Firstly, I said it before and I’ll say it again, that gender equity ideals are not being born out in reality in terms of men’s assumption of domestic labour is a problem. That they don’t take up the choice to take paternity leave or use their less work time surplus to raise kids and do chores is most definitely a problem. We agree!!

But I don’t agree about a couple of other things in your data interpretation and theorising.

Firstly you are still not addressing the nature of the time traditional breadwinners are spending with kids, and the demonstrated difference between ‘spending time with’ and ‘domestic labour to raise’. Your so called superdads are still not replacing mother’s labour with their extra time. There is a wealth of research to demonstrate this. They are not superdads because they include children more in their leisure time – they are superdads when being a dad comes close to providing the parental needs mothers currently overwhelmingly provide. That other blokes don’t do this either does not make breadwinner dad look better I’m afraid.

But secondly I think there are some problems with the biological determinism of gender that you subscribe to. The really serious problem with it is that the role of traditional man is heirarchically valued over women’s. That sex may in fact drive us to occupy, pursue, get pleasure and satisfaction from certain roles over others is less of a problem for me (though still a problem!) than the idea that being a good woman makes you dependent on and vulnerable to a man in a way that being a good man does not. Read Bob Connell’s work on gender for a good challenge to the link between sex and gender.

Seeking a world in which men and women share the valued and paid work in the big wide world (and the freedom and security and choices that come with it), as well as undervalued and unpaid work of washing dishes and holding kids hands whilst they get the dentist’s drill (and the boredom and drudgery that comes with it) as well as the emotional and intimate work of raising children (with it’s increadible joys of presence and bonding and deep responsibilities of eternal commitment) is most certainly not arbitrary! It is a goal based on trying to get a fair deal for all. This isn’t politics – it’s evidence based research about the fall out of traditional gender divisions clashing with the values of the modern world.

If women are now ‘victims’ of men’s avoidance of procreation, sharing of domestic labour, lack of commitment or whatever, they are not worse off that the generations of women who were bonded to the man they married or who fathered their children and had no responsibilities whatsoever beyond economic provision (and even that was sometimes up for debate). Who were powerless to leave a crappy or violent relationship because they were prevented by law from working after having children and would not get a divorce unless they could prove their husband was renegging on the marriage contract. Not always so easy to do.

While sex may well have something to do with it, the deal was crooked enough for the world to have radically shifted on what is fair to women in the last little while, whilst making a fairly short order of similar shifts from men.

Not just radical feminist mafia types, but mainstream legislators and the general population now recognise that women not only have a right to work, but they have an obligation to work. Men not only have a right to be more than a provider (as has been the traditional view, even though it may be, as you say, on the wane), they have an obligation to help to raise their kids. Not because we should all be the same, but because everyone benefits from sharing.

And just quickly on choice – many men responded to surveys about the Norweigan law saying they now took parental leave because their employers could no longer coerce them into NOT taking the parental leave they so wished to have. Because despite being entitled to take such leave, employers there (just like here! Fancy!) make clear to men who wish to be gender equity dad that their careers and capacity to provide for that family they so cherish will be dashed if they dare. So, you know, choice is complex. And how we choose is determined not just by our innate drives, but also by the way those choices are loaded for us after the fact. Again, I refer you to Alison Morehead’s excellent work on what influences choices.

No time to address all these points before I go to work, but your interpretation of the data doesn’t jive with all the couples I know (yes, that’s anecdotal.)

In the families I know where roles are simply reversed, the dad doesn’t spend less time with the kids – that’s just a nonsense. In our family, which tries (!) to be Gender Equity, Dad does spend a lot of face time with kids. There isn’t any nappy-changing type work any more as they’re older, but he did do alll that.

Your interpretation of the data is questionable. Why don’t men take up parental leave when it’s offered to them? Maybe couples are backed into a corner because of housing costs and other externalities which are similar here?

There’s a very interesting thread on Crooked Timber at the moment relevant to this topic which describes the kind of feedback loop which can militate against gender equity.

And, you put forward your position at the end of your last comment and its an essentialist one; although I agree biology has some part to play in our lives, it’s a position I do not agree with. So you pretty much have Buckleys of convincing this blogger (and many of my commenters.)

Your glass-half-empty language – “lose the breadwinner role”, belies the fact that some men might see that as a life opportunity, not a loss.

