It’s unfortunate most of the comments on it were dumb or delusional.
Patriarchy is so insidious. I’ve always thought it was unfortunate that women had to take time off for pregnancy and postnatal care, but never considered how partners could make up for it by taking over more of the childcare later on. From the beginning paltry maternity leave and nonexistent paternity leave set imbalance the scales even more, so the man’s career is more established and mothers become the expert on the children, and from there on out it’s easy to maintain the status quo, even when lives are upended in a pandemic.
There are structural issues. It would be hard for men to take time off or scale back to take a greater role as a parent, but that’s why it needs to be fought for.
I have an egalitarian-minded husband. Unfortunately, senior management at his workplace can't wrap their heads around the concept of a dual-career, two-parent household. Early in the pandemic, they simply did not comprehend our reality: a kindergartner suddenly attending school virtually while both parents attempted to work from home. ‘’What, isn’t it just like homeschooling?” No. And homeschooling wasn’t something we chose.
*My* workplace did NOT handle things much better in early pandemic times. Our chief executive, who is the parent of grown children, sent out an email in which she said that children should just be kept quiet with coloring books while you worked. Which would be laughable had it not been infuriating and unrealistic. Ultimately I did have to use some leave under the CARES act, since neither school nor after-school care were options. I took a paycheck hit for it, too. So, yes, this has laid bare the inequities and I'm feeling pretty raw about it. “Having it all” is an impossible lie if the support isn’t there.
Thank you for this piece. I agree. I have a piece that I am trying to publish somewhere about this situation and my own experience taking a pandemic maternity leave. All this anger and rage began to simmer for me, and I realized that what I did with the pandemic - hitting pause on work to accommodate my family - is exactly what I did when I first had kids. I had just crossed the finish line in August 2019 - my youngest went to kindergarten! I felt like the me I had put up on a shelf for nine years could finally come down. And then it was all ripped away. And I realized that for those nine years, I had wanted more time to work, but didn't feel like I could ask for more. Not because of my husband but because of the inner patriarchy within that made me feel like I should want to mother more than I should want to work. But it wasn't true. I'm not sure I would have realized that except that the raw deal dealt by the pandemic woke me up to my inner rage, unhappiness, frustration with the patriarchy in my own damn mind!
It is so terribly disheartening to see this going on now. Seems all the gains were illusory in some respects. Brings back memories of the ‘60s - as a newlywed I tried to apply for a job at a large insurance company; the older woman interviewing me wouldn’t even consider me because “You’ll have babies.” So only spinsters need apply?
Same era. I stopped counting the number of times I was told that. And the women who did manage to get jobs were escorted out when they got pregnant, at some point before they started to 'show" too much. Not escorted out in a bad way - big celebration - congratulations, now you get to go home and spend the rest of your life servicing your husband and children.
and if you think your job is underpaid and thankless, and you've got news about motherhood, wait till you become the elder-caregiver, because women are expected to do that, too, by default.
That was great! Thank You!I am a pediatrician and almost all of the nurses and physicians in our office are female. Although some of our cultural narratives tell women they should want to stay at home I know of no one who would want an office of exclusively male physicians/nurses particularly in primary care and ob/gyn. If the narrative/questions that pollsters asked were flipped ie would you want a world where you were less likely to see the physician you want because of lack of child care I think you would get different answers.
Great article as usual. One thought I have is that empirically it would be worth teasing out how much of couples' decision to prioritize the man's career is because he gets paid more, versus how much is down to the woman being perceived as 'better' at domestic work.
The pay gaps are a vicious cycle, because you can see why a couple would choose to prioritize the higher paying job, which perpetuates the problem. But the cultural problem is so big too, because even a higher paid woman will likely sacrifice if mom is 'needed' to do something for the kids or at home.
