You can halve it all

You can get your husband to do his share if you demand it -- or threaten divorce.

By Jennifer Bingham Hull

Jul 12, 1999 | My husband, Bill, can barely boil water. When I met him, he was living off of shredded wheat and bread and whatever he could buy at the office cafeteria. His default at home was to throw things on the floor -- not in the garbage, but on the floor. He figured that if it was on the floor he could find it again. Hoarders never know what they might need. It took several months of dating before Bill showed me the room he was renting in a house in Washington. "It's all over now," he said, hesitantly ushering me in. For the next five days, I filled one garbage bag after another from that room to help him move to Miami, where I would ultimately join him. There I was, a nice little feminist cleaning up after her man. Where would it go from there?

I began my campaign for an equal parenting arrangement with Bill soon after seeing his room and long before we got married. Bill repeatedly agreed to this arrangement. Still, I wasn't optimistic. In most couples we knew, women were doing most of the domestic work. And some of them had husbands who liked to cook. How was I going to get a guy who could barely operate the microwave to boil baby bottles? The therapist I was seeing to deal with my fear of motherhood suggested I read books on child development. Focusing largely on a mother developing her child, they didn't help. I wanted a book on marriage development. I wanted something that said: Yes, a guy who can't boil water can share child care.

Now there finally is such a book, though it's not one of those cheery tomes that say how wonderful it is to share domestic tasks with your husband. "Halving It All: How Equally Shared Parenting Works," by Francine Deutsch, is about being in the trenches with your spouse. It's about the day-in-day-out negotiation that goes into sharing child care, the challenges and benefits of such arrangements, and why so many couples who set out to parent equally fail to do so.

Deutsch wrote the book to address her own concerns. The author had invested six years in graduate school to get her Ph.D. and five on the job market before becoming a psychology professor at Mount Holyoke College. She wanted children but couldn't imagine giving all that up to be a stay-at-home mom. Nor did she have the energy to be superwoman. Equality at home seemed the only means of really having it all.

For her book, Deutsch interviewed 150 dual-earner couples. Those who share child care 50-50 are the focus of her study, but she also interviewed families in which working women do most of the domestic work. The 50-50 couples range from those who split tasks down the middle to those in which husband and wife carve out separate but equal spheres. (That's the solution if your husband can't wash baby clothes -- he gets to put baby to bed instead, as I discovered after the birth of our daughter Isabelle 17 months ago.) Most of the equal couples in the book didn't start out that way; in many, the women took time off work when the children were young. While most of the equal- sharers and their unequal counterparts are affluent, highly educated professionals, the book includes a group of blue-collar couples who share child care by alternating shifts at work.

First the good news: As I've found with Bill, it is possible to share child care, even if your husband is all thumbs in the kitchen. But women usually don't get parity unless they demand it. Most men do not wake up the morning after becoming fathers and suddenly rush out to buy wipes. A third of the equally sharing women reported battles with their partners to establish equality. Some used their husbands' desire for children to bargain for equal sharing. Others threatened divorce. The equally sharing wives are an assertive lot who send their mates clear, unequivocal messages. "I couldn't get away with it with Janet," said a father named Daniel. "She would hand me the baby and head out the door."

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