Rethinking Gender Egalitarianism

You went off to a conference on gender equality and left your wife at home with two older children and a 4-week old baby? It seems to me this is a clear case where you didn’t see caring for young children as “a major source of fulfillment.” Cold.

The male breadwinner/female caregiver model of the family may have passed. But their new ideal of the dual earner/dual caregiver family is looking increasingly ropey too, and won’t be with us that much longer either.

Substantial numbers of children only live with one parent. In substantial numbers of families the children are only the children of one of the couple. For increasing sections of society the nuclear family just doesn’t exist. But as far as this section of feminist theory is concerned it is alive and well, and all we’ve got to do is update the 1950s ideal to modern times and everything will be okay.

I’m all for flexible relationships and egalitarian relationships, they’re both very attractive. But they both push in opposite directions, and you can’t have them both in practice. I just wish these people would realise the contradicitions of their position.

There was an old, old piece I think by Joyce Trieblecot making a distinction between polyandrogynism and monoandrogynism. It seems like over the years feminist opinion about how families should be organized shifted in the direction of monoandrogynism–the idea that mothers and fathers should work and care for children. The assumptions seem to be (1) that a “balanced” life is better, more conducive to human flourishing than either playing the specialized conventional male or conventional female role and (2) that the conventional female role is really bad so that any arrangement where one partner plays that role will be inherently inegalitarian.

I don’t see any compelling reason to accept either of these assumptions. Leaving aside the feasibility of achieving this, it would seem that the ideal is polyandrogynism–both men and women have equal opportunity to play pure “male,” pure “female,” “balanced” or mix and match: “traditional” family, “role-reversed” family, or any other combination. If both partners want to be guys, they buy childcare, housework, etc. Of course, if both want to be housewife/nurturers there’s a problem about money.

I’ve got three kids and didn’t find caring for them when they were very young in any way fulfilling. I bought all the childcare I could afford. I just want to play the guy role–not because I think it’s better, but because that’s my taste. I thought that feminism was the polyandrogynist program: women get to be guys if that’s what they like, men get to play the traditionally female role if that’s what they like–both men and women get to play either role, balance or mix and match, that’s to say the end of sex-roles as such.

Leederick, you are right that real families are increasingly varied and it is good to always keep that in the back of our heads. But it is also true that every government, or every way in which we organise society, is more supportive for some kinds of family forms and relationships than others. For example, whether we have tax breaks at the individual or the family level, whether we provide social assistance to single parent households on the condition or not that they should be in (or look for) employment, whether or not school hours are compatible with large part-time jobs – all these issues favour some family models over others.

So it is not just a matter of rigid models which feminist theorists (and others) argue for as better than others; it is also trying to detect which ideals are currently supported and not supported by different packages of public policies, and whether it would be wiser to support other family models instead by changing social policies and institutions – and if so, on what normative grounds this can be justified (which is what political theory/philosophy is doing). If you look at these discussions from this point of view, I don’t see why there would have to be any contradictions involved.

Hi

I haven’t had much time today to look at this, and can’t reply in any detail. My response to leederick, though, is twofold. First, I think that stable family forms are desirable, and that it is legitimate to try and shape social life in ways that support stability and dual parent family life. The case against incarcerating a large proportion of the young-ish black male population is overdetermined (to say the least) but one part of that case is that it undermines stable family life. Similarly the case against high rates of poverty. So I would try to evade your criticism of my paper by saying that one doesn’t have to talk about everything at once, but also promise that a future version will at least try to say something sensible about it.

Second, though, I think there are two fair criticisms — one is that we need to think much more carefully about the tension between diversity and equality, the other is everything you said in your second para of #9 which bears a lot of thinking about and I, certainly, haven’t seen (or done) a lot of thinking about (on the normative level).

Minor clarification: adoptive parents obviously aren’t biological; but whether or not they’re comparable to step-parents (per the argument in #9) is, it seems to me, very much an open question. In any event, they constitute a relatively small proportion of all families, and thus don’t affect the figures substantially.