I have to confess I subscribe somewhat to the 'myth of the male bumbler'. But then I don't think men should be running companies or governments either or much of anything really. It feels to me like male obstinance is a driving force behind most of the world's problems, just because women seem so much more likely to modify their behavior for the greater good.
As a man it's easy to say, 'I don't know why women put up with it,' but it's also profoundly unhelpful, and I think we do know why; it's because the alternative options are so limited. I don't know what to say when men persistently refuse to be better.
One of the things I remember from uni (but we're talking 40 years back, in Holland, so 'relevance mileage' may vary...) was that the feminist cause was somewhat undermined by one heterosexual dating fact especially: that there was an average age gap of three years between men and women.
So if you look at things like schooling/jobs, the men would have been working three years longer and making more money*, which meant that decisions 'not based on being the man or the woman but for purely financially reasons**' always resulted in the woman serving the man's career.
*and because he is the first looking for a job, he can look everywhere, but when she is looking for a job, it's often bound to a much narrower geographical area - ie, close to his work.
**like who will give up work if one of the two has to, or where to live to be closer to work - etc
That's a very good point and is no doubt another key part of the puzzle. My first thought in response was that but yes it makes sense for women to date men who are a little older, because, well, men mature later. Sometimes decades later! But of course how much of that is that there's less pressure on men to be mature, responsible adults - we get cut WAY more slack - than there is on women, so it comes later to us. As opposed to just that we struggle with it for biological reasons, which is a theory I'm very open to, but it has to be explanatory and in no way excusing.
Perhaps that has to do with patterns? Girls often date older boys, because boys physically mature later. Maybe looking for slightly older dates becomes a habit? Or it's what women at least still do at the age they find their first longterm partners?
Does anyone here know of research into that aspect of heterosexual dating?
It's a privilege to be in your head! I'm blushing :-) I don't know how many male readers you get but dammit men are the ones who need to be listening to these conversations!
I’m 50 and my kids are 26 and 23 and live in Europe. But I’m still infuriated by this, because fuuuuuck a bunch of patriarchal bullshit. I really feel for younger folks who have small children or who want to start families and who have to navigate this stuff. The United States is such a cruel country in so many ways, and the way it treats women and children is just one part of the problem.
I really don’t know what I’m trying to say here. I’m just pissed off in general by injustice.
Yes. I'm Dutch and 59 - and at uni a few other students and I did a research project, comparing the answers agony aunts gave for the same women magazines in the Fifties and mid-Eighties. We laughed a lot but were also quite shocked by the answers in the old magazines that all boiled down to, 'You are the one responsible for keeping the marriage going.' Whether the guy slept around or hit his wife or drank or gambled... The homemaker wife HAD to double as homesaviour wife, whatever it cost her.
I remember all of us, two guys and four women, saying stuff like, "Damn, I'm glad that kind of shit is dead and buried"
..... so now I just want to scream: 'We've done that crap. It was godawful and demeaning and just Not-Fucking-Right and we're going back to that shit? What the fuck is wrong with us (men)?!'
In all seriousness, if you can feasibly do it, I recommend it. I lived in France when I had my kids and when they were younger, and although I never was able to take advantage of the generous maternity leave policies (I hadn't worked enough hours to qualify), I definitely benefited from the excellent pre- and post-natal care, as weill as subsidized day care.
I think about that a lot - part of me would love to just pack up and move somewhere else where I don't have to worry about this bullshit (and school shootings and every other American horror).
Fantastic piece, Jessica! I absolutely agree with everything you said (and you always put it so damn eloquently!!). As a person about to enter motherhood, it terrifies me to have to deal with the additional bullshit this pandemic (and men in general?) place on mothers. Fortunate to have a job with paid parental leave, which my husband also has, but it certainly won’t end there...le sigh.
