Are American Husbands Slackers?
By
Jeffery M. Leving and Glenn Sacks
© 2006
In the wake of the death of feminist
pioneer Betty Friedan, many women’s advocates are asserting that the
revolution she began is only half complete: career opportunities
have opened up for women, but these careers are being undermined and
sabotaged by women’s disproportionate and unfair household
obligations.
Judith Warner, author of Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of
Anxiety, recently asserted that the “gender caste system is still
alive and well in most of our households…The outside world has
changed enormously for women in these past 40 years. But home life?
Think about it. Who routinely unloads the dishwasher, puts away the
laundry and picks up the socks in your house?...The answer, for a
great many families, is the same as it was 50 years ago...[Friedan’s]
description of the lives of women in the 1950s sounded just too much
like the lives of women today.” As feminist professor Linda Hirshman
recently noted, “The glass ceiling begins at home.”
Careers and wage-earning have certainly increased the demands on
women’s time--have American men refused to hold up their end by
contributing more at home? Are American husbands slackers?
Warner, Hirshman, and other feminist critics compare the work men
and women do at home but fail to properly account for their
disparate obligations outside the home. Census data shows that only
40% of married women with children under 18 work full-time, and over
a quarter do not hold a job outside the home.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2004 Time Use Survey,
men spend one and a half times as many hours working as women do,
and full-time employed men still work significantly more hours than
full-time employed women.
When both work outside the home and inside the home are properly
considered, it is clear that men do at least as much as women. A
2002 University of Michigan Institute for Social Research survey
found that women do 11 more hours of housework a week than men but
men work 14 hours a week more than women. According to the BLS,
men’s total time at leisure, sleeping, doing personal care
activities, or socializing is a statistically meaningless 1% higher
than women’s. The Families and Work Institute in New York City found
that fathers now provide three-fourths as much child care as mothers
do—50% more than 30 years ago.
Yet even these studies understate men’s contributions because they
only count the hours devoted to a task without measuring the
physical strain and/or danger associated with the task. A man doing
eight hours of dangerous construction work in the 100-degree heat is
credited with no more "work" than a woman who works in an
air-conditioned office or who does childcare or housework in the
comfort and safety of her own home (and without a supervisor
breathing down her neck).
According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, more
than three million workers a year are treated in hospital emergency
rooms for occupational injuries—the vast majority of them suffered
by men. Nearly 100,000 American workers have died from job-related
injuries over the past decade and a half, 95% of them men. Of the 25
most dangerous jobs listed by the U.S. Department of Labor, all of
them are between 90 percent and 100 percent male.
The sacrifices made by men like Terry Helms, one of the 12 miners
killed in the Sago Mine disaster last month, are unrecorded in the
studies. Terry’s son Nick told the Associated Press that his father
“had endured numerous injuries in a 30-year career and hated mining
because of the dangers.”
“[My father] is very selfless,” Nick said. “[He] refused to quit
because the job put food on the table…He gave his life in there so I
could go to the movies.”
It is true, as Warner and Hirshman assert, that work outside the
home is often more interesting than work done in the home. Yet it is
also true that work done in the home—particularly time spent with
one’s children when they are young—is often more satisfying than
wage work.
Feminists’ persistent criticism of men has combined with women’s
traditional expectations of their husbands to place men in a double
bind. A man may be a devoted caretaker of his children or a talented
cook, but if he is unable to provide for his family, he is not
respected. Yet when a man works long hours to fulfill the
breadwinner role which he is still expected to perform, he is blamed
for not contributing as much at home as his wife does.
Feminists are right to complain that with long work weeks, the high
cost of child care, scant union protections, and inflexible
workplaces, working women often face a trying juggling act. But
they’re wrong to place the blame on husbands, who do their fair
share and often make great sacrifices to provide for their wives and
children.
This article first appeared in the
Tallahassee Democrat (3/22/06).
Jeffery M. Leving is one of America's
most prominent family law attorneys. He is the author of the book
Fathers' Rights: Hard-hitting and Fair Advice for Every Father
Involved in a Custody Dispute. His website is
www.dadsrights.com.
Glenn Sacks' columns on men's and
fathers' issues have appeared in dozens of America's largest
newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website at
www.GlennSacks.com or via
email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
Copyright 2006 Glenn
Sacks, all rights reserved
