I’ve been thinking about this for a really long time.  When I say I’m a feminist – I mean Equalist, because really folks, equality is what feminism is all about.  Some people think it’s all about promoting all that relates to women, and in some ways it is, but in my mind feminism is about promoting all that levels the playing field between the two sexes.  Part of this, in my opinion, means including fathers when we talk about “parenting”, and spreading the parenting equally and evenly between Mom and Dad.

(I don’t mean to exclude the alternative families here; I’m saying Mom and Dad as opposed to Mom and Mom or Dad and Dad because I want to specifically address the dynamic created by millions of years of stereotypical gender roles in a male/female parenting relationship – roles which the alternative families I know have managed to reinvent for themselves.)

Like this mom, I have felt some guilt around my recent decision to leave the corporate rat race for the time being to focus on my law degree, my kids, and my work-at-home business.  Even though my husband is 1,000,000% supportive of this decision, and felt that it was the very best thing for our family, I cannot help but feel like he’s getting cheated.

Why does he have to go to work when I don’t?  Yes, I know that being home with the kids is work, but it’s not like I do all the parenting and he does all the working outside the home.  We BOTH parent.  And up until a week ago, we BOTH went to the office too.  So everything was equal a week ago.  Now, my husband has to parent AND go to work outside the home.  Okay, you're going to say "But TFB, you also go to school and run your cake business!" and to this I would respond "So does he."  He takes classes full time too, AND holds a second part-time job reffing for Chicago Sport and Social (which is where he is right now), AND he helps me with the cake business.  So how is this fair?

For Part One of this story I have to give a little personal background on my complicated feelings about this.  I can tell you that it’s only somewhat “fair” for my husband to work right now and for me to be home because of our particular circumstances.  This doesn't wipe the slate clean, but it helps to understand how we ended up in our situation before I work out my feelings about the politics of it all.

When I first had my oldest son, I went straight back to work 5 weeks after my cesarean while my husband was supposed to be staying with our baby during the day, finishing his last year of school, and only working part time waiting tables at night.  We were both in school when I got pregnant, but I was still in my first year, and husband was almost done with his degree.  We were both in school in our mid/late twenties.  Neither one of us managed to get school done at the "normal" age – each of us for very different reasons.  I couldn't go to school at 18 like everyone else because I was too poor; he wouldn't finish school because too busy giving his parents gray hair.  So when we got married and decided to keep that pregnancy, the deal was that he finishes his degree and gets a job, at which point I could leave my job to go back to school full time and keep going until I got my law degree.  That was the deal.

Well, he kinda jacked all that up by not bothering to go to class.  Instead, he laid in bed sleeping while the babysitter (who was only supposed to be there while Husband was in class) took care of the baby instead.  Awesome.  Fast forward a few months, husband is flunking out of his last year of school, and all our “plans” are screwed.  I scream and yell that he owes it to me to finish school because I was going to a job I hated instead of finishing my own degree. Instead, he drops out of college the next day.  Oh, things were ugly in this house for awhile.  I wanted to kill him. Then divorce him. Then kill him again. 

It’s not that my husband is lazy.  He's actually one of the hardest working people I know.  He’s not one of those douches who sits in front of the computer and plays World of Warcraft all day.  He just had his head shoved so far up his Only-Child ass that it took him a minute to realize he was a grown, married man with a child, and this "doing-whatever-I-want" bullshit was not going to fly anymore. He had been deeply unfair to me, and he realized that, but not before it altered our relationship for (what may be) the rest of our lives.

Instead of divorcing him, I demanded that he get a full time day job, and that he not even think about going back to school until I’ve passed the bar.  He obliged.

And in the middle of all this, we were trying to sell our useless condo.  That wasn't working thanks to an awful economy.  That added an incredible financial stress that put us in a far worse situation than it had to be.

I tried and tried to think of ways for me to leave my job and go back to school, but with the husband having no degree and no experience doing anything but waiting tables, I HAD to keep working.  I made all the money.  I managed to get him a job in my office, but I was still the one with the better salary.  Another year later I decided the only way I was going to be able to go to school was if I worked full time and went to school full time at night.  So I did that for two years.  In that time I also had another baby, and then started a business out of my house to get even more money coming in.  I did this all while maintaining a 4.0 GPA  so I could keep my scholarship money flowing, and help guarantee my acceptance into a decent law program.

Two and a half years after the husband quit school, and two and a half years of me swearing that I’d better not even catch him thinking about college or I’d cut his balls off with a dull spoon, I did the unthinkable.  I let him start taking classes again.  In that 2.5 years, he grew up a lot.  He also found something that he had a passion for – something he’d actually go to class for and enjoy:  Teaching.  I let him start with one online class at a time.  He took two classes in the spring and got A’s in both.  He did well enough for me to trust him again, so now he’s back in school full time (while still working full-time at the office.)  If he keeps up this pace, he’ll have his teaching certificate in just 2 short years – right around the time I’ll be starting law school.

After running myself into the ground for two years, and only after we managed to shift ourselves into a not-so-desperate (yet still very rocky) financial situation, we decided it was time for my corporate job to go.  It was my turn to do what the husband got to do 3 years ago (difference being, I ain’t flunkin’ out.)  But this is where it gets complicated for me.

…For Part Two of this saga, I will talk about parenting roles, expectations, and the impact of it all on the feminist plight.

Stay Tuned.