Thank you, Emily! And congrats on your soon-to-be-parenthood! It is definitely a lot, but you're going into it armed and ready with that knowledge - which is half the battle :)
You can argue the Hell out of that but let's go with it. So, isn't it the conservative crowd who always claim that the managers in the private sector deserve their big salaries & bonuses because they are uniquely qualified to do these important jobs - and if women are uniquely qualified to do the even bigger Most-Important-Job-In-the-World, where are their seven figure salaries & bonuses? (Yes, we know the answer.)
As for individual men; I'm bitter and angry and so-fucking-tired-of-this-bullshit but not at all surprised. People like their privileges. Ask most people if they want better welfare & healthcare and they say 'Yeah, good idea' but they don't want to pay any extra tax themselves to achieve it. People like the idea of a clean environment but not if they can't drive their car everywhere or fly five times a year (for whatever reason) or even wear a goddamn sweater or coat instead of turning on the outdoor heater... et fucking cetera.
So most individual men will not lift a finger (doing the cooking or the washing up or even playing with their own goddamn children) to help their partners, let alone take a hit professionally.
Time for hard truths: most men don't find their partners and their hopes and happiness and ambitions all that important. Sure, they love their wives and girlfriends, as long as it's not too much effort. You know, all those fuckheads who throw no longer wanted or too troublesome pets out of the car? That's, in only VERY slightly hyperbolic terms, your average guy when it comes to their partners.
All right, end of rant - but Jesus, this shit pisses me off.
I AM ALSO PISSED! So thank you for this rant. And exactly, if parenting is so important: *pay us* We need those policies and that $$$ but we also need individual men to give a shit
Great piece, Jessica! Although, the sad reality is that men can do that BECAUSE they often have a partner who does the majority of domestic and often invisible labor of parenting and housework. I’ll never forget this quote from an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, in which one very successful male surgeon told a more junior yet equally ambitious and gifted female surgeon, “when you do what you and I do as fiercely as we do it, you need somebody who’s willing to stay home and keep the home fires burning. That’s the only way you and I are ever going to have somebody.” And unfortunately, that person who stays home and “keeps the home fires burning” is usually the woman in the relationship. “/ That might be an extreme example, but the point still stands: what we can do about this phenomenon if men don’t start stepping up and sacrificing their own careers to take on more responsibility at home?
This is really, really true. I think we need a combination of men stepping up & workplaces changing to become more parent friendly (for both moms and dads). And honestly, without that first piece of men stepping up we're in big trouble. How to make that happen is a HUGE question, but I get into it a little here: https://jessica.substack.com/p/is-divorce-the-only-answer-to-an
As far as the first piece of that puzzle, we could start by not shaming men who choose to stay home and by normalizing that. Perhaps not casually calling domestic and childcare work “women’s work” might also be a start...though changing the language around domestic labor might be easier said than done. However, language and thought are so intimately linked that we need to be mindful of how we describe/label things, especially when talking to children, who pick up on gendered concepts pretty early on
Yes definitely - I think that's a key part. What's hard is that so long as care work is feminized, men won't want to do it because they're taught that anything coded female is beneath them
Which is of course a much bigger problem, because it's not just types of work, it's anything coded female - men are too likely to avoid emotional responses and behavior patterns that are considered feminine.
Men can be so myopic. There's an argument that quality can be a strength when/if there's a task that needs total dedication and no distractions, but more often the result is just men being obtuse and clueless. I would guess that engineers skew more to that 'male brain' feature. (Hope it doesn't sound like I'm making excuses, I completely agree with you!)
This reminds me of your medium piece that really reframed the way I think about childcare: https://gen.medium.com/kids-dont-damage-women-s-careers-men-do-eb07cba689b8
It’s unfortunate most of the comments on it were dumb or delusional.
Patriarchy is so insidious. I’ve always thought it was unfortunate that women had to take time off for pregnancy and postnatal care, but never considered how partners could make up for it by taking over more of the childcare later on. From the beginning paltry maternity leave and nonexistent paternity leave set imbalance the scales even more, so the man’s career is more established and mothers become the expert on the children, and from there on out it’s easy to maintain the status quo, even when lives are upended in a pandemic.
