by Katrina on July 26, 2010
A quiet revolution has been taking place in Sweden for 15 years, affecting everything from the gender pay gap to workplace culture to relationships between parents and children. It all started at home.
Here’s a link to the fascinating New York Times story about this phenomenon. Now here’s my distilled version—with original illustrations!
Note: The dad should be holding a Swedish kronor instead of a dollar sign, but most of us wouldn't know what "kr" meant.
This Swedish family doesn’t look very happy. That’s because for decades Sweden has had the same problems we have in the U.S., with men and women seemingly confined to traditional roles when it came to working and raising kids.
Although the country had paid parental leave, mothers were the ones who stayed home with the baby. Women made less money than men, and the few men who did take time off were stigmatized at work. (They were called “velvet dads,” which is maybe like telling a guy he’s a “woos.” Any Swedish readers care to translate?)
In 1995, in what turned out to be a bureaucratic stroke of genius, the Swedish government created financial incentives for paternity leave. If the father didn’t take time off, the family lost one month of subsidies.
Suddenly it was like, Who cares if they call me a “velvet dad?” I’m not giving up free money!
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by Katrina on July 21, 2010
This is part of a series of posts about how working couples share the under-the-radar chores that, taken together, represent the “psychic burden” of parenting. Be sure to read these parts first:
Part I. Survey results
Part II. Why it’s fair
Part III. Why it’s not fair
My last post explored how parents (mostly moms) feel about the unfair division of labor in your households. In this post, I want to share some of the reasons you gave for how things got the way they did.
Several moms talked about their own guilt to be everything to everyone. Are we taking on more to make up for the fact that we have jobs?
“We both work full time and commute…It’s exhausting. Even though we split responsibilities pretty evenly, I still feel a sense of ‘mother guilt’ in that I feel I should be doing more. It’s like I want my son to have the benefits of both worlds: the stay at home mom who does enriching activities with him, who makes dinner, keeps a neat house, is never frustrated or tired or exhausted—while I’m working full time. Last night I was up until 10:30 making organic baby food. My husband doesn’t seem to feel the same pressure that I do in this regard. He doesn’t worry if after work playtime is in front of the TV instead of upstairs with lots of infant development toys and books like I do. Maybe these high expectations are unique to mothers. For my family, the unfair split between household and parenting responsibilities seems to extend past the physical day to day and reflect more of a psychological and emotional division of labor.”
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by Katrina on July 20, 2010
This is part of a series of posts about how working couples share the under-the-radar chores that, taken together, represent the “psychic burden” of raising children. Be sure to read these parts first:
Part I. Survey results
Part II. Why it’s fair
My last post looked at why half of the parents surveyed felt they had divided responsibilities pretty fairly, even though moms were still doing far more than half of the work. In this post, I want to look at the other half of the story—if both parents are working outside the home, why aren’t we doing a better job of dividing up responsibilities within the home?
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by Katrina on July 19, 2010
This is part of a series of posts about how working couples share the under-the-radar chores that, taken together, represent the “psychic burden” of raising a family. Part. I is here.
Working moms are bearing more (sometimes much more) of the “psychic burden” of parenting than working dads. Yet, when asked in my recent survey, “How do you feel about how you and your partner divide household and parenting responsibilities?”
Among working moms with working husbands (who made up the bulk of the survey):
- 51% marked “I think it’s pretty fair”
- 38% marked “I don’t think it’s fair, but I’m willing to live with it.”
- 11% marked “Totally unfair. It drives me crazy!”
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