Merit pay for teachers (skills, logic, highest, girls)
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We aren't talking about breastfeeding and I've already said that the only thing biology determines is who carries the baby and who nurses it so why are you bringing up breastfeeding? Beyond that, there is no reason for not having equal parenting.
Well, I'm not run by instincts. I make decisions based on what is best for my family. I'm not some animal whose instincts tell it what to do. I'm a person who can think and decide what is best. I think equal parents are best. Kids having a mother and a father they can lean on the same ways. Input from both parents in all aspects of their lives. Then again I see having more people to rely on as a good thing. I'm not into exclusive parenting, over controlling my children's enviornment or parenting in isolation.
What I don't understand are the extreme cases where the kids are so over reliant on mom they cry if she leaves them with dad. I'd be ashamed if my kids cried when I left them with their other parent. I think parents should work in a team. With both of them involved in all areas of children's lives from education to who gives them a bath. Sure mom's the only one who can breastfeed but that's one function done so early in life a child won't even remember it. They can bond to both parents and learn to rely on both parents. Dad's are just as good as moms if you give them a chance. There's nothing in the male biology that says men make lousy parents or that women make better parents. The fact I have breasts and can brestfeed speaks only to my abilty to feed a baby. It doesn't speak to my ability to be a good parent. That takes a brain and last time I looked, dad had one too.
That works for you and your husband and that is good. Let others do things in a way that works for them. the key thing is it working and the child getting what they need. Parents don't always have the same income earning potential. They may have similar degrees but their careers have gone down different paths one more lucrative then the other.
What ever works for the two is better for harmony then doing it a set way and having the child exposed to disharmony. That is their freedom of choice and hopefully they are on the same page and the child knows his parents and their strengths and weaknesses. and HOW they operate as a couple.
It's not very adult to expose a child to disharmony. No matter how you strive for equality, neither parent should be creating a disharmonious situation. That's just childish if they do. You need to do what is best for the child not what mom or dad wants. It ceases to be about what mom or dad want once the child comes into the picture.
I think children benefit from fathers as equal parents. Research shows they benefit from involved fathers. Anything mom can do that can increase dad's involvement should be a good thing. The traditional division of labor in child rearing makes dad a second class parent. A paycheck. While mom is made the primary parent by virture of spending disproportionally more time with the children than dad.
I've always thought the ideal would be mom and dad working opposite shifts so that each got time as a solo parent and each got time as a team parent. Of course that's hard on a marriage. Maybe staggered shifts would work. My husband's and mine were, slightly, staggered sot hat he had about an hour and half in the morning alone with the kids and I had about the same at the end of the day with the kids. That was ok but a little more solo time, wiht less to do during the solo time, would have been better.
Merit pay in the business world consists of a lot of favoritism, discrimination, and back-stabbing. I can't imagine wanting to duplicate that in the public schools.
However, this exists in public (and private) schools with or without merit pay.
I've always thought the ideal would be mom and dad working opposite shifts so that each got time as a solo parent and each got time as a team parent.
I grew up in that household and had no desire to repeat it when I had children of my own. It was extraordinarily difficult on my parents' marriage, although they managed to muddle through and are going on 45 years. I've always told people that my reason for leaving my career after giving birth to my first child had little to do with her and everything to do with my marriage.
I grew up in that household and had no desire to repeat it when I had children of my own. It was extraordinarily difficult on my parents' marriage, although they managed to muddle through and are going on 45 years. I've always told people that my reason for leaving my career after giving birth to my first child had little to do with her and everything to do with my marriage.
I would think it would be hard on a marriage. It would equalize parenting though. I think the staggered shifts my husband and I worked are probably as close to balancing all aspects as you can really get. Opposite shifts just seems ideal from a parenting standpoint because both parents have similar amounts of solo time and a lot of it. There'd be zero marriage time during the week though. You'd have to have a strong marriage to handle that.
I would think it would be hard on a marriage. It would equalize parenting though. I think the staggered shifts my husband and I worked are probably as close to balancing all aspects as you can really get. Opposite shifts just seems ideal from a parenting standpoint because both parents have similar amounts of solo time and a lot of it. There'd be zero marriage time during the week though. You'd have to have a strong marriage to handle that.
From a parenting standpoint, it would certainly help spread the labor, but I question whether or not it's really a good thing for children to see so little of their parents' interaction.
From a parenting standpoint, it would certainly help spread the labor, but I question whether or not it's really a good thing for children to see so little of their parents' interaction.
Depends on their ages. I don't think it matters to very young children. School aged children do need to see their parents interactions but by the time they're in school, you wouldn't want parents working opposite shifts or anything like that because you don't have all those day time hours available. Half the time the child would be in school during the day. Children's needs change with their age.
Your comments about males and the early grades are unfortunatedly so on target and difficult to change. Many men want to be coaches and that of course is a high school choice. Leadership in schools once was the domain of men. I am not sure the classroom was ever a majority of males. That is why the historical argument that teaching was low paying because it was a female based profession. Interesting article on males in the classroom. Dan Brown: Why So Few Male Teachers Today? Does it Matter?
It was-- though admittedly, you have to go back well over a century.
Biology has nothing to do with how we split child care between parents. It hast to do with tradition more than anything. Biology just tells us who carries the baby to term and nurses it. Everything else is up for grabs.
"Who carried the baby to term and nurses it" involves a good two year commitment for one partner in that equation. At that point, it becomes much harder to change ingrained habits. Particularly if the young parents are afficionados of Attachment Parenting/Sears, because that infant has well and truly attached to Mom by the time s/he's weaned.
At the other end-- Dobson, Ezzo and the Pearls <shudder>-- you have rigid gender roles defined by religious beliefs. You and I may be good with "biology is not destiny", but it's not going to play with the Quiverfull crowd.
Division of labor seldom leads to equality. It usualy ends up with one person doing one kind of work and the other doing another kind, like mom providing the caregiving and dad playing the part of paycheck to support mom.
Personally, I haven't found this to be true.
My littles were young enough when I retired that they don't remember me working (or their playpen in my office). In their world, Dad works and Mom is home. OTOH when, in a discussion of Sasha and Malia Obama, they wondered about having a parent in the White House, it was Mom there, not Dad. They know who's more suited to the political, and it's not Daddy, gender roles be damned.
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