Sharing or shirking
How men feel about lockdown labour, writes Christine Armstrong
Lo c kdown does strange things to your work- life balance — especially, it seems, if you’re a man. “My boss says he understands that I have two children at home,” says Glenn, an exhausted dad who works in IT. “And my wife also works, so I can’t do 9- to- 5. But, in reality, I am expected to work the same 12- hour days as usual.
“I am inundated by constant demands for video calls, information, and reports. Everything is urgent. But the tech is working slower, and I have two, quite frequently naked, kids charging around the house fighting over sweets.”
Another dad, a researcher, admits to being confused about his priorities — should he maintain his focus on his work, or do more for his family in quarantine? His partner has been furloughed, so is running the house and home- schools their three children. When he finishes for the day, he has been trying to help her by setting up a barbecue, making popcorn or playing with trucks on the floor — which he thought was the right thing to do, until he realized she was vacuuming around him, furiously wiping down surfaces and submitting schoolwork online.
“So I asked her: ‘ What am I supposed to do? Tell me three things I can do to make it easier for you.’ To which she responded: ‘ You also live in the house — can’t you work it out?’ ”
He says he understands the pressure she is under, especially since their cleaning lady is not now coming. But he doesn’t really see why the house needs to be vacuumed every day, and he admits he often retreats into the spare room to avoid more conflict.
Meanwhile, a manager at an energy company is conscious that he has been trying to give the women in his team breaks during the day for their children, but the men haven’t asked for them, so get less slack.
Han- Son Lee, founder of the fatherhood community Daddilife, recognizes the quandary for working men.
“As we know, men as a whole aren’t always the best at showing any sense of vulnerability at work, and I’ve been seeing how dads are suffering in silence when it comes to managers — especially those who are appearing to be supportive on one hand, but then as a next step demanding that work is completed ASAP.”
A chef dad who has been furloughed is also struggling. He is supposed to be caring for his offspring, but hasn’t done a lot of childcare on his own before, and they keep escaping to Mommy, who is trying to work in a quiet corner of the house. “Honestly, I’m not enjoying this much, and neither is she. It’s not what I usually do — and the schoolwork is doing my head in,” he says.
One human resources leader, who did not want to be identified, says she has noticed female employees routinely being offered furloughing so they can care for their children, but that men are not being offered the same. It’s an inequity that one single dad mentioned when I spoke to him about the challenges of shuttling a child between two homes and managing online learning for them.
According to the HR expert, “coronavirus will put women’s careers back years, as the assumption among employers of men seems to be that ‘ the wife’ is there to deal with the kids, and that the male employee will deliver as normal.”
She continued: “My husband works with tight month-end and quarter-end deadlines. No accommodation whatsoever is being made for the staff who normally work very long hours to meet these deadlines, and who now have to lose chunks of their useful working week to care for small children. If you normally work until midnight, even when kids are at nursery, what happens now they are off ? This creates massive stress for employees and their families. It is disrespectful to me and my employer and also to our children.”
Jeremy Davies, of the Fatherhood Institute in the U. K., agrees. “Until lockdown, it was standard practice for employers to ‘ see’ women’s motherhood and be blind to men’s fatherhood — viewing us almost as different species. We don’t know for sure how the crisis is playing out differentially in families, but the ‘ old ways’ are built into the DNA of businesses and government policy. Virus or no virus, that needs to change.”
Once lockdown is lifted and we can get back to our offices, it’s possible that we’ll need to have a meeting about all this, going forward.
Coronavirus will put women’s careers back years,
as the assumption seems to be that ‘ the wife’ is there
to deal with the kids.