The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home (26 page)

Compared to the time of Barbara’s grandmother, Barbara and John lived in an era in which the demands on marriage had increased, expectations of it had risen, and support for it declined. At the very least, one long-range solution for modern marriage probably lies in reducing demands and boosting support. In the meantime, I asked Barbara what advice she would pass on to younger couples. As one who had looked over the brink and returned, she said with feeling, “See a good counselor and work on it.”

CHAPTER
12

Sharing Showdown and Natural Drift: Pathways to the New Man

E
IGHT
out of ten of the men in my study of two-job couples had one thing in common. Like Evan Holt, Peter Tanagawa, Seth Stein, and Ray Judson, they didn’t share the care of the home and children. This introduced extra work for their wives and often tension in their marriages. The two men I describe here believe in sharing, and take care of their children as a “primary parent” does. Their starting points differ drastically, as do their means of arrival, but the influence on their marriage and children is the same.

As the only son of an immigrant who began work at the age of twelve and rose to the top of the scrap-metal business in New Jersey, Michael Sherman became the repository of all his father’s ambition. The reading of Michael’s school report cards was a family event, while the cards of his two older sisters received little notice. From kindergarten through high school, he was always first in his class. Now, as a man of thirty, he recalls still with a touch of bitterness how his father would dangle him on his lap, showing him off to admiring old men, and between report cards lose interest in him.

He grew up, therefore, more in the company of his mother, his two older sisters, and a maid. When Michael was eighteen and left for college, his father suffered a nervous breakdown so serious that
he never recovered. Having been alternately idolized and neglected as a child, Michael early vowed that he would never treat his own children as his father had treated him. But, he told me, he initially expected his marriage to Adrienne to be like his father’s marriage to his mother: he would get the “A’s” at work, she would raise a lovely family.

He wanted Adrienne to be well educated and, in the phrase circulating in his parents’ circle, a “brilliant mother.” Unlike his own mother, though, she “might also work.” When Michael was courting Adrienne, he made it clear: “It’s fine if you work, but my career will come first.” He planned a career in microbiology.

Adrienne had been the adored only daughter of older parents. Her father had walked her into the parlor after dinner—past the dinner dishes—to read together from the encyclopedia. A gifted student, she had intended to have “some sort” of career, perhaps as an anthropologist. Previous boyfriends had shown polite admiration for this plan; but by comparison, Michael seemed genuinely interested in it. His views were more traditional than hers, but he seemed more flexible than other men she’d met. She agreed to put his career first. He agreed she should have some sort of career, and they married.

Three years later, when he was finishing his last year of graduate school, Michael applied for postdoctoral positions, was accepted everywhere, and chose one at Duke University. Adrienne quit her studies at New York University and applied to the Ph.D. program in anthropology at Duke, and to two other programs. She was turned down by all three. So she arrived in Durham as Michael’s wife, the rejected doctoral candidate. In New York, where she had done two years of graduate work already, she had been praised as an outstanding student in her department. Her mentor had invited her to lunch to discuss her work. She had close friends and colleagues. Now she sat alone every day in the library staring blankly at a cold stack of books, so miserable she could hardly read.

After a few months of this, something in Adrienne snapped.
One evening, Michael came home at five o’clock from his “real” job as a postdoctoral fellow. Adrienne arranged to come home at the same time from her “unreal” job in the library as a would-be scholar trying to read. At 5:05, when Michael sat down as usual to read the paper and wait for dinner, Adrienne exploded in a burst of fury and tears. Why did
his
day entitle him to rest? Didn’t
her
day count too? It was bad enough that the world was ignoring her career plans; did he have to ignore them too? She had been happy to follow him to Duke; that was fine. But she desperately needed his support for her own fragile career plans, and sharing the second shift was a symbol of that support.

Michael was baffled. Hadn’t they
agreed
long ago his work came first? Why this sudden storm? It was so unfair. Maybe Adrienne was still feeling stung by Duke’s rejection. Maybe this would pass with time, he thought. But it didn’t pass. Adrienne remained distressed and determined. If Michael couldn’t bring himself to value her career ambitions as he valued his own, if he couldn’t symbolically express this by sharing housework, she told him she would leave. Michael refused, and Adrienne left.

What
had
happened to Adrienne? After all, she had married Michael in good faith on terms they had agreed on. Only a year earlier, among supportive colleagues and planning a brilliant career, she could never have imagined leaving. Part of her also loved being a homemaker and a hostess; before our first interview in her San Francisco home, she served me home-baked nut bread, carefully softened butter, and coffee freshly ground and brewed. She was beautifully dressed and had a stylish hairdo. She was not, it seemed, in flight from femininity or the domestic sphere.

But on the evening she had left Michael five years earlier, she couldn’t bear the idea of staying home. As Daddy’s girl, the future scholar, she had done so very well. It had felt so good. As she sat alone in the library, rejected and isolated, staring blankly at her book, she wanted even more to do well again. She desperately needed Michael to back her up or she didn’t want to be with him.

