Though the words “parental leave” appear regularly in press releases and news articles, most companies and employees still think and talk primarily about maternity leave: time for a new mother to recover from childbirth, breastfeed her infant, and—unwittingly—become an expert in family management.
“My husband doesn’t know what size shoe my kid wears.” “My husband doesn’t know what time the baby naps.” “My husband doesn’t have the daycare number stored in his phone.”
These were just a few of the things mothers responded when asked how they divide household responsibility in their family. I’d posed the question because I was writing a book about what moms can do to keep their careers on track during pregnancy and parenthood, and I wanted to incorporate some tactical advice. Millions of women want a partner who is an equal partner. What can they do to get one?
In any arena, be it domestic management or the acquisition of a new professional skill, the path to becoming an “expert” is simple: practice and develop institutional knowledge. As the women I interviewed had found, they became parenting “experts” quite fast—pretty much right from when they welcomed a baby into their home.
After a baby is born, nearly all of a household’s rhythms and systems are in flux: how much the parents are sleeping, how they spend theirdays, what they worry about, what they buy, and about a million other things. Everything changes.
[For more of this story, written by Allyson Downey, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...sponsibility/484217/]
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