Double or Nothing 19/03/21

 A New York Times article published laughable figures recently dictating that ‘nearly half of men say they do most of the home schooling. 3 percent of women agree’. These results supposedly worsened due to the covid pandemic, in which the UK government made the decision to authorise the closure of schools and workplaces - once Bojo actually got his act together. 

While working from home seems like it should feel a bit like a holiday, the extra responsibility parents have had to take on to educate their children from the dining room table has meant that for many couples, the pandemic is far from the ‘retreat’ Manchester University suggests it is. As a result, unsurprisingly if you’ve been paying attention to the status of women in relation to men since basically the beginning of civilization, this extra responsibility has befallen mothers more than fathers. 

With statistics like 45% of men saying they do more of the homeschooling, whereas 80% of women claim the opposite, the article goes on to explain that past research consistently shows that men often overestimate the amount they do, and that women do more. I’ve been living in a male dominated flat now for the past 6 months and if the state of our kitchen is anything to go by, I would strongly attest to the accuracy of that particular study. The worst part is, as I’m sure many women will agree, crumbs on the counter are the least of my worries. 

Even in same sex couples, research suggests that one parent often priorities their career whilst the other prioritises the family. Leading to the classic but toxic question of ‘who wears the trousers?’ in the relationship. Thus, in compliance with Risman’s suggestion that “being forced to be at home is amplifying the differences we already know exist”, we are faced with the hetero-normative but nevertheless feminist issue of the ‘double-burden’. 

Women are now not only supposed to birth future patriarchs (boys) or agents of the patriarchy as a result of entrenched misogynist ideologies (girls), but also to educate them whilst keeping up with the job they actually get paid to do. Understandably, this has led to almost 900,000 women dropping out of the labour force in the US compared to 200,000 men in September of last year. Quite rightly, the UN Women’s Deputy Executive Anita Bhatia has suggested this poses a “real risk of reverting to 1950s gender stereotypes” and that the global pandemic could erase at least 25 years of increasing gender equality. Far from smashing the glass ceiling, it feels like the panes have been replaced with bullet proof perspex. 

I live in fear of turning my television on to see a 1950s type advert of a mother being advised by a male doctor or psychologist on the right way to raise their children and the right products to give them. Her knowledge confined to consumption within the domestic sphere. That’s not even mentioning the fact that far too commonly in modern adverts women are still placed in a kitchen setting. This is especially obvious around christmas time, when it’s apparently acceptable that she has single handedly created an entire christmas dinner all by herself. I made beans on toast today and even that felt like an effort.

Whilst I am one of the obsessives of Shondaland’s ‘Bridgerton’, I love it for its lavish ball gowns (of which there are almost too many to count), witty scene prolepsis, and enthralling encounters between characters remarkably pleasing to the eye, rather than it’s portrayal of the position of 18th century women. One in which Anthony, as the archetypal ‘man of the house’, is shown (badly) running the household of his widowed mother and making a mess of his sister’s ‘coming out’ season. As much as we all love the eldest Bridgerton brother, he is proof enough that not only is this an outdated concept but also (as the stats suggest), quite often men have a very inaccurate perception of how much they’re actually doing to contribute to their family. 

As is obvious from women’s participation in the labour force since the early 20th century, this isn’t just an issue of gender equality, but also through a socio-economic lens, this will have massive implications for the US market economy. Given the depressing ubiquity of capitalism, surely anyone can see that removing half of the population from the public sphere is a massive regression for humanity and society as a whole. 

Ironically, given that the whole world became a private sphere during covid, not even that global catastrophe could halt capitalism. The closures of shopping centres led to the opening of new tabs for ‘Asos’ or ‘Ocado’ on our laptop screens and several hundred years after it gained prominence as a socio-economic system, the gendered distinction consumer culture constructed between the private and public sphere is resurfacing with a vengeance.

Contrary to popular belief (by which I mean people who’ve seen me smashed go on a tirade of why ‘men are trash’), I actually don’t believe this misconception of the sharing of domestic chores is men’s fault. Well, not all men. As for the men in government, who sit smugly behind the door of 10 Downing Street and send their children to private schools rather than sit struggling through their maths homework with them, or those who help to purport both capitalism and gender inequality by upholding laws and constructing a system which allows women 50 more weeks off work than men to care for their child, those men (and women) are absolute garbage.

I’m (thankfully) not a mother and of course I can’t speak from experience but personally, if I’d been carrying round a brat - sorry, I mean bundle of joy - for the last 9 months, once it was out of me I reckon I’d probably appreciate a little more help from the person who helped put it there in the first place. 

While we continue to raise a society in which men’s employers expect more from them than from their female counterparts, and women are raised to worry that they will be seen as a bad mother if they don’t provide the primary care for their child, we will continue to see an imbalance in parental responsibility. This will inevitably have a negative domino effect on this godforsaken economy. 

Thus, the glass ceiling morphs into a glass box, and like always it is the rest of the victims of capitalism who join the women already trapped inside. However, important to remember for this rather oppressive analogy, is that glass can (and will) shatter with resistance. I wonder what a parental revolution would look like, and who would carry the domestic burden then?