cover image Halving It All: How Equally Shared Parenting Works

Halving It All: How Equally Shared Parenting Works

Francine M. Deutsch. Harvard University Press, $27.5 (336pp) ISBN 978-0-674-36800-2

Even in these supposedly liberated times, very few couples--even when both work full-time outside the home--share equally in the care of their children. Deutsch, a professor of psychology at Mt. Holyoke College, set out to study those anomalous few who do so, in order to discover how ""our models for tomorrow"" make equal parenting (and by extension, equal cooking, cleaning and laundering) work. Some, such as blue-collar alternating shift workers, share parenting duties equally as a result of economic necessity. But even when, as with some of the more affluent couples Deutsch interviewed, equality is a consciously thought-out process, ""putting egalitarian principles into practice is a shaky and messy business."" She points out time and again that equally shared parenting is only possible with ""strong women and reasonable men."" And do the women ever have to be strong, for men--most of whom Deutsch considers to be ""helpers"" or ""slackers,"" rather than equal sharers--tend, as one put it, to ""sleaze out"" of familial responsibilities by resorting to such strategies as passive resistance, incompetence and denial. Unfortunately, Deutch's message is muddied by redundant, long-winded prose. But she does makes some profound observations on modern family life and sounds a ringing cry for making changes. (Apr.)