Empowering Men To Lead
Men in the United States spend less time on home care tasks compared to their female counter parts [1]. This is particularly impactful when both parents work full time. Recent studies have also shown that men take on the less of the mental load of household management. There is a gap in the leadership and capabilities of men at home. Our socialization around gender drives our expectations around household management and tasks and these unconsciously become an unchallenged default. This socialization starts when we are young, but it continues today as men find themselves as the minority parent gender when taking their daughter to the Girl Scout meeting. Until we a demonstrate a different model of gender equity at home, it will be hard for family units to change. Sometimes we do things the same way it's always been done because we can't envision another way. I live in a house that is gender equitable and for International Women’s Day I'd like to #breakthebias and normalize male domestic leadership by sharing what has worked for us.
Context and Disclaimer: We are a family of 4; two parents who both work full time and kids who are in 7th and 3rd grade. The spirit of this piece is to share our lived experience in the event that someone is struggling with work load inequity at home and would benefit from our story. We don't have it figured out and this isn't advice. Also, households come in many varieties and this experience might not relate to your situation.
Ownership and Trust
Explicitly defining ownership of domestic responsibilities and trusting the other person to get it done has by far been the most impactful strategy for an equitable household. Ownership is about who is going to physically do the thing. Trust is about the other person being comfortable letting go of the mental load. Here is an example; when it comes to our kids I'm responsible for doctors including specialty doctors (like the allergist) and my husband is responsible for the dentist and orthodontist. As a result I have very little understanding about what the overall plan for orthodontics is. It takes zero space in my mind. I trust that My husband is making great decisions and if there is something that he thinks I should know or weigh in on, he will tell me. This trust allows me to completely release the mental load of thinking about it.
Here's how this strategy came to exist for us. Our household was inequitable and it was causing arguments. So we made a list of all of the household tasks. Then we divided everything into columns. One for me, one for my husband, and one for shared. We agreed not only to who would own what, but we also talked about any specific expectations that the other person had about how or when that task would be done.
Fair does not always mean equal
In 2018 I was responsible for an incredibly large and complex project to launch a new credit card for one of the country's largest banks. It was all consuming. I really thought I was keeping it together at home until my husband told me I wasn't. We discussed together the things that were most important for the family and how to make sure they were taken care of. We recalibrated and my husband temporarily took on more responsibility at home. One specific example of this was dinner. We'd always eaten dinner together at 6:30 and I was the cook except for order out night and taco night. With the demands of the work project my consistency had been spotty. During this season my husband learned how to make several new dinners and became the cook on weeknights until that work project ended. I'm so thankful that he spoke up and that he was willing to do something that he'd never done before to support our family.
The way we think about ownership is that it's not about an exactly even split. It's taking into account the interests, needs, and capacity (including mental capacity) of everyone involved. One of the important elements of this strategy is to revisit the list as circumstances change. Check in with each other and ask the question "Is this still working for you?"
Communicate about schedule and logistics
When two people are involved in the schedule and logistics of a house, they need to be in consistent communication. This has been the area of most struggle for us and it's the one area that I imagine to be less challenging for a household where a single person owns everything. While we always have room for improvement there are two strategies that have been valuable; the digital family calendar and the week-in-review conversation.
Our family life is on the digital shared family calendar. If it's not there, it doesn't exist. This enables each of us to be responsive to things like event invitations or picking an appointment day and time because we don't have to check in with each other about if we are free. Even with the calendar in place, there are other logistics to decide. If there is an evening activity during the week, who will drive? Do we eat dinner before or after? For this reason, on Sunday nights we have a week in review discussion that includes the kids so that we're all on the same page about what to expect. Brian keeps these details in his head, for me I need it on paper to retain it so I have a journal where I lay out the logistics of the week so that I remember.
Conclusion
From this post I invite you to take what sounds right and make it your own while ignoring what doesn't fit for you. The way that a household creates equity will be as unique as the individuals in it. The important part is that we prioritize creating household equity and not default to women as the owner of home care tasks based on unconscious bias. We need to empower men to be leaders at home and normalize the equitable management of households. The success of women in the workplace demands it.
Post Script
There was once a fight where my husband raised that his equitable contribution to our household was incredibly rare and that I didn't appreciate that. It's true that it's rare. We don't know many households like ours. My response was something like "You don't get a gold star for doing the right thing just because other men are underperforming." An equitable household is a baseline expectation so there's no extra credit for it… even if you're crushing it compared to your peer group. But today, as I leave for a business trip where I will hold a panel discussion with other female leaders on topics including gender bias for International Women's Day, I'm very thankful that my husband is who he is and requires no special instruction from me to lead our household while I'm gone. He deserves all the gold stars and full acknowledgement that I would not be as successful at work if I didn't have him as my partner at home.
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