Clarification — No one was implying that all work is bad. Even 80 hour per week jobs are great for some people who don’t mind the sacrifices that it takes on a personal life. (Hirshman is right. To make it to the most elite jobs, you have to plan things accordingly.) We were rebelling against the idea put forth by Linda Hirshman that highly educated women should pursue 80 hour per week jobs or else they were letting down the movement.
Which segues nicely into a point that my husband asked that I make. He felt that men want to be liberated from the pressure to assume the breadwinning role. Most guys want the choice, too. Another way to change the gender imbalance at the top levels of business and law is to recruit more men to work at home. Time to jump start that slacker movement.
Apt. 11d 
Okay, I need to weigh in here briefly on these many important topics.
Five minutes ago, I got off the phone with my spouse, who is driving to the grocery store to pick up the final items for my daughter’s birthday party tonight while I am preparing for a big meeting at work.
When my husband and I were dating and both graduate students, 8 years ago, I made sure we had a conversation about careers, kids and homefront duties *before* we even got engaged and married and had kids.
I didn’t want to be hooked up with a man who would not be willing to do his share (or more if my career dictated it) of “grunt work” and child raising at home.
Lo and behold, this has come to pass and my spouse has a part-time job while I have the stressful full-time job and he does more child care and household chores during the week.
It’s the best arrangement that we can come up with for all 4 of us.
I really think these women’s mags should start having articles not about “how to catch a man” but “how to talk to a man” about your expectations, desires, shared visions of the future. It should be about how to figure out if you want to settle down with a partner who can be on board with your priotities, dreams, etc.
Hmm. Maybe I should write this article myself.
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Sorry for being totally OT, but where do I put this blog in my blogroll? I mean alphabetically? Could you e-mail me with the answer at vtybg@netzero.com? Thanks.
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Hmm…you need a further clarification…
“Even 80 hour per week jobs are great for some people who don’t mind the sacrifices that it takes on a personal life.”
Should be —
“Even 80 hour per week jobs are great for some people who don’t mind the sacrifices that it takes on a personal life and who have partners who don’t mind.”
My DH is very happy and fulfilled in a career that entails these kinds of hours. I don’t like the way his choices dictate mine.
Forget the housework — not an issue — before we had kids we just hired help and it was fine. But if your spouse isn’t putting in the parenting hours, and you don’t want the kids raised entirely by the help, your “choices” are made for you.
I happen to be quite happy with my lifestyle — part-time job, and very primary parent — but I dislike the fact that I don’t feel like I had a choice in the matter, and in an ideal world I would greatly increase his level of participation and feel like I had the option of ramping up my career, whether or not I chose to do so.
But I can’t play stupid — being an interesting, motivated and talented person who loves what he does is one of the reasons I liked him in the first place. It’s also the reasons he’s really successful — resulting in the kinds of jobs that demand total commitment.
Did we have “who will do the parenting” discussions when we were dating/engaged? Nope. It all seemed so far away. Guilty as charged.
I like to say, “You don’t really know someone till you have kids with them, and by then, it’s too late.”
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Here’s an economist dad’s take on the 80-hour work week that makes the salient point, “the ideal would be for everyone to have an actual (vs. Hobson’s) choice of how much labor to supply to the market.”
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I have always said I have a luxury my husband does not. He has to work full-time to support us, no matter what he desires. He can earn more than I can at this point. He would gladly stay home. Perhaps if we had thought it through we would have prepared our work lives and family to make that possible, but we didn’t. So I get to decide if I work full-time, part-time, or not at all. He doesn’t have those choices.
Oh and he does the house and parents pretty eqaully with me.
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I like to think that we rotated making the decisions: we both did graduate studies until kids, he finished, I went back after he finished. We moved for my phd which did not help him find work for his new phd. Eventually we moved when he found work and I could write there, too. But except for the 2 year window when he was unhappy with his job and I was looking for a tenure track position, there isn’t a lot of flexibility anymore. We’re not going anywhere now that he has a very good job. I’m adjuncting. I continued to apply, but when it came down to it, the money offered wasn’t anywhere near what he earns. We won’t be moving a family of four for that.
The point? By opting off the track now, there’s not ever going to be an easy way to get back on. My diss stuff can go up in the attic with yours, Laura.
While these are our individual choices, there are certainly a significant number of men with the tenure track jobs and women without around here.
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I think one of the primary and most defendable political solutions is the creation of some kind of universal health care. For most families, at least parent must work a full-time job to get health benefits (assuming a job that offers them).
That’s the case with my wife and me. Since my job made more money and, ironically, offered more flexible hours, the decision that I stay working full time when we had kids was pretty obvious.
That said, we have made many small decisions since to ensure that we share as much family time as possible. Just one: my job is about a 20 minute bus or bike ride from our house. That’s about as far as I want to get. I have friends who, by choice or necessity, have long commutes to their jobs and that single factor changes their lifestyle immensely.
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In the comments at Literary Mama, Linda Hirshman pipes up to say that the family unit should be judged in terms how well it works out for women. I just think that it is very hard, because no two families are the same. Just because a woman has stopped working a full time job, it doesn’t necessarily mean that she has done so because she likes being exploited. There are so many variables. One famiily may a have a kid with special needs. Another might have a situation where the spouses take turns being the primary breadwinner. Another might not be able to move to South Dakota to get the one available job in an academic discipline. I think a good number of women who stay at home don’t have a choice. They should hardly be blamed for that outcome.
More thoughts, but I’m starting to peeter out on this whole business. I might go write a post about hair gel….
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Thank you (or maybe your husband) for making that point. My husband feels the same – he would definately take the opportunity to stay home when our first child comes. Unfortunately, the economics may not work out for him to be full time at home (even though I’m the primary wage-earner). And he’s not the only man I know who feels that way. Sadly, they aren’t the men in power (too young). And I definately agree with you about choosing the slackers: they really do make great food, and more interesting company.
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The point about more men staying home – Hurray! I think this is something that Hirshman would agree with, too, and I think failing to address this is a major flaw of her piece, and why it was so grating to so many people – she only addresses the women’s side of things, but to be really successful, we also need to change society’s expectations for me, but this always gets much less attention.
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Oz Men
Just because the NL West is about as strong as the New Engl
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