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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Second the point about gender inequality. Before you have kids you have oceans of time and autonomy. Once you have kids it becomes, inevitably, a competition between the spouses for time to work, play, sleep. And somehow it's mostly the women who get the short end of the stick.

It doesn't happen because anyone "wants" it to happen (usually). It's the cumulative impact of all the little decisions and non-decisions.

Example: Doc says breast is best. Gotcha. So, woman is the one who gets up four times in the middle of the night to feed the baby because, well, husband has no breastmilk (and pumping a lot of extra is also hard, esp. early). So baby gets used to mom and is easier for mom to settle down... so mom becomes the parent the baby gets handed to when things are tough... and it becomes self fulfilling.

Ditto: mom gets more parental leave than dad and spends more time with baby, so gets better at handling baby things efficiently and settling baby... self-fulfilling, see above.

And then: mom is sleep-deprived and has been off work for months. It starts seeming like maybe someone should stay home or cut back on work to care for the baby, and mom probably made a little less money than dad, and she's been home anyway, and she's better at baby stuff by now (see above), and maybe dad's a little older and his career is more advanced so it somehow seems higher stakes if he quits or cuts back... and anyway mom is now so sleep-deprived she can't imagine being fully functioning at work... so if anyone's career goes on the back burner, it's hers.

And then... husband thinks, well, I have the important job and make more money, and she is home all day/two days a week/more hours each day... so really there is not reason not to expect her to handle the play dates and doctors appointments and making dinner...

And then you're stuck.

I also wish I had read "The Bitch in the House" before having children. It might have led me to think through some things and talk them through with DH so we could avoid the problems that emerged. In hindsight I feel very naive. I fell into all the traps I described above.[/quote]

I fell into this too.  
It wasn't even that I didn't enjoy those things.  I did.  It just didn't occur to me that little decision by little decision in those early months/years, I was setting up a pattern for all of our years raising children.   
[/quote]

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