Creating More Equal Partnerships (with Kate Mangino)

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Intro – 00:00

 

BLAIR HODGES: Welcome to Relationscapes. We're exploring the ever-changing terrain of human relationships. I'm Blair Hodges, introducing our guide in this episode, Kate Mangino.

KATE MANGINO: I think about how many times I've heard in my life, “Well, it wasn't the way I was raised.”

That's just not good enough. Because no matter what your background is, with the right support and the right tools, you can be an equal partner.

BLAIR HODGES: During the COVID lockdown in 2020, my wife and I reached a breaking point. We were both working from home, me in a full-time job and her in a part-time one. And I thought our division of labor would pretty much stay the same as it was before. But my partner had different ideas, and I wish I had Kate Mangino's book back then to help guide me through that really rough patch.

It's called Equal Partners: Improving Gender Equality at Home. And Kate wrote it for all kinds of couples, married or not, straight and queer. Because as you're about to hear, resentment can brew in all kinds of relationship situations. And fortunately, Kate has some tools to help us do better.

 

The Turning Point of COVID – 01:40

 

BLAIR HODGES: Kate Mangino joins us. Welcome to Relationscapes Kate, I loved prepping for this one. Your book's terrific.

KATE MANGINO: Thank you so much for saying that and for having me today.

BLAIR HODGES: This is a book I definitely needed to read. Personally, I feel like I've been more of a feminist at heart, a feminist in intent, and perhaps less of a feminist in how things have actually shaken out at home.

This is something me and my wife have talked about a lot, oftentimes at her request, which has been helpful, but also sad that she's been the one kind of carrying that load. So this is a book that personally has been really useful for me to think through.

KATE MANGINO: Thank you so much. And I would say you are not alone. We have data that shows that gender equality is a value that most Americans hold. I think Pew pulls it above 80%. It's wildly popular across political spectrums, but putting it into practice is something different.

BLAIR HODGES: This book gives a lot of context for that, but also a lot of practical advice, as we'll see as we go along. Let's begin, though, by talking about COVID a little bit. You're encouraged that people are having more honest conversations about gender norms and roles maybe than ever.

Your book intro says that the COVID-19 pandemic was kind of a pivotal moment for this, that this was a time when people really had to focus on this.

KATE MANGINO: I mean, I still wonder if my book would have sold if it hadn't have been for the pandemic, which is a horrible thing to think, because we would all wish that away if we could. But I didn't have to convince anyone that gender equality was an issue in the household because of the pandemic.

I sold my book in June 2020. And so we had three months of reporting and information out there about how the pandemic was affecting women differently than affecting men in different sex, marriages, and relationships. I think when I proposed to write a book with some solutions, there was an appetite for that.

Whereas I've talked to authors who've written about this subject in the years past, and they had a really hard time convincing people there was even inequality in our homes. And I think that's for lots of reasons. We see women in the workforce, we see men in the grocery store wearing the Baby Bjorn. We see, you know, images all the time of change.

And so I think it's important to remember that, yes, we have achieved so much. We have changed greatly in the last several decades. We behave differently than our parents and our grandparents. And that's all wonderful, but we are not in an end point. We still have further to go. The pandemic gave us this moment where we could say that out loud.

 

The Female Role and Male Role Can Exist in Many Relationships – 04:18

 

BLAIR HODGES: When you were trying to sell this book and talk to publishers, what did you say set this apart from other books, because there are some other books on this. Where did you see your book sliding in in a unique way?

KATE MANGINO: I'm a fan of Eve Rodsky and the Fair Play book. I think she did a really great job of defining invisible labor and getting people to understand what that is. And then, you know, people have sort of used different terms. Emotional burden. I like to use the term “cognitive labor.” I think that's the most exact phrase for what it is.

But I think Eve's work did a really good job at talking about the invisible load and giving examples of what it is I saw. My book is moving along to say, okay, we know that cognitive labor exists. We know there is invisible load. What are some ways that we can address it?

The other thing that I was very conscious of doing is that a lot of the research out there, academic research as well as journalism, really focuses on white, college educated cis, different-sex relationships who have kids.

But I see gender inequality happening in households with and without kids. I see gender norms affecting same sex and queer couples. I see it happening in lots of different spaces that aren't sort of that “traditional” nuclear family. And so I wanted to sort of open it up and include more perspectives in my research as well. So that's another reason why I hoped that my book was sort of extending the conversation.

BLAIR HODGES: Right. I've read a few books on this topic, and this was the best book at thinking about more than just male, female. You can't fully escape it, obviously, which is interesting. One of the strategies you use is you talk about female role and male role, and you let readers know you're talking about how these have typically played out over time.

So you're not trying to essentialize gender in saying these things are more natural to females or males or somehow more rightly belonging to these different realms, but rather that because of culture, because of what people learn from their own households growing up, from television shows and movies and books and everything, we kind of take on these ideas about what the proper roles for “female” are, what the proper roles for “male” are.

So you still talk about those roles, but you're also using those. As you say, they can be applied in a queer couple. They can be applied in all sorts of different relationship structures.

KATE MANGINO: And I hope eventually, I hope in 20, 30, 40 years, we'll sort of de-gender these roles and we won't have to use female, male at all. We'll get away from the binary. But I do think that, you know, I was really conscious of sort of paying tribute to how much—well, not paying tribute. Wrong phrase there. [laughter]

Acknowledging how much gender norms have greatly impacted our behaviors even today. And at the same time, talking about how these are just behaviors. These are not linked to our biology. These are not linked to anything. They're choices. They're choices that we can make and we can choose to do things differently in our households in the future.

I still don't love “male role” and “female role.” I sort of timed out. Like the book was due, and that was what I had, and I couldn't think of anything better, so I just submitted it. I'm always open to how other people describe those behaviors.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, in your introduction, you let people know. You said, “I believe these terms acknowledge the tremendous influence gender has had on our domestic patterns, while avoiding the assumption that all people that take on female roles are women or that all people taking on male roles are men.”

And so for ease of language, you'll often use “he” when discussing male roles or “she” when female roles. But you're fully aware, you say, “that a person of any gender could take on these behaviors,” and language is really tricky. But I see this as a book that meets its time, right? Like, this will be one that perhaps writers and scholars can look back on in 30 or 40 years and say, “oh, look, this is an interesting snapshot of how gender was discussed.”

KATE MANGINO: This is where we were, yeah.

 

Acknowledge the Problem First – 08:09

 

BLAIR HODGES: Your book is broken up into three main parts. The first one is really about convincing people that inequality exists and what it looks like. The second part takes some exemplary figures that you think have done a good job at maintaining equal partnerships or working toward equal partnerships. And then the third part's more practical advice and such.

Let's talk about that part one, "Acknowledging Inequality." You say household gender inequality problems are structural, and they're also personal. Why is that distinction important?

KATE MANGINO: I think it's important because we have to be aware of what we can change today and what is a bit of a longer challenge. And I think the structural issues are longer challenges.

For example, on many daycare forms, both parents are listed, but they default to always contacting the person doing the female role whenever the kid is sick or there's a question.

And all the parents of young kids who are still going to camps during the summer because they're too young to stay home by themselves, you know, the camps are asking for one point of contact, and so that falls on one parent. And a lot of people will say things like, I put my name down. I put my husband's name down, I put my partner's name down. They still always default to mom, you know.

And so that's a structural issue. It's when software designers only have space for one parent or one point of contact on a camp form, a school form, a pediatrician form, a daycare form. And I think those are structural problems we need to acknowledge, because we need to sort of chip away at fixing them in the long term.

But that's not everything. I also think gender inequality can be such a huge problem that people feel scared to do anything about because it's like, what can I do? It's so pervasive. It's so enormous.

So in my book, I was trying to help people see the ways that our words, our actions, little things every day—it doesn't take giant chunks of your time. It's not something you have to put on a calendar. It's just rephrasing our words, talking differently to our friends and our neighbors. Those are the things that can really help change social perception. I think it's empowering when you think, oh, I can do that today, I can do that tomorrow. I don't have to wait for my government to make a policy change.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. For another example, parental leave.

