Listen to the Experts on
Sharing Parenting

• The Benefits of Sharing Parenting
• Role Models
• How To Get There and How To Do It
• The Significance of the Name Game
• Study Findings

The Benefits of Sharing Parenting

I asked every Mom and Dad I interviewed who substantially shares parenting what she or he viewed as the benefits of fathers spending a lot of time with children. They all gave similar answers. In no particular order, they usually mentioned

1. the independence, competence, security, and curiosity of their children;
2. a special bond that many fathers and children never get to experience;
3. mutual respect, understanding, and balance of each other's responsibilities; less conflict and stress; and a happier marriage;
4. realizing their goal of giving a lot of parental attention to their children; and
5. giving their children role models that will enable girls to feel comfortable out in the world and boys to see value in doing things at home and with their family.

A series of excerpts from interviews of sharing parents provides examples of what these experts see as the payoffs of involved fathering.

***************************************

Rebecca works three days a week as a website designer and her husband Darrell has a home-based business and fits his work hours around Rebecca's schedule. She said:

Our son is very secure and happy. He's not clingy, not just focused on one person. Because we both take care of him, and will do the same for our newborn daughter, we've been able to impart our own values. We don't let him watch t.v. He loves to read and knows his alphabet at 2. And we also have much less stress in our lives.

***************************************

When Andrea took a high level position in the Clinton administration, a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," her husband took an eighteen month "career-break" and worked ten to twenty hours a week from home (but none in the beginning). She said:

I do know that unlike other kids that I see, including my own niece, the children don't naturally gravitate to the mother over the father. You do see that a lot, you know, 'Mommy, Mommy, Mommy.' Or they'll reach out for Mom. There's a little of that. I think some of it's just genetic or something. It breaks my heart sometimes. You know, I just want to keep saying, 'well, I'm the mother.' It's like a natural advantage. But that doesn't happen nearly what I see in other families.

Q. How did it work for you when your husband was home? Did you like it?

Yeah, I did. Because I liked my job, a lot. And I could go to work feeling a hundred percent confident that my child was well cared for. He was there for the bulk of the time and I knew that my son was getting the best care. And my husband enjoyed it. He clearly enjoyed it. So that was great.

[Working moms appreciate the difficulty of, and value, the job of taking care of children and household, an added bonus that seemed to make for happy couples and balanced family efforts]. Andrea said:

But I also really recognized that it was a tough job. With both kids, I was their primary caretaker for the first six months. So I recognized how tough a job it was. Any kind of romantic notions I had that he was sitting around eating bon-bons, they weren't there. They didn't exist. I knew that he was looking forward to me coming in the door to be the next shift and to give him a break. And oftentimes when I did come in the door, finally, he would go pour himself a beer and try to have a few moments of peace. And really it never ends up being much more than a few minutes of peace.

***************************************

Susan is a senior economist for an international organization whose husband works part time. She values her husband's participation with their daughter and thinks it has helped their marriage. She worked part-time for her first year as a mother.

I think my husband and I have a lot easier time in many ways and our marriage is probably much stronger. And we were talking about the conversations that they have at the play-group that he takes our daughter to. Things are so unequal in those families. All those families are stay-at-home-mom families and it sounds like the men are hardly involved at all. And David's relationship is so different with our daughter, and with me. In a lot of ways he's the stay-at-home and he's the one they know and he shares stories and bonds with them. But at the same time he doesn't have nearly the unequalness that they do.

Q. By being there and talking about your situation, he's letting them know that there's another way to do it.

Yeah, that the working person can actually make some time for their family in their lives. We had some friends over for dinner the other night and they got pregnant and we asked them what they were doing, and they said, 'well, one of us will be home.'

My advice to them was, "whichever one of you does it, if you can afford it at all, do get yourselves a little bit of babysitting because it makes it much easier if the one who's doing most of the parenting still has some time for whatever they have found defines their own life, and gives them their independent persona." I know a lot of parents can't afford to have one parent not working and still pay for some daycare or babysitting.

