After all, men can change diapers as well as women. We need to do more than add a few laws, as important as they are. We need to change the mindset.

One of the most offensive things I heard concerning women was Mitt Romney during one of the debate, saying that he accommodated one of his staffers so she could go home and make dinner. WTF!

And it makes me mad when I hear progressives accepting this framing. This is not about women (even if it affects mostly women). It is a family issue. Parents should be able to take care of their kids without losing wages, and I do not care if the family is one or two parents, men or women.

As long as we do not change the dialog, we are on the losing side, where women will be considered second-class citizens.

one of the things that pissed me off the most about rick brattin's rant about "women's rights have gone too far" when he was explaining his draconian nonsense about notorized letters of permission to have an abortion, was that there was absolutely NOTHING about the ejaculator's responsibility from that point on.

Not even sure what that means.

Not a bad deal really, assuming the reciprocal effect of women working more and taking care of the kids less.

Currently in the US there's a significant work gap between men and women.

Average hours per day:

Working and work-related activities.................. Men: 4.20 Women 2.77

The childcare gap is larger going the other way, but the total time consumed is far less.

Caring for and helping household children......... Men: .27 Women: .54

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t01.htm

So the question becomes who is getting the shit end of the stick on that deal?

It's the "make" part that is puzzling

with the chart you are using.

Glad my wife and I never had kids. It sounds like a real life-killer.

something like this:

same?

Or does Romney think that women are responsible for the household and men are not?

There is an obligation here on both parents
1. For the husband, to stop with the goofy, "Derp! I dunno how kitchen things work!"
2. For the wife, stop with the eye-rolling, goofy, "Silly man! You don't know how to cook things!"

Shit like that has to stop flying. Anybody can cook competently, if they care to.

When you hear someone dissing "men in the kitchen" you should hear echoes of a Barbie Doll complaining that "Math is hard!"

If one or both parents are working harder, more hours, more risk, less time at home, at less than favorable working conditions than they would be without children, does that qualify as "parenting"?

Accord to the ESP proponents, the answer is "no".

Daddy working 60 hours to provide more money does not constitute equally sharing the parents duties. That's rather the whole premise of the movement, actually.

At least as far as this being any sort of an authoritative reference:

Possibly I read it too quickly and missed your meaning.

I thought you were suggesting that *one* person could contribute to parenting via earning lots of money and working overtime, while the other contributed by changing diapers, cooking and cleaning.

Yes, if both parents have to work the same long hours (equally shared breadwinning) and both cook meals, change diapers etc., that would be ESP. I can't imagine it would count with one major breadwinner and the other spouse doing all the child interaction stuff.

The idea of ESP is to take the traditional arrangement, reduce the father's work-for-pay, increase the mother's work-for-pay, and give them equal interaction time with the children.

Okay, good, we have that straightened out.l

If both parents are contributing X number of hours to the effort of raising children, what difference does it make what activity they are engaged?

Dividing all tasks, including income generating activity equally is certainly one way to do it, but not the only way or perhaps not even the best way. The ESP web site even seems to suggest this:

One size fits all platitudes are rarely the answer to real world problems

I'm just telling you what they say.

Take the traditional Leave it to Beaver family and make it so that both parents do equal amounts of child interaction and equal hours of work-for-pay. If one parent does all the breadwinning and the other does all the child interaction, you're not doing equally shared parenting.

My wife does not work, so she does all the housework and child rearing while I am away. That said...

The wife said that if she returned to work full time (40 hours), then I would be required to split house duties 50/50 even though I work 60 hours - I call BS on that. I can't cut my work to 40 hours - not that type of job. I make 10X what she can make, so it makes no s new to cut my hours to give her more work hours.

I do change plenty of diapers and clothes when I am home, but that is a small ask. The tough stuff is feeding a very fussy eater - my wife does that.

I contribute minimally to cleaning (which is torture - I grew up in a messy house and never learned discipline to clean) the wife is OCD with spotlessness - I am sooo not. I told her we should get a weekly house cleaner to reduce her stress, but she pushed back by saying that cleaning must happen daily and she doesn't want a stranger in the house - so cleaning keeps her stressed on top of raising the toddler. I say sacrifice a small bit of cleanliness to have someone come in once a week...but oh well...it would reduce pressure on me too if she felt less stress!

But it's only one of the way to contribute to raising children. ESP is about being with your kids for equal amounts of time.

Then she wouldn't have to hear you say, "My wife does not work," as if working in the home is not real "work."