KATE MANGINO: Exactly. That's another really good one, Right? We've been battling over care leave for years. Whether or not people get, I mean, hashtag #paidcareforall has been out there for a long time and it's not going to be decided for some time. I think we're still working on that. So in the meantime, what can we do to make a change today?

BLAIR HODGES: Right. And this book is helpful at calling out structural issues and having people pay more attention to those, but also directing us toward the more personal things people can do also individually, every day in their own lives and their own relationships without forgetting about the structural issues. So that's helpful.

 

The Neo-Traditional Home Still Isn't Fair – 11:05

 

BLAIR HODGES: You talk about modern household realities. Dual income households are on the rise. When partners live together, both partners are typically working. But you also say there's kind of this new thing happening. You call it a neo-traditional home. This is where the female role people are usually responsible for the bulk of household chores, management, caregiving, et cetera.

And the balance has improved. You say it's about 65% to 35%. But what really stood out to me was that you say studies showed we hit that balance like in the 80s, and it just kind of stopped there. That really surprised me that we've kind of been where we're at since the 1980s. That's when I was born.

KATE MANGINO: Yeah, it surprised me too, and disappointed me at the same time. So “neo-traditional” is not my own term. It's a term that academics tend to use to describe the most common household configuration right now in North America. And that would be two people together in a relationship. Both are working, both are contributing to household income.

But as you said, the bulk of the household physical and cognitive labor falls on that person in the female role. So it comes down to about a two thirds, one third split, which might not seem horrible, but when you think about, you know, let's say the female role is doing 20 hours a week. The male role is only doing 10 hours a week. Over time that really adds up to a lot of time that one person has and one person doesn't have.

And you're right, we have chore journals that date back to the 60s and we saw a huge shift between 1965 and 1985, which mirrors, you know, women entering the workforce. So it makes sense. You know, men really stepped up at home, and dynamics in homes changed, but we have really plateaued since about 1985. Those younger gen Xers, I put myself in that category. Millennials have not really had an impact, and we don't have too much research on Gen Z. They're just sort of growing up now.

But I did some focus groups and I had some interviews, and I'm not seeing tremendous change there either. I think Gen Z is very comfortable with gender fluidity and more comfortable with pronoun use. But when it comes to people in relationships, in those private household patterns, because it's not being talked about so explicitly, I think there's still a lot of default happening.

 

The Cognitive Labor of Routine or Intermittent Tasks – 13:25

 

BLAIR HODGES: This was eye-opening, where you talked about the type of work people are doing in the home. You talk about routine kind of labor and intermittent kind of labor. So routine is stuff that just happens regularly, like washing dishes, laundry, just straightening up the house, dusting, bathroom cleaning, all this kind of stuff. And it's usually more indoor stuff.

And it's usually coded more female compared to the more intermittent tasks, which are like yard care or, you know, maintenance of maybe a broken sink or finances. And these are more intermittent and more outdoor and more coded male.

And that breakdown of tasks also helps, I think, explain why the female role is often doing more. Because they're more likely to be assigned or to take on those routine tasks.

KATE MANGINO: Absolutely. And those routine tasks are much harder to get away from, right?

You can't not feed your kids one day. You can't not take your dog for a walk. There are nasty repercussions that come from not doing your routine chores, whereas intermittent chores, you know, if you don't mow a lawn for a weekend, maybe the neighbor gets annoyed, but it doesn't really have any negative impact.

And so I think that it's that lack of flexibility. Routine chores are relentless, and I think there's an exhaustion in that relentlessness that the female role is experiencing that might not be understood by other people. Routine tasks follow you on vacation. They follow you through the holidays. They actually intensify when the kids have time off from school.

That cognitive labor keeps going all the time, and I think it's lack of a break that makes it especially difficult to be the household cognitive laborer.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, this is one area where I feel like I was kind of already there when I was 8 years old. That's when my mom said, “Nope, time for you to start doing your own laundry.” She had three kids at the time. Three kids under the age of like six or something. And more kids on the way.

Wait, we had, by the time I was eight, we had four kids. So I've always been doing laundry and naturally fell into that when I was married. And so I am the laundry person at our house for everybody. And that's really because I had a mom who made a difference for me.

And I feel like if there were more things like that and if there were more opportunities for me as a person assigned male at birth, cis-het white guy to just be expected to do that stuff, I wouldn't want to wait for a mommy to come and do that stuff for me.

Now, ,y mom did a ton of stuff for me as well.

KATE MANGINO: Sure.

BLAIR HODGES: But I think that kind of routine work, having done that from a young age, I think was helpful.

But it's not just these tasks and stuff. There's also emotional and cognitive labors. I prefer “cognitive” too. I think when we talk about emotional labor, it's interesting because those are more female coded words. And there's the whole stereotype of women being the emotional ones.

KATE MANGINO: “So emotional.”

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. Which is so bull. Like, dudes are super emotional.

KATE MANGINO: I agree. I think cognitive—and if anyone has ever been a project manager in any way in the professional world, you know exactly what we're talking about. It's that constant anticipation. You know, you get through your day at work and you're like, gosh, I'm so busy. I'm so tired and I didn't get anything done.

It's because you're managing processes, you're putting out fires, you're talking to people, you're moving things along, you're checking up on budget. All of that's. It's that. It's that in between. I read an article recently, someone used the word glue work. It's the. It's all that little in between glue work that keeps things functioning. And it's hard to call out and it's hard to quantify.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. It's hard to track. And you talk about specific things. You mentioned anticipating needs. That's part of the cognitive labor.

You also talk about identifying options, making decisions, and monitoring outcomes. And I have another personal example here. So piano lessons. My kids are in piano lessons. I take them and drop them off at piano lessons and pick them up and feel like I'm really contributing.

But reading this book was yet another reminder of all the invisible work that went into making that happen. Because here I'm thinking, like, hey, this is great. Like, I'm really helping out here. But when I thought about it, my partner was the one who started thinking about piano lessons. She's the one who was, like, talking to other people about, like, piano teachers. She brought that info to me, and we made the decision together. And it's easy for me in that moment to be like, wow, I really pitched in. But she had already done a bunch of work. And then she's the one that's more likely to remember to remind them to practice.

So I'm trying to find ways, maybe put, like, an alert on my phone that the kids have piano lessons and that I should also be involved in, like, reminding them to practice. But all that cognitive labor, and I'm thinking this is a 50/50 split. I pick them up, my partner drops them off. We're splitting the 50, 50. But no, there's way more behind this.

 

Customized Equity – 18:12

 

KATE MANGINO: There's way more. And I think when people say, like, okay, what can I do in my relationship? How can I move closer to equity? I always say you have to both have routine tasks. Instead of dividing it routine and intermittent, you have to sort of 50/50 the routine, 50/50 the intermittent, and find ways that you're both doing cognitive labor.

So maybe, you know, you say, okay, you're going to take piano lessons. They're already in piano lessons, so that's a great start. You're going to make sure they always get there, and they always get home. And if you need me to pick up or drop off, send me a text and I can help. I can help, but you're the one that's going to own this. You monitor. Are the kids happy? Are they practicing? Are they learning? Do they need to switch teachers? Do they need fewer or more lessons.

All of that, you know, someone should track food, and someone should track piano, and someone should track, you know, after school soccer, and someone should track camp in the summer. You need to divvy those up. So both parents, both partners own cognitive processes in the house.

BLAIR HODGES: I like how your book invites people to have direct conversations about this, because it may not be the case that an exact 50/50 split is equitable in the terms of, like, who has more free time, who has more cognitive space for it, who likes to do certain things.

So your book isn't saying like everything must be 50/50 or it's unfair. You're saying, look at your immediate context and make deliberate decisions about what's fair for everybody.

KATE MANGINO: Absolutely. And everyone's household configuration is different. You know, one parent might work from home. One parent has a more flexible schedule. One parent might be a stay-at-home parent for a while. One person might have extreme work travel.