But that's part of what made it a little bit difficult for David in the beginning. Women were raised all along with this notion of, "well, okay, now we have a choice." But that at least one option was to be a stay-at-home for a while. Whereas men never expected to do this, right? And maybe that's part of the problem that when the women expected to do it, they expected to do it more whole hog than is actually very fun.

***************************************

Donna is a Foreign Service officer now jobshares with another mom. She worked full time for the first two years of their daughter's life, when her husband, a corporate attorney, stayed home. Then they swapped and she stayed home for two years while he worked full time. Now, Dad remains very involved and works full-time, very regular hours while Donna works half-time. She especially values giving her children a model of a working mom and an involved dad.

That was in the back of my mind when I was deciding whether I was going to go back to work or not. My mom worked when I was growing up. The thought of a mom not working hadn't occurred to me. She was a medical technologist. She worked and my father died when I was ten. She had a career to go to. The idea of not working - I want my kids to know that that is an option. But that it's not an exclusive thing or role for men and women.

My husband and Kelly have a special relationship. They have a very close bond. He has a great relationship with both the kids.

I have a memory of my Dad taking me swimming on Saturdays and drying my hair. Those were happy times.

***************************************

Stay-at-home Moms expressed similar sentiments. Putting jobs and careers on hold or giving them up for the family effort didn't cause women to take on all the household and child-related duties. Janey is a stay-at-home Mom whose husband has always done a large share of the parenting and currently performs all the shopping and much of the cooking in their house. She said:

You can see it in our son. He's curious and turned on, and I know he gets part of that from the time he spends with his Dad. There are some things that he's just better at than I am and I wouldn't do as well, and Joe has gotten the benefit of both of our strengths. Last week I took the kids on vacation without my husband and we had a great time but at some point I realized that Joe was sad because he missed his Dad. He was having to do swimming and the beach with just me, and it's just not as much fun. And I thought that my brothers and sisters and I never would have been so sad without my father, that I wouldn't have missed him like that, and I was really happy that Joe has that bond with his Dad. They were both so happy to see each other when we got back.

Sharing Parenting: Role Models

Material from interviews conducted for
How To Avoid The Mommy Trap

Profile: Susan works as a senior economist for an international organization, has a PhD, has traveled all over the world, and is a widely recognized expert in her field. Her husband David works part-time as a writer, teacher, and publisher and tends their eighteen-month old daughter for most of the week. They use a shared-nanny arrangement for twenty hours a week. She stayed home with their daughter for four months and worked four days a week for the first year.

Oh, heavens no. My mom was a full time housewife or almost full-time housewife until I started first grade. And then we moved states so that she could go back to school for a PhD. She'd been working on her PhD when she got pregnant with my sister and was fired and basically had to quit and be a full-time housewife. She got her degree in statistics but then she taught industrial engineering at the university. So she and Dad were professors in the same department and had offices next door to each other from my fourth grade until they retired.

We had a cleaning lady who did all the cleaning. And actually Dad did the grocery shopping but Mom did all the cooking and a fair amount of the laundry until I was in eighth grade.

She moved out for a few weeks. She said, 'This is it, I'm moving out. I'm on my own now.'

And she tried to explain it to me. I never really understood at the time that she didn't know who she was without being a wife and mommy and she needed to find her identity.

Well, a few months. She went down and had an apartment. When she came back, part of the deal was that she didn't have to do as much of the housework.

Yeah, actually.

Yes - the fact that she's never been a traditional conformist woman anyway. She went off to Mexico on her own and did a student exchange program in college. In the 1940's some time. That wasn't done. She went to graduate school in math. She got there by getting a ride cross-country on her brother's motorcycle. So she's never been a traditionalist that way. When she started working, there wasn't even a ladies room in the building she worked in because it was an engineering building. She had to go next door to go to the bathroom. So all those things affected my notion of to what degree we had to live by 1950's traditional prescriptions for life. But she always said - and fervently - that no woman should work while her children were small. And she's so sorry that I am. Oh yeah, she hates the fact that I have to work. She feels so sorry for me.

