Says so fucking much. Good news! Men and women (across race, class and family background), both ideally want an egalitarian relationship. The bad news? Men’s fallback position is for a neotraditional relationship. However, women’s fallback position is overwhelmingly self-reliance.
From here at Ms Magazine, reporting on Kathleen Gerson‘s book, The Unfinished Revolution. Incidentally, this graph is based on American data.
Wow.
I have definitely experienced this in my marriage. It has caused huge amounts of frustration. Apparently, it’s easy to talk the talk about equal partnerships, but when things get tough his default position is the exact opposite. And despite lots of conversations about it, I really don’t think he’s fully aware that it is his default position. (The bitter part of me thinks well, yeah, to acknowledge he does it means he would have to do something about it, and really, why would he want to do that?)
Seeing the data, seeing how common it is, actually helps, in one sense. It’s not just me; not just my marriage.
This is fascinating. Makes me want to read the book.
Yes, I can relate to this! My partner and I have about the same earning capacity. As with the graph, we had theoretical plans for complete equality, but I stayed at home with both of our kids, working part-time from the time they were between 1 & 2. I thought I was choosing what I wanted at the time. I thought I was getting the best of both worlds. Especially when the kids were babies (they are now 7 & 5), I loved being at home with them. Had friends around me in the same situation and we did lots of fun things. I got to write when they were napping, and generally life felt pretty blissful*. However, I think mothershock has been a slow wave that has taken years to wash over me and now I feel like I am being submerged!
My partner is not loving his fulltime job and we have been talking about me going fulltime and him going parttime. I think is he is genuinely terrified of the prospect. Of what sort of job he would do as primary caregiver, of whether he would be able to cook for us satisfactorily (he is not a foodie and I am), of whether we would be more unhappy with the new arrangement overall.
So as well as the cultural barriers to us changing, we have a whole lot of personal ones to overcome and it’s very hard to disentangle the two.
* gross memory distortion probably going on here
It’s one of those things that is a shock to see but then it’s not surprising, is it? Will have to chat to DP about this, I can see it being an excellent discussion since he’s not actually the kind of man who is into neotraditional relationships.
This also rings true for me in many ways, as do the comments. And I find myself wondering how the stats play out in the reality of people’s relationships. Does the fallback position relate to what people do when a relationship ends, or is it more about the plan B that we have in the back of our mind or slowly start to implement, either within or outside our relationship?
I think that parenthood is one of the big crunch moments when equality suddenly becomes really hard, and I know that for us that was when we fell into/chose (?) a more neo-traditional structure, with my partner gradually moving to full-time work and me dropping the full-time PhD and embarking on a path of part-time work, part-time study, primary child-caring, etc, etc.
And I think that within that neo-traditional structure, we both still strive for equality (a work in long, slow, hard progress), but I suspect that for each of us, the fallback positions are different. Well, I know that when things get tough, I find myself looking at a child’s single bed in a small, clear room with a twinge of longing, and when my partner is working long hours or travelling for work, I take a deep breath and think, okay, I can make this work on my own. I’m practising how to do this on my own. I don’t think this is what happens for my partner.
I also see this in my friends. When the non-equality hits a high, my friends don’t very often say, “He’s breadwinning and I’m keeping the home fires burning.” They say, I say, “I’m basically solo parenting at the moment.” Which, I know, is not the same thing as actually solo parenting, but it’s the way we explain ourselves, the way we conceptualise what is happening in our lives and how we’re responding to it.
Sorry this is such a long comment. I’m still trying to figure out what all this means, and I think I’m missing something. I wonder if my starting point should really be about the possible differences between the ideals we hold for our relationships, the structures we chose or find ourselves working with, and the meaning we make of our experiences. I wonder if it’s in these differences that so much of the work of relationships lies, in untangling the threads and finding our way forward together. And then finding that it’s not just about us. It’s that damn patriarchy, getting in the way again, and always.
Thanks for posting, and for starting all these important, wonderful conversations.
I know a few women who reverted to “fine I will just do all of it myself til I get to a financial place where I can leave this manchild” and the “til i can leave” drags out for 5 or 10 years – kids have to get old enough to not need paid care, mom has to finish school or bump up the job ladder, etc.
So they are earning around half the money (but it’s not enough to get by on) and solo parenting and solo houseworking and solo dealing with extended family obligations, and he’s contributing (most of) his paycheck. One couple, that’s expressly their deal: they are roomates, as soon as she can, she’ll leave, they’ve discussed it. I assume he has some sort of plan for when that happens but it’s probably “move back in with mom”.
I think what happens when you have a kid, you realize asking you husband to repeatedly pick up his socks and take out the garbage takes more time than just doing it and letting him do the stuff he’d do anyway, like housemaintenance etc. – you get so little time, that fighting the small battles on equality takes less priority, and even though it can be very frustrating, falling back on traditional roles, it also saves a lot of time and arguments. I think giving your husband specitic tasks like cooking, even if he makes a mess, helps more than trying to get him to “self-direct” and pick up his clothes or whatever, which he might forget anyway during the day. The main issue I believe, is that men can tune out – good for them! – and ignore kids, while a mum can’t she is always multitasking, and changing that is very hard for both!
I wouldn’t pick up the socks or remind an adult to pick up after themselves because either option would drive me nuts. I would wash what is in the laundry basket and leave the adult to run out of socks and learn an important lesson in not taking other people for granted.
In the same way that you understand that magic fairies do not get the dinner on if you forget (and that forgetting will result in cranky over tired starving children) men really can learn that forgetting to do their share has negative consequences. Like going to work in yesterdays socks. Assuming that a man can’t learn that is just patronising.
I see both of your points. Where I get tripped up is the double standards for domestic work. DH does not lose any social standing if the house is a mess and the children eat nothing but junk food. I do. It is not a coincidence that often women “have higher standards” for domestic work. Patriarchy’s way of making her do it. And as to the socks example, DH would love nothing more than to be responsible for exactly the minimum domestic work to meet his own needs. His own laundry and only his own laundry. His own food and only his own food. So instead, the constant negotiation for group contribution. And that gets tiresome.
I just stopped doing his washing.
Of course they “can” pick up after themselves, so why don’t they? Some men do their fair share, but the fact is that its still a pervasive problem in many households that they don’t contribute equally to domestic duties.
Amazing. Thanks for posting this.
Blown. Away.
Fantastic post and comments, thanks. This has really helped me clarify what is behind the breakdown of my relationship with my children’s father, almost 12 months ago. It also explains why I am (somewhat guiltily) okay with the self reliant place I am at, outside of the obvious impact (more guilt) on my children.
“self reliance” for men looks remarkably like “traditional roles” when you add kids into the mix, IMO.
Yes!!! Thank you! I’ve been trying to articulate this for days, and your comment made it click.
I saw this, and read the article, and was confused. The article mentions divorce, and doesn’t describe how the questions were framed for the survey participants. My thought was “Divorce? You don’t have to be divorced to be self-reliant!” If you are the one organizing and providing for the physical, social, and intellectual needs of most/all family members, you are basically self-reliant. If your ideal is egalitarian, and you end up doing everything against your will, you call it self-reliance. And your spouse justifies it by calling it neo-traditional.
[...] ohhhhh, that’s interesting graph: with thanks to Blue Milk. I’ve been thinking about what it means all [...]