I interviewed two physicians from my book. They were both women and one of them was doing her residency, which, you know, we've all heard has just unheard of hours. Like she was clocking a hundred hours a week. And so her wife said, you know, I'm not going to expect my partner to necessarily do the same amount of cleaning or cognitive work because she has so little time during the week. But if we each do 25% of our free time and we contribute that to household, that's fair to me.

So I think there's lots of ways to define fair, but you both have to agree on it. It can't just be one person's idea of what fair looks like.

 

The Role of Noticing in Household Management – 20:26

 

BLAIR HODGES: Right. I also like this idea of "The Noticer." The female role tends to be the noticer. Talk about that role a little bit.

KATE MANGINO: Noticing is that anticipation. You know, it's like you walk through the house and do you notice that there's a bunch of toys on the stairs? Do you notice the cat box needs to be scooped? Do you notice that the dishwasher is full of clean dishes that, you know, needs to be unloaded and put away? Do you notice that you're down to just one more diaper and someone needs to run to the store?

It's sort of like, I think of it as Pop-up Video, which shows my age. Remember back in the 80s when MTV had Pop-up Video? You know, think about pop-up house. Like when you walk around, do you notice all of these things that need doing or do you put on your blinders and you just walk to the TV and sit down? And I think that when you are the noticer, it's a bit of a burden because then you realize how much there is to be done.

And so helping both partners become noticers and helping kids become noticers, I think is important.

And it’s funny, it's interesting, when you write a book, it's like a whole book and then there are just like a couple pages that really resonate with people.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KATE MANGINO: And the Noticing Time activity that I do with my kids is something that has sparked a lot of interest big time.

BLAIR HODGES: We have implemented it here. That was huge. Basically, yeah, it's Noticing Time, which is like you set a timer, you say, all right, everybody, we're going to notice. So walk around, see what needs doing, do it. But it gets them into the habit of walking around and just noticing stuff. There's no direct assignment.

BLAIR HODGES: It's just, what can be done, what can be straightened up, what can be cleaned up? Let's all do it. And we're doing it at the same time.

KATE MANGINO: Yeah. And it works in our house too. The reason I tried it out is because when you assign kids chores, that's not teaching them cognitive labor. They're just doing a physical task. And because they're doing it over and over and over like humans do, they start to look for shortcuts. They kind of go into default mode, and they just do it without thinking about it.

But Noticing Time requires a little bit of analysis, right? And the first time I did Noticing Time in my house, it was a giant disaster. It was laughable. Like, you know, it's like, just do whatever you think needs doing. And they literally stood in the middle of the room of my disaster of a house that was just like messy from top to bottom. And they're like, what? Everything's fine.

BLAIR HODGES: [laughs] Yeah.

KATE MANGINO: There's nothing to do. What are you talking about, Mom?

But years later, now they know exactly what to do. They know that their sink is always dirty because they're really sloppy with toothpaste. And there's always like, right? So they know, okay, if I can't find anything, go to the sink that's probably dirty.

They know that things pile up on the stairs because no one actually wants to like walk up the stairs to put them away. They start to figure out what are the places that really start to get messy. And now if I say 10, 15 minutes of noticing time, it's a dramatic difference in our house.

And I don't really care what they do. As you said, it doesn't matter what they do because whatever they do is less for me and my husband. So we're fine with them—and hopefully, I don't know, the jury's still out because I'll have to write a follow up article when they have their own homes to see if, if it follows them into adulthood or not.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, I'll look for it.

KATE MANGINO: [laughs] In 20 years.

BLAIR HODGES: And see what happens in my own house too.

 

The Psychological Toll of Cognitive Labor – 23:40

 

BLAIR HODGES: These kinds of ideas are really helpful and you also directly address problems that happen because of these imbalances. For example, psychological harms to, often to the female role. There's kind of a scale of like, they become drained. There's, there's actually a psychological toll that happens here.

KATE MANGINO: Yeah. When you're in the female role and you're doing the bulk of the cognitive labor in your house, especially if others in the family don't get it, they don't see what you're doing, they don't appreciate it. In fact, sometimes they make fun of you for being like, oh mom, you're always like such a nag or oh, mom, you make such a big deal out of everything.

So not only are you doing all the work, but you're getting flak for it, right?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KATE MANGINO: And I think that we've seen it in data. It can lead to problems in the relationship, resentfulness towards your partner, it can lead to depression, it can lead to professional harm because you might not be able to reach professional or income-earning potential that you want to go for.

Maybe there's, you know, something, there's a management position that's open and you feel like you can't put your hat in the ring because you don't have the extra hours to spend on that.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. Let's say you're doing the pickup from school. Your partner is the one who gets to stay after work a little bit and get some things done and get ahead and get that advancement or whatever.

KATE MANGINO: Exactly. Or let's say the new job says, you know, we, we require 10% travel. And you think, oh my gosh, I could never leave.

BLAIR HODGES: Right.

KATE MANGINO: I can't leave home because everything falls apart without me. So feeling that responsibility, that weight, is tremendous. And over time it can really build up and lead to depression. It can lead to physical illnesses, it can lead to substance abuse.

In extreme cases, it can lead to divorce. I have had several people reach out to me that said my marriage ended because we just, you know, he didn't understand what I was doing and I felt used and unappreciated.

BLAIR HODGES: You also call attention to the fact that it hurts the male role as well, that it can disconnect them from the family in certain ways, that it can cause emotional disconnection. And that it's also kind of actually disempowering in a way for the male role. Say a little bit more on that.

KATE MANGINO: This is the number one most important thing I think that we could talk about today. So for people who are listening, like this is the one thing if you're going to remember anything from this podcast, this would be what I would hope for.

 BLAIR HODGES: Other than noticing time. [laughs]

KATE MANGINO: Yeah, okay. The noticing time too. But I think we talk about—“we,” the greater we in media—talk about the harm that comes to the female role all the time. And we're quite used to hearing that. What we don't talk about enough is the harm that comes to the male role.

And we have an increasing amount of data to show us that when men do less and they're sort of still pushed into that income generation role and they're pushed into the being emotionally closed, silent protector provider role, they're not as involved in caregiving. They're not as involved in those routine tasks. They don't take on the responsibility. Perhaps they have more free time. But then they also don't have the opportunity to form those emotional bonds that come with bath time and feeding and cooking and playing that, over time, men also are emotionally harmed.

They feel disconnected from family. They don't have the same relationships with their kids when they get older. And that can also lead to depression and physical illness. We're seeing an increase in, for example, heart problems with men that can be linked back to lack of emotional connection with family. The UN report on Modern Fathers, I can send you the link if you want to attach it, has some really interesting data about how men suffer when they're pushed into that provider role and they don't take part in that household routine work.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, send that along. We'll definitely put it in the show notes.

You also point out ways this plays out in same-sex couples, and class and race also play some factors here. What's an example of how these same dynamics could play out in a same sex couple?

KATE MANGINO:

For example, this goes back to what we were talking about earlier about the structural issues. So because we have a structure that sort of implicitly assumes you're going to have one income earner and one domestic-focused person and this is even, I think especially, appropriate in households with children, that it sort of pushes one of you to have that full-time job and if you're American, that's going to come with your insurance package and your benefits package that the whole family is probably using.

And then the one person is going to be that flexible parent who you know, for example, school ends at 2:30 or 3 and work ends at 5. So what do you do in the meantime? Some school districts have aftercare, some don't. Sometimes you have a flex parent or a halftime parent who picks the kids up or meets them in at home. But you have to overcome those structural barriers.

So it doesn't matter what your gender identity is, if there's two of you who are trying to make your family work, oftentimes it just makes sense to have one person in that male role as that income earner, insurance person, and one person in that female role.

And then if you're going to pick the kids up at 2:30 and come home, you're probably going to start dinner, you're going to start picking up, you're going to throw a load of laundry in, you're going to talk to the kids about, oh, what do you need to have for Wacky Wednesday tomorrow? Well, let's start getting that together. Right? If there's just that time that you spend together just naturally translates into more routine work.

BLAIR HODGES: Or even just helping your kids do their work. Like if you're trying to get your kids to clean, oftentimes that is a thing you have to be there for. And that's one of my frustrations.

