The mama lion at the gate

This is an extreme example. Far more commonly, in intact families, mothers may consciously or unconsciously sabotage paternal involvement in various ways -- by taking the crying baby away from the father, by criticizing the way he puts the toddler to bed or cooks a meal or by directing his every move and making him feel like an assistant rather than a partner.

"The man who's just trying the waters at being a parent and participating in the household feels very clumsy and unanointed, and then he gets defensive," says Braun-Levine. "We keep giving orders and saying, 'This is the way you do it, and if you can't do it my way, just stand here and hold the dirty clothes.'"

Brott believes that all first-time parents, men or women, have to learn the ropes through trial and error -- except that in most cases the father never gets to do that because the mother quickly dons the mantle of expertise: "She's not giving him the chance to make the mistakes she's made and go through the learning process."

Many women sincerely believe they can meet their children's needs in a way their husbands can't -- a belief that often doesn't seem to be grounded in fact. James Levine, director of the Fatherhood Project at the Families and Work Institute, recalls that after he gave a talk on encouraging father involvement to a group of nurses, a woman in the audience said that her daughter needed regular medication for a chronic illness and she simply couldn't trust her husband to give it to her.

"As it turned out," says Levine, "the husband is an emergency medical technician who deals with medical situations far worse than their daughter's every day. There was no rational basis to believe that he couldn't or wouldn't give the daughter the medicine. But Mom had decided this was something she, and only she, could do. Then she resented Dad for not doing it!"

Even at a feminist symposium on men and the changing nature of work and family life -- where the issue of maternal gatekeeping was identified as a barrier to equality on the home front -- there was some disturbing evidence of maternal chauvinism. When panelist Dana Friedman, a family issues consultant, mentioned a poll in which 60 percent of fathers said that they shared equally in child rearing, laughter rippled through the mostly female audience, turning into gleeful guffaws when she added that only 19 percent of mothers agreed. (Yes, men probably exaggerate, but could women's investment in the motherhood mystique make them less than completely objective?)

Then, Francine Moccio, director of the Cornell University Institute for Women and Work (sponsor of the event), said that she wanted to speak up for maternal gatekeeping and launched into a story about how, 20 years ago, her husband forgot to pick up the kids from a party. "So," she summed up, "they do need to be trained." Again, there was roaring laughter.

Were these women expressing frustration over men's failure to share in the burdens and delights of parenthood, or taking pleasure in their own presumed superiority? (I have heard professional women in their 30s, daughters of the feminist era, talk about their husbands' domestic ineptitude in tones that implied bragging more than fretting.) Perhaps the symposium illustrated the obstacles to men's involvement in family life in ways the organizers never intended.

To recognize that women are partly responsible for the unequal division of labor at home is not to make them into the sole culprits. Cahn stresses that some men still regard child care as "women's work" or affect helplessness to get out of unwanted chores, and that the workplace is still peculiarly unfriendly to men who want to devote a lot of time to their families.

It's true, of course; yet one must wonder if, in reaction to a very real history of misogyny, we are now too afraid to blame women for anything. In her Yale journal article, Cahn expresses concern that her reasoning may be perceived as anti-female: "If I turn the argument around, and talk about the need for men to relinquish power in the workplace so that women can break through the glass ceiling, I am not making a particularly controversial statement. When I say the same thing about women in the home, however, my statement becomes more problematic."

Next Page: Women can't have it both ways

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