Halving It All: How Equally Shared Parenting Works - Hardcover

Deutsch, Francine M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674368002 ISBN 13: 9780674368002

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1999

Synopsis

The best way to have it all--both a full family life and a career--is to halve it all. That's the message of Francine Deutsch's refreshing and humane book, based on extensive interviews with a wide range of couples. Deutsch casts a skeptical eye on the grim story of inequality that has been told since women found themselves working a second shift at home. She brings good news: equality based on shared parenting is possible, and it is emerging all around us. Some white-collar fathers achieve as well as talk about equality, and some blue-collar parents work alternate shifts to ensure that one parent can always be with the children.

Using vivid quotations from her interviews, Deutsch tells the story of couples who share parenting equally, and some who don't. The differences between the groups are not in politics, education, or class, but in the way they negotiate the large and small issues--from whose paid job is "important" to who applies the sunscreen. With the majority of mothers in the workforce, parents today have to find ways of sharing the work at home. Rigid ideas of "good mothers" and "good fathers," Deutsch argues, can be transformed into a more flexible reality: the good parent.

Halving It All takes the discussion beyond shrill ideological arguments about working mothers and absent fathers. Deutsch shows how, with the best of intentions, people perpetuate inequalities and injustices on the home front, but also, and more important, how they can devise more equal arrangements, out of explicit principles, or simply out of fairness and love.

About this title

About the Author

Francine M. Deutsch is Professor of Psychology at Mt. Holyoke College.

From the Back Cover

For many years, we treated the frantic juggling of dual-career couples as simply the consequence of their personal choices. But the realities of today's economy have made dual careers essential, not optional, for virtually all families. Halving It All is an essential guidebook for the world of shared parenting we all find ourselves in now. A must read.-Pat Schroeder, former United States Congresswoman

Reviews

The cheerful pun of the title is one of the liveliest moments in a tangled scrutiny of mothers and fathers who share parenting equally. This study of dual-earner couples with children was funded by the National Science Foundation in order to explore if, in fact, it was possible for working women to split equally with their partners the notorious ``second shift''the responsibility for childcare and household chores that comes after a full day at work. Deutsch (Psychology/Mt. Holyoke Coll.) and her team initially interviewed 429 couples and ended up with 44 who met the criteria for parents who shared equally (5050) or nearly equally (6040), plus a group of couples who worked alternating shifts and a third group whose division of labor was unequal (7525) with the burden usually falling on the mother. Most of the couples were white, educated, and middle class; the alternating shift group fell into the blue-collar category. The emphasis was not on who did the dishes or even on equal time with the children, but on whether the responsibility was truly divided. That includes the ``mental work'' of managing the routine, like keeping track of children's schedules or noticing that baby needs new shoes. It will come as no surprise that Deutsch found breaking out of traditional gender roles was extremely difficult for her subjects. She tries to tease out the issues involved, including the demands of biology (breast feeding, for instance), men's reluctance to take on a ``feminine'' role, women's reluctance to give up the status of mother, the lack of role models. Jobs are a stumbling block. ``Careers are [still] designed for men'' who have wives at home to support them, says Deutsch. Equal parenting demands ``family careers,'' with shorter hours, more flexibility for family emergencies and plenty of compromise by both parents regarding ambition and direction. A motley profusion of anecdotes and quotes offers little support for the author's lame if hopeful conclusion: ``Why not equality?'' -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674368002
• ISBN 13: 9780674368002
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336