Equal Couples

When I first meet a couple in counseling, I look to see if they express conflict. If they do, I usually congratulate them on having two voices! Since conflict is not a goal couples typically seek, this usually comes as a surprise.  Yet one of the key findings from our research is that the ability to tolerate and address conflict facilitates the development of equality. 

Stereotypic gender patterns encourage women to accommodate.  This keeps relationships going “smoothly” and creates the illusion that there are no conflicts. If women automatically accommodate, men may not even have to do anything to get the other family members to organize around their interests. And in the short term, the woman may be happy to make him happy.

Problems arise when the same person accommodates over and over. She either stops knowing herself or she gets resentful. Or both. Neither is good for her or the relationship over the long haul. Harriet Lerner’s The Dance of Anger describes these troublesome patterns and offers good suggestions for overcoming them. 

When couples are equal, there will be two voices, and they will not always see things exactly the same way. No wonder the equal couples in our studies so regularly describe how important it was to them to deal with conflict!

posted by Carmen

Power issues do not dissolve simply because two people are in love. Stratified power differences, long based on sex, skew relationships in ways that overvalue and privilege the interests of men and direct the flow of influence toward them. Though starting to break down, these power differences have been in place for centuries. When power is well ingrained, compliance occurs without overt power struggles and conflict. The less powerful person (usually the woman) simply accommodates the other. Many women learn, for example, what their husband’s limits of tolerated behavior are and stay within them. The man’s power is not observable because there is no conflict and the wife never seems to want anything the husband does not.

There is no such thing as not dealing with gender and power issues. Couples who fail to acknowledge and come to terms with the reality that the larger social system treats women and men differently are dealing with power issues by default, usually at a high cost to their relationship. Institutional power is built into social systems in such a way that its exercise is almost independent of the will of a particular individual. It is part of law, church doctrine, informal norms, economics, work environments, and many other social systems.

Many women live under a male domination that is not so much outright oppression as an unacknowledged preeminence of men’s desires.  Couples who wish to move toward greater equality need to learn to recognize instances  of gendered power in their relationship and develop strategies for coping with it. Have you observed this kind of power in your own relationship or in a client’s relationship? We welcome comments that give examples of gendered power and suggestions about strategies to deal with it.

posted by Anne

There have been scores of different definitions of couple equality. No matter which definition we use, two people probably can never be totally equal all the time. When Carmen and I talk about couple equality we think of equality as a goal. The move toward equality is a process, a process of building a relationship that takes account of the well-being and needs and dreams of both individuals. Our definition of equality focuses on the dynamics of the couple relationship:

• the relative status of partners,
• the extent to which both partners pay attention to and attend to each others’ needs,
• the ability and willingness of both partners to accommodate to each other, and
• whether partners both have a good sense of well-being

In other words, the process of creating equality is about how partners relate to each other and take each other into account in their everyday actions as well as in big decisions. There is give and take. Partners think through the implications of decisions for each other and for their relationship. If they make a decision that they believe will temporarily work more to the benefit of one partner, they try to find ways to minimize disadvantages to the other and try to equalize advantages over the long run.  This requires honestly talking through long-term implications of any big decision. The key to equality is that both partners are always consciously engaged in the process of creating the most equal relationship they can, given their life circumstances.

Posted by Anne

I keep finding pieces in Miriam Peskowitz’s The Truth about the Mommy Wars and Pamela Stone’s Opting Out that I want to share because they help us understand why moving toward couple equality sometimes seems so difficult. Though we are all experiencing  the problems of achieving equality one family at a time, both these books make clear that many of the problems we face are societal, institutional, structural – choose your word! We are back to the old feminist theme, “The personal is political.”

A growing number of women and men in all segments of our population WANT to have time to care for and raise their children and also want meaningful work that enables them to support those children! It seems so simple. Yet a surprisingly large number of families throughout American society find it increasingly difficult to do so as they are expected to work longer hours in their full time jobs than in the past. Part time options, when they are available, are often unsatisfactory because they pay much less, creep into unpaid full time work, and frequently carry no benefits or chances for advancement. Peskowitz argues that women may be liberated as women but not yet, entirely, as mothers. We are not as postfeminist as we would like to believe.

We know there is a better way.  America stands out in the world as providing less support to families than other industrialized nations and many so-called “underdeveloped” nations. Although this is a hard time economically, it may also be a time of opportunity. As companies restructure, there are possibilities for instituting new ways of working that can bring work environments more in line with the needs of current workers. Instead of quietly struggling and blaming ourselves for not being able to do it all, it is time for us to start advocating for work environments and policies that support family life and equal relationships.

Posted by Anne

Our decisions about family care and work are more than just individual problems and private choices, argues Peskowitz in The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars The parent  problem is a “serious, structural problem that is a remnant of an economy that saw men as central and ideal workers and relegated women to supporting roles at home.” Carmen and I argue that this widespread  individualistic attitude about parenting promotes couple inequality.

