New York Times & Equal Parenting

The New York Times just recently put out an article on equal parenting in the piece called “When Mom and Dad Share It All”. The title about covers the concept of the topic.  Not much of a question here about what’s to be expected.

As a father myself, I love the idea of fathers bringing in more of the work effort on household chores.  Whether it be laundry or child rearing, I believe Dad needs to help.  I believe it’s a waste to not have a father interact with his most valuable asset:  his family.  I also believe that Mom shouldn’t be tied up at home.  To lock her down with 50% of our society is a complete waste of resources.  And I don’t mean to imply that she is a resource for corporate greed, I’m saying that she is needed to help grow a positive society, a social world with a proper balance.

The article by the Times goes into describing a few different families, including same sex parenting.  They focus things down to social influence as being the driving factor on who carries what loading.  There is also a mention of “monkey see, monkey do” in the natural tendencies of the parents that they picked up from their parents, which is not surprising since that is often the source of education in parenting that many people are limited to.

Even though I like the concept of both parents being involved in equal parenting, I did have a few problems with the article.  This may be a shock to the blogosphere where this is the hot rage right now, but there are a few issues not addressed by this article.

First, why doesn’t the piece talk about natural tendencies based on the sexes?  One could start thinking that both parents are equally versed in all skills, when in reality we are hardwired differently by mother nature.  Millions of years of evolution doesn’t exactly change immediately with a few years of new social perspective.

Second, look at the numbers in the article.   The average heterosexual couple claims they pull 45 hours of housework, but a more equally parented family in a same sex household puts in at most 20 hours per week.  Sounds like some exaggeration is going on somewhere!  Why did they drop such an obvious discrepancy?  Maybe the social pressure is to great for the researchers to not act like the marketing department putting down Dads as the trend currently stands.