Thinking About the Baby - Mike Murgo

In Susan Walzer's Thinking about the Baby, she examines the gendered roles of parenthood and the care-taking imbalances between the parents. Firstly, she suggests that mothers worry about their babies because fathers do not. Fathers do not typically think about their children while they are at work or doing other things, and someone needs to care for the child, so it is left to the person who birthed it - the mother. Why is worrying associated with the mother, though? Walzer suggests that it is an integral part of taking care of a baby, as it evokes the scheduling of doctor appointments, babyproofing, and changes in the baby's diet. Moreover, there is a connection between physically caring for the baby and thoughts that reinforce this care - worrying more correlates to doing more. Additionally, mothers tend to be self-conscious about others' perceptions of their parenting. People tend not to think, "That's a good mother," when they see a good mother, but they do tend to think, "That's a bad mother," when they see a mother whose parenting they do perceive as inadequate. Mothers are worried about how others evaluate them as mothers, especially given the social script that mothers are the primary caretakers of the baby. Fathers, on the other hand, are given more slack by society. They are not expected to do all that a mother does in raising a child, nor do they actually do it. Fathers may feel that they are putting in equal work in raising a child, but in reality, mothers tend to be the managers of the required care-taking tasks. Mothers are typically the ones to ask the father to change the diaper or give the baby a bath; they have the extra burden of delegating the work, thus adding extra "mental labor," as Walzer puts it. Considering that their task of baby care if often the mother's ultimate responsibility, mothers become disempowered economically as the fathers tend to work the most.

"She worries a lot. I'm probably too easygoing, but she makes sure he goes to the doctor, makes sure he has fluoride, makes sure he has all of his immunizations. She's hyper vigilant to anytime he might be acting sick. She's kind of that way herself. I kid her about being a hypochondriac. She makes sure he gets to bed on time, makes sure he's eating enough, whereas I'm a little more lackadaisical on that." This account from an actual father represents the general mood of fathers in America. The mother worries about doing most of the work, while the father's job tends to be to tell her not to worry. I know in my personal life, this is how I was raised. My mother was always on top of everything. When I asked my dad a question, I would be answered with, "Ask your mother." Thinking back on life, I was raised almost completely by my mother with little influence from my father. She is surely the person who shaped who I am today. Walzer's analysis of economic disempowerment on the side of the mother is also true in my family's case, as my mother stayed home to care for my siblings and I until I was 5 years old, leaving my father to bring home the most money. Having this advantage, he kept her in the dark financially - even when he was out of work for extended periods of time - and it took years for her to discover how bad the financial situation really was. Walzer's analysis of parental power dynamics were very much alive in my household.

The family is a largely imbalanced and gendered institution, and I can't help but wonder how parents who know of this fact change their behaviors to make care-taking more fair and equal. I also cannot ignore how the biological implications of parenthood, which I had been hoping Walzer's article would discuss more of, play into the roles of parents. Mothers not only carry and birth the baby, but they need to stay with it in order to breastfeed. This naturally gives the mother more work than the father, and thus often times leads the mother to stay home while the father works. Should the fathers be stepping up their game and doing even more than what they perceive as "equal" when you factor the necessity of breastfeeding into the equation, even if they contribute most of their time to the family as the major breadwinner? It's all very tricky, especially when you cannot easily quantify the amount of labor given to the baby in order to divide it 50/50. How will you know when the father is doing just as much "mental work" as the mother, for example? And if one parent is not acting as the "planner" of work, delegating it amongst the two, how will the work get done? Parents will need to sit down together and plan tasks to complete the work without delegation. Making parenthood fair is a complex responsibility, and I am interested to find how it will play itself out if I ever have kids with another man one day, essentially stripping the mother from the equation.