Want Equality? Support Parents, Not Just Mothers
Men and women both have challenges with work life balance. (Image created with AI)
To achieve equality, we must support both women and men in the workplace.
I fully admit when I was younger my focus was solely on advancing my place as a woman within the professional community. After all I had just graduated with an engineering degree, a female engineer. I was somewhat of a unicorn. No, scratch that… I WAS a unicorn. I felt right at home mentoring women. My perspective didn’t change after my first son (Sully) was born, either. I kept my focus on women and our unique challenges. After all, we did all of the ‘hard stuff’; the pregnancy, the delivery, the nursing.
I believed this even through the first years of my son’s life, which in hindsight I see now there were clues.
My husband’s schedule is non-traditional with his career, which means if he isn’t flying or in training, he is home. While I worked my usual 9-5 he would often spring Sully from daycare and spend the day with him. (This might also earn him unicorn status.) One evening he shared about his day. They were out to lunch with a friend, and when he was feeding Sully his bottle, a complete stranger (an older woman) grabbed the bottle from his hand and began to explain to him how he was “doing it all wrong, he is sucking air!”. My sweet husband politely explained the mechanics of a Dr. Browns bottle to her, she apologized, and left them to enjoy their lunch. (Note that this occurred while our friend, a veteran mother herself, sat across from them. Shouldn’t that have repelled this strangers unwanted parenting advice? I guess not.) Looking back that should have been my first clue, but as I have admitted, I was focused on advancing women. After all it was I who was dragging the pump into the office to fill those darn bottles and work while they enjoyed lunches.
I can tell you exactly when my perspective began to shift. It was just before we had our second son, Porter. An expectant father, let’s call him Mike, and I were having a conversation about paternity leave; he was eligible to take a few weeks off when his child was born. I was so excited to hear his employer offered this benefit and asked him if he planned to take it. “Not really. I get the impression men aren’t supposed to take it.”
“Tell me more,” is what I like to think I said. What I likely said was, “Why the hell not?!”
The conversation, and my perspective, shifted in that moment. Here was a new father excited for his first child who also had the rare gift of paid time away from the office to support his family, and he was afraid to take it. My mind replayed the earliest days of my motherhood and how thankful I was to have my husband there, changing diapers, making sure I ate a proper meal, taking my son for an hour or two when I was so tired, overstimulated, and just needed a moment to myself to pull it together. How could I express to Mike how important this leave would be to his family? I tried, and I honestly can’t remember if he took any of his leave, but I did promise to look at men a little differently in the workplace.
As women have made strides in the workplace, so too have their partners in the home. As advocates for work life balance we need to learn to support all working parents. As a leader I remind myself to check my bias. When a father asks for time off to take care of his children, I support him. I also take a moment to ask myself, “have I supported him in the same way I have supported mother’s on my team? Have I conveyed the same level of ‘family first’ and ‘don’t ever apologize for taking care of your family’ to him as I have to women?’ I’m not perfect, and I still recognize a certain imbalance in myself due to the volume of “default parent” and “a woman’s mental load” content pouring into my social media feeds.
No, ladies, I am not discounting what you do. What we do. I know it is hard. However, if you take a moment to have some conversations with fathers, you’ll recognize that they often experience challenges with work life balance. Here is an incomplete list of some of the examples I have heard/observed:
A father asks to take time off to take his child to a doctors appointment, and his manager asks “Shouldn’t your wife do that?”
A new father is exhausted at work and missing his family, but his co-workers don’t recognize this and instead ask why his work is not up to the same standards as before his child was born.
A father feels left out as female co-workers discuss the challenges of motherhood, but fail to recognize his wife is a nurse during the pandemic and he is caring for his family and managing his workload while she works extra shifts.
Let’s remember to support the fathers in our lives so their partners can feel less like the default parent, and more work life balance. That is how we continue to advance women.
Note to non-traditional families: I often write with my own life experiences and my family dynamics in mind, but you are always in my heart. If you have perspectives to share, or would like to add your own thoughts to navigating equality in the workplace, please reach out to me at ChrissieMeasamer@gmail.com. I would love to have you as a guest blogger or interview you for an upcoming piece.