I have to admit I don’t see the force of Leederick’s point that it would be practically or normatively inappropriate to hold step-parents to the same egalitarian standards as biological parents. I agree that existing family dynamics can make it hard for step-parents to step in as caring parents, though I think that the age of the children concerned is hugely important here (as far as I’m concerned, if you agree to marry a spouse with children aged two and four (to pluck some numbers from the air), then it shouldn’t make much difference in the long term to your caring responsibilities whether you’re a biological parent or not). I don’t see, in this case, how the fact of biological non-parenthood undermines the egalitarian impulse here at all (and I also think the adoption example IS significant in troubling the connection between responsibilities and biological parenthood).

I do agree that in families with children of the age of 10, or 12, or 14, that stepping in as a parent can be incredibly fraught and emotionally difficult. And to put it simply, children may simply refuse to BE ‘parented’ in the conventional sense by the new spouse. But I’m still not sure that this undermines the normative idea about the importance of equal parenthood. I’d need more argument as to just how, anyway.

…argues for a mix of improved daycare provision, labour market regulation and parental leave at generous replacement rates; and the argument is that this will improve the quality of family life and increase gender equality.

I’d be surprised if such a conference came to any other conclusion — it seems overdetermined.

And yet — European countries have these sorts of policies and they seem to result in the preservation of gender inequality. The generous leaves are taken almost only by women (even when equally available).

The U.S. has little or none of these, but fathers serving as primary caregivers seems a much more common pattern because of economics. E.g. free, government-provided daycare is not provided so when the father makes less money (which is increasingly common) families do sometimes decide to have the father stay home (or work part time). But I’d predict that if women were offered generous paid leave at near their salaries, they would be the ones taking leave regardless of whether or not they were the higher paid spouse.

I say this, BTW, as a father who has, over the past 15 years, done more than half of the child care — mainly because I could (I can telecommute and work while at home with children over the summer or when they’re sick, but my wife cannot).

Harry B-

I used the “two-biological-parent” classification only because the census bureau break down I was linking to uses it. As far as adoption is concerned, my point in #12 was merely that, even if one were to accept leederick’s argument about step parents (in #9), adoptive parents should not be considered comparable.

My normative intuitions on this are, I think, pretty close to Chris Armstrong’s.

I supervise men and women in a business workplace every day; of my current direct reports 5 of 7 are parents. I see some continued gender stuff, but among the men there’s a big generational divide between Boomers and Gen Xers. Gen X men are, in general, much less likely to accept long hours if it means not seeing their kids. Perhaps the two camps — those who are pessimistic about men, and those who are optimistic — are both right? Perhaps it depends on how old the man is?

I also personally believe the answer in the States is not about asking the government to mandate subsidized day care, or longer leaves, or what have you. It’s about breaking the connection between health care / FICA expense and full-time work. If a half-time employee cost his/her employer exactly half what a full-timer costs, businesses would have many more part-time employees. And if you could walk out on an overly-demanding employer without risking your family’s health coverage, you’d see a lot more parents voting with their feet.

Fitz — the mechanisms being proposed, even in my paper, quite specifically do not enforce (though they do endorse) any particular arrangements within particular marriages. I should also add that at the conference there was a a great deal of unease with the idea of the state involving itself in social engineering (an unease from which I hurriedly disassociate myself, having argued frequently here at CT that it is legitimate, for example, for the state to promote marriage).

Harry B-Not at all. I was just worried that my comments suggested something other than what I had intended.

Slocum-I’m inclined to agree with you that wage rate disparities play a role–albeit partial–in determining which parent withdraws from the labor market to care for children. But can you document that fathers in the U.S. are really more likely to stay home than their European counterparts?–and if so, which European counterparts, since the relevant policies appear to vary substantially from country to country.

Which suggests an interesting point: much of the discussion has implicitly presupposed that people make fertility decisions, and then subsequently flounder about in the policy environment of whatever country they happen to live in. However, at least if you’re willing to trust things like this, it may be the other way around: the policy environment may have a substantial impact on fertility decisions.

pete — right, though you might read #3. On reflection (which franck’s comment forced on me), I realise that I wouldn’t have done the same with either of the other kids at the same age, but that’s because they were monstrous, unlike the little charmer we’ve added.