It Takes a Village (21 page)

 

I
HAVE
had my own experiences with the power of stereotypes, most notably when the response I gave to a reporter's question during the 1992 Presidential campaign led to the infamous cookies-and-tea tempest. I had understood the question to refer to the ceremonial role of a public official's spouse, and I replied that I had chosen to pursue my law practice while my husband was governor rather than stay home as an official hostess, serving cookies and tea to guests.

Now, the fact is, I've made my share of cookies and served hundreds of cups of tea. But I never thought that my cookie-baking or tea-serving abilities made me a good, bad, or indifferent mother, or a good or bad person. So it never occurred to me that my comment would be taken as insulting mothers (I guess including my own!) who choose to stay home with their children full time. Nor did it occur to me that the next day's headlines would reduce
me
to an anti-cookie—and therefore obviously anti-family—“career woman.” Many people jumped to conclusions about me, both positive and negative, based as much on how they interpreted what I said as on the words themselves. Few heard my full comments or knew much about me before labeling me in one way or another.

I learned important lessons from the whole episode, one of which is that when I am asked a question that relates to me personally, I have to be aware that my answer may be measured by how people feel about the choices they've made in their own lives. But the incident also highlighted for me the amount of energy that is wasted on public and private sniping over women's and men's choices and on stereotyping their values, abilities, and predilections. Whatever our differences of opinion on these matters, they pale beside the needs of children, which demand all our varied resources.

Raising children isn't like other jobs, for men or women. There is no exam to pass, no license to hang on the wall. There aren't any vacations, sabbaticals, or leaves of absence, either. You may be a “full-time” lawyer or secretary or teacher or construction worker, but you're a parent around the clock. In addition to being breadwinners, many women are frequently primary caregivers not only for children but for aging parents, shouldering a punishing triple load.

It may be that women will achieve economic and social parity with men only when mothers and fathers fully share responsibility for rearing their children and other household tasks. That day, however, is not likely to dawn anytime soon. In the meantime, we can do two things that will make a difference over time: give both mothers and fathers the time and encouragement to become actively involved in the process of parenting; and help our sons and daughters to avoid the limitations imposed by stereotyping.

 

W
HEN
I became pregnant in 1979, my law firm did not have a maternity leave policy. When I tried to raise the subject, I encountered embarrassed silence. As the months went on, I noticed that my male colleagues averted their eyes from my swelling body. When I went to court, judges asked with more concern than usual if anyone needed a recess.

I wound up with a four-month maternity leave that enabled me to spend much-needed time with Chelsea, getting accustomed to my new role as a mother. But most new parents don't meet with anything like this kind of accommodation.

As I have mentioned, the Family and Medical Leave Act guarantees unpaid leave to employees in firms with more than fifty workers. That is a good beginning. Many parents, however, cannot afford to forgo pay for even a few weeks, and very few employers in America offer paid maternity and paternity leave. (Some notable exceptions are outdoor-wear manufacturer Patagonia, ice cream maker Ben & Jerry's, Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, the Sara Lee Corporation, and NationsBank.) Only about half of all female workers of childbearing age are eligible for short-term disability benefits that would cover pregnancy and childbirth, because the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, while it prohibits discrimination against these conditions, does not mandate coverage where none already exists.

Other countries have figured out that honoring the family by giving it adequate time for caregiving is not only right for the family and smart for society but good for employers, who reap the benefits of workers' increased loyalty and peace of mind. The Germans, for example, guarantee working mothers fourteen weeks' maternity leave (six weeks before and eight weeks after delivery) at full salary. Mothers are also guaranteed job-protected leave for up to three years after childbirth, for the first two years of which they receive a maternity grant equal to about one fifth of the average German woman's salary. While this financial benefit is not adequate to support most families, it is a helpful supplement to family income.

Other European countries provide similarly generous leave, some of them to fathers as well as mothers. In Sweden, for example, couples receive fifteen months of job-guaranteed, paid leave to share between them. The pay is approximately 90 percent of salary for the first twelve months and is reduced further in the last three months.

Yet few Swedish fathers take advantage of the policy. According to a University of Wisconsin study, attitudes and beliefs play a significant role in the decision, along with practical considerations. Many Swedish men, like their American counterparts, believe that men should be the primary breadwinners, lack exposure to male role models who care for infants, and, not least, perceive that there is little social acceptance and encouragement for taking paternal leave.

In our country, even when paid paternity leave is offered, few men take it. One exception to this pattern is Lotus Development Corporation, which offers four weeks of paid leave to new fathers and adoptive parents. Of the 305 Lotus employees who took family leave in 1994, more than a third were men, “an unusually high percentage in American business,” according to
Working Mother
magazine, which adds that Lotus's “cutting edge culture…makes men feel safe taking time away from work to care for their children.”

Many employers are not supportive even when leave laws apply. Kevin Knussman, a Maryland state trooper for nearly two decades, applied for extended parental leave to care for his new baby while his wife recuperated from a difficult pregnancy. The state police personnel office informed him that unless his wife was “in a coma or dead,” he didn't qualify as a “primary care provider.” He was ordered back to work after ten days leave. Earlier this year, Knussman filed a lawsuit against the state of Maryland, claiming that the police department's refusal was a violation of the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Despite institutional resistance, more fathers are beginning to put time with their families high on the list when they make job decisions. A recent survey of more than six thousand employees in professional and manufacturing jobs found almost as many men as women reporting that they made adjustments in their work lives such as refusing promotion offers, transfers, extensive travel, or overtime. Business may be starting to hear and to respond. Another study showed that working men and women who ranked family over work earned more in the long run than those who did not.