There are structural issues. It would be hard for men to take time off or scale back to take a greater role as a parent, but that’s why it needs to be fought for.
I have an egalitarian-minded husband. Unfortunately, senior management at his workplace can't wrap their heads around the concept of a dual-career, two-parent household. Early in the pandemic, they simply did not comprehend our reality: a kindergartner suddenly attending school virtually while both parents attempted to work from home. ‘’What, isn’t it just like homeschooling?” No. And homeschooling wasn’t something we chose.
*My* workplace did NOT handle things much better in early pandemic times. Our chief executive, who is the parent of grown children, sent out an email in which she said that children should just be kept quiet with coloring books while you worked. Which would be laughable had it not been infuriating and unrealistic. Ultimately I did have to use some leave under the CARES act, since neither school nor after-school care were options. I took a paycheck hit for it, too. So, yes, this has laid bare the inequities and I'm feeling pretty raw about it. “Having it all” is an impossible lie if the support isn’t there.
Thank you for this piece. I agree. I have a piece that I am trying to publish somewhere about this situation and my own experience taking a pandemic maternity leave. All this anger and rage began to simmer for me, and I realized that what I did with the pandemic - hitting pause on work to accommodate my family - is exactly what I did when I first had kids. I had just crossed the finish line in August 2019 - my youngest went to kindergarten! I felt like the me I had put up on a shelf for nine years could finally come down. And then it was all ripped away. And I realized that for those nine years, I had wanted more time to work, but didn't feel like I could ask for more. Not because of my husband but because of the inner patriarchy within that made me feel like I should want to mother more than I should want to work. But it wasn't true. I'm not sure I would have realized that except that the raw deal dealt by the pandemic woke me up to my inner rage, unhappiness, frustration with the patriarchy in my own damn mind!
It is so terribly disheartening to see this going on now. Seems all the gains were illusory in some respects. Brings back memories of the ‘60s - as a newlywed I tried to apply for a job at a large insurance company; the older woman interviewing me wouldn’t even consider me because “You’ll have babies.” So only spinsters need apply?
Same era. I stopped counting the number of times I was told that. And the women who did manage to get jobs were escorted out when they got pregnant, at some point before they started to 'show" too much. Not escorted out in a bad way - big celebration - congratulations, now you get to go home and spend the rest of your life servicing your husband and children.
and if you think your job is underpaid and thankless, and you've got news about motherhood, wait till you become the elder-caregiver, because women are expected to do that, too, by default.
YES YES YES
That was great! Thank You!I am a pediatrician and almost all of the nurses and physicians in our office are female. Although some of our cultural narratives tell women they should want to stay at home I know of no one who would want an office of exclusively male physicians/nurses particularly in primary care and ob/gyn. If the narrative/questions that pollsters asked were flipped ie would you want a world where you were less likely to see the physician you want because of lack of child care I think you would get different answers.
Thank you! And this is a *great* framing. I wish people would put it this way
Great article as usual. One thought I have is that empirically it would be worth teasing out how much of couples' decision to prioritize the man's career is because he gets paid more, versus how much is down to the woman being perceived as 'better' at domestic work.
The pay gaps are a vicious cycle, because you can see why a couple would choose to prioritize the higher paying job, which perpetuates the problem. But the cultural problem is so big too, because even a higher paid woman will likely sacrifice if mom is 'needed' to do something for the kids or at home.
I have to confess I subscribe somewhat to the 'myth of the male bumbler'. But then I don't think men should be running companies or governments either or much of anything really. It feels to me like male obstinance is a driving force behind most of the world's problems, just because women seem so much more likely to modify their behavior for the greater good.
As a man it's easy to say, 'I don't know why women put up with it,' but it's also profoundly unhelpful, and I think we do know why; it's because the alternative options are so limited. I don't know what to say when men persistently refuse to be better.