Instead, the researchers looked at households in which the woman earned at least a small amount more than the man. They found that such households didn’t match up to the traditional family arrangement.

So they then divided the higher female income families into two different groups. In one group, there was no ideological commitment to “gender equity”, in the second group there was.

The researchers were pleased to discover that the second “gender equity” group performed better than the group in which men were unhappily economically marginalised.

However, the gender equity group still performed worse than the traditional male breadwinner family in terms of fertility and hours spent by men with children.

That’s why your theory that male breadwinning is connected to absent fatherhood is wrong. When men lose the masculine breadwinner role they don’t spend more time with their children, even if they are committed ideologically to “gender equity”.

In fact, the traditional male breadwinner spends more time on average with his children than either gender equity men or women – despite having longer hours of paid work than any other group.

It is the traditional breadwinner men who are the modern “superdads”.

Finally, a word about choice. It was pointed out earlier that when Norwegian men were given a choice to leave work to take up paid paternity leave, only a tiny percentage opted to do so. So the government coerced them to do so.

So it’s not really the provision of choice that is being pursued, but a certain outcome, namely the abolition of our sex as an influence in family life.

This aim assumes that our sex either doesn’t naturally influence our choices within the family, or that it does but can be made not to matter to satisfy a political aim.

I think all these assumptions are wrong and that sex does naturally influence our choices, so that men and women will never seek exactly the same family roles; that these natural preferences are hardwired into us and will never be permanantly suppressed (short of genetic engineering); and that the political aim of trying to abolish the role of our biological sex is based ultimately on arbitrary premises.

Gender equity households are where parents equally share caring and paid work, not where women replace tradtional men’s roles in a gendered division of labour or where they engage in small amounts of marginalised workforce activity in concert with a high status full-time earning partner. The benefits I point to related to gender equity flow from both parents being valued workforce participants.

The study further distinguishes between female breadwinners based on economic vs ideological motivations and find that the negative outcomes you refer to relate largely to the economically motivated households. The reality is that these are primarily households where men cannot find (good) work and women can.

As such, they are households who are already economically and socially disadvantaged, where men are already likely to be suffering from low self-esteem and where marital discord is already present. These are not generally blokes who seek to lessen their work hours to participate more fully in home life – they are men who have failed to find or maintain a place in the paid workforce and for whom a homemaker role is not something they have chosen at all. They do not represent even remotely the kind of men who might seek part-time work as a way of becoming mroe involved fathers.

Further to your hypothesis the traditional breadwinner man is connected to his masculine instincts (as you put it) to be exactly that – a breadwinner. His job (traditionally) is to provide, to work and make money and own the stuff that allows the woman to care for children (and him and his stuff). The traditional role of the father has been distant, absent and largely economic.

There has also always been (and remains) a positive correlation between marriage and fathering and earning potential for men – well over 90% of male executives in Australia (BCA research here) have a stay at home wife and children. Int he past the ability to have and provide for larger families has been a significant marker of social and economic status – just as in polygamous society more wives speaks highly for a man.

That children enhance men’s careers is not a new discovery, and quite possibly could be attributed to the fact that the presence of children cements a man’s commitment not to being a present father, but to breadwinning. This is well supported by the way men’s hours of work go up when they have kids, and then once they have made the commitment to work and supporting a family, they have more children.

It is in fact this cementing process which I would hypothesise (anecdotal evidence only) shifts many couples from the gender equity ideology they held pre children to a more traditional male breadwinner or 1.5 earner model after children come. The combined effect of the biological realities of childbearing for women and the increased importance of job security and success for men kicks in and everyone starts ‘doing gender’ because it seems to make more sense (see the research work undertaken by Alison Morehead for an exploration of doing gender and the institutional supports and challenges to gender equity).

And so yes Helen, the revolt is far far from over! As I anticipate the arrival of my second child within days, Armaniac’s post is all too heartbreaking. I daily give thanks that I have a partner who has made choices about work that allow him more time than most blokes get with their children, that neither of us care enough about ‘stuff’ to let income be the final word on what parents we hope to be, that the kind of father he gets to be is so far removed from what was possible even 40 years ago.

But we are lucky, so much luckier than so many others. And even for us, we are a long way from anything I would call gender equal. I disagree with you Mark that gender equity is about autonomy, gender equity is about choice. Until we all have the capacity to make choices about the mothers and fathers and workers and families we want to be in, until gender is not the overwhelming determinant of these outcomes then the fight will remain.

