That men do less than half of household work and child-rearing is well-documented. Why this continues to be true is not as clear. Is it insensitivity? Intransigence? Just plain sexism?
There's another explanation: Men are simply in a superior position to negotiate who does what. And women help keep them there.
In her book Kidding Ourselves (Basic Books, $23), Rhona Mahony shows how the principles of negotiation from economics apply to family life.
"It tends to be easier for the husband in a typical marriage to get his way in those instances when the wife and husband disagree about something," Mahony says.
Why? Money, for starters. "In the typical marriage, the husband earns more money than the wife does, and that gives him power."
It makes him powerful because if his salary is larger, when a baby arrives, she will likely be the one to cut back at her paid work. As she increases her hours at home, it seems to make sense for her to take on more of the chores he might have once done. Even if she doesn't cut back on her hours of paid work, she is likely to spend many, many more hours taking care of the baby than he does, in no small part because she wants things done her way. So women dig themselves in deeper and deeper.
There are measures women can take to bring more equality to their marriages, Mahony says, but it's often hard. Because by the time a woman has married, she writes, "she has already done nearly all the negotiating over chores and child care that she will ever do."
It's not as if all men want to follow the traditional roles. Many would like to be equal partners with their wives at home, Mahony says. But even for them, there are obstacles.
One is the tendency to act according to expectations, which "can make it hard for people to do something nontraditional."Another is what she calls the "headstart effect" - the intense attachment a woman forms with her newborn. Men lag somewhat in the intensity of their attachment, Mahony says, and women perpetuate the gap by not leaving the father to care for the baby, alone, for long stretches of time.
Marriages are not business relationships, of course. There's love. Women can use this to appeal to their husbands' sense of what's right. Women can improve their positions by improving their earning power. Beyond that, Mahony suggests, a woman can decide to hire out more child care, or pay others to do household work.