KATE MANGINO: Absolutely.

BLAIR HODGES: I wish I could just tell my kids, like, okay, it's time to clean your room, and then just they do it rather than me having to be there. [laughs]

KATE MANGINO: And that they would do it. Well, yeah, I'm waiting for that too.

 

How We Got Here – 29:29

 

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. The research that you cite throughout the book shows how inequality is rooted in these ideas about gender roles. And it also strikes me that this idea of the nuclear family, where we have the provider who's the male role, we have the nurturer who's the female role, was really kind of constructed by design, by government and by American society.

Basically, men could earn enough money to work a job and provide for a family to have a woman in the home to do all that extra labor. And that meant a man's workday was usually bigger than before. But now that we're having dual-income houses, because you can't really survive on that one salary anymore, the female role is still often expected to still do all that extra work.

And studies show that women are often spending more time, if they have children, with their children today than even women did in the back in the 60s or 70s and are doing more work, while men are doing a little bit less.

 So we kind of socially engineered this idea of family and now we've pulled out all of the supports that would make it possible. But we're still having people kind of try to live that way.

KATE MANGINO: Absolutely. I would say I do think that sort of 1950s ideal of that man working and mom staying home was more of a myth than a reality. There were a lot of families at the time that both had to work—agricultural families, tons of families in cities that needed two incomes to make ends meet.

So that was more of an ideal that we saw play out on Leave it to Beaver and My Three Sons, but wasn't necessarily the reality that we were all facing or that families were all facing at the time. So I think we also need to debunk that myth a little bit and be honest about how the fact that we've been a dual working culture for a long time.

And then I agree with you that parenting has changed. As you mentioned, parenting is far more intensive. The expectations of what parents do, you know, “oh, your kid had more than an hour of screen time” and you know, there's all this shame involved. Expectations on parents are much greater. And you alluded to this, I had a data point in my book that stay-at-home moms in the 70s spent less time with their children than full-time working moms in 2020.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KATE MANGINO: So you can just see how many hours we expect people to put in.

The other structural thing that I think we need to address is, you know, we start to say, okay, fathers can be caregivers. Of course fathers want to be involved in kids’ lives. And so we've seen more and more companies and government agencies and schools allow for parental leave or paternity leave.

But then there's this underscore like, if you're really serious about your career, don't take it. Right? So there might be a policy allowed, but then men are sort of pushed into not taking it. So I think there are mixed messages everywhere about where we've been and where we've going. And I think we all just have to think really intentionally about what our own situation is and what we want to do, what decisions we can make that are best for us. Just kind of close out all of those mixed messages around us and pick what's best for your family.

 

Male Roles: King of the Castle, Hands-On Husband, Equal Partner – 32:36

 

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, let's dig in a little bit more there. Because your chapter on socialized inequality, I think it's like chapter two or chapter five, talks about three models of the male role in the house. And it's an evolution. First was the king of the castle. Next was the hands-on father. And then the equal partner.

And there's stuff that goes beyond those as well. Maybe there's a person who, a male role who does all the female role stuff. And then maybe there's someone who won't even do king of the castle stuff. They're just totally disconnected and problematic.

KATE MANGINO: Right.

BLAIR HODGES: But tell us about this snapshot window. King of the castle, hands-on father, and equal partner.

KATE MANGINO: These are my own terms. I wanted to really define this hands-on husband or this helper husband, because I was hearing people tell me all the time, oh, we're equal in our relationship. And then I would dig in with some questions and I would find out very quickly that they weren't equal, that they were a neo-traditional couple. So I was like, okay, I need to differentiate equal partner and hands-on husband.

But to do that, let me start way back. Which is the king of the castle. The king of the castle is Archie Bunker, Homer Simpson. You know, it's all of these—Don Draper. It's these people that we've grown up with in TV and movies. And it's that man who thinks that my only job is to earn an income. And then once I come home and I bring that paycheck home, my duties are done. I'm not responsible for feeding anyone. I'm not responsible for laundry. I'm not responsible for changing diapers. I will play catch if it sounds like it's going to be a good time. I'll watch a movie if I want to with my kids, but I'm not required to do that.

BLAIR HODGES: It's almost like, “thank me for doing that,” kind of.

KATE MANGINO: It is, yeah. And we don't see many, you know, those are fewer and fewer. I think we're phasing out the kings of the castle.

And then let's go to the other extreme, which is the equal partner, which is the person who, no matter what your gender identity, you're going to do half of the physical and cognitive labor in the home.

Now, again, it's not going to be 50/50. You don't follow each other around with a spreadsheet every day. But at 10,000 feet, over the course of your relationship, you know, it ebbs and it flows. You have a sick parent, you're going to step away. You have a promotion at work, you're going to step away. It happens from 10,000 feet. You look at your relationship and you say, neither of us have animosity towards the other person because we both did our fair share.

BLAIR HODGES: Yes, it’s a feeling as much as anything.

KATE MANGINO: Yes. We both contributed. Exactly.

So what's in the middle? What's in the middle is that helper husband. I called it a hands-on husband in the book and I wish I had called it “the helper” because I think that's what's resonating more with people, is sort of there's this manager in the home and then I'm the helper husband.

“Oh, I'll unload the dishes for you.” She's done and I walk away. She's the boss, she has all of the plans in her head, she knows the schedule. And it's just, you pick the kids up from piano. Can you stop at the grocery store? We need milk. It's just, it's like being a manager in a workplace and having an hourly employee that you just give them tasks, but that person isn't carrying any of the cognitive load.

And I think that's what neo-traditional relationship is describing. I think that's probably where we're seeing the most common construct now. Of course, it's a continuum. So maybe some people are closer to equal partner and some people are closer to king.

BLAIR HODGES: Or there's like areas where, this person's more equal partner on this thing, but hands-on on everything else or whatever.

KATE MANGINO: For sure. And again, these are behaviors, so it doesn't have to be a man. I've met plenty of women who are kings of her castle. These are behavior patterns. These are not gender identities.

 

Debunk the Excuses – 36:08

 

BLAIR HODGES: You talk about how people deal with cognitive dissonance when their egalitarian ideals aren't playing out at. So in a partnership where both might feel very feminist. They feel women's empowerment is important to them. They really want an equal situation, but it's not playing out that way.

And you call out some reframing tactics people fall back on to help account for that. That was really a fascinating part of the book. Let's hear about some of those reframing tactics.

KATE MANGINO: Oh, thank you. So I was trying to figure out how people can claim to value gender equality but still live in this helper relationship. And so I kind of identified a few different ways.

One of them is economics. A lot of people fall back, oh, I make more money than she does, so obviously she's going to do more in the home. I work more hours than she does or I have a more intense job. So it makes sense that she does more in the home.

But we just saw a report from Pew, which I can send you that link as well, that flips that on its head. Because when women out-earn their husbands, they actually still do just as much work in the home. So when men earn more, they use them as an excuse to do less in the household. And when women earn more, all they have is purchasing power to outsource help. But he doesn't step up.

So the economic argument doesn't really hold any weight. So I kind of dismiss economics. And if I hear people say that to me, I'll start calling them out on it. And that's why I think that, for new relationships, this is a great question to talk about when you're just getting together, moving in together, getting married, getting engaged.

Say to each other, do you think that the person who earns more money doesn't have to do as much at home? You know, like, let's just have that honest conversation now, because depending on how our work lives are going to be in the future, that could affect either or of us. Or do we really want to be, you know, kind of equal in the household?

So another excuse I hear a lot about is, “It's her personality.”

BLAIR HODGES: Right. She's so good at it.

KATE MANGINO: Oh, she's so good at it! She's just so naturally good at the household. It's her personality. She likes to be in control. She likes to do all this stuff in the house. And so I'll help her whenever she asks. But really, she's the manager.

And I just want to say, it's not her personality. She has probably grown up to acquire the skill sets necessary to balance a household, to multitask, to be flexible, to keep all those plates spinning in the air. But they're skills at the end of the day, skills that anyone can learn how to do. It's not a personality trait. It's a coping mechanism. And I think that's an easy way to shrug off responsibility.