As the saying goes, no one on his deathbed ever says he wishes he'd spent more time at the office. Many divorced men who form second families vow they won't neglect their children the second time around. But children from a first marriage aren't training wheels, and they don't get a second chance at childhood.

More men are beginning to acknowledge the tough choices parenthood sometimes entails. My husband's former deputy domestic policy adviser, Bill Galston, decided that he couldn't combine his work at the White House with the time he wanted to spend with his son. Galston spearheaded the administration's efforts to strengthen families and support children, and he takes seriously his obligations to his own child. He says, “Fatherhood for me has been the most deeply transformative experience in my life. Nothing else is a close second. It is a prism through which I see the world.” He tried hard to integrate time with his son into the demands of his work, bringing him to the White House after school to do homework or to dine with him. But when his son wrote him a letter in which he said, “Baseball's not fun when there's no one there to applaud you,” Galston decided to leave a job he loved to return to teaching. He told my husband, “You can replace me, but my son can't.”

Most men, however, are unlikely to participate wholeheartedly in the care of their children until they are not only accepted as but expected to become active caregivers by the culture at large. Gender roles change slowly, and more than legislative change or progressive business policies is required. It is an age-old problem, and not a uniquely American one by any means.

In a poor section of Santiago, Chile, I visited La Pintana Community Center, which offers a variety of programs to strengthen and preserve families. Two working-class couples spoke to me of their experiences in a program designed to strengthen fathers' involvement with their wives and children. The men told me how they used to spend their nonworking hours having a good time with their friends, leaving their wives home to care for the children. The counseling program, however, had helped them to discover how rewarding time spent with their families could be.

If a Latin American culture that has strong notions about gender roles is attempting to find ways to promote the idea that fatherhood is as challenging and rewarding as anything in the so-called real world, so can we. Perhaps the most effective way we can involve men in parenting is simply to do so.

I remember how tentative my father was about even holding my baby brothers at first. In contrast, my brother Tony is an active caretaker for his son, and my husband was an eager participant in caring for Chelsea. He held her and sang and talked to her for hours. He had never tended a baby before, though, and I had to back off to create enough space for him to figure out how to get comfortable with her. I forced myself to stop hovering over them and to let him learn for himself how to tell a “wet” cry from a “hungry” one, or how to change a diaper without fear.

I also had to accept that he wouldn't always tend to Chelsea the same way I did. When Chelsea was learning how to turn over, Bill had her on our bed one day, watching with amazement as she turned first one way, then the other. He called excitedly to me to come see and, when I arrived, told me in all seriousness that he was sure she understood gravity. A few minutes later, she rolled off the bed and fell onto the carpet. So much for her grasp of physics!

A father who cares for his own child needs to be appreciated as a responsible parent rather than relegated to the role of “baby-sitter” or ill-trained assistant. Inexperience may result in occasional mishaps—an unsecured diaper that falls down or some other minor inconvenience. My friends and I often shake our heads over what our husbands will let kids do when we're not around. Bedtimes get pushed back, and meals become junk food extravaganzas. But the time children spend with their fathers builds a special bond that is more enduring than the occasional cranky, sleepy, stomachachy aftermath.

No one can dictate exactly how a given household should divide labor. It depends on the unique needs and abilities of each member and what seems right for the family as a whole. Two of my dearest friends illustrate two of the different ways it can be done.

One, a friend since grade school, quit teaching school when the first of her three children was born. For many years, she led a life much like my mother's, devoting herself full time to her children and her home. Now that her youngest child is in junior high, she has again taken a paying job. Her husband has been the family's consistent breadwinner, but he has also participated daily in the care of their children. In addition to sharing household chores, he has done, in his words, “dad things” like coaching their sports teams.

My other friend married after she was forty and had a child when she was forty-five. Her husband, who has a job that enables him to work from home, has assumed the bulk of the cooking and the daily care of their son, while she has continued a hectic professional career that includes frequent travel. The two of them are at ease with this division of labor, and their son is thriving. They remind me of what Shirley Abrahamson, a distinguished judge, said when she accepted an award from the American Bar Association. In thanking her husband for his support, she noted that he had managed to combine marriage and career—but that no one ever asked him how he does it!

 

C
HILDREN LEARN
what they see. When they see their fathers cooking dinner or changing the baby's diaper, they'll grow up knowing that caregiving is a human trait, rather than a female one. When they see their mothers changing tires or changing fuses, they'll accept troubleshooting as a human quality, rather than a male one. We should be mindful of the messages we send them as well as the behavior we demonstrate.

Differences in adults' treatment of girls and boys begin well before they reach their first birthdays, as has been demonstrated by studies in which infants in diapers or snowsuits are left in the care of adults who think they know the child's sex because of the names they are told. The same baby is treated differently depending on whether the adult thinks it is a boy or a girl. For example, an adult might identify and respond to the same infant's cry as anger in a “boy” and fear in a “girl.”

These early signals continue in school. When a girl does poorly on an exam, adults are inclined to say things like, “Never mind, you did the best you can.” Boys are more likely to be told, “Try harder. You can do better.” The message that children hear—and internalize—is that effort pays off for boys more than for girls. They also learn that being a boy means taking risks, being active, and trying to do things on your own, while being a girl means needing adult assistance to do whatever you have trouble doing.