A new study released by the Families and Work Institute (2009) reveals that 26% of women in dual-income households are now earning more than their husbands. In the New York Times' Motherlode blog (2009), Lisa Belkin focuses on a change in motherhood's impact on career ambition: in 1992, the presence of children reduced a woman's desire for more work responsibility by 18%; in 2008, the gap was 3%.
Changes were apparent in the fatherhood role as well. Over the three decades studied, 59% of men in 2008 experienced "some or a lot" of work-life conflict, compared to just 35% in 1977. Women's work-life conflict over the same period was stable: 41% in 1977 and 45% in 2008. The increase in men's work-conflict is probably due to increased parental investment: 31% of women in 2008 said their husbands took at least equal responsibility for parenting: "Interestingly, 49% of men reported taking as much or more responsibility for the children as their wives, indicating a perception gap."
So, one of the reasons I started writing DB in the first place is because I felt like I had three views of gender: living as a woman, living as a man, and as an outsider to the whole damn game. In no part of my life is this more apparent to me than in discussions of parenting, which feel like they come up a lot: this post makes three this week that end up coming down to "women can has babies." This feels like a tangent, but I really want to express a little self-disgust here: manhood and womanhood are more than fertility. Or are they? Does my sterility make me as much of an outsider as my tripartite perspective?
Returning to the Family and Work Institute's results, I have to say that I am disappointed that I don't see a way to compare their findings with single-income households. In fact, I'm not seeing a good way on the U.S. Census site to separate single-earner families from single-person households. Anyone else want to take a stab at what percentage of couples are getting by on one income?
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11 comments:
Typo: "Or do they?" should be "Or are they?"
Do you feel like an outsider because of your sterility/intent to never parent? Or because of having transitioned, or something else? I'm not quite sure of what you're saying there. There are certainly lots of men and women who are sterile, many of whom end up parenting anyway, and lots of people who opt not to be parents. I don't think of any of this as having much bearing on perceived gender, but I feel like maybe I"m missing something about the point of your post.
@laurenhat
Typo fixed. D'oh.
I feel like an outsider because of having transitioned. Not often, not usually, but sometimes, I feel like my experience is different enough that I have no perspective on either the male or female experience.
However, the recent spate of posts about parenting, and the effect of parenting on gender roles specifically, makes me wonder if my outsider perspective on gender is shared by everyone who (for one reason or another) ends up not parenting. Do childless women feel excluded from the experience of womanhood? I remember reading an essay by a pagan-spiritual FTM who tried to work with a men's group to find Male Mysteries that weren't tied up to insemination, and the group couldn't. It makes me wonder whether any of the other men in that group found themselves feeling a bit outside -- or were they all fathers, all fertile?
@dan4th
Thanks for clarifying.
Huh! Interesting. It has never occurred to me to feel excluded from womanhood due to being childless. And if I ever do opt to become a parent (which currently seems unlikely), I really hope not to go through pregnancy myself. I have had people act like I'm missing out horribly on some essential part of womanhood with that attitude, though, come to think of it. But I don't know -- that seems kind of silly to me, as child-bearing just seems like one more traditional behavior that women are no longer obligated to perform in modern society if they choose not to. Not to mention that it seems unkind to infertile people who want to be fertile to call them less of a man/woman for it.
astrogeek01
2009-03-27 04:20 pm UTC
I think, from what I've read and heard in a number of places from a number of people, that people who -choose- to be childless are generally looked down upon in our society. Like "what is *wrong* with you??" kind of thing. I think it's immensely ridiculous attitude, but it's out there, and pretty strong/prevalent. I think those people who are infertile and who wind up becoming parents through other means are accepted as "normal" from my experiences with those friends/family who have adopted. Overall it's pretty screwed up, the attitudes that society has toward "child rearing" as the thing that everyone ought to want to do.
As a dichotomy/aside to this, I don't think it actually makes anyone an outsider to womanhood or manhood to not want or have kids. I think it's just a societal weird perception that people ought to have kids. I know that doesn't make any sense, but I get the feeling that the "what's wrong with you" doesn't really apply to the woman/man part of it, but to something else I can't really quite define.