BLAIR HODGES: One part I really highlighted there was the “different standards” thing. Like, oh, she has more exacting standards than me. And since I'm more okay with it, it's actually, well, she's gonna do more of that stuff.

But you also point out that female roles are often socialized to feel more guilty or anxious about mess, or they feel like it's reflective on them. The state of their house is more reflective on them than what your male role will typically take on. So there's socialization that has happened there.

KATE MANGINO: Years of socialization. Yeah. And I think the truth, maybe the answer there is it's somewhere in the middle. It could be that that female role has standards that are too high and that it's perceived judgment, not real judgment, and that the male role has standards that are too low.

In writing an article for Psychology Today, I was working with some couples’ therapists. And one piece of advice they gave that I think is brilliant is that oftentimes in a home, the female role sets the standards because she's the one that has the higher standards. And then the male role is just like, never quite getting there. Never achieving it. And I hear that from women all the time. “Oh, I would let him do his fair share, but he does it badly. So I'm just gonna step in and I'm just gonna do it the right way.”

BLAIR HODGES: My wife loads the dishwasher. She will not let me.[laughs]

KATE MANGINO: And so the couple's therapist said, you know, you have to have a shared vision. You can't have one person setting the standards for the whole household. You need to come together. You need to say, like, what is the minimum standard of cleanliness that we're both—

And it's probably going to mean this person's going to raise standards and this person's going to lower standards, but you need to have a shared vision. What's the minimum requirement for doing laundry and ironing, or a minimum requirement for putting a meal together for the family? And that once you have that shared vision and you feel like we can both agree to it and we can both do it, that's a place where then you can move forward.

BLAIR HODGES: I think this gets tricky for me because I have ADHD and there are some things where—the dishwasher is a really good example of this, where it just seems like no matter how many times it's pointed out to me, I'll have forgotten to maybe rinse the silverware off before I put it in or whatever. Like, little things like that. And I can get it a lot of the time, but it's enough for her that she's just like, okay, if you can't get it all the time on this one, I'm just gonna do it. But you're also going to unload. Like, this is going to be your part of the dishes. She says she feels like it's a fair bargain.

KATE MANGINO: So, yeah, I mean, that's what I was thinking. Like, if you are forgetting to do the pre-rinse, then you're also unloading, then you're dealing with the consequences and you're going to have to clean it a second time when you unload. And that's fair.

I mean, I've been married for almost 17 years, so I get it. You figure out patterns over time. And there are some things that “I'm just faster at” or “he's just better at.” And so you tend to just say, okay, you handle that and I'll handle that. And if you're both okay with it, that works great.

 

Revise the Arrangement – 41:39

 

BLAIR HODGES: We've been better at that. But I also like that your book invites people to keep revisiting it because sometimes a partner might feel reluctant to bring it up again, or they might start to get a growing resentment about the current distribution of labor and maybe feel unsure about how they could broach it. And your book encourages people to kind of periodically do that.

KATE MANGINO: And I think it's necessary, especially when there's a change in the household, even a minor change. Anytime your schedules are going to alter—you get a new pet, someone gets a new job, your kid goes from middle school to high school, and it's a different building and so you have a different route. You move houses. That's huge.

When we moved a couple years ago, our house now has, like, one of these old school kitchens that's, like, off to the side of the house, where our old house had an open concept, right? So you could do the dishes and be part of the family.

And now whoever's doing the dishes is sort of sequestered in this little room. And we had to have, like, a whole conversation about changing how we do evening time because my husband was always the cook and the dishwasher. And he said, I feel left out. I'm not part of family time anymore. It's sad. And so we had to change our routines because we changed our house.

So I think that even small changes in your schedule should be a good opportunity to revisit patterns.

BLAIR HODGES: And the book has checklists. It has lists of questions that people can go through. There's a chapter about things you should ask and circumstances without kids and households that don't have kids, which is really helpful for people that are entering into relationships or thinking about extending a relationship, whether through cohabitation or through marriage. So people can check that out in the book.

It's called Equal Partners: Improving Gender Equality at Home. It's written by Kate Mangino, and we are talking with her today about this fantastic book. You might have seen her work appear in other places like Time Magazine, Slate, Psychology Today, The Atlantic, and other places.

 

Learn the Parental Instinct – 43:29

 

BLAIR HODGES: Okay Kate, you say a lot of people report that things get more difficult when kids enter the picture. Women's household work increases because they're spending more time caregiving. And you also point to studies showing that men's housework actually declines at that point! Which is very disturbing. Talk a little bit about the kid component.

KATE MANGINO: I think that because in our gender roles, and even though on the surface people say no, no, no, that's not true, when you think deeply about our culture and how we view caregiving, there's still a lot of defaulting into caring as being maternal. You know, mothers take on, especially if in different-sex couples, if the mother carries the baby herself. I think that breastfeeding plays into this as well.

But we have these associations that there is a maternal instinct and that women are somehow natural caregivers and men are not. And I disagree with that. I think all humans have the capacity to be amazing caregivers.

There's some new information coming out of University of Southern California that's really exciting. They’re studying neurological changes in father's brains when they spend time with infants. And it's tremendous. No one studied it before. We've been studying women's attachments to children for decades and we just haven't invested money into looking at how men's bodies, men's hormones change when they co-sleep with children. Men develop the capacity to be empathetic when they spend time with infants. And we're just finally starting to get some really exciting data around that field.

So I would just remind everyone that there is no natural maternal instinct that all humans can't have, that everyone is capable of being a tremendous caregiver. But it takes time and it takes practice and it takes bonding.

I got a great piece of advice recently from Dr. Sheehan Fisher, who's with Northwestern, who studies paternal leave, specifically paternity leave, and says that if you are one of those lucky people to have paternity leave and you take it—and he hopes that you do—that you need to have time as a family so you learn how to be a team with this new little person in your life.

But you also make sure you take some paternity leave when the mom is away so that you bond with that child, just the two of you. And you know how to do all the things. You know how to contact the pediatrician, you know how to handle sickness and diapers and blowouts and laundry and feeding and naps, so that you build the confidence to know how to parent just as much as anyone else.

BLAIR HODGES: It's so useful. There's even a list of questions here to discuss before you have a first baby or adopt a child or foster. I'll just read a few of these.

For example, “Do you think one of you is more naturally suited to being a parent? What led you to that decision?”

So you can unpack your assumptions about parenting.

“Do either of you need additional parenting skills or knowledge before the baby gets here? How can we address that?”

“What changes are you looking forward to? What changes make you anxious?”

“List some things you're willing to cut back on or sacrifice. List something that you're not willing to give up.”

This stuff is so good. Oh, this one I really liked:

“If you're breastfeeding, what's the non-breastfeeding parent going to do during breastfeeding hours? How can they offset and balance out the caretaking load?”

That didn't even cross my mind. Like, we're doing better at that. Not with breastfeeding, I mean, my kids are 9 and 12 now, but I’m thinking of how my partner and I do bedtime routines. We switch back and forth. So I'm with the 9-year-old one night, she's with the 12-year-old. Well, the younger kid takes longer. And I realized, okay, when she's in with that kiddo and it's taking way longer and I'm finishing up with the other kiddo, I could just go read or go kind of chill.

And I realized, oh, you know what? This is actually a really good time to straighten something up or, you know, take, take the load of laundry out of the dryer that I put in earlier that day or whatever, because my partner is still caregiving at that time. And so we've tried to kind of fill in some of those times where I have been way more apt than she was to take personal time at any opportunity. And I'm trying to do that a lot less.

And your book, if I had this question posed to me directly like this, I feel like we would have arrived at that a lot sooner. So people can benefit from going through this.

You have a chart about time in the book where couples can evaluate, like, how much work time do each of you have? How much chore time are each of you spending? How much parenting time are each of you spending? How much alone time or friend time do each of you have? How much time do you have for health like sleep and exercise? And how much time do you have together? And you want people to be really deliberate about thinking about this distribution of time instead of just letting the chips fall where they may.

