Who wears the pants?

A few days ago I read a really interesting article in the New York Times, entitled "Who Wears the Pants in This Economy?"  The author visited a small former mill town in Alabama where until recently, a working wife/mother was shockingly non-traditional and where men were able to provide a comfortable living as sole breadwinners until the mills closed and most of the male employees were laid off.   With no real diversification in local industry, many of those men have been unemployed for the long term.   The working class and middle class families profiled had women who bucked the trend and had careers, and were now the primary or sole breadwinners while their husbands sort of drifted, maybe doing some light housework or ferrying teenage children to activities and hunting or fishing in between.   It was fascinating because these families were being told at their church and among their social circles that men are to provide and women are to nurture at home and were teaching these strict gender roles to their kids, and yet there's this sharp contrast with those values and the families' reality in the post-Great Recession economy.  The men are left in a position where they're the titular head of the household but with none of the financial power that they used to have, and the women are told in church that they're to be submissive wives yet are the ones financially supporting the household.

We are a family who was substantially impacted by the economic collapse.  In September 2008, we were doing pretty darned well.   Mark was working at a great job that he liked and that paid very nicely.   I was working where I work now, albeit for a different manager (one who I wasn't thrilled with).   And then in October the markets melted down and Mark was laid off with no warning.   Nine long and difficult months of unemployment ensued, followed by just over a year of him working in a retail setting for a crummy little cell phone company that hired him with the promise of rapid advancement that never panned out.   He was laid off by that company when I was 20 weeks pregnant, only to get a new job with that same company that not only paid less but gave him an hourlong commute each way every day (still better than nothing - especially with a baby on the way).   Because of the layoff he had no PTO and was short of FMLA eligibility by just a few weeks when Lily was born, so he took a week of unpaid leave and hoped they'd hold to their promise to keep his job while he was out.   They did, but the day he returned he was informed that his department was being closed down as of the next day and that he should be grateful that rather than being laid off they were sending the employees back to retail.   He came home from work that day to his wife and week old baby and started sending out resumes.  Within a week he'd heard from his current employer and started the interview process.  He gave his notice and started his current job when Lily was 6 weeks old.   A week after he left, his former employer ceased doing business in this state - we were fortunate that he'd gotten out prior to the company shutting down.

He works for a huge telecom/wireless company (a hint - "Can you hear me now?") and his employer provides us with great medical insurance at 1/4 the premiums of what is offered by my employer (which is pushing hard to get employees on high deductible plans).  Their tuition assistance will just about cover the bill for him to go to grad school, which hopefully will start next month.   Because he's salaried non-exempt, he's able to get overtime, which helps substantially even if he only picks up a few hours a week.   The kicker is that he basically started his career over again at entry level at the age of 31.   He'll get caught up again eventually, but it's not going to be during our childbearing years.   I still earn nearly twice what he does, and we expect that the relative disparity will continue for some time to come.

You'd think that this situation would bother us, but it really doesn't.   We both grew up in families where both of our parents worked.   Yeah, my mom was home with me for my first year and his mom was home with the kids until Mark started school, but basically for as long as either of us can remember, we saw our parents both working and parenting and maintaining our homes.   Our religion (or lack thereof) never told us that God wanted the man to provide and the woman to nurture.    Most of our friends and all of our relatives in our age range are in situations where both spouses work.   It's just our reality, and both of us have a decent sense of balance when it comes to our careers and our life at home.   We both provide, and we both nurture our child.   In a very real sense we both wear the pants in our family and we're happy with that!

That's why it was kind of shocking to read that NY Times article and realize that there are plenty of people who still buy into the "a man supports his family and a woman nurtures her family" gender roles.   I know it's a function of religious institutions and local society dictating as such, but it's still startling to know that in other parts of the US, little girls in Sunday School are being told that they are princesses for their future husbands to take care of - yet reality is that those girls are the ones going to college, getting jobs as nurses and teachers and engineers, and are likely to need to work to help support their families.   Their male counterparts are having it drilled into their heads that being a sole provider is their birthright, yet most of them will be unable to do so in the new economy.   As a sociological phenomenon I find it fascinating that kids are being raised with that sort of traditional outlook when in fact their actual lives are likely to be very different.