Working in the home is not only a 60+hour per week job like yours, but it requires daily unpaid overtime, is isolating and thankless. She may have had enough of it. It might be worth it to her for you to get paid less so she can have a better quality of life.

Maybe if she worked outside the home her personal image of who she is would not be dependent on how her kitchen counters looked. And she would take you up on your perfectly reasonable offer to get a weekly house cleaner.

But cleaners are cheap. What will get expensive is daycare for the toddler, which you will need if you're both working outside the home. If she is stressed now, wait till she tries to get to work and get your kid to childcare...and then pick the kid up before childcare closes. That will all fall on her unless you cut your hours or she gets one of those rare jobs with in-house childcare. Which is the point of the OP. The childcare options in this country are utterly inadequate. Men need to realize lack of decent, affordable childcare hurts them as much as it hurts women and children.

She doesn't want the 40 hour job because she specifically wants to spend time with our son. We are trying to find a two day per week daycare so she can have some time off and he can learn social skills. Our building has a daycare and we are on the wait list to get in.

She is a type A perfectionist from Japan - being OCD about being clean comes with the territory. She worked before we got married and did well, but chose to stay home once we were effectively married. We share our bank account completely so she gets paid as much as I do. I totally don't mind if she works again - up to her - except I can't do 50-50 housework if I have far more hours than her. I am very bonus dependent at work, so if I quit this job for a 40 hour job, it could be a 75% pay cut - can't happen in NYC.

My wife does not "work", so she does all the housework and child rearing while I am away. That said...

what, exactly, do you think housework and child rearing are, if not WORK? she may not be doing PAID work, but she IS working.

do in the home as WORK, which is why I made the comment.

Doesn't like strangers in the house. I'm with you though.

Don't get the wrong impression though - she is not all stress- we eat out on the weekends and enjoy time as a family on the weekends - my boy goes to bed at 10:30, so I get fully family time at night in spite of the workload...though I only sleep 5 1/2 hours per night so I can also get time to run five miles and then work out each day.

To be fair - I do think I could contribute more - always so exhausted at home, but that was my choice to work out so hard and only sleep 5.5 hours. So exhausted or not, I should chip in more.

Many people and women like me become compulsive about career, family and home- it's a lot! Good to know you get real time and enjoyment. Family and children are so important, invaluable like health. I was far too perfectionist sometimes 'doing it all' and couldn't see the big picture, the forest for the trees. And time passes so quickly. Perhaps your wife would consider trying a cleaner, continue if it goes well, if only for special occasions. Life's short! Enjoy your loved ones, all that really matters in life. All the best (from a reformed workaholic).

"My wife does not work outside the home" would be preferable.

My ex husband had a very bad habit of opening the fridge and proclaiming "we don't have any(fill in the blank)" after many months of identifying where the missing item was in the fridge I changed my method. My response became "I guess not." And I said nothing more. Amazingly he soon learned to look and find what he wanted.

As long as you are willing and able to perform as a body slave anyone will abuse your weakness.

Until she went back to work FT.

Then she went back to college and ended up with a +65% raise after two years.

inequality of women vis-a-vis the workplace. It's all women, but marital and kid status make another huge difference.

It has always enraged me that the workplace assumes that there's a wife at home to manage things like cooking dinner and doing the housework. Which is among the reasons I resisted going to work when my children were growing up. In my case, I also did not have a career of any kind to speak of, so I wasn't giving up as much as some women do.

And I'm very aware of how important the paid wages are to women with children, even if there is a male breadwinner around.

When I worked for the telephone company in the mid-1960's, some very large percentage of the women there were either the sole support of their families, or the larger wage earner. All the rest of us were single.

One small part of this is that women have to hand over a lot more household and child care responsibilities to their husbands. Don't let them get away with not knowing where things are in the kitchen, or not vacuuming the floor or loading the dishwasher or changing a diaper. Just don't Yeah, I know, it's easy for me to say this, but you still need to do it.

And the corporate mind-set needs to change drastically. One thing childless people often complain about in the workplace is that they're expected to pick up the slack when someone needs to go home "early" to pick up a kid from daycare. Maybe the problem isn't that someone is leaving "early" but that everyone is expected to work as if they have no life whatsoever outside the job. As it is, any of us will only have young children for a relatively short time in our working lives, but there's also aging parents to care for, and the need for a life of our own that is not the job.

Yet, for many, workaholism (for lack of a better word) is admirable, not something to be avoided.

