Part 1: Our Journey of Equally Shared Parenting

This is part  1 of a post on our family’s journey of equally shared parenting. Part 2 was posted here, which is my husband’s take on this!

“A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half our homes.”
― Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

Recently I read about how businesses are aspiring to create equal opportunities and reduce the pay gap between men and women in the workplace. In my opinion (and some other studies actually) home and family strategies are also needed to achieve equality at work.

[bctt tweet=”Create space for men to step up at home in order to create the opportunity for women to lead at work” username=”cherralle_”]

Equality starts at home. Equality in the home represents the sharing of household and childcare responsibilities.

When building your career, you need to commit time and energy to your job. However running a household and significant time off required for any matters related to the home and children, has an impact on how one can progress. I wrote here about the maternal wall bias mothers face at work.

We know that women do more household work than men, but here is one of the many referenced studies which proved it. I see what you are thinking; we know this, did we REALLY need a study to show women do more housework than men?

Another challenge with parents driving their careers: who is taking care of our children when fathers and mothers are both driving careers? One way to address these gaps is through creating equal homes. By sharing the family workload, a mother (and father) will have more space to focus on their career or any pursuit for that matter.

Related Post: The Maternal Wall: How to Disrupt Bias Against Working Mothers

How we strive for equally shared parenting in our home (*warning* we have wins and misses)

Do not every let a father babysit his child, ever

Mamas, please do not refer to your partner taking care of their child as babysitting and do not allow anyone else to refer to it in that way. Lets change the narrative. Its called parenting. Plain old parenting.

Allow and encourage your partner change diapers, feed the baby, bathe the baby, and do not correct him. Unless someone’s life is at stake, let your partner figure out his way. I don’t know about y’all, but with my first child, no magic kicked in that gave me mad ‘baby care skills.’ Day by day, I needed to figure out how to hold the baby, feed the baby, burp the baby, what to do when the baby is crying. I had to learn that, and a man can learn this too in the same way. In fact, my husband did. He is pretty good at it.

[bctt tweet=”Let’s change the narrative, fathers do not babysit ever, it’s just plain parenting.” username=”cherralle_”]

Fathers must be given space to figure it out

Allow fathers the space to figure it out. Sometimes they want to, but we stand in their way:

• We discourage them because we want to ‘correct’ and show them the ‘right way’. Is it really a train smash if they don’t rub lotion on the baby in an exact precise way?
• We put pressure on ourselves that we need to be seen to be running with certain things because we are a bad mother if we do not.

Related Post: The Side of Motherhood We Do Not Post On Instagram

Husbands and fathers, lean in at home

Please lean in to your families. Example, when there is a new baby in the house – understand that the mother needs support and the baby needs parenting. Change diapers, feed the baby, take baby for a walk to give the mother of your child a break. Hell, go all out, and run with meals.

During my first maternity leave, my husband would ‘take over’ when he came from work, do as much as possible and bring supper home. He also wanted his ‘bonding’ time, and did as much as he could in the little time he had after work and on weekends with our baby girl. This was the turning point in my life when grocery shopping on my own became an outing I looked froward to!

Tag team

For the last four years since our first child was born, we tag team everything. Who needs to be home in the afternoon; taking turns to look after the kids when they are booked off sick; or when there is a taxi strike and our nanny cannot get to work. We even tag team weekend pursuits, so we each have some timeout as well in our individual capacities (we try!). This has relieved us of the pressure to be away from work all the time (this is a reality of parenthood) and has helped us to maintain focus on our careers and personal passions. It is not easy but we work through it and do what works for us.

[bctt tweet=”Equality starts at home with men and women contributing in the home to housework and childcare” username=”cherralle_”]

As a couple, set goals and challenge current norms

As a couple, challenge stereotypes where you can. I am guilty of letting things slide too. Although in our home we strive for equally shared parenting, the subtle judgment makes me back off sometimes. When I am referring to something that my husband does for our family, I get that look from people like something is misfiring in their brain. ‘Your husband wakes up to give your baby milk and you just sleep?‘. Yeah. I sleep. Like a baby.

I am also clueless on which medicines apply in which scenarios when the children are ill. My husband has a better relationship with our family doctor and he knows kids’ medicines (it’s a super power). So he always knows exactly what needs to happen when they are ill.

At the same time, I always end up being the one that runs with ‘family projects’. Example, when we travel, when my daughter needs stuff for school,  when we moved house,  gifts, etc. That is okay because I don’t mind. So I guess it balances out. Ha! We do what works for us. Its not fifty fifty exactly,  not even close, its a perfect imbalance. We do not keep a log book but we try to each contribute in our own way.

Finally…

It is only logical. To gain access to the leadership talents of women, we need to create space for women to be mothers and work. To have  equality in companies and governments, we need equal homes. For women to increase their roles in the workplace, men need to increase their roles in the home. My personal view is that if society is consistently making mothers feel forced to choose between children and a career, no one will pick careers. I need to restate this quote again, because it sums it all up.

“A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half our homes.”

– Sheryl Sandberg

What does equally shared parenting mean for you,  can we strive for it or it is a pipe dream?

Further Reading:

Bye Bye Mommy Guilt, Why You Should Feel Proud of Being a Working Mother

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