You can find links to the data here.

In short, the data shows that “gender equity” type families are rare (2.9%) and have less favourable outcomes than the traditional family type (lower fertility, lower stability and less time commitment by men).

The research doesn’t explain why this is so. I expect, though, that it has to do with the larger context of the values each family type is based on.

The modern “gender equity” type family is based on an ideal of autonomy. This has as one consequence the belief that we should not be impeded in our choices by our biological sex. The gender equity family, therefore, is partly defined by the absence of traditional sex roles.

Men who accept the “gender equity” arrangement are supposed to gain in terms of autonomy. But think of what this means for men psychologically. The larger value they are following is one of being autonomous and unimpeded in their lifestyle choices. What is there in this value to make men stick to a marriage during tough times, to commit to the burden of raising children, to commit their time to working to provide for their families or to invest their time heavily in their offspring?

In contrast, the traditional family connected a man’s masculine instincts to his role within the family as husband and father. Being true to himself as a man meant working hard as a provider, and acting effectively within the family through a distinct role as a father. The overriding value here was not an individualistic autonomy, but the challenge of fulfilling masculine responsibilities within the family.

This, perhaps, explains why such traditional men are, on average, more strongly motivated than their “gender equity” peers to having children, earning family income and spending time with their offspring.

Wow. Just wow. Your responses are many times more informative than the original post.
Armaniac’s beautiful post about his daughter expresses what a lot of men are thinking– they’re not content with being the “traditional” breadwinner/absent father any more. I see them all around me now – young dads with strollers. The dads in my department at work are rumbling about school holidays and dentist visits.

The revolt against essentialist gender roles is far from finished.

And I am talking the totality of domestic labour, not just looking after kids. Again, I’d point to Bittman and Craig’s work to domenstrate that there has been an improvement in the amount of time men spend with children, but not in housework, household management, organising children’s welfare and care, cooking, shopping and so on.

So daddy breadwinner is getting better at taking the kids to the park or reading bedtime stories, perhaps nappy changing, but not necessarily more likely to be taking them to the doctor, planning next weeks meals, making sure they have clean clothes for school tomorrow or liaising with their childcare worker about development issues. Even if mum works full-time she is almost certainly doing this stuff from her desk, in her lunch hour, perhaps while breadwinner daddy is 100% focused on his work tasks, watching telly, out with friends, or playing golf.

Gender equity dad may well be a part-time worker with a part-time worker partner, who shares the care of his kids and the work of keeping the household and family running. He may be picking up a genuinely equal share of the work, not just ‘minding the kids while mum is at work’.

But if these guys do exist there are very very few of them. If you take the moderate gains in equality and spread them thinly, there is little room for a real margin of ‘equality dads’ – more likely a larger proportion of men are slowly shifting on the spectrum.

But this does not mean that women should cease agitating for equality, and real equality does really mean less time at work for dads who currently occupy breadwinner status. Reduced incomes should not be an excuse to abandon the idea of gender equity. And really if men are working less and slacking more then surely the problem with that is the choices men are making, not in regards to working less but in regards to slacking more!

Besides the calculation of reduced income needs to account for the life cycle – which demonstrates that the best protection against poverty for Australian families is to have 2 working parents, the best protection against poverty post retirement is to have 2 working parents, the best protection against poverty for families that break up is for both parents to work. Reduced income in the short term to allow women to work and men to work less takes a long range view of the prospects of both parents in maintiaining their attachement and value in the workforce, in saving for retirement, in sharing the unpaid work of family life and in participating in the raising of their children.

And if this is currently being played out by more women working in paid work (for their own as well as their familie’s benefit) but still doing the lion’s share of all the other work then there is still a significant problem. This is not the fault of feminism, or of the women who have heeded the realities of our times and mutual obligation easy divorce message.

Also, regarding your “feminism has failed” line of argument. Do you think that with recent events, like the unpopular WorkChoices legislation, the unpopular detaining of David Hicks, and countless other anti-democratic policies that do not have electoral support, that “democracy has failed”, and we should discard the notion altogether?

Do you think that the recent murder of an Aboriginal man by a policeman, or any number of black deaths in custody, has meant the anti-racism movement has failed? Or do you think, on the other hand, this just means we should ramp up our support for the anti-racism movement?