Just look at this extremely silly article from Time. It appeared to infer that work-life balance advocates were somehow denigrating "hard workers," meaning those who work longer than advocates say is really healthy. In my opinion, working excessively long hours is not productive and doesn't necessarily mean you are working harder, but that you probably have too much to do. Companies really need to stop expecting people to be available at all hours. My boyfriend (a librarian, or really an administrator these days) is expected to be "on-call" on the weekends. I mean, what possible library emergency could require his services on his time off? It actually comes from a work culture in which people are not given the freedom and responsibility to make reasonable decisions. They are afraid and would prefer to punt to someone higher up. Even at Christmas, he was forced to respond to emails from the public (okay, I guess that might be okay, in light of the power some members of the public have, politically).

Anyway, that silly article:

http://time.com/3648927/stop-making-workaholics-a-dirty-word/

Beyond the fathers I knew personally, I recall hearing admiration for accomplished people, whom I recall as being defined not just by their intelligence but by their relentless work ethic. For example, Jonas Salk worked 16 hours a day, seven days a week until he came up with a cure for the disease that terrified all parents—polio. Kids with polio were doomed to a brief life, all spent on crutches if not in an “iron lung.” Salk developed a vaccine that has virtually eradicated polio.

Yet today, a person who works long hours is likely to be pathologized as a “workaholic,” like an alcoholic, addicted. In fact, most successful people I know do work long hours and not because they’re addicted to work but because they make a conscious choice that the working week’s 40 to 60+ hours are more wisely spent being productive—for example, making, selling, or providing goods and services for people—than on recreation or even the vaunted family time. Indeed, research does support that quality time, not quantity time, is key. Consider, for example, this review of the literature, which concludes that children are not hurt by mothers who work outside the home. But that doesn’t stop the criticism: “She’s a negligent mom.” “He’s out of balance.” “She’s a workaholic.”

But what about the consensus opinion that long hours makes you less productive? I can counter that only by reporting that I’ve been career coach to hundreds of highly successful and productive people as well as to many strugglers, and one of the key differentiators is that the successful group works far longer work weeks than work-life-balance advocates would recommend. And nearly all those hard workers insist they work only as long as they can do so without sacrificing quality—and for them (and me,) that’s well beyond a 40-hour work week. And their long hours don’t seem to affect their health, as long as their work style is not hurried or short-tempered.

It's long been my observation that longer hours result in less productivity. A few months ago I read an absolutely fascinating article about this. Perhaps in the NYTimes Magazine, but I'm not entirely sure.

Here's a summary of the major points:
Today's workaholic culture stems largely from the IT field, populated by people who absolutely have no lives outside the work, and don't even begin to comprehend that such a thing is possible.
Top executives in particular have a support system around them (wives, secretaries, aides) who make it quite easy to do nothing but work.
Back when the 40 hour workweek replaced the 60 hour workweek, industry leaders uniformly screamed that they'd be put out of business because of this. And then, quite to their astonishment, they found that workers produced much more in 8 hours than they had in 12. Surprise, surprise.
Despite this, the 100 hour work week has become the norm, especially in high tech. But again, the employees simply aren't that productive, and someone did the math, and figures that the first i-phone would have come to market two years earlier than it did if the people working on it had stuck to a 40 hour week.

In short, there is almost nothing to admire in the 16 hour days. Maybe Salk would have come up with the polio vaccine a couple of years earlier if he'd ever gotten a good night's sleep.

And of course, a mother simply working outside the home is not a bad thing. My own mother worked back when very few did. But if the mom is routinely working 60 plus hours a week, then she's not around enough to really be a good presence. Same is true, of course, for the dads, although we do put the entire onus for raising good kids on the moms. But a dad who's never home and awake to be with the children isn't a good dad either.

What I'm particularly disturbed by is the recent trend of nurses working a 10 or 12 hour shift. I'm sorry, but that's a job really requires you to be at your top for the entire shift, and somewhere after the 7th or 8th hour you are not as fresh as you are in hour 2 or 3. Unfortunately, a lot of people (not just nurses) like those shifts because then they only work four or three days a week. I'm not too worried if the cashier at my grocery store is in her 12th hour, but I don't want my nurse to be working that long.

the corporate ladder. he disagreed vehemently, of course. but the fact remains that he is a veep, and a co-worker who had a sick wife and had to take a lot of time off to care for his only child is the laughing stock of the company.
he never took more time off than was absolutely necessary, meaning one week for each newborn, even when that newborn was kid number 5. and zero vacation days for homeschool trips. or even early outs for report card day when the kids went to school.
i hope the judge sees it that way when we get to divorce court. (i am told i have a great judge.)

