As we all settle into our holiday season, relishing Xmas memories, and still making Chanukah ones, it’s time to think about the New Year… and that means—for many of us—New Year’s resolutions.
Let me remind you how gender matters.
Throughout this season, I’ve been seeing social media posts—which will remain anonymous to protect the guilty—from progressive men showing how fun it is to be surprised on Christmas morning by what they “got” their children, or thanking their wives for single-handedly making Christmas magic for the whole extended family. These are often well-known, respected men who write about racial inequality, disability rights, or Democratic politics.
So let’s deconstruct what these comments mean. These men, known for their concern for inequality and social justice, are publicly bragging about enjoying male privilege in their marriages and families. They are boasting about not doing their fair share, about subtly or overtly pushing their female partners to do a double shift of holiday preparation. But it’s not only such well-known or progressive men making such comments. I’m sure you can all think of a family in which the shopping and wrapping of gifts, and the preparing the home for the holidays falls primarily on the wife’s shoulder. Often the cooking and cleaning remains primarily her job. Maybe that family is even yours. And we have all seen the TikToks of moms crying from holiday stress but I’ve yet to see any with dads falling apart under weight of the season.
Given the reality that most mothers are also working for a living, these men are exploiting their wives. While this may not be surprising, what surprised me was how often well known men—with many social media followers—proudly brag about such exploitation.
Why do they do so? And how do they get away with it?
Clearly, our culture still expects—and even rewards—men who bathe in male privilege. The family “tradition” of wife and mother stressing herself out decorating the home, shopping for the holiday, cooking the meals, and then cleaning up afterward is still so taken for granted that the misogyny baked into it is almost invisible to the men involved. Once upon a time it might have been invisible to the women as well, but my guess is not now. The women I know to whom this happens simply shrug and bear it, not wanting to ruin the holidays. The men I’ve asked about this just shrug and claim their wives take on the work because it is more important to them. Little do they know that’s the classic excuse for a man leaving the domestic work to his wife, a rhetorical move to displace responsibility from his own actions to hers.
In my own research on Millennials, I find that most of the men in that generation claim to believe in gender equality, and that they should share domestic work with their spouses. I interviewed over 100 Millennials when they were in their late 20s and early 30s, and the majority were ambivalent about gender equality, but a strong minority were as strongly feminist as were many of the women. In a very recent publication, my co-authors and I looked at how couples managed their households during Covid, and, if that changed, why and how. We interviewed over 100 caretakers via Zoom during the pandemic, and listened to their stories about how Covid had changed their lives. What we found was that most households didn’t change very much, but in those that did were couples that used the newfound flexibility of working from home to better enact their gender egalitarian values. For most, gender traditionalism was very sticky, but for those who already wanted to be equal partners, the new organization of work made that possible. And I am sure that in some families, fathers do their fair share, but not in many others.
So change is possible. For those men out there who present themselves to the world as people who care about equality and who endorse feminism but slip back into bragging about misogyny during the holidays, change is possible. To those women who shrug their shoulders and carry the burden for their shirking husbands because they don’t want to be a grinch during the holidays and stir up negative emotions instead of magic for the holidays, think through your options, and state your rights to a decent, moral, contributing partner long before you get out the menorah or decorate the tree.
Let’s make a New Year’s resolution to be fair, honest, and loving to our partners. All you men out there who brag about your wife making a magic holiday season, take note: You are giving yourselves away as secret sexists. Man up, and do your share.
Now, I know better than anyone else, that mostly women read columns about gender and women’s rights, including this post. So, my female friends, cut and paste this URL into your partner’s text feed, or his email. And suggest that his New Year’s resolutions include being fair to you. You deserve it.