One of my all-time favorite articles is Anne-Marie Slaughter's "Why Women Still Can't Have it All" from the July 2012 issue of The Atlantic. It's long, so if you haven't read it but don't have time to right now, first of all, schedule some time in. But in the meantime, here are my two favorite points:
One way to change that is by changing the “default rules” that govern office work—the baseline expectations about when, where, and how work will be done. As behavioral economists well know, these baselines can make an enormous difference in the way people act. It is one thing, for instance, for an organization to allow phone-ins to a meeting on an ad hoc basis, when parenting and work schedules collide—a system that’s better than nothing, but likely to engender guilt among those calling in, and possibly resentment among those in the room. It is quite another for that organization to declare that its policy will be to schedule in-person meetings, whenever possible, during the hours of the school day—a system that might normalize call-ins for those (rarer) meetings still held in the late afternoon.
and
Many people in positions of power seem to place a low value on child care in comparison with other outside activities. Consider the following proposition: An employer has two equally talented and productive employees. One trains for and runs marathons when he is not working. The other takes care of two children. What assumptions is the employer likely to make about the marathon runner? That he gets up in the dark every day and logs an hour or two running before even coming into the office, or drives himself to get out there even after a long day. That he is ferociously disciplined and willing to push himself through distraction, exhaustion, and days when nothing seems to go right in the service of a goal far in the distance. That he must manage his time exceptionally well to squeeze all of that in.
Be honest: Do you think the employer makes those same assumptions about the parent? Even though she likely rises in the dark hours before she needs to be at work, organizes her children’s day, makes breakfast, packs lunch, gets them off to school, figures out shopping and other errands even if she is lucky enough to have a housekeeper—and does much the same work at the end of the day.
Or, put even more succinctly, the workplace can be more hospitable to parents of both genders if it:
1. Schedules meetings and other face-to-face interaction during school hours whenever possible.
2. Recognizes the demands of parenting in the same way it would recognize the demands of training for a marathon (or some other similarly commendable but difficult and time-consuming task).
That article was a support to me as I navigated part-time work, part-time study, and full-time motherhood. Well, three years later, I possibly have a new favorite article...and it was written by Anne-Marie Slaughter's husband: Why I Put My Wife's Career First. Read it if you get a chance.
Jeremy and I have just gone through - are still going through - a major life shift in which my career now takes precedence over his. And while our story bears some similarity to Moravcsik and Slaughter's on the surface, deeper than that we're not so much alike. (We are both academics, like they are, but we are far from high-powered positions and our kids seem to be about a decade younger than theirs.) Handing the role of "lead parent" (as Moravcsik calls it, and I like that term better than "default parent") to Jeremy has meant a lot of changes, most of which we are still sorting out.
For ten years (yes, it's true - Miriam turned ten last week!), I have been the lead parent. For the last five years or so, I've also been working or studying "outside the home" (UGH how do we not even have a better term for that yet??). I am so used to work work working and then coming home and work work working with the house and kids. I'm used to walking through the door of the house and immediately being on duty. I'm used to taking care of everybody else before myself, and cramming my work-work into any precious kid-free time I had. (Or, more likely, especially in the case of my MA work, just doing it while kids were hanging off of me, sometimes literally.)
It is a strange (but wonderful!) feeling to go to work and be able to really focus. To come home and freaking go pee if I have to before cleaning up anyone's mess or making someone food. Does anyone else do that thing where you get home after errands or a day out and you have to pee and you're starving but the kids are starving too and baby needs a diaper change and the groceries need to be put away so you just do everything and 45 minutes later you still have to pee and you're still starving but at least the kids are happy and fed and the food is put away?
ANYWAY, yeah, still getting used to not doing that anymore. I'm also getting used to the feeling of someone having my back - or, as Moravcsik puts it, again in better terms, the feeling of having "a spouse who bears the burden at home." It is an amazing feeling, and I at once am so grateful to/happy for/worried about Jeremy for being that spouse. Because I've been there, and it's character-building/life-affirming/soul-sucking.
I'm sure I will blog more about our transition someday, but I'm not ready yet. For now I'm reading and re-reading Moravcsik's article, as well as reminding myself that we live in the region of the world that gave us these beautiful photo essays of dads at home with their kids.