He Helps, She Hurts: Working Moms and Self-Esteem

Work Wednesday

My husband, who rarely travels solo these days, took a quick trip out of town last weekend to visit an old friend. I didn't begrudge his overnight outing. We all need time away to connect with old friends. (And he was visiting a friend with an infant, after all!)

But I did, at some point during the weekend, bring up his absence to a casual acquaintance and mention that the kids missed him. She said, something to the effect of, "Well at least you're not away. It's so much harder for everyone when the mom is out of town. I mean, our husbands really don't know what they're doing, right?"

Well, wrong. At least for me and my family.

But it's societal assumptions like these -- that mom must be the uber-parent -- that account for the finding, in a study released on LiveScience.com last week, that the more involved and competent a dad is in childrearing, the greater the hit to the mom's self-esteem. 

Yes, you read it right. According to the well-publicized study, the more dad helps, the more mom hurts.

Takayuki Sasaki of the Osaka University of Commerce in Japan and his colleagues from the University of Texas at Austin interviewed 78 dual-earner couples with 8-month-old infants in their homes in the United States to measure two types of self-esteem, self-liking and self-competence (the degree to which individuals feel capable of and effective in accomplishing goals).

The researchers found that even though the women spent three times as much time as the men on child care activities, the more the dads diapered and cooed, the more the moms' self-esteem plummeted.

Now, I question the design of the study, especially given that the researchers were talking to families with 8-month-old infants.  After all, eight months is a blip in parenting time, and many moms and dads have a lot of insecurities about their parenting abilities. At that juncture, I still feared dropping my daughter off the changing table and worried that each low-grade fever my son ran signaled something far worse. And because I was still breastfeeding both kids at eight months, my mommy hormones were in overdrive.

Still, I think the results pretty much would have been the same even if the researchers focused on families with older kids. Sasaki, the lead researcher, attributed his findings to intense social gender norms:

"In American society, women are expected to take a main role in parenting despite increasingly egalitarian sex roles," Sasaki said. "Thus, we believe that employed mothers suffer from self-competence losses when their husbands are involved and skillful because those mothers may consider that it is a failure to fulfill cultural expectations."(By contrast, the husbands didn't suffer self-competence losses when their wives were involved and skillful because that is consistent with cultural expectations.)

He also observed that "employed mothers may feel pressured to do more care-giving to ensure the survival of their feelings of self-competence, even though they may wish for fathers' increased participation to lessen their burden." (Come on, women!)

Much as I sense Sasaki has fixed on a significant phenomenon, I don't think that the "dad helps, mom hurts" dynamic is unchangeable. I take my identity as a mother seriously. I get a lot of pleasure from doing "traditional" mom tasks, like cooking for, clothing, and comforting my kids. And it's probably fair to say that, to a large extent, my self-esteem is linked to motherhood. 

Still, I don't think that my self worth has been challenged by my husband's parenting role. To me, no working mom (or stay-at-home mom) in her right mind should feel diminished by a partner who is capable of putting the kids to bed at night and getting them out of the house in the morning. In fact, I'm proud that my husband truly is my children's co-parent and I'm pleased with myself for marrying him. How's that for self-esteem?

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What do you think?  Does your partner's involvement in child care make you feel like a success or a failure?

Photo courtesy of RachelH via Flickr.com.

Comments

[Karen Paul-Stern]

I was at a work dinner last night with my husband, and I sent him home early to make sure the kids were ok. One of the people there, who is older and a grandmother, said, "I love when dads take care of their kids!" It stunned me into silence - this was MY work dinner, my husband was along for the ride, and he is always the de facto parent in charge when I'm working at night. It's not even a question.

I agree - the 8-month marking point is misleading, as I felt very physically connected to each of my kids at that particular moment and much of my parenting mojo was tied up in that. But now, with older children, my husband and I must partner on everything relating to their lives, so that we're showing a united front and the kids get the message that mom and dad are in charge together. Otherwise they quickly divide and conquer. So my parenting self esteem is no longer tied to who changes a diaper - now it's all about who can get the kids to listen to them!

[Justice Fergie]

You know what's funny - I've completely experienced that feeling. In fact I wrote about it on my blog:

http://www.mamalaw.com/2008/04/role-reversal.html

It's crazy, but very real!

[Kristie]

Wow, my husband's involvement does not make me feel like a failure at all! His involvement is what makes our family dynamic great. Our kids feel comfortable with both of us and I have complete faith in him.