{"id":1667,"date":"2018-06-19T08:11:34","date_gmt":"2018-06-19T13:11:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/?p=1667"},"modified":"2018-06-19T08:11:34","modified_gmt":"2018-06-19T13:11:34","slug":"what-should-you-give-your-husband-for-fathers-day-the-best-gift-might-be-respect-trust-and-an-equal-share-of-the-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/2018\/06\/19\/what-should-you-give-your-husband-for-fathers-day-the-best-gift-might-be-respect-trust-and-an-equal-share-of-the-work\/","title":{"rendered":"What Should You Give Your Husband for Father’s Day? The best gift might be respect, trust, and an equal share of the work."},"content":{"rendered":"

Reposted from\u00a0Psychology Today.<\/a>\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The majority of Americans today believe in equality<\/a>.\u00a0Nearly three-quarters of American adults (73%) say the trend toward more women in the workforce has been a change for the better. And 62% of adults believe that a\u00a0marriage<\/a> in which the husband and wife both have jobs and both take care of the house and children provides a more satisfying life than one in which the husband provides for the family and the wife takes care of the home.\u00a0But despite real progress in men\u2019s participation in family life, Moms usually remain the default parent while Dads help out but do not take charge.\u00a0Women\u2019s income, not men\u2019s, is often seen as what pays for the childcare. Another\u00a0recent study<\/a>\u00a0of American families shows that mothers multi-task more than fathers,\u00a0do it more often at the office, and feel more burdened than men by having to always be doing two things at once time.<\/p>\n

So what is going on here? Is there an international plot to maintain patriarchy, as conspiracy theorists might argue?\u00a0Or are women naturally suited to housecleaning and men are just not up to the task, as so many anti-feminists claim?\u00a0Are today\u2019s husbands really\u00a0Neanderthals that come home from a long day\u2019s work, drink beer, and expect their wives to wait on them?<\/p>\n

Perhaps my own experience loading the dishwasher a few months ago can provide some clues.\u00a0I don\u2019t do housework very often.\u00a0As a university professor, researcher, and author\u00a0who always has writing deadlines looming while I travel to conferences and\u00a0lectures, both in the US and overseas, I\u2019m ridiculously over-scheduled.\u00a0My husband is semi-retired, works from home and so with his flexible schedule, spends a lot of his time following me around the world.\u00a0He doesn\u2019t pick up the slack in our home;\u00a0he runs our household.\u00a0One Saturday morning after being served\u00a0fabulous French toast, I insisted on cleaning up for a change.\u00a0Within minutes, I was lecturing him on how the dishes already in the dishwasher weren\u2019t rinsed well enough, or stacked neatly.\u00a0He smiled at me and said, \u201cSo when was the last time you ate on a dirty dish?\u201d<\/p>\n

If I can find\u00a0myself, without thinking twice about it, lecturing my husband on how to load a dishwasher,\u00a0when I haven\u2019t touched a dirty dish in months. How hard must it be for women who\u2019ve been doing the dishes and the meals and taking care of the kids to\u00a0accept their\u00a0husbands as competent partners? Or even as partners who might become competent once they were responsible for the tasks?<\/p>\n

I have no doubt there are\u00a0men out there who are simply sexist self-serving narcissists who want wives to do the second shift so they drink beer, play golf, and watch TV.\u00a0But are there not also some women who just cannot stop themselves\u00a0from lecturing our partners on how to launder clothes,\u00a0stack the dishes, put away the groceries and dress the children.\u00a0Many moms I have talked with even leave lists of what to put into the lunch box when they travel for business\u2013as if their husband isn\u2019t smart enough to figure out what to put between two slices of bread. Why would these successful women have married men they can\u2019t trust to make a sandwich or pick out a toddler\u2019s outfit?\u00a0The assumption of male incompetence at home has the same result\u00a0as expecting women to be incompetence at work.\u00a0<\/a>It makes the recipients less likely to take on responsibility, to do the job well, or to show initiative.<\/p>\n

Perhaps part of why men aren\u2019t stepping up to the plate as equal partners is because women don\u2019t let them.\u00a0It\u2019s not that women don\u2019t want their husbands to share the job and the joys of\u00a0parenting<\/a>.\u00a0Research shows clearly that they do<\/a>, and that there are even benefits in the bedroom when people feel their marriage is fair.\u00a0But we women have set the rules for how housework is done for so long, and often take so much pride in our mothering identities, that we\u00a0don\u2019t leave enough room for fathers to be equal players. Perhaps mothers are worried about what the neighbors will think if their son\u2019s outfits are not matching, or their daughter\u2019s shirts have stains?\u00a0Is such\u00a0shame<\/a>\u00a0worth undercutting men\u2019s responsibility for domestic labor?\u00a0Surely, if a man was worth marrying, he\u2019s talented enough to wash dishes, make play dates, and clean the toilet.<\/p>\n

So for Father\u2019s Day, let\u2019s show dad\u2019s some respect.\u00a0The best gift might just be to respect your partner enough to let him load the dishwasher without comment, and take care of the kids without fearing his your evaluation. Here \u2019s a gift idea for wives on this Father\u2019s Day: stop giving directions, stop running the show and then resenting that you carry the load of the family work. Give Dads\u00a0a break this year for Father\u2019s Day. Trust them enough to lean out at home.\u00a0And if you have to occasionally eat from a dirty plate, as I do, it\u2019s worth it. Let your guy lean in for a change.<\/p>\n

Barbara J. Risman is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.\u00a0 She is also a Senior Scholar at the Council on Contemporary Families.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reposted from\u00a0Psychology Today.\u00a0 The majority of Americans today believe in equality.\u00a0Nearly three-quarters of American adults (73%) say the trend toward more women in the workforce has been a change for the better. And 62% of adults believe that a\u00a0marriage in which the husband and wife both have jobs and both take care of the house […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2095,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[30296,33641,8959,70,17571,55,3849,11306,2778,255,13,4374],"class_list":["post-1667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-child-care","tag-egalitarianism","tag-families","tag-family","tag-fathers","tag-gender","tag-gender-equality","tag-gender-inequality","tag-gender-roles","tag-housework","tag-inequality","tag-parenting"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2095"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1667"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1671,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1667\/revisions\/1671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}