Friday, February 21, 2003

Follow the money: This week's big family story is the news that the wage gap between men and women narrowed big-time last year. Though full-time working women still make a paltry 77.5 cents to the male dollar, this represents a big jump and is cause for celebration. (Small celebration ... the shrinking of the gap had a lot more to do with men doing worse than women doing better ...)

The issue came to my attention when a fellow at-home dad posted this Wall Street Journal story to a newsgroup I subscribe to. (Apologies if the link doesn't work ... the WSJ site is a subscription site, and I don't know if this is inside or outside the subscription area.) The bit is a column by the Journal's Work & Family columnist, Sue Shellenbarger, and she argues that the better women do, the more options open up for families -- i.e. more men can check out the road to Rebel Dad-dom.

Shellenbarger isn't interested in painting this as an unequivolcally good thing, mentioning that some dads aren't cut out for a reversal of the traditional gender roles. She doesn't make at-home fatherhood out to be Shangri-La (which, clearly, it isn't), but I'm not all that bothered by the nation's largest paper painting a less-than-rosy picture.

In short, here at Rebel Dad, we're thrilled that more men have the chance to try it, and that more families are deciding that swapping gender roles isn't an unheard of thing to do. If that doesn't work out, so be it. (Of course, there's not a whole lot of press devoted to the flip-side: at-home mothers who chafe at a more domestic life.)

As usual, though, the column makes a provocative point -- "But the story behind the story is that women's growing economic clout will accelerate a seismic upheaval in family roles, with more frequent swapping of breadwinning, parenting and housekeeping duties." -- without giving an additional data. Are we in the midst of a "seismic upheaval?" There aren't good numbers to suggest either way. I'd like to think I'm part of a growing fraternity, but these numbers alone don't convince me.

I'll re-open the Rebel Dad Challenge: give me a definitive set of stats on the number of at-home fathers now and over time and I'll buy you a case of beer.

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