The elitist dad on Wife Swap is spawning backlash blogs and facebook pages.
Expanding on a discussion in our comment section, Harry b describes a clasroom exercise that examines gender and expectations about family life.
Megan says what would make her feel poor.
Salma Hayek is incredibly cool.
Apt. 11d 
How has Drezner not already blogged the Salma Hayek news? Did Foreign Policy forbid him to be funny?
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According to his facebook status, he is refusing to comment on that story.
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Probably because of a restraining order. She was very active lawyers.
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I don’t have Obama’s BlackBerry address. I can’t even read Drezner’s facebook status. I am so far out of the loop…
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I don’t even have facebook.
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Aha! So MH, you’re the little kid from the Matrix going, “There is no loop…”
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Also, there is no spoon. Which makes this yogurt I’ve got problematic.
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(Cross-commenting at CT)
I am curious about whether parenting is different now from when Harry’s students were younger. In Virginia, the Code now states that “The court shall assure minor children of frequent and continuing contact with both parents, when appropriate, and encourage parents to share in the responsibilities of rearing their children. As between the parents, there shall be no presumption or inference of law in favor of either.”
Moreover, I suspect that the number of shared custody arrangements is increasing dramatically with every year. As Courts move away from an arrangement where one parent gets custody and the other gets two weekends a month to an arrangement of more equal time, expectations regarding the division of labor should change.
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“I am curious about whether parenting is different now from when Harry’s students were younger”
I also think things might be changing. I can’t compare to the “student’s” generation, since they’re 20 years ago, but I know that there are a number of families in my child’s school where I’d say parents are roughly equal parents, and a few where I’d say the father is the primary contact parent. This pattern is more marked than with families with younger children. It’s a high SES private school with high performing kids, so not a random sample, but I find it interesting.
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“As between the parents, there shall be no presumption or inference of law in favor of either.”
How far do they take this? Do breast-feeding infants need to be split 50/50 between divorced parents? Sounds kind of Solomonic, and not in a good way.
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I think SES plays into the split of custody/placement arrangements quite a bit (ie, upper SES couples are more likely to split placement equally after divorce). But, interestingly, within intact families the higher the SES level, the more men say they believe in gender equality but the less they do with the kids. (Sorry, can’t give a cite for that, no doubt I’ll come across it sometime when I go back through all this literature).
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“the more men say they believe in gender equality but the less they do with the kids”
I’ve found this to be false in my non-random sample. But there are numerous confounding factors, including the high SES programmer who was there at the right time for the dotcom/stock boom, and can “retire” while their kids are still children. For some, this means wives who concentrate on their careers; for others, it means both parents concentrate on the kids.
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If men say they believe in equality yet don’t do as much with the kids, they may be encountering the old conundrum many wives complain about. You want to run your household in a more egalitarian way, but the primary breadwinner’s job does not allow it. (Requires too many hours, too inflexible, etc.)
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Jen — yes, that’s the conjecture (I’m really sorry I can’t find the citation) — basically, high SES men have jobs which demand a great deal of their time, whereas low SES men have more “discretionary” time (including being more likely to be involuntarily unemployed) some of which they spend with their children. On the other hand, many high SES men could still get lower SES jobs and have more discretionary time if they believed in equality enough. Revealed preference theory says they don’t believe in it as much as they say they do.
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I wonder how much of this also boils down to the simple strength of each parent’s preferences.
I will try to give an example. My wife and I have a child. Three basic, simplified options:
1. I stay home and she works hard to make money
2. She stays home and I work hard to make money
3. We share earning and child care equally. (ie both have jobs earning equal and allowing equal time for child caring)
My medium preference is 3 first, 2, then 1 (or 3 first, 1, then 2.
Her strong preference is 2 first, then 3 then 1.
In the interest of being a good husband, I might agree to her way when the children are young upon her agreement that we will move to number 3 when the children are older. It isnt because it is my preference. It is because her preference greatly exceeds my preference.
Then, once she has been out of the work force for a while, it is harder to get back to number 3. Or maybe she doesn’t really try hard to get back to number 3.
I am not suggesting that many couples do not have very traditional models for the division of labor. They do. But, I think my examples does explain a significant percentage of couples. (Or I could be totally wrong.)
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Thanks will, even if you are wrong about that it is a very helpful heuristic for thinking about the choices involved in the dynamic world. I’ll use the example in class to illustrate the possibilities next time I teach this, if that’s ok.
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No prob, Harry. Of course, please feel free not to use the phrase “my examples does explain.”
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It seems too generous to describe that guy as elitist. I’d go with “reeks of effort”.
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