Check out Lisa Belkin's Motherlode over at the New York Times for our thoughts for the day. We guest-posted a response to a previous guest post from a mother who was frustrated about her inept and apathetic husband. We assume that they want something different and encourage them to embrace competence both in childraising and teamwork to change their divisive dynamic.

Enjoy!

ESP afficionado, Curtis Hart, posted up this wonderful video of Gloria Steinem on The Colbert Report on our Facebook Page recently. It is worth the few minutes of viewing! In just a short time- in between the jokes and such - Ms. Steinem voices her crystal clear support of equally shared parenting.

So I got a bit brave. Watching the clip made me smile ear-to-ear...and so I decided to write to Ms. Steinem to thank her. Much to my surprise, her staff wrote back right away, and said they would definitely forward my comments to her and sent me an address to which we could send our book for her to read. And then Gloria wrote back herself. I would like to share with you an excerpt of what she wrote (with her permission granted):

"I never thought that Hillary Clinton -- or any woman who represented equality -- could be elected at the top as long as almost all of us were raised by women, and so we associate female authority with childhood. I think men especially, but many women, too, feel regressed to childhood when they see a powerful woman; it was the last time they experienced one.

Of course, men pay the parallel price of being deprived of all those human qualities that are wrongly called "feminine" -- empathy, flexibility, awareness of detail -- but are only those necessary to raise children -- or being brought up to raise children.

If you want to see that this [meaning equally shared parenting] is the path away from the cult of masculinity and toward something as huge as world peace, read The Mermaid and the Minotaur by Dorothy Dinnerstein. She was ahead of her time -- I think she published this in the '70s, and she's no longer with us -- but it's a landmark book and should be re-published.

You are doing in a practical and personal way something that has bigtime importance to us all!" 

By allowing both women and men access to the full array of human qualities, we free us all. By breaking free of our self-ascribed labels of "masculine" and "feminine" we allow ourselves to be, well, just who we actually are. The peace in living as our authentic selves really does seem like a key ingredient to world peace.

I can't wait to read The Mermaid and the Minotaur, a book I have seen referenced many times but have not yet acquired. A dear friend is lending me her copy this afternoon. And I will ride high on the encouragement to press forward with the good news about ESP from a true world leader.

This book review may be a bit unfair to all of us here in the USA.  Baby's Here! Who Does What? was published in the UK last month and we do not know of a purchase source over here yet.  But that is not a reason to skip reviewing this little gem.  It is what we would call the first ESP graphic handbook (a bit like a graphic novel, but nonfiction) - a mere 136 pages with large font type and tons of comic-like drawings and speech bubbles.  But even with this seemingly lighthearted approach to the topic, it packs in all the right stuff.

Baby's Here! Who Does What? is by Duncan Fisher, who also writes this equal parenting-focused blog and is the former Chief Executive of the UK's Fatherhood Institute.  He is active in campaigning for equal rights for all parents and for the support of children and families over on his side of the pond, and we have enthusiastically followed his writing for quite awhile.  Duncan is married to Clare, and the father of two daughters.

Inside the pages of Baby's Here! you will find a solid, tight argument for equally shared parenting in its full depth. Despite the chored-focused title, this book really lays out the advantages of sharing the home, the children and the breadwinning for both parents, and adds in short, manageable lists of questions to ponder as a couple over your morning coffee.  No big task charts or complicated scoresheets (imagine that :-)) are included.  Duncan's objective is to open up the full parenting discussion to both mothers and fathers, wresting it away from simply being a woman's issue to being a joyful and - yes - challenging life adventure for the couple to tackle together.

He emphasizes the importance of taking time to nurture your relationship as a couple above all other things - and that this decision will also be the best one for your kids.   Chapters cover the real possibility of sharing, the cultural and workplace norms that typically stop couples from doing so, and...my favorite just because it is a bit different from what is found in other ESP-like books...a whole section devoted to how humans have evolved from sharing paradigms rather than from our more recent divide-and-conquer family structure.

Yes, fathers are fully up to the task of sharing equally in all that it takes to run a family.  Yes, it is natural and right.  Yes, let's give this ESP thing a chance and see what it can bring us.  These are Duncan's messages.

Applause! Applause!

We happily add Baby's Here! Who Does What? to our list of Resources, and hope that many of you do get to pick up a copy for a great shot of encouragement and sensibility.

We met Gail and Lyn a few years ago when they wrote to us about their ESP life, and consider them to be two of the most intentional and thoughtful equally sharing parents we have ever had the privilege to know. They have written their Real Life Story for us awhile back (and write much more on their blog, First Time Second Time - check it out!), but we had been hoping that they could also share with you the unique journey they have taken to literally share breastfeeding - for better or worse.  And now we have been gifted with their thoughts - their examined journey - on this very topic.  Read on for a real treat...

Camile Paglia wrote an interesting article in the New York Times on Friday called No Sex Please, We're Middle Class. In it, she asserts that when women hold control at home and men follow along as ‘helpers,’ sex lives can dwindle. That makes sense. Here it is in her words: "...family life has put middle-class men in a bind; they are simply cogs in a domestic machine commanded by women. Contemporary moms have become virtuoso super-managers of a complex operation focused on the care and transport of children. But it’s not so easy to snap over from Apollonian control to Dionysian delirium."

When men were “men” and women were “women,” traditional roles may have kept our sex lives interesting (to a point) because we maintained our separate spheres and stayed strangers in this manner. Great if you like the ’strangers on a train’ kind of sex. Probably not so great once you get to know a few annoying things about your own personal stranger, but remain relative strangers none-the-less.

Then there's the scenario in which men and women learn to share everything together - the work and the joy - on a level in which no one is directing the other (otherwise known as equally shared parenting of course). Here familiarity may be at a high but genuine intimacy thrives - and the kind of sex that arises from that depth of intimacy is there for the taking.

But when men do their fair share around the house but are dragged and managed by their wives, nothing seems very sexy anymore. We call this 'pseudoequality' - an unfortunate situation in which men and women look to be equals on the surface, maybe even achieving 50/50 chore sharing (heaven forbid!). But look a bit deeper and you'll see a profound imbalance of power - a set-up for resentment, harassment, avoidance, annoyance and anger. Not too sexy, huh?

Half-way to equality is like half-way to paradise...purgatory is not a good move, sex-wise!