Equal Recognition for Equal Work

Why don't working dads get the credit they deserve?

Susan Wise Bauer

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"We just don't know how you manage it all," a colleague tells me. I'm checking my mail in the university's English office. I have a stack of ungraded papers in my arms and a toddler sitting on my feet. My two older boys are racing up and down the hallway. "You're home schooling," my colleague says, "you have three boys, and you teach!"

I hear this a lot. From folks at church, from other home-schooling moms, even from my local librarian. "You have another book coming out?" he asks, when I show up for storytime. "Yes," I say, "and this fall I'm finishing my Ph.D." "Superwoman!" he says.

If I had a live-in nanny, no one would call me Superwoman. But I have something better: a husband. Peter keeps the same schedule I do—half the day parenting and housekeeping, half the day working. But no one calls him Superman.

Peter cleans closets, does the grocery shopping, holds down a job, and cares for his three sons for at least 30 hours during the week. So do I. Each of us spends slightly less than 40 hours per week on our careers. Our professional output is respectable, if not spectacular.

Yet onlookers react differently to my husband's career and to mine. The work I produce in those 30-plus "job hours" is regarded as evidence of my Superwoman status. How many mothers without a live-in nanny can manage three small children plus a demanding career? Not many. And I couldn't either, if Peter didn't put in a second shift at home.

But the work Peter produces during his work-week doesn't match the output of other husbands who don't do a second shift. Outsiders see my professional accomplishments, add what they know about my family responsibilities, and shake their heads in wonder. Outsiders view Peter's professional accomplishments, measure them against the output of a man who works a 65-hour week, and decide he doesn't have a "real" career. His second shift is invisible.

And it stays invisible. Peter once asked me to stop telling my friends, at parties, about all the things he does around the house. "All the guys look at me with this resentment on their faces," he said, "because their wives start comparing what I do with what they do. It makes me the odd man out."

Does this put extra stress on our marriage? Yes, in a way. I'm constantly affirmed; Peter's constantly challenged. I'm continually told how competent, talented, extraordinary I am. Peter hears only silence. I'm fulfilling my kingdom mandate—I'm working and raising my family. So is Peter. But while both parts of my mandate are clearly visible, half of Peter's seems to have suffered from some sort of cultural blackout.

And Peter works hard. Any parent of preschoolers will tell you that the office, the school, even the factory floor is a snap compared to entertaining three preschoolers without resorting to the Magic School Bus. Peter's child-care shifts are filled with games, books and cookie-making. Picking up toys, I discovered a map of the world drawn on the boys' basketball, with Virginia marked with a star.

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Originally published in: Marriage Partnership, 1998, Winter

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