If you too are concerned about these issues, you may want to connect with some of the organizations that advocate about these issues for parents.  Check out www.familyandhome.org, which started out as a mothering movement, but quickly broadened to all parents; www.mothersandmore.org, which, among other activities, advocates for structural changes to support mothers; and www.hipmama.com with lively political commentary.

Post by Anne

When I ask couples if equality is important to them,  it is rare that  someone says “no.”  This is true for both women and men.  Stephanie Coontz describes this trend in Marriage, a History. Although it’s true that women are changing faster than men, she reports that “American men no longer want a weaker, subservient partner” (p. 299). This is a very noteworthy change. 

The problem, according to Coontz, isn’t that women and men want different things in life and love. The problem is that achieving equal relationships is hard.  When their ideals are not met, people have to decide whether to live with compromised ideals or make changes.  Responses vary, but women are becoming less willing to stay in unequal relationships.

Living up to our ideals is hard because there are so many ways that societal norms and expectations, work policies, and our own learned habits pull us back into old patterns that reinforce gender stereotypes and limit relationship options. The good news is that, increasingly, people do move beond old gender patterns and create mutually supportive relationships.

Our research shows that couples who are able to live up to their egalitarian ideals take conscious steps to counteract old gender patterns. When couples begin with the premise that responsibility for the relationship is shared, it is easier.  What have you learned about this process? What helps you live up to your ideals?

 posted by Carmen

Inflexible workplaces zap professional women from two sides. They make it difficult for women to continue high level jobs when they become mothers, as I described a few blogs back. They also make it difficult for the women’s husbands, who have similar jobs, to change their schedules so they can share family responsibilities. With parenthood comes new sets of  demands for caring and educating children that both parents believe are essential. Yet when the women Pamela Stone talked with in Opting Out? were trying to figure out how to balance parenting with career, their husbands did not step up to share the load. “It’s your choice,” most husbands told their wives, code for “It’s your problem.”

Stone argues that the men, in voicing support for whatever decision their wives made, appeared to be deferring to their wives, but the appearance of egalitarianism was deceptive. In reality, the men’s inability to cut back on their own schedules sent a clear message that they were unwilling or unable to support their wives’ careers as equal to their own. Inflexible workplaces push couples back into the old gender roles they thought they had abandoned. Once the woman opts out, stereotypic gender roles and inequality become even more pronounced. Yet family needs can’t be ignored.  “Somebody’s got to do it,” explained one mother as she settled into the playground beside other at-home mothers.

Inflexible work environments take a terrible toll on mothers, fathers, and family life in general. Widespread couple equality will be difficult to achieve without  addressing  the organization of our workplaces. The first step is for couples to become consciously aware of how work demands can unbalance their relationships and try to minimize their impact. But the real solutions will have to come from outside individual families.

Posted by Anne

I’m still thinking about the couple relationships in Julie and Julia. The more I focus on them the more I see. Films and novels provide good opportunities to observe and talk about relationships outside our own lives. We feel less threatened. It’s easier to see things in someone else’s life. Besides, we can replay the scenes as often as we want. We can also play  “what if” and imagine how lives might have gone differently if partners had responded to each other in different ways at key points.

How would things have been different for Julie and Eric if they had engaged in more discussion and shared decision making about Julie’s project at the beginning? What if they had tried to anticipate its impact on the two of them and their relationship? After all, since she worked full time most of her project was going to happen on “couple time.” Would she have been as exhausted and had as many melt downs? Would he have felt as closed out, ignored, and frustrated?  How might her blog have been different?

Posted by Anne

I just have to share this.  Last night we went out for Mexican food with my daughter and her family. Ethan, my 3 year old grandson, referred to his dad as “a guy.” Then he indicated his little brother, grandfather, and himself also as “guys.” When we asked him if his mother was a guy, he smiled and shook his head, “she’s a g-i-i-r-r-l-l-l.”  Then he looked at his mom, flexed the muscles in both his arms and added, “a big, STRONG, girl!”

I have no idea what prompted his response. But it was so wonderful to hear a boy speak in positive, strength-based terms about the female gender! When both “guys” and “girls” are recognized as strong, we are on our way to more equal relationships.   posted by Carmen

Why do some women quit careers and head home? In order to find out, Pamela Stone interviewed women all over the country who had been high flying professionals before they left work to be at-home mothers. Her answer, detailed in her fascinating recent book, Opting Out should give us all pause. She found that most women only quit as a last resort, that they face, not choice, but a “choice gap,” created by the “conditions of work in their professions.”  They go home because they are unsuccessful in their efforts to obtain flexibility and often found themselves marginalized and stigmatized for trying to find ways to hold on to their careers after they became mothers.

Their return home is not evidence of a “new traditionalism,” as the media sometimes tries to portray. It is not the women who are traditional, argues Stone, it is the workplace. There are many signs, she says, that women and men are bearing the costs of “toxic workplaces and white collar sweatshops,” costs which are not only personal, but ultimately societal and economic. One of the major personal costs for couples is the difficulty traditional workplaces pose for developing  an equal relationship and sharing family life.

Have you tried to obtain greater flexibility or more family friendly work conditions in your workplace? How has it worked?