One of the things I remember from uni (but we're talking 40 years back, in Holland, so 'relevance mileage' may vary...) was that the feminist cause was somewhat undermined by one heterosexual dating fact especially: that there was an average age gap of three years between men and women.
So if you look at things like schooling/jobs, the men would have been working three years longer and making more money*, which meant that decisions 'not based on being the man or the woman but for purely financially reasons**' always resulted in the woman serving the man's career.
*and because he is the first looking for a job, he can look everywhere, but when she is looking for a job, it's often bound to a much narrower geographical area - ie, close to his work.
**like who will give up work if one of the two has to, or where to live to be closer to work - etc
That's a very good point and is no doubt another key part of the puzzle. My first thought in response was that but yes it makes sense for women to date men who are a little older, because, well, men mature later. Sometimes decades later! But of course how much of that is that there's less pressure on men to be mature, responsible adults - we get cut WAY more slack - than there is on women, so it comes later to us. As opposed to just that we struggle with it for biological reasons, which is a theory I'm very open to, but it has to be explanatory and in no way excusing.
Perhaps that has to do with patterns? Girls often date older boys, because boys physically mature later. Maybe looking for slightly older dates becomes a habit? Or it's what women at least still do at the age they find their first longterm partners?
Does anyone here know of research into that aspect of heterosexual dating?
You are in my head because my next column is expanding on that idea and a few others :)
It's a privilege to be in your head! I'm blushing :-) I don't know how many male readers you get but dammit men are the ones who need to be listening to these conversations!
I’m 50 and my kids are 26 and 23 and live in Europe. But I’m still infuriated by this, because fuuuuuck a bunch of patriarchal bullshit. I really feel for younger folks who have small children or who want to start families and who have to navigate this stuff. The United States is such a cruel country in so many ways, and the way it treats women and children is just one part of the problem.
I really don’t know what I’m trying to say here. I’m just pissed off in general by injustice.
Pissed of in general by injustice is my default setting, so I get it!
Yes. I'm Dutch and 59 - and at uni a few other students and I did a research project, comparing the answers agony aunts gave for the same women magazines in the Fifties and mid-Eighties. We laughed a lot but were also quite shocked by the answers in the old magazines that all boiled down to, 'You are the one responsible for keeping the marriage going.' Whether the guy slept around or hit his wife or drank or gambled... The homemaker wife HAD to double as homesaviour wife, whatever it cost her.
I remember all of us, two guys and four women, saying stuff like, "Damn, I'm glad that kind of shit is dead and buried"
..... so now I just want to scream: 'We've done that crap. It was godawful and demeaning and just Not-Fucking-Right and we're going back to that shit? What the fuck is wrong with us (men)?!'
Trying to talk my husband into moving to Europe for the benefit of our soon-to-be baby! Don’t think I’ll succeed. Should I feel like a quitter?
In all seriousness, if you can feasibly do it, I recommend it. I lived in France when I had my kids and when they were younger, and although I never was able to take advantage of the generous maternity leave policies (I hadn't worked enough hours to qualify), I definitely benefited from the excellent pre- and post-natal care, as weill as subsidized day care.
I think about that a lot - part of me would love to just pack up and move somewhere else where I don't have to worry about this bullshit (and school shootings and every other American horror).
Fantastic piece, Jessica! I absolutely agree with everything you said (and you always put it so damn eloquently!!). As a person about to enter motherhood, it terrifies me to have to deal with the additional bullshit this pandemic (and men in general?) place on mothers. Fortunate to have a job with paid parental leave, which my husband also has, but it certainly won’t end there...le sigh.
Thank you, Emily! And congrats on your soon-to-be-parenthood! It is definitely a lot, but you're going into it armed and ready with that knowledge - which is half the battle :)
I absolutely agree - with everything.
First: 'the most important job in the world'.
