Women Are Doing the Man Things But Men Won't Do the Lady Things

[redqueen]

Women are doing all the "man things" they can these days. Wars. Heavy lifting. Dangerous jobs. Cigars. Heart attacks. And men are doing more "lady things" than ever before, like expressing identifiable emotion and caring about children. They are really picking up the slack and the slacks. Get it? From off the floor? But don't machete your sensible feminist heels down to flats just yet: This men-are-the-new-women thing is still overblown.

Take the whole stay-at-home dad trend. A bit overhyped, says a piece over at the Atlantic, which acknowledges that, sure, while it's true that the number of men who are stay-at-home dads has doubled in recent years, it has doubled from such a low figure as to be almost insignificant statistically, and doesn't merit all the trend pieces. Read it and weep directly into your yogurt/salad to burn some extra cals:

Among all married couples with children under 15, only 0.8 percent include a stay-at-home dad— up from about 0.3 percent in 1994—compared to 23 percent that include a stay-at-home mom.

But even those small percentages probably overstate the relative importance of stay-at-home fathers in the greater context of U.S. families. First, we're living in the age of the single parent. More than half of births to women under 30 happen out of wedlock, and women disproportionately end up taking care of those children.

...

But it's this part that gets me upset all over again:

… even among two-parent households where women work, the percentage of men acting as the primary caregiver has actually declined slightly since the early 1990s. The fraction of these men regularly providing any care whatsoever for their children while their wives work has been static since at least the late 1990s.

Yup: In families where men and women both earn, women are rocking 12 hours of childcare while men are only mustering up 7. If anything, the author writes, men have stopped taking on more responsibility at home in recent years.

Ugh. Unfortunately, yeah, we know. We know women still do more housework than men. And handle more of the childcare. Because we are doing it, and you know we gonna talk.

...

http://jezebel.com/women-are-doing-the-man-things-but-men-wont-do-the-lad-1253430721

[ismnotwasm]

1. Anecdotally

Working with many women in the right age group, this is spot on. I hear more complaints from women gong home and cooking and cleaning and taking kids to soccer games than I should be.

On the bright side, some of them have true partnerships who have a shared measure of household chores and child care, but they are definitely out numbered.

[gopiscrap]

2. sadly, society is not geared for it

and doesn't value male parental child nurturing and care.

[Tumbulu]

3. Nor does society value

Women who care for children. It is almost financial and professional suicide. But more women are willing to do it than men anyway.

[redqueen]

4. Not geared for it how? I'm not sure what you mean there.

And also as Tumbulu said, society has always looked down on most jobs considered to be 'women's work' as lowly and beneath men. There is lip service paid to them being honorable and valuable duties but the compensation for such jobs belies those claims.

[gopiscrap]

5. men are questioned when they do "women's" work

they are thought of as incomplete when being nurtures and not work outside of the home etc.....it's getting better but it's still there.

[redqueen]

6. OK, I was thinking more of just the entire situatuon,

couples where both work, no kids, and still with the unequal sharing of household chores.