I’ll never forget my folklore professor telling us during a class at Indiana University about how men and women were considered equal a century or more ago in the U.S. A man’s role of either working outside of the home or farming was no better than a woman’s role of taking care of the home and children. Both were essential for a family to thrive and do well.
I’m not sure how true that was, but the concept sounded great to me. I’m glad, however, that women have more choices today. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, in 1920, 21 percent of people in the U.S. workforce were women. Today, that number has risen to almost 50 percent. As more women have entered the workplace, however, various home and parenting responsibilities haven’t been shifting accordingly.
Men are taking on more hands-on parenting tasks than their fathers before them. I remember my mother marveling at John’s parenting skills 22 years ago when our oldest was just a newborn. He had left our table at a restaurant to change Jonathon in the men’s restroom.
“Your father never once changed a diaper,” she commented.
I laughed to myself as I remembered Dad asking Mom once where the forks were in our house. He was a good provider, a loving husband, and a great father. Other than handling our finances, he left the rest of the home and childcare responsibilities to Mom. She didn’t work outside the home and did a wonderful job with me and my siblings.
Men have made progress, and my husband and several of our male friends are a great example of this. But research finds that even as more women enter the work force and men take on more chores, there’s still a burden many women seem to carry all by ourselves: the mental load.
Why? As my other son Jacob would say, blame society. Women typically adopt this mental labor because our mothers did it and so did our grandmothers. We also worry that the blame for any family or domestic failures will fall squarely on us.
What about same-sex couples raising children today? According to a May 2018 New York Times article, research has consistently found that same-sex couples divide up chores more equally. But when gay and lesbian couples have children, they often begin to divide things as heterosexual couples do, according to new data for larger, more representative samples of the gay population.
Though the couples are still more equitable, one partner often has higher earnings, and the other one has a greater share of household chores and childcare. The article states that this shows these roles are not just about gender.
What’s the bottom line? Work and much of society are still built for single-earner families.