“Equal Partners” by Kate Mangino

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  • When value do not match reality, we can
    • Change our values
    • Change our actions
    • Reframe the mismatch
  • Reframes:
    1. Economics or “bread winner”
      • Reversals tend to shift expectations from men to outsourced labor
    2. Personality
      • “She is better at doing the work than I”
    3. Different priorities
      • “He chooses to do this”
    4. “Bossy wife” decoy
      • “She wears the pants in the family” or “Don’t ask me, I just live here”
      • “nagging” is related
    5. Workplace
    6. Benevolent sexism and “himpathy”
      1. “Complimentary gender role differentiation”
  • The cognitive laborer is so overwhelmed they just want to check something off their list so they can stop thinking about it
  • Ask questions you think you already know the answer to, you might be surprised
  • Talk about role balance before the relationship get entrenched
  • Rejecting guilt is difficult and possible
  • Baby’s change everything! Even balanced households transition to more traditional role when a baby arrives
  • It is too easy for fathers to succeed and for mothers to fail
  • Make the invisible seen
    • If you are not comfortable sharing what you did then there is probably an imbalance
  • “Maternal gatekeeping” is a way females reinforce their stewardship
  • Women often need to step back
  • Be wary of people helping the routine because eventually the helpers go away and the routine must go on
  • The ideal partner is an active noticer of things needed to be done
  • Practice saying difficult things
  • Reject unearned praise, especially if it is gender based
  • Reject perfection (embracing flow is a better way)
  • We can appreciate the past while shaping our future
  • Articulation is important for developing empathy
  • We teach boys to solve problems but not to process problems
  • Correct, forgive, and move on
  • Privilege allows for mistakes
  • Men having platonic female friends mean they have either failed at conquest or are not interested in girls
  • We need boys to respect all women, not just the ones in their lives
  • Phrases to avoid
    • “Boys will be boys”
    • Comparing grown men to children
    • “[gender] are so…”

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