Equal Couples

The struggles of new motherhood are more than an identity issue, argues Miriam Peskowitz in her book The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars. “They are a labor issue.”  She argues that our frustration with family and working choices is about the “refusal of most American workplaces to deal creatively and humanely with family life.” We are caught between our belief that we live in an egalitarian society and a cultural reality that tells us we don’t. She calls this the “parent problem,” the problem that affects us all.”

Many couples who want equality manage okay until they hit parenthood. Suddenly all the old expectations and attitudes about how men and women ought to “be” surface. Organizational expectations and norms that the couple hadn’t noticed before also suddenly apply. Options narrow.

Peskowitz describes the parent problem as a “serious, structural problem, a remnant of an economy that saw men as central and ideal workers and relegated women to supporting roles at home.”  It is the “parent problem,” argues Peskowitz, that is the pressing feminist issue, not the “war” between mothers who work and those who don’t.

posted by Anne