Halving It All: How Equally Shared Parenting Works (review)

Halving It All: How Equally Shared Parenting Works by Francine M. Deutsch. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999, 327 pp., $24.95 hardcover.

Admittedly, I reviewed Halving It All by Francine M. Deutsch just after completing sections on "Motherhood" and "Women and Work" in my Psychology of Women class, after viewing little girls modeling "girls can have it all" t-shirts in several women's magazines/catalogues, and after numerous discussions with my undergraduate women who believe that the notion of "having it all" is probable. Of course, Deutsch's assumption is that the way to have it all is to halve it all or to share equally. Yet, the majority of her interviews with working parents suggest that the having and the halving are still disparate concepts, particularly in the daily lives of wives and mothers. Deutsch herself observes that "acceptance of women as paid workers has not been accompanied by an equal acceptance of a decrease of women's involvement at home or an increase in men's involvement" (89). One of Deutsch's interviewees, a professional, married mother, expands on this when she makes the observation that still "there's this illusion of choice for a woman" that is omnipresent and inevitably creates a dilemma for her (98). I approached Deutsch's work with numerous questions about why she would choose such a title that capitalizes on a notion that is clearly in the disservice of women, young women in particular. My undergraduates seem to have very little understanding of the trade-off women must make as they combine careers, marriage, and motherhood. The "super woman" idea is alive and well and the goal of most of the young women I know. I still question Deutsch's choice of a title and I still question her assumption that equal halving or sharing can be a reality in American homes, but as I read each chapter, I became increasingly impressed with the significant contributions this work offers.

Deutsch's book is a clear and striking example of the importance of qualitative analysis. Through a series of extensive interviews with parents, Deutsch provides us with poignant and honest narratives of parents struggling with how to make equality happen in their daily lives. Each of the eleven chapters relies on interviews to both elucidate and clarify, but it is also these interviews that engage the reader from start to end and allow for a glimpse into the hearts and psyches of the parents. As she says in her first chapter, "the real scoop about equal sharing is that it is not primarily a story of who but a story about how--how equality is created" (11). Using her interviews as the single most important vehicle for analysis, Deutsch discusses this process of a created equality by moving from descriptions of equality and inequality in homes and family life to specific factors that both facilitate and impede equal sharing.

Two particularly welcomed aspects of this discussion deserve careful attention. In chapter six, Deutsch confronts the limits of the increasingly popular, biological perspective by systematically dispelling the myths that surround "babies, breast-feeding, bonding, and biology" (108). According to Deutsch, equal sharers teach us about the limits of biology just as unequal parents teach us about a reliance on biology. In a subsequent chapter, Deutsch once again calls into quesion the myths surrounding daycare. In reviewing what we know of the history of colonial and pioneer mothers, as well as contemporary subsistence village children, Deutsch reminds us that children have not suffered from parental absence nor has the traditional family assumed a longstanding tradition. Furthermore, our most comprehensive research on childcare to date is reassuring and does not indicate that parents need fear daycare's impact. However, in spite of this information about the positive ramifications of daycare, Deutsch observes that "mothers often sacrifice equality to save their children from it" (160). Ironically, while Deutsch assumes the position that "[d]aycare...