For years, the model for raising a family has revolved around the idea that the man would go to work and his wife would stay home to watch, tend to and raise the children while also covering household responsibilities. And it worked. Kids got enough attention, grew up educated and followed a structured model that their parents and society had locked into. Only recently has there been a shift, with women entering the workforce alongside men. The traditional family model has had to adapt, which has led to some new ideas concerning how the modern family should operate to produce the best outcomes for family members and even society.
Naturally there have been different attempts at handling the responsibilities of the double-career family. Most people seem to draw on the idea that each parent will cover 50 percent of the responsibilities that come with having a family. Easy enough, right? This doesn’t always pan out. In fact, it’s about as difficult to manage as it is unusual. The Pew Research Center reported that “50 percent of married or cohabiting women report doing more childcare than their male partners, whereas just 4 percent of men do more than their female partners.” This phenomenon contributes to the so-called “motherhood penalty,” where women earn less than men in the workforce because they are unable to dedicate as much time and energy to their careers due to household demands. This tends to push women into taking on the “lead parenting” role so their husbands can allocate their time to advancing in their careers and earning more money.
While this is the general cycle that most families seem to go through, there are exceptions. Andrew Moravcsik, former professor at Harvard University and current professor of politics at Princeton University, writing for the October, 2015 edition of The Atlantic, discussed how he took on the role of lead parent for his two sons while his wife pursued her career more fully. He handled day-to-day tasks, like helping with homework, packing lunches, attending sporting events, etc. while his wife spent years rarely being “home for more than a couple of dinners a week.” He was able to recognize the impossibility for a woman to really “have it all” in both her professional and family life, so he made some sacrifices.
Moravcsik goes on to argue that a family with kids essentially demands the attention of a lead parent to overlook a successful household and allow the other to devote more to his/her career. That lead parent needs to be okay with his/her career taking a backseat during the primary child-raising years and accept a hit in long-run success. My parents dealt with this same issue. When they met, my dad was working for a financial firm and my mom had recently started her medical residency at the U. After I was born, my parents had to reassess, and in a world where women were beginning to earn more professional respect, my dad wasn’t quick to dismiss her career. In fact, he took a step back so he could be the lead parent while my mom finished her residency and worked as a physician through my pre-school years.
My dad’s sacrifice doesn’t mean my mom’s medical career was unaffected. In order to ensure that she was an active participant in my upbringing, she abandoned her surgical training to go into Internal Medicine instead, a less demanding course for a medical doctor. When I was in elementary school, my parents traded roles. My mom took some years off from work and my dad focused more on running his business. The roles then reversed again mid-way through high school when my dad’s business stabilized. My mom went back to work part-time and my dad was able to cut back on work to help me with sports and ensure I was doing well in school.
Things worked out well for my family, but things weren’t always perfect, and plans changed sometimes. Overall I think we were successful, partly because of my parents’ respect for each other and willingness to cooperate, but also because they only had one child — a trend occurring more in highly educated couples. There are many ways to handle the shift of women entering the career force. Some families may have to designate one parent to raise a multiple-child family for a period of time, while some might successfully split time, similarly to how my parents did it. Each are legitimate and responsible options for ambitious and career driven parents, and while parents may not be able to “have it all,” with some cooperative sacrifice here and there, there’s no reason families can’t thrive in a modern two-career household.