Does Equal Parenting Work? - Continued
Published: June 20, 2008
As Belkin explains:
Social scientists know in remarkable detail what goes on in the average American home. And they have calculated with great precision how little has changed in the roles of men and women. Any way you measure it, they say, women do about twice as much around the house as men.
The most recent figures from the University of Wisconsin's National Survey of Families and Households show that the average wife does 31 hours of housework a week while the average husband does 14 -- a ratio of slightly more than two to one. If you break out couples in which wives stay home and husbands are the sole earners, the number of hours goes up for women, to 38 hours of housework a week, and down a bit for men, to 12, a ratio of more than three to one. That makes sense, because the couple have defined home as one partner's work.
But then break out the couples in which both husband and wife have full-time paying jobs. There, the wife does 28 hours of housework and the husband, 16. Just shy of two to one, which makes no sense at all.
The article is both extensive and substantial, and the questions she raises are important. Why do women still do most of the parenting and the domestic work? The assumption of the researchers cited in the article seems to be that this stubborn imbalance must reflect either a refusal by men to do what they should do or a reluctance by many women to liberate themselves from old roles and expectations.
What seems to be unthinkable is nevertheless very hard to resist -- what if this enduring reality points to something objectively different in terms of the gifts, passions, intuitions, and roles of men and women . . . fathers and mothers?
One key and unavoidable insight of all this research is the fact that egalitarianism doesn't end up being very egalitarian in reality. Mothers are still mothers, and fathers are still fathers -- and there is still a difference. Those who operate from a secular worldview informed by feminism must assume that this is just another representation of enduring cultural prejudice. Those operating from an evolutionary worldview will be tempted to suggest that this is evidence of the enduring power of ancient adaptations.
The Christian, operating out of a biblical worldview, must see this as an affirmation of the fact that men and women are assigned complementary, and not identical roles. As fathers, men are called to loving leadership in the home, and this will mean an active and loving engagement with his children. The Christian father will love his children no less than the Christian mother, but his role will not be the same.
There is certainly no shortage of men who are lazy, unfaithful, and disengaged from family life, but this does not answer the question The New York Times Magazine is asking. The idea of "equal parenting" is not just unrealistic, it is unreal. Reality can be a hard thing to accept, but it is also a hard thing to resist.
Dr. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Albert Mohler is the host of The Albert Mohler Program, a daily national radio program broadcast on the Salem Radio Network, and has contributed to a number of Christian publications. For more information about Mohler, log onto go http://www.albertmohler.com.
Copyright © 2008 Dr. Albert Mohler. All rights reserved.
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Does Equal Parenting Work?
Published: June 20, 2008
Dr. Albert Mohler explores the myths and truths behind the concept of equal parenting.
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