The truth is that even men who don't climb the corporate ladder but merely have responsible jobs that might require some extra hours, like my ex, can only do that with someone at home taking care of things. Even stuff like calling in the plumber. Someone has to be there to let the plumber in to do the fix.

i cant tell you how many doctor's appointments i took kids to. and did many renovations on our home, some by myself, some by contractors, where i not only had to be there, i had to answer all the design questions and fend off randy carpenters.
and keep the garden. and the social network.
sleep? what's that?

yeah, i think i will be ok in court. 30 years of marriage, not so great health, 60 yo. i'm a lifer. i will get what is there for the judge to give me, i think. and fortunately, we built quite a bit together.

Taking care of myself is such a Sisyphean challenge. When you are both adult and child, and trying to live responsibly, the results can end up looking like a Wes Anderson film.

- People should be makers, not takers
- People should start families
- People are responsible for their own social fates, so they should either follow society's expectations and fail
- But for women who want to be productive members of society and have a family yet are restricted by corporations' unwillingness to accommodate them?

contradictory and insane rules.

I'm a big advocate for Changing corporate culture to allow for better work-life balance. That is also something that we are miles away from as a country.

I'm married and we have 2 kids. My salary has gone up considerably from when we started having kids and my wife's has gone down slightly.

With that said, it's pretty much self inflicted. When we had our first kid, I was underemployed and my wife earned more than double what I made. However, my job was more flexible, so I drove our daughter to preschool, picked her up and took care of her when my wife worked long hours.

When we had our second kid, my wife didn't want to play those same roles and wanted more time with them. We moved, in the process she got a slightly lesser paying job and I got a higher paying job with less flexibilty. Our salaries are now about equal and, as a pair we earn more money, but she makes less.

I just don't know what the infographic is telling us, because considering the number of people that willingly inflict these differences in pay on themselves, I'm not sure that -4% is all that significant.

Corporate culture needs to change in so many ways, and this is a piece of it, but I believe the infographic to be misleading as it paints a picture that women who have kids are then docked pay for that choice and men are then given raises.

The issue is real, but it's very complicated and intertwined with a lot of other issues. It's also not really a woman issue, as the fact is that there is often additional pressure and time taken away from the family on the man side of the issue. That 6% increase includes my increase, for example. This isn't some bonus I was given for having a kid, this has come at the expense of me working longer hours and being away from my family more at the request of my wife to allow her to spend more time with the youngest.

Pay inequality is still a serious matter but I see in the next generation below mine less emphasis on which gender is worth more pay and more emphasis on which skills are worth more pay.

Hopefully as more women push closer to the top (and it's taking way too long IMHO) the pay inequality will resolve itself. The one thing in the way is exactly the work / life balance issues. More often than not it's the Mom who chooses to limit herself work wise to take the primary role in raising kids. Men generally are more active than ever in raising children but it's still lopsided.

And from what I've seen single parent men really get hit hard. Employers will tolerate a woman taking unexpected time off for sick kids, or forgive not being "part of the team" on special projects that require after hours or weekend work. For men the tolerance for such is far less.

So yes.... corporate mindset needs to evolve far more.... but I'm like you. A 4% hit seems small. Wonder if it's because women are still making less overall.

The fact is that women who have children sometimes take up to 3 months off after giving birth. Im not saying that's a bad thing. It is just that men don't take that kind of time off, and usually not offered by most companies. So that creates one imbalance there and perpetuates a gender role.

Second, women who have children end up requiring more flexible scheduling and may work less hours. Again, not saying that's a bad thing...it's just compared to men, men continue working long hours and continue working overtime. Statistics show men work far more overtime hours than women do. Men also work overnight shifts more than women (such shifts usually carry an extra premium hourly rate since they are not easy to fill).

Third, career choices are a factor. Women tend to not focus as much on earning potential as men do when picking a college major. Men are judged more by society than women when it comes to earning potential and career choice.

As far as your comment on transsexuals, I remember posting an article here a few weeks ago that showed lesbian women are paid 20% higher salaries than straight women. That may be because lesbian women are making different choices concerning career and family than straight women are. The choices lesbian women make are closer to the type of choices men make.

The point here is that gender roles may be the core of the problem concerning the wage gap.

they are operating in a vacuum, or that societal norms, roles, and expectations, not to mention brainwashing, play a part? where do you think gender roles originate?

by the way, the trans comment was not mine, but part of the quoted text and chart.

could you please provide links for the assertions made in your post?

