In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

257 CHAPTER TWELVE Can Parenting Be Equal? Rethinking Equality and Gender Differences in Parenting Andrea Doucet Over the past thirty years, researchers in many countries have pointed to massive, gendered transformations in paid and unpaid work and parenting . Across most Western countries, we have seen more and more breadwinning mothers, stay-at-home fathers, and gay and lesbian parent households. These large demographic and social shifts have engendered equally massive discussions about what a family is, what parenthood is or should be, how to make sense of gender equality and gender differences in parenting, and what institutional, policy, and legal measures might assist those who seek to achieve gender equality in parenting and paid work. I joined this conversation just over twenty years ago when I was conducting my doctoral research on women and men trying to “share” parenting and housework. That project instigated a two-decade-long research program that has focused on addressing the puzzlingly persistent link between women and primary parenting while also reflecting on what impedes or facilitates active father involvement. My work has constantly scrutinized the fit between gender “equality” and gender differences in parenting. After two decades of ethnographic and theoretical work, I have come to the view that we need a social science approach that focuses less on gender “equality” in parenting and more on making sense of differences , and whether, where, and how those differences matter. That approach informs my contribution to this book. My chapter is paired with Susan Frelich Appleton’s contribution (in chapter 11), which explores “what is parenthood?” as a legal question. I share her location within the diversity model, which recognizes and appreciates the diverse forms that families and parenthood can take. I agree with her support for an approach that “embraces gender equality [and] supports recognition of a diverse range of parent-child relationships, without regard to sex or gender.”1 I approach these questions, however, with a different set of lenses, including sociological, ethnographic, and feminist 258 Andrea Doucet theoretical work, which, together, combine an aim of gender equality with attention to where, how, and why gender differences can manifest themselves in everyday life. I also take up this book’s call to reflect upon some of the “creative tensions ” that emerge from attending to both the integrative model and the diversity model of parenthood. I concur with the book’s editors that these models, while posited as “organizing devices,” may nevertheless run the risk of ignoring “nuance and plasticity.”2 In contrast to the integrative model of parenthood, I do not emphasize the “importance of biological connection, the significance of sex difference (in terms of motherhood and fatherhood), and the right of children to their two biological parents.”3 At the same time, my chapter recasts some terms from the integrative model, specifically embodiment and the shifting meanings of motherhood and fatherhood to women and men themselves. This chapter poses two framing questions: (1) Is gender equality possible in parenting?, and (2) How can we take a diversity approach, with its aim of gender equality, and still allow space for gender differences? It also addresses two central questions posed in this part of the volume: (1) Are there gender differences in parenting?, and (2) If so, should difference make a difference? My response to these questions, and my argument, is threefold. First, in response to the question, Are there gender differences in parenting?, I argue that we need to be clear about what we mean by parenthood, parenting , and “differences.” I posit parenting as a set of relational, emotional, domestic, community, and “moral” responsibilities. I also argue that gender differences should not be viewed as “real differences”;4 rather, gender differences, if and when they occur, are socially located, contextual, and time and spatially dependent. As Joan Williams explains, “People have thousands of ‘real differences’ that lack social consequences. The question is not whether physical, social and psychological differences between women and men exist. It is why these particular differences become salient in a particular context and then are used to create and justify women ’s continuing economic disadvantage,” as well as what creates men’s disadvantage in care work and parenting.5 Second, building from Williams’s argument, I attend not only to why but also to how gender differences become salient in particular contexts. In the flow of everyday family life, for those living it as well as for those observing it, gender differences in parenting alternate between being invisible and insignificant...

Share