The late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a fierce advocate for women’s rights, was unwavering in her belief that women and men should share equally in raising children. She emphasized that this is crucial for achieving gender equality.
She said that women will truly achieve equality when men equally share the responsibility of raising the next generation.
“Justice Ginsburg was ahead of her time,” Dr. Julie Graves, an expert in family medicine and public health, shared with me. “RBG often discussed her experience balancing law school and teaching while raising her children.” A supportive spouse was partly responsible for Justice Ginsburg’s extraordinary success.
The pandemic brought the division of home responsibilities into sharper focus. Fathers stepped up. Parents of young children had to adapt to helping kids with online learning while being together constantly. However, the shifts in parents’ work hours due to increased caregiving responsibilities disproportionately affected women. When schools and daycares closed because of COVID-19, mothers with young children reduced their work hours at four to five times the rate of fathers.
Few would argue that most men contributed more than usual during the pandemic. But how much and whether it was enough to bridge the still glaring gender gap in household responsibilities is another question. “Despite reports of progress, the pace of change remains slow, leaving doubts about whether true equality will ever be achieved," Francine Deutsch and Ruth Gaunt state in their book, "Gender Equality at Home".
One indication that change could be lasting is seen in the data on fathers who take paternity leave. This group is more likely to be engaged with their children and take on more childcare and housekeeping responsibilities. The children of these fathers are also more likely to experience increased parent-child closeness.
However, when Spain introduced paid paternity leave, the fathers who took it and were active in caring for their infants wanted fewer children, and if they had more children, they waited longer to have them six years or more. The researchers suggest this shift in perspective was due to their "increased involvement in childcare."
For many, if not most, women in heterosexual relationships, holding out hope that a partner will equally share early childcare and remain involved in household chores throughout a child’s upbringing may be unrealistic, especially if both partners work full-time. On average, mothers still do more planning and experience deeper stress.
“The main time constraint is negotiating who will be on call at home—that is, who will leave the office and be home at a moment’s notice,” states Claudia Goldin, a labor economist at Harvard University.
Among the parents I spoke with as part of the Only Child Research Project, the level of fathers’ involvement was mixed—some did very little, while others were actively involved from the start.
Since men tend to take minimal paternity leave, their involvement can be short-lived. However, partners who were actively engaged with their children during the pandemic need to remain involved. But will they?
A Dose of Reality
When examining household responsibilities, a recent study indicates that men tend to revert to their previous habits. The researchers looked at participation at different ages 25, 32, 43, and 50 challenging earlier studies that suggested a decline in women’s contributions to household duties. They found that “when women were raising children, they contributed significantly to housework, and when men were raising children, they contributed less than they usually did to household tasks.”
The study's authors believe that “parenthood effectively reinforces traditionally gendered roles and behaviors.” It seems we are slipping back into old, conventional roles of the past. The changes they observed at specific ages “suggest that the gender gap in housework remains stubbornly persistent and is further exacerbated during times of child-rearing.”
Perhaps fathers should start asking their partners what tasks and responsibilities they can take on at home. A simple “What can I do?” might just help families rediscover the benefits many experienced when men were home during the pandemic and lead to a more equitable division of household tasks.