...it's not necessarily some corporate conspiracy against women. Trust me, I don't like to defend Wall Street. But companies are most concerned about profits, not the gender of the person making them the profit. But gender roles of our society tend to encourage, motivate, and promote men more than women in certain places. Corporations can do more to help alleviate those pressures, but they are not the cause of them. Religion, our upbringing, and the society as a whole are far more responsible.

And here's the link I was talking about... I understand there are some potential weaknesses with the study. But it's results are interesting...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/lesbians-earn-more-than-straight-women--but-gay-men-are-penalised-9934289.html

childbirth, etc.,

. . .

While the downturn and the weak economy of recent years have eliminated many of the jobs women held, a lack of family-friendly policies also appears to have contributed to the lower rate. In a New York Times/CBS News/Kaiser Family Foundation poll of nonworking adults aged 25 to 54 in the United States, conducted last month, 61 percent of women said family responsibilities were a reason they weren’t working, compared with 37 percent of men. Of women who identify as homemakers and have not looked for a job in the last year, nearly three-quarters said they would consider going back if a job offered flexible hours or allowed them to work from home.

. . . .

Working women who have children under the age of 18 make $17 less per week at the median than women without kids, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But for men, having children means making $147 more per week than their childless peers.

Women with children under the age of six make even less, $653 compared to $697 for childless women. Single mothers with children of that age get hit the hardest, making just $490 a week at the median compared to $654 for single women without kids.

Men see a boost from children no matter their age, but they make over $1000 a week when their children are between the ages of six and 17. Single dads with young kids, however, make less than their childless peers.

The data also show that the gender wage gap continues to haunt women. Women make less than men in every occupation tracked by the BLS except for two: social work counselors and health practitioner support technologists and technicians.

Having children has a big impact on women’s lives because they still do most of the work to raise them and care for them. While fathers have nearly tripled the amount of time they spend caring for their children since the 1960s, mothers today spend more time with their children than mothers did back then. Mothers spend nearly double the amount of time on unpaid work in the home such as taking care of kids, cleaning, and cooking than fathers do each week. For women around the world, each additional child they have reduces the time they have for themselves by 2.3 hours a week, more than for men. It also makes them more exhausted.

Caring duties, including taking care of a parent or a spouse, push women out of the labor force but doesn’t impact men. Having to work long hours, which is increasingly the norm in today’s workplace, is also pushing mothers out of the workforce and not impacting single women.

. . . .

It backs up the assertions in the OP rather well.

Thanks niyad, for wading through it!

When women choose to make career sacrifices for her family, that contributes greatly to that gap. That new mother will never catch up to her male peers, nor will she ever catch up to the women who choose not to have children.

A lot of that choice is pressured by gender roles. That's not going to change unless society changes their perception on how social responsibilities are assigned to each gender.

and many studies show that your argument is hogwash.
and no study can show how many women make these unfair choices, and give up on BIG careers that they never got a chance to start because of the added burdens that are inescapable when you have kids.
i went to an ivy league art school, but took so much time off with my kids, believing i could just start later and my work would be timeless.
by the time i got the chance, i was too old and ugly. and worn out. yes, there is a huge double standard. look around for emerging artists in their 40-50's. they are men. successful women artists, you will find, tend to be young and good looking.

choices? i had 2. both sucked in major ways.
men? lots of choices, few painful. and many rewarded, like my husband was, in ways that women are NEVER rewarded. most very successful women take the other choice- they dont have kids. whether they like that or not.

that you can go through in a couple of hours and then you're back to your old self. Your body has gone through tremendous changes, which often take longer to recover from than the celebrity moms would have you think.

In addition, if a mom wants to nurse, three months is not at all n unreasonable time to take off.

If more companies offered the sort of flexibility that many employees want, male or female, gay or straight, with or without kids, we'd all be living in a much more humane society.

I was making a point that women take time off after childbirth, but men very rarely do for any extended period of time. So that tends to set up the gender roles right then. Several countries in Europe have begun to require employers to not only offer paid leave for mothers but fathers too...but that's rarely offered in the United States. These days you are lucky to even have a job with any sick or vacation time at all. It's amazing how many employers would prefer you to show up with the flu and spread it to everyone than pay you to stay home a day.

The US is also the only industrialized nation to not mandate any paid parental leave for either parent.

So I apologize for coming back more strongly than was warranted. My bad.

And yes, if more men took even a relatively small amount of leave when a child is born, it would make a huge difference.