I place a lot more value on having either parent at home - I'm a little bit more neutral about which parent it is. But I place a lot of value on having a lot of parent care in at least the early years. And I'm beginning to think that this business about the early years is nonsense. It's all of them.

Yes, he was traditional in the sense that he worked a full-time job, but he was always the one we got the unconditional love from and the playtime. I'm much closer to him. I've spent years being much closer to him than my mother. I didn't really appreciate my mother until I was in graduate school. And the thing that I like about my father is that in all my travels he was always the one who knew where I was, when I was coming home. He was the one who let us do all those fun things like have junk food and took us to the park. We were basically his on weekends a lot. When I started first grade, she was working on her dissertation and we were his.

Let the stay-at-home parent have some time of their own and make sure that the working person does alter his or her life to accommodate their families.

back to top

Sharing Parenting: How To Get There and How To Do It.

Profile: In her position as a financial officer of a Fortune 500 company, Kim, an MBA, has oversight and responsibility for 5000 employees. Her husband stays home with their four year-old daughter. Kim grew up in New York City, where she received a Catholic preparatory education. Her mother stayed home until Kim and her brother entered elementary school and then went back to school to earn a masters' degree. Later Kim's Mom worked full time for the Board of Education of New York City. Her father was vice president of an engineering company.

Q.	What type of family did you grow up in? What did they teach you that led you to share parenting with your husband?

My parents were very much of the values that you need to be able to take care of yourself and depend on yourself. Education was an extremely top priority always. Because the more educated you get, the more independent you'll be able to be.

Q.	What advice would you give to your daughter, a college student, or an engaged woman before they have kids that would help them create a situation where they're not doing more than they want to at home?

Don't say, or think 'I want to be this ideal person.' Be honest with yourself and your spouse about what your goals are, and what you're willing to give up. In any relationship, and especially when you have a child, there's lots of personal sacrifice. It's important to know that when you have a child that's going to be the top priority.

Know what your other priorities are. As you go through and carry out whatever you're doing, you need to have checkpoints, so you don't let things bottle up. And then, you can sit down and say, "this isn't really working for me. Let's try this instead." Because as you bottle things up, you have a lot of frustration come off on the child without realizing it.

Don't just assume anything. Constant communication with your spouse and your child is the most important thing.

Q.	What would you tell expectant mothers about what's going to happen and what they need to watch out for, what would be really good to do?

If two people decide to have a child, it's really important that the father is very involved from the beginning. It's a shame: sometimes you hear of these parents where the father has never even diapered the child. I couldn't fathom that. Because there is such a bonding time in the beginning. Plus, the mother, naturally -- especially if you're breastfeeding -- does bear more of the burden. And your hormones are going crazy, and everything's going crazy, and it's just a big bonding experience for the whole family, the more the husband can be involved.

And the more the mother can give up. Because sometimes women just say, 'well this is my responsibility and I have to do this, and that's not your space.' Or they don't give him the opportunity. Like if they are breastfeeding and they never give the father the opportunity to use a bottle, that's not fair either. The mother should go out of her way to make the opportunity for her husband to be a real part of it.

I did that. I feel like I did that.

back to top

The Significance of The Name Game

Those Who Shared Parenting Usually Didn't Share Names

Of the thirty-five married couples with "non-traditional" work and parenting arrangements that I interviewed formally for "How To Avoid the Mommy Trap," thirty of the women had kept their names in some way. These non-traditional arrangements took a variety of forms. Sometimes both parents worked part-time, both worked flexible hours, Dad stayed home, working parents shared child and home care duties, or Mom stayed home and Dad did a lot at home, including taking care of children and household.

To put the Mommy Trap figure in perspective, only about 5 percent of American women keep their names when they marry. But 72 % of the women in the couples that I interviewed who had customized their divisions of family responsibility had either kept their own last names or combined them with their husband's in some way.

