Just in time for Father’s Day, employment law attorney Barbara Goodwin reflects on what are considered the “traditional” family roles and reminds employers not to make the mistake of stereotyping men and women and their caregiving responsibilities.
I’m a working mother. I had my first child about 10 days after graduating from law school and have been parenting while working ever since. My husband, on the other hand, is a full-time stay-at-home parent. We’re lucky that we’ve been able to manage to have one of us stay home with the kids, and given the timing, it just worked out best for that person to be him.
Sometimes, we run into people who don’t understand. I remember once, a few years ago, my husband was coming with the kids to play on my then-employer’s softball team. One of my co-workers asked where he was, and I said he was on his way with the kids. She asked if he was picking them up at daycare, and I replied no, he stays home with the kids. Her response? “Oh — so he works third shift?” It was easier for her to believe that my husband never slept (up with the kids all day, working all night) than that he didn’t have a traditional outside-the-home job.
That was about five years ago, and even in that short time, things have changed. I know several other families in which the father is the stay-at-home parent, and people no longer seem quite so shocked when they find out that my husband stays at home with the kids. Still, people think of us as “nontraditional.” I find that pretty funny since if I were the one staying at home, we’d be considered so traditional we’d be old-fashioned: We’ve got one parent who stays home with the kids, does most of the housework, and cooks the meals and one parent who works full-time. The only thing keeping us from being a 1950s sitcom is that the woman’s the one working and the man’s staying home.
Just like my husband gets funny looks sometimes, I get them, too. Sometimes, people think I’m doing something extraordinary by “letting” my husband stay home with the kids. Sometimes, people wonder how I can work instead of staying home myself — the underlying suggestion being that I’m a bad mother because I don’t want to be the one at home.
None of that’s true, of course, and more importantly, the people who think those things don’t really know anything about the way my family works. They’re acting on their own assumptions — that mothers stay home with children, not fathers, that “good” mothers make lunches in the morning and dinners at night, and that mothers who are willing to work full-time or more aren’t “good” mothers. Those are stereotypes — just like all blonds are airheads. And like all other stereotypes, they don’t reflect reality.
Our family made the choice that made the most sense to us based on a whole host of factors. Not one of the factors we considered was the gender of the parent who would end up being the primary caregiver. We picked the right person to stay at home. He just happened to be male.
You can’t judge a book by its cover, and you can’t judge a parent by his or her gender.
Barbara Goodwin is a shareholder and director with the firm of Murray, Plumb, & Murray in Portland, Maine. She may be reached at bgoodwin@mpmlaw.com.