With Adrienne gone, Michael stopped to consider his choice.
He felt that she knew and loved him far more deeply than any other woman could; and despite how impossible she’d been, he loved her. After two months, he woke up one morning with a decision: he could do without being waited on, could do without his career coming first. He’d rather have Adrienne back. He called to tell her he would share the second shift, and she quickly came back. Raised as a little king, Michael had never done housework before, but now in their modest apartment he did half. Adrienne felt much happier, and so now did Michael. Now on the new terms, Adrienne could brave it at the library.

Adrienne wanted Michael to share not only because it was fair to her but because she wanted equality to be just as important to him as it was to her. In truth, Michael shared the second shift because he loved Adrienne and knew how terribly important it was to her. At least that was his main thought at first.

Adrienne applied to the graduate program in anthropology at Duke the next year, and this time she got in. After her first year there, Michael made another sacrifice in a spirit of genuine support. Although he had finished at Duke, he stayed on for an extra year so Adrienne could collect data for her thesis. For the first time, she applied for an instructorship. One day, her mother telephoned, trying to be supportive according to her own lights. She said to Adrienne, “You have so much to do, dear, I hope you don’t get the job.” Adrienne collapsed in tears. Michael picked up the phone, indignant at his mother-in-law. “What do you
mean
you hope Adrienne doesn’t get the job? She
wants
the job!”

After Adrienne finished her thesis research, she followed Michael again to the best job he was offered. Miracle of miracles, she was offered an excellent job in a nearby city. She spoke with quiet humor about a memo tacked on the anthropology department bulletin board listing all job applicants and the posts they had won: her name was at the top. “First I was seen as the tag-along wife with the chopped-up career. Then they saw that list and suddenly thought I was the hot stuff and Michael was following me!” Now the twists of fate could seem funny.

In the sixth year of marriage—three years after the showdown and one year after beginning teaching—they decided to have a child. When Adrienne got pregnant, Michael spoke proudly of “our pregnancy.” Bedridden for the last two months, Adrienne taught seminars from their living-room couch. Michael did all the cooking and shopping and planning. When twin boys were born, Michael came home every day in time for the five-thirty feeding. As he recalled, “It was
very
important to me to be there for that feeding.” Adrienne found it hard to handle both twins; for a while, before she finished breast-feeding one, the other was awake and ready. After six weeks they switched to the bottle. Michael fed one twin, Adrienne fed the other.

The twins grew into a rambunctious pair. One would climb on the other’s back to try to scramble up the chimney. With conspiratorial giggles, they would push on the garden gate together, open it, and dash up the street. Once they took turns drenching each other in a bucket of motor oil. If Adrienne’s showdown had forced Michael to “concede” to sharing, now Michael was having fun with it. As he reflected, “I’m amazed at myself. I hadn’t imagined the extent of nurturing feelings I have that I had really played down.” He began to feel proud: “I honestly think I’m the best father I know. I’m surprised at how patient I am, and also at how impatient.” For their part, the twins responded appealingly to his attentions, and drew him into their play. Crossing the street, each reached up for Daddy’s hand. They alternated in the mornings, calling for Daddy or Mommy. In search of more time to spend with his sons, Michael asked for some leave time from his university. Part of the time, he had to travel to give papers, but that was fine with Adrienne.

But, increasingly, Adrienne was under more pressure at work. Now in her fourth year in the anthropology department, she found herself in fierce competition for tenure with six hardworking male assistant professors. How many articles had she published this year? How many more in the works? When was the “big” book due? Her department chairman took fiendish pride in telling junior colleagues
how “tough it really was.” He admitted that Adrienne put in far more time guiding student research than her male colleagues, but reminded her “as surely she knew” that teaching didn’t matter in getting tenure.

When the twins were three, Adrienne was out of the house forty-five hours a week and worked all evening after they were in bed. Even with this effort, she was falling behind male colleagues whose wives took care of their second shift. As Adrienne explained:

During this period, the Shermans’ baby-sitter grew depressed, began to drink heavily, and one day disappeared completely. Michael could do his share, but no more. For the first time in years, Michael yelled at Adrienne: “I’m happy you have a career, but I don’t think you should have a career
like this.
There’s an upper limit.”

She knew he was right. Adrienne asked her chairman to delay her tenure review but he refused (“If I did it for you, I’d have to do it for everyone”). She felt she’d reached a dead end and thought of
quitting. She could combine an old interest in sculpting with child therapy, a job outside a hierarchy. One comment by a rival faculty member, which she had suppressed to smooth her way before, rang in her head now: “Do you
really
feel like a mother to your children? Or is your housekeeper more their mother?” His tone said, “It must be hard on you,” but he meant, “It must be hard on
them.
”

Adrienne spoke to a senior colleague about extending her tenure review deadline despite the chairman’s veto. Out of sympathy and perhaps guilt over their own struggling wives, the faculty granted her an extension. She asked for a half-time appointment, and, with Michael’s support, she fought for it. After more than a year of meetings; letters; calls; and long talks with deans, colleagues, and a network of feminists in other departments, Adrienne became the fifth faculty member on the entire campus to be granted a half-time tenure-track position.