Therefore I concluded that the decision not to give up one's surname may reflect the strength of a woman's commitment to retain a role distinct from her family if she becomes a mother, as well as her expectations that her husband will partner in their family responsibilities. My interview population was not selected scientifically, and may well be a very skewed group. Most of the parents live on the East and West coasts, and have college if not graduate degrees. Without being statistically representative of the United States, my research seems to indicate that an unusually high proportion of married mothers and fathers who substantially share parenting keep their names when they marry.

No Absolute Rules

Notwithstanding the above, taking one's husband's name didn't preclude a non-traditional arrangement from occurring. One couple featured in the book had almost complete equality of efforts (although she did most of the cooking and he did most of the projects around the house), both working two thirds of the time and each took care of their daughter when they were not working. This couple was very religious, the woman had taken her husband's name, and the man held conservative political views.

You Are What You Choose

Some general patterns emerged, although the situations discussed below did not hold true in every case. Most of the mothers I interviewed whose husbands alternated stints at home, worked part-time, or stayed home, retained the names they were born with, in toto. These women worked flexible or part-time schedules. A few who kept their maiden names stayed home for the duration and took on less than all of the household and child-related responsibilities.

The Middle Road

Some moms dropped their middle name and added their husband's name at the end of their own, with or without a hyphen (Jane Smith-Doe or Jane Smith Doe). These women tended to work three or four days a week, or flexibly, and do more child and household care than their husbands. Their husbands participated substantially at home, just not as much as their wives.

These women's decision to retain their given family name and also take on their husband's surname seemed to signal their "transitional" beliefs as to the roles mothers and fathers should take on. In this view, women can derive their identity from work and the outside world but also run the domestic side of things, while their husbands are involved but not ultimately responsible for the management of the household and most of the nurturing.

Moms who tried to have it both ways often took on more than they could do comfortably, particularly when their children were small. They sometimes complained about their division of efforts or lack of personal life. Those that remained unhappy had a hard time giving anything up to Dad, or giving anything up to him without critique and instruction.

On the other hand, those that found a way to cede responsibility to their husbands were among the happiest parents that I encountered, particularly after their youngest child turned three. By that point, these women were able to spend a lot of time at home and also enjoy a fulfilling life and career, and felt they truly did have it all.

Husband and Wife Swapping

One couple had combined their names so that each took on the other's last name (Jane Smith became Jane Smith-Doe and John Doe became John Smith-Doe). This couple created one of the most equal arrangements that I witnessed in terms of work and childcare (although Mom took the lead with household chores more than she wanted to), the wife had a strong commitment to feminist ideals, and the husband held politically liberal views. Their choice with respect to their name reflected their belief in feminist and egalitarian ideals.

The "Name Changers"

The mothers who had changed their names, but ended up with Dad at home or working part-time or as the primary on-call parent usually happened upon an unusual work and childcare arrangement. In many of these families, the man stayed home or helped out a lot as a result of circumstance rather than ideological commitment. Usually the wives earned more money than the husbands and one or both disliked substitute childcare. For example, in one couple, the mother was a nurse and the father a teacher. In many, the father had recently been laid off from an equal or higher-paying position.

However, I have interviewed and met countless other families where a father has been laid off, quit his job, or made less money than the mother without Dad's taking on any significant parenting or household responsibilities. So circumstance alone didn't contribute to the arrangements the Name Changers created: these moms had a strong tie to their jobs and careers, a deep sense of independence or belief in equality of the sexes, and/or non-traditional decision-making power in their relationship.

In situations where the women had kept their names and circumstance forced Dads to take on a substantial role, the parents often experienced a lot of difficulty initially. Each had taken on roles and responsibilities that didn't comport with their ideas of what he or she should be doing. For the couples that ended up contented, a shift then occurred, which created a balance more to their liking. Usually this involved Dad taking on part-time work or getting some babysitting help so that he could exercise, see friends, do errands alone, or pursue something outside the family that he considered worthwhile.

