese Tiger Mother” has sprung to the top of bestseller lists. In it, she describes a home life that sounds like a boot camp for overachievers. Chua roars that Chinese moms instill excellence and self-discipline, while their touchy-feely Western counterparts overindulge kids with praise, choices and fun.
Whatever the reader might make of that argument, something in her story jars like a sour note at Carnegie Hall: Her husband — the girls’ father — plays a minor role.
It’s fair to wonder why mothers are churning out anguished books on parenting (Mommy Wars, Bad Mother, Confessions of a Slacker Mom), while TV commercials are tutoring fathers on the merits of phoning for takeout by “finger cooking”? It’s as if the last half-century has hardly moved the dial on the division of domestic labour.
Then, just as the Tiger Mother debate was winding down, another prickly topic emerged. A new study suggests that splitting parental duties may not guarantee harmony in the home anyway.
Researchers from Ohio State University observed 112 couples as they helped their 4-year-olds with two difficult tasks. In some of the households, fathers were active caregivers; in others, dads spent more time playing with the child and left most of the rest to mom.
The study, published in the journal Developmental Psychology in January, found that when both parents were caregivers, more conflict arose and they were more likely to undermine each other than in households where mom was in charge.
At first glance, this hardly seems surprising. After all, too many cooks really can spoil the proverbial broth. Still, the Ohio State findings may well have provoked silent (and not-so-silent) screams across the land. Maybe, some headlines suggested, dads should stick to piggybacks and ball games and leave toilet training and homework monitoring to the spouse who has historically been in charge of those tasks.
What’s an egalitarian-minded parent to make of all this? It could be that there are many ways to share, says study co-author Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan, and that dividing by two isn’t the best recipe for every family.
“It’s much more complicated than ‘everybody must be equal,’ ” says Schoppe-Sullivan, 36, who shares care of her own 4-year-old daughter with her husband (and reminds herself not to micro-manage). “You can certainly have a solid co-parenting relationship without sharing caregiving responsibilities equally.”
Parenting can be a territorial business, says Kerry Daly, dean of the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences at the University of Guelph. And like it or not, gender roles still play a big part in how heterosexual couples raise kids. Mothers may not be happy to hand over the reins; dads may be reluctant to tread on what has traditionally been women’s turf. Cultural background plays a role and so do personal preferences, like who’d rather bake cookies and who’d rather tie skates.
“The trouble with equality is it goes back to the idea that moms and dads should be doing the same things interchangeably and move in and out of those seamlessly,” says Daly, a leading researcher on father involvement. “I think most couples would say that’s not their reality.
“The ideal needs to be reshaped and made more realistic with a different range of options,” he adds. Couples should aim for “something that feels fair, but respecting separate roles.”
A 2010 study in the Journal of Marriage and Family suggests that may also be the case for same-sex couples. It found that while lesbian couples generally co-parented more compatibly and with greater satisfaction than heterosexual couples, even they rarely achieved parity when it came to child-care duties.
Things have improved for many overextended mothers since famed sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild coined the phrase “the second shift” in 1989, referring to another day’s work that greeted mothers arriving home from their paid jobs. More often these days, dads and moms share — and even swap — shifts.
Take Sean MacIsaac, 42, a former high-tech worker in Ottawa. When he and his cardiologist wife, Rebecca, moved to Etobicoke for her job and had their first child, they couldn’t find daycare. MacIsaac decided to put off looking for work and try staying at home. Two years later, he’s still there, spending his days happily rocking babies, changing diapers, pushing the stroller and going to city drop-in programs with Rose, 2, and 6-month-old Molly.
At the end of the day, there’s a smooth transfer of power, he says, as Rebecca arrives home to cook dinner and he heads out to play hockey. They do things differently, but they’re on the same page. “I’m totally happy to let her take charge.”
Ali Martell calls it “tag-team parenting,” based on who happens to have a free pair of hands. The Thornhill mother of three does more of the child care because at the moment it makes sense. Her job, as editorial director of UrbanMoms.ca, allows her to work from home most days.
But when her husband, Gav, is home, it’s all hands on deck. Before leaving for his downtown job as vice-president of a software company, he packs lunches for the kids, Emily, 9, Josh, 8, and Isabella, 5. Ali, 32, gets the kids to and from school and after-school activities. They split the cooking and the laundry. Ali oversees homework. Gav, 36, does the bedtime routine with Isabella. In a pinch, he can work at home.
“Because he’s so flexible, our children know these are not just Mommy jobs,” Ali says.
When she had a job in the publishing industry and worked in an office, they had a nanny and split evenings and weekends down the middle. The current arrangement is less equal, but makes everyone happier.
Focusing on the big picture is something Kyle Pruett and Marsha Kline Pruett suggest in their 2009 book Partnership Parenting. “You need to consider everything you and your spouse do for the good of the family, and stop keeping track of what your partner is not doing,” they write. While it’s tempting to engage in 50-50 bean counting, “this kind of thinking ignores the realities of people’s lives.”
Toronto dad Dalton Higgins says one parent always does more in most families he knows. And it usually comes down to which parent has the most time and flexibility outside paid work, says Higgins, the author of Fatherhood 4.0, which explores the world of multicultural dads.
He says a “cookie-cutter approach” to dividing the responsibilities isn’t any more of a solution than sticking to traditional gender roles. Higgins, whose consultant wife works from home, figures he does about 35 per cent of the parenting duties for daughter Shiloh, 11, and son Solomon, 4.
“You have to look at this on a case-by-case basis.”