You can argue the Hell out of that but let's go with it. So, isn't it the conservative crowd who always claim that the managers in the private sector deserve their big salaries & bonuses because they are uniquely qualified to do these important jobs - and if women are uniquely qualified to do the even bigger Most-Important-Job-In-the-World, where are their seven figure salaries & bonuses? (Yes, we know the answer.)
As for individual men; I'm bitter and angry and so-fucking-tired-of-this-bullshit but not at all surprised. People like their privileges. Ask most people if they want better welfare & healthcare and they say 'Yeah, good idea' but they don't want to pay any extra tax themselves to achieve it. People like the idea of a clean environment but not if they can't drive their car everywhere or fly five times a year (for whatever reason) or even wear a goddamn sweater or coat instead of turning on the outdoor heater... et fucking cetera.
So most individual men will not lift a finger (doing the cooking or the washing up or even playing with their own goddamn children) to help their partners, let alone take a hit professionally.
Time for hard truths: most men don't find their partners and their hopes and happiness and ambitions all that important. Sure, they love their wives and girlfriends, as long as it's not too much effort. You know, all those fuckheads who throw no longer wanted or too troublesome pets out of the car? That's, in only VERY slightly hyperbolic terms, your average guy when it comes to their partners.
All right, end of rant - but Jesus, this shit pisses me off.
I AM ALSO PISSED! So thank you for this rant. And exactly, if parenting is so important: *pay us* We need those policies and that $$$ but we also need individual men to give a shit
Thank you. I felt slightly weird writing it, thinking throughout, 'You are pissed off? How do you think women are feeling, rant-bro?'
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Great piece, Jessica! Although, the sad reality is that men can do that BECAUSE they often have a partner who does the majority of domestic and often invisible labor of parenting and housework. I’ll never forget this quote from an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, in which one very successful male surgeon told a more junior yet equally ambitious and gifted female surgeon, “when you do what you and I do as fiercely as we do it, you need somebody who’s willing to stay home and keep the home fires burning. That’s the only way you and I are ever going to have somebody.” And unfortunately, that person who stays home and “keeps the home fires burning” is usually the woman in the relationship. “/ That might be an extreme example, but the point still stands: what we can do about this phenomenon if men don’t start stepping up and sacrificing their own careers to take on more responsibility at home?
This is really, really true. I think we need a combination of men stepping up & workplaces changing to become more parent friendly (for both moms and dads). And honestly, without that first piece of men stepping up we're in big trouble. How to make that happen is a HUGE question, but I get into it a little here: https://jessica.substack.com/p/is-divorce-the-only-answer-to-an
Yes!!! I remember reading that piece now. Such good points!
As far as the first piece of that puzzle, we could start by not shaming men who choose to stay home and by normalizing that. Perhaps not casually calling domestic and childcare work “women’s work” might also be a start...though changing the language around domestic labor might be easier said than done. However, language and thought are so intimately linked that we need to be mindful of how we describe/label things, especially when talking to children, who pick up on gendered concepts pretty early on
Yes definitely - I think that's a key part. What's hard is that so long as care work is feminized, men won't want to do it because they're taught that anything coded female is beneath them
Which is of course a much bigger problem, because it's not just types of work, it's anything coded female - men are too likely to avoid emotional responses and behavior patterns that are considered feminine.
It's as if the choice is being made to have a dumber, poorer country. Some Dark Ages-level shit. (Are we allowed to curse on this substack?)
Yup, that's us men, just look at voting patterns :-)
You sure fucking are!
YES! I actually had a whole section in the column about that very thing but decided to write a separate piece about it! (Coming soon!)
Right! We desperately need better policy, but we need that cultural shift too!
Men can be so myopic. There's an argument that quality can be a strength when/if there's a task that needs total dedication and no distractions, but more often the result is just men being obtuse and clueless. I would guess that engineers skew more to that 'male brain' feature. (Hope it doesn't sound like I'm making excuses, I completely agree with you!)