The August 8 North American issue of Time magazine has a cover story that proclaims: “CHORE WARS: Let it go. Make peace. Men and women, it turns out, work the same amount.” The article begins with a question: “Men are pulling their weight – at work and at home. So why do women still think they’re slacking off?”
If I might hazard a guess here, perhaps part of the answer is that a lot of us heterosexual men are still slacking off. In many areas. And even when we do put in the same number of hours of work (paid + unpaid) as our partners do, we get to exert a lot more control than women do over when and how our time gets spent.
(Research on same-sex relationships has long shown that gay and lesbian couples tend to split household chores far more equitably than do their straight peers.)
Better, but not yet there. The numbers (and there are a lot of numbers in this article – the writers throw around murky data like caged monkeys flinging poo) do seem to indicate that men are helping out around the house much more than ever before. But the fact that we still use terms like “helping out” or “chipping in” to describe hetero guys’ household work shows that we still have a long way to go until we reach a place of equal responsibility and equal contribution! And while the numbers do show great improvement –that’s only when compared to a baseline that was taken over 45 years ago!
The good news: today men are doing 3 times as much food preparation and clean up as they did in 1965!
The not-so-good news: women are still doing almost 3 times as much work in this area as men are!
The good news: today men are doing 4 times as much housework as they did in 1965!
The not-so-good news: women are still doing 4 times as much housework as men are!
The good news: today men are doing 2½ times the child care they were doing in 1965!
The not-so-good news: women are still doing nearly twice as much childcare as men are!
So why are women supposed to be okay with all of this? According to Time, it is not that men are slacking off. According to Time, men are working (almost) exactly as much as women are – if you include paid work in the equation. Of all the hours being worked (paid and unpaid), the woman in the relationship is working 52% of them, the man 48%. And, according to Time, this fact means that our workloads are equal.
Time is wrong, for several reasons, including the fact that the man who is working longer hours performing paid work is likely getting other benefits as well – certainly more than he would be if he were home changing diapers, getting dinner on the table, or scheduling the kids’ doctor appointments. For his sacrifice, the man is likely getting paid more, and his career is probably advancing. He is engaging in socially-respected (and financially rewarded) endeavors, and his day is probably a lot more varied and stimulating than having to grab groceries and run the kids to soccer practice. Granted, as Time suggests, the man’s work is likely helping the family economically. But it is also helping him to get ahead as an individual. The same cannot be said for the mom who is attending yet another toddler reading hour at the library.
I do not mean to devalue these essential activities that most women are doing so much more of than we men are. But while I was a stay-at-home dad, carting my wonderful daughter to and fro, my career did not advance. My world got about as small as my little girl’s did, and my lifetime earning potential has probably decreased significantly. So Time magazine’s claim that unpaid, home-based work hours are somehow equally balanced by a partner’s professional hours spent on the job is, to my mind, foolish. It just doesn’t add up, even if the hours worked in each place (almost) do.
And some things are in fact getting worse. There was one other piece of rather disturbing news in the article – a section about what the magazine calls “high-quality leisure time.” Essentially, women are hardly getting any. In 1975, both men and women reported that having free time reduced their feelings of being time pressured. By 1998, however, women were reporting that for them this was no longer the case. Time off for women did not make them feel relaxed and rejuvenated. And why is this? The researchers think that this has to do with the fact that women are now spending 50% of their “free time” with their kids.
So supervising kids is defined by the researchers as “free time”? Huh?
To my way of thinking, spending time with your kids is great. But it also often feels a lot like work. Maybe we need to re-run all of those numbers that the article provides and give women some credit for all of this “free time” they are spending parenting!
It turns out that we men, on the other hand, are not sharing our free time. We are guarding it jealously like a dog guards a bone. We play golf. We watch the game. We train for the race. We go out with our buddies. And we can do all of these activities because someone is home watching the kids – our partner.
How many of us hetero guys, really, spend much time watching the kids so that our partner can take a few hours to get away from it all – on a regular basis? So that she can go out with her friends? Watch what she wants to watch on t.v.? Train for her own marathon? A lot of us may claim to do these things, but again the numbers show us coming up short. A recent study that the magazine cites showed that only 8% of heterosexual couples with kids where both parents work outside the home actually equally split child care.
8%.
In 2011, that’s a disgrace.
We guys can do much, much better than that. And it’s about time we did. Tomorrow is Sunday and I have the day off. I will spend all of this “free time” with my young daughter. I think I will take her on a hike (at which time I will work to keep her safe, and ensure she has sunscreen and a hat on, and make sure she has the right shoes on, and make sure she eats a good lunch, and tend to any boo-boos she might attain, and… gosh! This is beginning to sound a lot like work!)
And what will my partner be doing tomorrow? Whatever the heck she wants to. For her, it really will be free time.