I like mentioning to people that I'm sterile because it freaks them out. Even if I tell them I'm happy as a clam about it...they always want to feel sorry for me. Like they are wondering if I just haven't realized the tragedy yet (this from both people with and without kids).
I do think that people WITH children think that people WITHOUT children are slightly less...well...human. Not as good, smart, caring, giving. Not really an adult. At least that's the attitude that I often get.
ukelele
2009-03-27 08:19 pm UTC (link) Track This
I think...I think they're more, way more, than fertility, but that babies make a great prism for refracting all our cultural neuroses (adults' behaviors can change much faster than societal ideals about childhood and parenthood), and that they expose an uncomfortable asymmetry (uncomfortable, anyway, to those of us whose instincts are egalitarian, which I'm guessing is most of the readers here). How to achieve real equality in the face of that asymmetry -- whether it can be achieved -- is a test of a lot of ideologies and policies, I think.
(And the asymmetry, oh, it is so irreducible. Men and women can both be parents, but pregnancy and birth and lactation, which have huge effects on one's ability to do stuff, are utterly female. It's hard.)
@ukelele
And the asymmetry, oh, it is so irreducible
I think that's my concern. There's nothing I can think of apart from the physical/reproductive differences that is definably "masculine" or "feminine". I can neither fertilize an egg nor nurse a baby. I have been neutered. Does that make me neuter?
I am competitive, compassionate, emotional, contradictory, passive-aggressive and insecure. None of these labels strike me as particularly masculine or feminine.
[info]astrogeek01
2009-03-27 09:20 pm UTC
Selfish. That's what I hear. It's somehow "selfish" not to have kids. I've always been a bit puzzled at that.
[info]ukelele
2009-03-27 11:45 pm UTC
I don't think of it in terms of a masculine/feminine distinction (not a psychological one, anyway), but in terms of policy, politics, social roles? Huge.
hrafn
2009-03-28 01:22 am UTC
Because it's selfish to live your life only to suit yourself (whether you are partnered and live a cooperative life with them seems irrelevant; duties to employers ditto), instead of spending a couple decades with one of your primary (if not the only) concerns being caring for others.
Which view aggravates me because - so what? So what if you don't want to deal with child-rearing? Do the "you're selfish" people really want the "selfish" nonparents -raising- kids?? And to be quite honest, I think many people have children for "selfish" reasons: they have kids because they want them. Which is how I think it ought to be, but I've never been in favor of a life of self-sacrifice for the point of sacrifice.
I dunno; maybe some of it's misplaced envy at the freedom that people without kids have.
Oh that turned into more of a rant than I intended.
hrafn
2009-03-28 01:31 am UTC
manhood and womanhood are more than fertility. Or are they?
I often wind myself into a state of confusion over that question. I haven't had children; I probably won't. I might be infertile, but I kind of hope I never find out that I'm -not- (the notion of being pregnant gives me the creeping horrors).
I don't behave in a lot of typical feminine/female/womanly ways, but I identify as a woman, and have always been comfortable with this female body.
So I get stuck when it comes to gender identity, because I don't display most of the usual markers that women do (I do have long hair, and I occasionally wear skirts, but that is about it), so I wonder if saying, "I'm a woman" is really /true/ - except in the geek community, where there doesn't seem to be the same kind of gender differentiation there is in mainstream society. I don't get confused when I compare myself to other geek women. And I've often wondered if some of my discomfort around mainstream women comes down to my inherent discomfort with superficial femininity - but it's not all the superficial stuff, other women seem to talk and think and behave in ways that I just don't, and I feel awkward interacting with them. It's like I'm missing out on some code. Partly because I have consciously rejected some of it, and partly because it just never sunk in, I guess.
So yeah. I feel kind of displaced in that I have no child making/rearing experience, but I'm not sure it's significantly different than how I feel displaced from mainstream Stuff in general (most of which has little to do with gender).
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