KATE MANGINO: I added the time chart specifically, too, because I think sometimes we get too stuck on tasks and delegating tasks and who's going to do what, and then we get too stuck on the physical tasks.

And so I just thought, you know—and I've talked to so many people who are like, we've had that conversation 80 times, and it might change for two days. And then we go right back to the way things were. So I just thought, maybe you just need to break out and just talk about it in a totally different way, get away from the tasks, don't worry, you know, stop that and just come from a new angle and say, do we both have enough time for work?

You know, do you feel like you have enough hours in the week to do your job the way you want to? Are you able to sign up for the shifts that you want and to think about downtime? Some people, you know, the introverts, need time by themselves to refuel, and the extroverts need time with their friends. That could be the same category. It's just whatever you need to sort of refuel and feel human again.

And so it's just another way to look at equity in the household and kind of, if you need to get away from the “who's going to fold the laundry” conversation.

 

Beware Maternal Gatekeeping – 49:36

 

BLAIR HODGES: I bookmarked a hot take in here. This episode needs a definite hot take. Here’s one people can chew on. The heading of this section says, “Women Perpetuate Sexism, Too.” It's about maternal gatekeeping. This is a really important point. Give us a sense of what that is.

KATE MANGINO: I hate talking about this, but it's so incredibly important.

BLAIR HODGES: I also want to hear about why you hate it, too, but go ahead.

KATE MANGINO: I hate it because it's a slippery slope. Because if you talk about it incorrectly, it can very quickly translate as me saying, it's women's fault.

BLAIR HODGES: Female role shame.

KATE MANGINO: Female role shame. And that's not at all what I'm trying to do. And so I want to be very careful about the way we want to talk about it thoughtfully.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, good.

KATE MANGINO: Okay. Historically, women did not have a lot of power in the professional space or the community space. A woman's power was in the household. That's where, you know, going back hundreds of years, that's where a lot of our patterns have come from. And so when you only have power in one place, what do you want to do? You want to maintain that power at all costs. Right?

And so now you translate to modern day. We have women in the workforce, we have shifts in power in the professional space, political spaces, community spaces. It's also going to happen in the household. But it probably feels very uncomfortable and very unnatural for a lot of women to give up control in the domestic space.

And so here’s an example of maternal gatekeeping. You have a new baby in the house and you're packing up to go for, you know, an outing, and dad packs up the diaper bag, and mom says, aren't you crazy? You didn't bring enough diapers. And she doesn't like this kind of formula, and you didn't pack a warm enough sweater. Let me do it. And then she goes and repacks the diaper bag. It asserts her power. It asserts the idea that she's the one that knows best, and it diminishes her husband's power, right?

Now, one comment over the course of a lifetime is probably not going to do much harm. Sure. Comments that happen daily or weekly are going to very quickly accumulate and that dad is going to think, why do I bother if she's going to redo everything that I do anyway?

He might even start believing that he doesn't know what's best and she knows what's better for the child and she's the better parent. We see this from grandmothers, we see this from friends, we see this from neighbors, and we have to be really aware of it.

I don’t think this is about female role shame. This is about recognizing we are asking for a power shift in the household and that stepping back is probably even more uncomfortable than stepping up.

To take this into a totally different situation, I have a brother with special needs. He has cognitive and physical disabilities, and I'm a co-guardian with my mother for my brother. And I see us jockeying for control, you know, to help Danny as much as possible. And it's very interesting for me to take it out of a household situation where it's a married couple into a totally different situation. And to have a very similar conversation about, you know, we each have to step back from time to time to let the other person step in, and we have to make sure we are truly co-guardians as opposed to one leading the other.

So sometimes if you think about it in a different context, it can help you figure out what kind of co-parent you want to be.

BLAIR HODGES: This is a conversation we've had in my partnership, where sometimes we do just have different ideas about what's gonna be okay for a certain thing.

And you mentioned the diaper bag. Like, maybe I didn't bring the extra diaper. There's a blowout or something. And, well, hopefully then I would learn from that and say, I don't want that to happen again.

Then it's locked in my brain to be the one to say, like, I need to be getting the diaper. So sometimes, maybe let people make mistakes, especially if it's not threatening to the child. Oftentimes, we're talking about comfort rather than absolute necessity. And so I think the partner who tends to be more involved sometimes can step back a little bit or acknowledge, you know, some people do things a little bit differently, and actually that's okay. And I can give space for that.

I think that approach can help with household chores. That kind of stepping back can exist in a lot of different tasks that we're talking about. But like you said, there's that slippery slope possibility of letting that go way too far, of saying, like, “Well, we're gonna do it my way that you don't like.”

So it really has to be an ongoing negotiation and thinking about maternal gatekeeping. For me, that was a light bulb moment, and I sensed the temptation to lean too far into it, to be like, “Ah-ha! This is actually what's happened. This is the reason!”

KATE MANGINO: And I have to say, I maternal gatekeep because I'm a woman. I was socialized—I'm a cisgender woman. I was socialized that way. And my husband helps me, you know, he's sort of my accountability partner, you know, when I do things. And he'll be like, “Sweetie, you don't need to do that. It's okay. I got this. You go, I know you need to finish up work,” or “I know you need to do this.”

So instead of seeing it as, it's her fault, think about it as, it's the maternal gatekeeping's fault. It's our socialized history. That's what's wrong, and we're going to work together to overcome it. I think that's the best way to address it.

 

Female Roles: Embracers, Acceptors, Copers, and Resenters – 54:45

 

BLAIR HODGES: This is a topic some women might wrestle with. Maternal gatekeeping. This gives them something to chew on. But you also talk about how different female role folks tend to react to ongoing inequality in their relationships in different ways. There are kind of different roles you've identified that people fall into. There are embracers, acceptors, copers, and resenters. Give us a snapshot of these kind of roles. I think there's gonna be listeners that recognize themselves in some of these roles.

KATE MANGINO: So after I articulated the king of the castle, the equal partner, the hands-on husband, I thought, you know, I'm interested in sort of who the counterparts are, you know, whatever the gender is going to be. Who are the people married to this personality. So I decided to kind of go with the neo-traditional and think about that hands-on husband character and what is his partner going to feel, what is she going to look like?

The embracer is at one end of the spectrum, where she's happy. She loves doing all the little things. She loves being the cognitive labor, she loves being in control. And I know a lot of people like this, especially a lot of older couples who are more comfortable with gender socialization because of their generation and their kids are out of the house so there's not a ton to do anyway. And they would rather be in control and do all the little things than to find equality in their relationships.

And to those people, I say, great, if you're happy in your marriage, good on you, because being married is hard. And if you're happy, I'm the last person that's ever going to suggest that you make a change. And I think that we need to acknowledge that there are female role people who are embracers and they're not wrong, and that's totally fine.

And then the next ones, the acceptors and the copers, those are very similar. It just comes down to how many resources they have. So basically, those people wish their partner stepped up more, they wish their partner did more in the household. They feel overwhelmed. But the acceptor probably has in-laws down the street or parents down the street who can babysit all the time, they might have extra income so they can pay for childcare, or they can pay for meal kits, or they can pay for household help. They might be in a tremendous school district that has before and after care that's really high quality.

So the acceptor probably just has a network of help, right? Whereas that coper doesn't have that network of help, doesn't have family close by, doesn't have the income for extra help, has to do it all themself. And I think during the pandemic we saw people go from acceptor to coper because networks changed. Our networks changed overnight and everything disappeared. And I think we became very aware of how much we lean on our community and our network.

BLAIR HODGES: This is my house. This is my life.

KATE MANGINO: Yeah. Right.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, and then it goes to the next one actually, which is—to be frank with everybody—resenters.

KATE MANGINO: Yeah. The resenter is the one who is thinking about leaving her husband. She's thinking that it would be easier on her own because she's doing so much work, and she's so bitter and she's so resentful that the romantic part of that marriage is failing.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. It's lonely, too, you point out.

KATE MANGINO: It's very lonely. And I've talked to many resenters over the course of my research, and I think they—Sometimes you find solace knowing other resenters, but it just feels very lonely in your household. And we have statistics that show that single moms do fewer hours of housework than women married to men.