What They Said

In my interviews, I almost always asked about the name-change issue. For the women who kept their names, it was a non-issue. Their identity was already set in a way that they didn't anticipate marriage would change. They said things like:

"People all around the world know me and know my name and it would only have confused them if I had changed my name. So I didn't really think about it."

These women all had linked their personalities and self-definition in part with their professional or other capacities, although some married out of their ethnic group and wanted to keep their names for that reason.

The moms who had changed their name had more to say about the issue. Extended family and the reaction of children's friends and schools seemed to be a factor for a number of mothers who otherwise would have kept their surnames. Everybody seemed comfortable with what he or she had chosen, except for those who took the Middle Road. Trying to have it both ways seemed to be a confusing proposition.

What I Did

I never really considered changing my name. My husband and I didn't talk much about it until we were in the clerk's office getting our marriage license. My heart pounded as I contemplated the finality of the choice I was about to make. There was no blood test, we had no pre-marital training, and the only concrete step I had to take, other than say "I do" was to decide whether to keep the name I always had used or take on a new one.

I liked my name and had grown accustomed to it by the age of 28. Clearly, my fiance was not pondering the same question, although he had no preference as to what I should do. I went along with what I had always planned, with the understanding that if keeping my name proved a problem for any potential children, I could take my husband's name then.

When people asked whether I had "kept my name," I used to joke that my husband kept his and I kept mine. Behind the joke lies my belief that it's just as possible or appropriate for a man to change his name as it is for a woman, and that the sexes are essentially inter-changeable. For me, taking my husband's name would have meant losing something of myself that I'd had forever, that I regarded as a part of me. It hasn't been difficult for our children thus far: so many mothers and father's introduce themselves as "so and so's Mom or Dad" that my having a different name has not created any problems.

And yes, I do think that in retaining my maiden name I made a statement to my husband and our families and friends as to what I planned for the future. The decision told them that I didn't want a completely "traditional" -- as in Dad provides and Mom nurtures, cooks and cleans -- kind of relationship. As I type, my husband is cooking the dinner, but now I think I would like to lend a hand and that he would like for me to do so

back to top

Study Findings

If you didn't see or read about the study, here's what researchers Jane Waldfogel, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, and Wen-Jui Han, from Columbia University found when they analyzed data compiled by the NICHD. The NICHD is the most comprehensive study of the effects of non-maternal care to date.

• The cognitive and verbal development of children whose mothers worked thirty hours per week or more before the child was nine months old was poorer than for those whose moms stayed home or worked fewer than thirty hours a week during the same time.

• Other factors such as the quality of substitute care, the home environment, and the sensitivity of the mother also contributed to child development.

• But even after taking these factors into account, the children of mothers who worked full-time during the first nine months were still behind other children in terms of school readiness, at age three.

• If the mother worked fewer than thirty hours a week, or started working after the first year, there were no significant effects on cognitive development.

• The best childcare is one caregiver with one or two infants.

• The effect was greater for boys than girls, and for children in married families than those with single mothers.

Dr. Jeanne Brooks-Gunn made the following recommendations based upon her research:

1. If it's possible, mothers should delay going back to work until nine months to a year, and to work less than thirty hours a week.
2. Mothers should be as sensitive and responsive to their children when they are home as they can be (but earlier NICHD findings showed that more than thirty hours in substitute care led to less responsive mothering).
3. Parents should hire high quality childcare (but only about 10% of childcare available to American children is of high quality).

But what about fathers?

The NICHD study looks at non-maternal care, not non-parental care. However, few of the fathers in the study took on primary roles, and those that did took them on for only a short while. Thus (based upon interviews with NICHD researchers and reading their data), it would be possible to separate out the small amount of children in the study cared for by their fathers and reach a similar conclusion about non-parental care, rather than just non-maternal care. Consistent findings documenting the stellar development of children with primary parenting-fathers tend to substantiate such a conclusion. Thus, although the NICHD study is called "non-maternal" its findings seem to also apply to the effects of non-parental care.

back to top