Creating Opportunities for Men to Be More Involved With Their Children

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For generations, most heterosexual parents followed fairly rigid gender roles in how they ran their households and parented their children. Typically, men worked outside of the home and were responsible for financially supporting the family, and women were responsible for running the household, taking care of the children, and managing the family’s relationships with friends, other family, and each other. Men sometimes “helped” with certain tasks, but women largely remained the ones responsible for monitoring things and making sure everything got done. As it became more common for women to work outside the home, although many men stepped up how much they helped, women often complained about the burden of feeling in charge of everything in the family and lamented not having partners who would shoulder that responsibility equally with them.

In my experience, many families today (particularly younger families) are genuinely interested in working toward a more egalitarian division of roles in their families, but practicalities often interfere with living their values. For example, I think the litmus test of how a family’s egalitarian values is the question of who stays home with a sick child. Although this is changing, in many heterosexual relationships, the man still earns more than the woman. This can create a conflict between a couple’s egalitarian values and the reality that it may cost the family more for the man to miss a day of work than the woman.

One aspect of gender role rigidity that has been particularly resistant to change is child-rearing. It is certainly true that younger fathers are far more actively involved in raising their children than previous generations. I had my children in the late 1980s and early 1990s when a popular joke was, “What do you call a man in the park with his children on a Saturday? Divorced.” I remember crying tears of relief when I found a diaper-changing table in a restaurant bathroom for the first time. Although men are clearly doing more, it still has been difficult for many well-intentioned families to let go of the underlying premise that women are in charge of child-rearing and men help.

2 Suggestions for Making Roles More Flexible

There are two suggestions I often make to families with young children who are interested in making these gender roles more flexible. These suggestions can be equally helpful to same-sex families that have become stuck in rigid roles in their family that are not related to gender.

The first is that I often suggest to young fathers, or to whichever parent is stuck in the “helper” role, that they be the ones to get up with their children in the middle of the night. This usually precipitates some pushback that goes something like, “I have to get up in the morning to work so that I can support my family.” I acknowledge the truth of what they are saying and confess that I had similar reservations when I first tried this with my young children. I suggest that they may find the benefits of increased feelings of connection with their children and confidence as a parent worth the sleep deprivation, and I encourage them to try it to see if they don’t find it worthwhile.

The second suggestion is similar to the first but often has a more dramatic and enduring impact on the structure of a family. I invite the mom, or whoever is stuck in the role of being in charge of everything that happens with the children and the family, to go out of town for a weekend. I ask that person not to do anything before she leaves to cushion the impact of her absence on the parent staying behind; don’t prepare meals in advance, don’t hire babysitters or schedule play dates, and don’t ask someone to “stop by” or call yourself to check on how things are going. As you might expect, I often get pushback from both parents to this suggestion, but in the end, most couples agree to try it.

The outcomes of this experiment are remarkably consistent. When the partner who has been gone for the weekend comes home, she most often finds an exhausted partner and excited and happy children. The house may not be quite up to the standards it was before she left, but everyone usually has a great time. The partners staying behind report feeling much closer to their children and more confident in their own parenting abilities. Often, they have been so stuck in the “helper” role that they don’t know a lot about how their partner does things with the kids, and so they have to figure things out for themselves. Most often, it is that partner who suggests repeating the experiment.

It might seem far-fetched to you that such a simple experiment could change some of your family's entrenched patterns. In response, I’ll just tell you what I say to the young couples in my office: “Give it a try and see if you like it.” These exercises are simple, yet they can have a profound impact on your family dynamics.

Excerpted in part from Hidden in Plain Sight: How Men's Fears of Women Shape Their Intimate Relationships.