BLAIR HODGES: Wow.

KATE MANGINO: Which shows how much performing gender we do when we're in heteronormative relationships. And when you're by yourself, you make all your decisions. I'm not doing a big dinner tonight. We're all eating PB&Js because I don't have the time.

You make your own decisions, and you can edit out what you're going to do or not to do. And a lot of resenters decide, you know, I'd rather do this on my own than pull along this relationship that's failing.

BLAIR HODGES: There's one role you even left out of this, but you did include a note at the beginning of the book, which is a note I don't remember seeing in a lot of books. You have a note about violence. And so I think this kind of belongs on this scale, though, because some women's reactions are going to be based on how they're treated in the relationship in extreme ways.

Take a second to talk about that note on violence you included in the book.

KATE MANGINO: I've done enough work on violence against women, and I volunteered for years at a rape crisis center, and so I understand that asking for household equality and initiating any change in the household, if you have violence in the household or the threat of violence could just intensify that violence and put the person in that female role at risk.

You know, the number one thing to remember is you don't want to do any harm. And so I put that note at the very beginning of the book, that this conversation can only happen in relationships where there is trust and respect and an absence of violence.

We also know that when women try to leave a relationship, that's the most likely time where she's going to experience physical violence or even death. There's a lot of fear in leaving a relationship or having this conversation.

So, if you were a friend, if you're listening and you or someone you know is in a violent situation, this is not the conversation to have. This is not the book for you to read right now. Look for other resources of support. This could be a theoretical conversation, but I would not initiate this conversation if there's any threat of violence in your home.

 

The Equal Partnership 40 – 01:00:10

 

BLAIR HODGES: Thank you for that.

Part two of the book introduces us to a group that you call the EP40. This is the Equal Partnership 40, a group of people that live in equal partnerships. And you kind of dug into their lives. You wanted to find out more about them, who they were, what their backgrounds were, what motivations they had for the relationships that they'd built.

Let's talk about the strategies that come out of those conversations you had. You identify a number of them in the book. What kind of strategies did you learn from this exemplary group? The EP40.

KATE MANGINO: I sought out the EP40 because I think there are too many negative examples in media of men. We are very good at calling out what men do wrong. And that's great. We need to do that. But we also need to show what men do right and what we're looking for.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, sometimes the comedy seems like, apologetic for the men or like, “oh, men, this is who they are,” and it's hard as a dude to find, like, positive role models in media, for sure.

KATE MANGINO: Men are not buffoons. Men are very capable of being caregivers. Men are very capable of being fathers.

I have a son. I don't want him to grow up only reading about toxic masculinity. I want him to grow up reading about positive masculinity and alternative masculinity. So when I looked for the EP40, I wanted to find men who were already living as equal partners and just say what makes you tick. How did you get to where you are and what motivates you?

You asked about strategies. There were many strategies. I think communication came up over and over. But that seems like such a catch all that I really wanted to dig in deeper about what communication means. And I came up with sort of, they're talking about communication on two levels.

Number one, there's this constant dialogue about logistics. Constant who's doing what, who's going to be where. It's teamwork, it's cooperation, and it's healthy communication, not about, you need to do this. And you need to do that. But like, hey, I've got this. Can you get that? Oh, are you going here? Can I handle this?

And to make sure that you're both always doing cognitive tasks and physical tasks. So that's kind of that more superficial but extremely important level of communication.

The other level of communication that came out a little bit later is the importance of really knowing each other and really knowing each other's values, knowing each other's fears. You know, if you know your husband came from a violent household and didn't have a lot of role models of what healthy fatherhood looked like, he might be very timid in spending time with his kids. And he's going to need reinforcement and encouragement and love and patience and time. And if your partner came from a family, you know, maybe she was the oldest of six and took care of younger siblings, she might have a different, you know—

But understanding where your spouse came from, understanding what your spouse is trying to achieve and to be their supporter and partner in that journey. Yes, you want to hold each other accountable, but you also want to truly be a support to help your partner, be the parent and the partner they want to be.

And appreciating their hopes and their fears and their, perhaps, vulnerabilities. Understand where your partner came from on a deeper level so that you can support them as best that you can.

BLAIR HODGES: That's helpful to think about, communication and how it works.

Other strategies that you talk about in the book are things like dividing and conquering. We've talked about this throughout the interview, but it's sort of assigning out different labors based on preference, based on practical considerations, and always thinking about fairness.

You found that the EP40 is often really good at creating routines. A lot of times they network with other men. They have these support groups or friends who like to talk about these things. They often like to push back on norms and reject praise. If someone’s like, “wow, dad, you're out with your kid,” and they would reply, “okay, yeah, I am. I don't need an award for that. This is also enjoyable to me.” And they also embrace their emotions.

You'll notice that I bracketed their backgrounds. You do talk about some things you found in common or some things that you thought kind of contributed to their EP40 status. And I'll mention a few of those. A lot of them had single moms. A lot of them felt othered growing up or they. So I think they developed empathy there or kind of felt the weight of cognitive labor growing up. They had caregiving experience, or they had really bad role models and wanted to be the opposite of that.

The reason I wanted to bracket that is because I don't want to give people the sense that they have to have those experiences growing up in order to fall into these roles. And your book doesn't give that impression either. But rather, these tended to help guide men in the direction of being more likely to be equal partners. But that anyone really can learn these strategies, regardless of their background, if they're invested in doing it.

KATE MANGINO: And that was sort of one of the biggest findings of my research. I think I was hoping that I would find something that would tie everyone together because that would make a great title, like, if you have a sister, you're going to be an equal partner. Right? But I couldn't find one thing. I saw trends, as you mentioned. There were some trends, but there wasn't one single factor.

And I was very intentional about over-sampling men of color. I made sure that I got people from all different areas of the United States and Canada. I talked to men living in rural areas and urban areas from all different backgrounds and educational levels.

So I had a really diverse set of people. And there was not one thing that could connect every single person together. And then I sat with that for a couple weeks, feeling a bit disappointed, to be honest.

And then I realized, well, actually, that's lovely, because what that means is no matter what your background is, it doesn't matter. With the right support and the right tools, you can be an equal partner. This is about self-agency.

And you know, I think about how many times I've heard in my life, “Well, it wasn't the way I was raised.” That's just not good enough. Because the men I interviewed, only two of them came from households where they had equal partners role model to them. 38 of them came from either traditional homes, single parent homes, or even violent homes. And they all managed to get to the same place.

And so I think that again, you can't do it on your own. You need support, you need other male friends, you need an understanding partner. You might need resources and books and whatever, but you can get there. And I think that that's a, that's a wonderful finding.

 

Raising Gender-Inclusive Children – 01:06:36

 

BLAIR HODGES: That's Kate Mangino. We're talking about the book Equal Partners: Improving gender Equality at Home.

All right, let's zoom out a bit and talk about a little bit more structural issues and how we can make an impact there. One of the things you mentioned is that in raising kids, for people who choose to be parents, that they can begin to impact their kids and kind of get them on board earlier.

What kind of ideas do you have for parents to help that happen? We talked about noticing time. That's one. But there are other things.

KATE MANGINO: I think it's important to sort of acknowledge and realize how much gendering there is in children. I mean, even walk into any baby store and there's like the pink side and the blue side and the blue clothes have trucks and balls all over them and the pink side have tutus and ballerinas. Be aware of what marketing is doing to gender identity and how we push kids into these spaces and resist that.

Make sure that kids have toys that are coded for all different genders. I intentionally buy little boys dolls and make-believe food and little play kitchens, and I intentionally buy girls tinker toys and the more engineering kind of Lego toys. Lego even, you know, I hope I don't get in trouble but even, even the Lego—

BLAIR HODGES: You gotta be careful.

KATE MANGINO: You do. Okay, so I won't say that.

BLAIR HODGES: No, no, I'm saying like you got to be careful with Lego. Yeah, I don't think we have any Lego lobbyists or like.

KATE MANGINO: Lego, they have like sets that are coded for girls and they're all in pink and purple.

BLAIR HODGES: They sure do. It's really shocking when you stop and look at how gendered stuff is and how important that seems to be.

KATE MANGINO: And the messages around boys doing sports and being active and girls being emotional, it comes from before they're even born. And so I think being very aware of it and trying to counter it and trying to introduce your children to all different kinds of things outside of their gender, despite their gender. Just think about raising a child as opposed to raising a girl or raising a boy.

BLAIR HODGES: Emotional intelligence seems to play a big role here, too. I really liked how you talked about how you engage, for example, with boys calling out things, helping them learn, but not shaming, talking through things with them.

And then you also have this emotion list that you've made where it's all kinds of different emotions and you're actually talking with your kids to give them a vocabulary that they can fit their feelings to.

KATE MANGINO: So I've learned that boys tend to stick to mad, sad, glad. Right? Those the three emotions that are okay for boys and men to have. And one of the EP40 was actually a psychiatrist and so he gave me some tips, and he said, when your son says they're mad, sad, or glad, don't accept that.

Know that there are more emotions under that, especially anger. If you're, you know, I'm mad, don't stop there. That's a starting point.

Do you feel humiliated? Do you feel frustrated? Do you feel left out? Do you feel unheard? You know, really try to push your kids to name emotions and connect their feelings with emotions. That will help build the emotional intelligence you were talking about. That will give them skills to be an equal partner when they grow up.

 

Building Equal Communities – 01:09:35

 

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, so that's a little bit about kids. Let's talk about equal community as well. It's one thing to work on these things at home, but it's another to interact with extended family or friends or even in the workplace where you might have parents who give extremely gendered gifts or who make comments about something like, “Oh, the boys sure are rowdy today,” instead of like, “Wow, these kids are, you know, a little rambunctious.”

What kind of advice do you give for people that want to apply these ideas in broader settings like that? Which is where it can sometimes be the most tricky.

KATE MANGINO: The example you just gave is a great one. Stop saying, “oh, moms have such a hard job.” Oh, parents have such a hard job. If we can de-gender our conversation and think about the way parents act to raise children as opposed to way, you know, moms versus dads, boys versus girls.

Plus it's leaning into the gender binary, and it's making invisible people that don't identify as a man or a woman. So there are many reasons for doing that. I love just intentionally switching language away from mom and dad towards parent and away from boy and girl and towards student or children or something more inclusive.

BLAIR HODGES: What do you say when people push back on that and say, “Oh no, you're erasing these identities,” or “you want to, like, erase these wonderful, important roles, like, there's nothing shameful about being a mother, or there's nothing shameful about being a father”?

KATE MANGINO: Sure, that's a really good question. I am not trying to erase those identities. And if you are in a mother's group and everyone there identifies as a woman and they are all a mom, then you're still going to call it a mom's group, and I understand that. And you are going to have shared experiences that are unique to motherhood. That's not what I'm talking about.

I'm just saying when you're generally speaking about, for example, you know, let's say it's something school-related for your kids and they say, “Oh, let's have a mom's group to support this,” make it a parents group to include all people. Or if you're going to talk about it's so hard to be a working mom and balance work and home. It's so hard to be a working parent. I think if we want to include men into the space and we want men to accept more responsibility and more cognitive labor, we need to include them in the conversation.

So that's why I suggest the language change with kids. I think it's a little bit more obvious. You just don't want to—we code things as boy and girl which means we also restrict things. Girl-coded things mean they shouldn't do this and the opposite. And I think there it's more socially accepted for a girl to be a tomboy, right, for girls to do sports or do leadership. That's evolved over the last few decades.

I think we raise girls differently. I don't think we're raising boys differently. We still aren't accepting of boys who are emotional, boys who want to lean into caregiving roles. I have a friend whose son is trying to find summer babysitting work and people are interested in a 15-year-old male babysitter. They think it's strange.

So just being aware of how much gendering we do towards kids and trying to pull away from that, aside from the children thing, just with a community in general, I think that sometimes the little comments we make go a long way.

I had a story from one of the EP40 who—his wife is a physician, and made a lot of money. They didn't need more money in a household. Their kids were like 1 and 2. They needed his time. So he quit his job, became a stay at home dad and was quite happy and it was going really well. But the extended family were really hard on him. They called him lazy, they made snide comments behind his back.

He's not pulling his weight, he's not providing. And he felt guilted into going back into the workforce about a year later, and he regrets that decision. Hindsight. And so if you are a grandmother, if you are a grandfather, an aunt, an uncle, a neighbor, you know, if you see dads trying to step up in the home, if you see moms trying to step up in a professional space, support them, give some words of encouragement, be careful that you're not judging people because of a gender norm. That you are being open and encouraging and supporting whatever choices they're making to do what's best for their family.

BLAIR HODGES: It's such an interesting needle to thread because it's like we don't want to simultaneously, we don't want to praise male-role folks, dads usually from doing things that are just being part of a dad. We also want to recognize where they have strengths and where they do need extra social supports because of ongoing stigma.

KATE MANGINO: So that’s absolutely right. It is a fine line. I guess what I would say is we don't want to over-praise fathers for just being parents. But what we need to be very careful is not assigning shame when they step away from work, when they take a job with less money so they can spend time at home.

Maybe not praise, but just acceptance. “Oh, that's a great choice for you and your family,” you know, “we support you one hundred percent.” You don't need to throw them a parade. But you also want to let you know it's hard for men to reject professional prestige. Thank you. That's a good way of putting it.

It's hard to reject professional prestige. It's hard to say, no, I'm going to take my caregiving leave and spend time with my infant. I know that you tell me that maybe that's bad for my career, but I'm only going to get this opportunity once and I'm going to take it. And, you know, so being supportive of just different kinds of decisions, don't throw them a parade, but just be really supportive and encouraging.

 

Regrets, Challenges, & Surprises – 01:15:05

 

BLAIR HODGES: That's Kate Mangino, author of Equal Partners: Improving Gender Equality at Home.

And we've come to our final segment here. It's a choose your own adventure moment Kate, it's Regrets, Challenges, & Surprises. So you can speak to something that you would like to change about the book now that it's out. Something that perhaps was most challenging about it or something that really surprised you throughout the course of your research.

You can speak to one, two, or all three of them. It's up to you.

KATE MANGINO: Regret is something we touched on earlier. I wish I would have talked more about maternal gatekeeping in a deeper level. I wish I would have given that more pages and I wish I would have acknowledged that I have come to understand that so many women have been socialized to believe that they are responsible for the happiness of everyone in their home and that that is an underlying assumption that's rarely spoken out loud. But a lot of women feel, and I wish I would have dug down deeper to get to that level.

So, anyway, maybe that's the next book or that's an article, but that's an area that I would like to investigate further.

Something that surprised me in a wonderful way is the number of young people that this book resonates with. I've had high school students reach out to me and college students reach out to me who just say, “I'm not in a relationship. I'm years away from having a relationship. But I'm really glad that I'm aware of this stuff now because it's going to help me, you know, pick and choose who I want to date and what kind of person I want to be and what kind of partner I want to be and how I can support my friends who are starting to have relationships.”

And when I've talked to groups of students, they're asking incredibly sophisticated questions about gender. That gives me great hope for where our future is.

BLAIR HODGES: That's awesome. It's really a powerful book, Kate. I appreciate all the work that you put into it. The book is Equal Partners: Improving Gender Equality at Home. Thanks so much for taking time to talk about it with us.

KATE MANGINO: Thank you so much for having me today. It was a pleasure.

 

Outro – 01:17:09

 

BLAIR HODGES: That's it for this episode of Relationscapes, a journey through the terrain of family, gender, and sexuality, mapping out the stories and ideas that shape who we are and how we connect with each other.

If you're enjoying the show, please go to Apple Podcasts and leave a review. It's especially important now that I've refreshed the show. We've got a new name. We want people to hear about it.

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Mates of State provided our new theme song. Relationscapes is part of the Dialogue Podcast Network. I'm Blair Hodges. See you next time.