In my experience, women are more willing to give up their free time and hobbies, to spend quality time with their children. So, even when both are working, the mom ends up putting in more hours with the kids, because she just abandons other activities. Part of this is because working mothers feel guilty for being away, so they're trying to compensate.
I don't mean to be dismissive of the points you are making, because you are right that men are under pressure to be providers, that women don't generally feel and I do think it's important to acknowledge that, but when I say men "get" to have it all, I'm referencing the fact that no one questions whether a man can work and still be a good father. Also, if you look at the studies which quantify how much time men and women spend on housework, you'll see that men have a lot more support than women do, when it comes to being able to succeed outside of the home. Men can focus more on their careers, because their wives overwhelmingly pick up the slack for them at home. I think this gives men an "edge" in "having it all."
I think we mostly agree on things. However, I would point out that a man can have a career and be a good father precisely because being considered a "good father" is partly tied to having a career and being a good provider. The actual parenting part of it isn't as big as it is for women, I think. Put another way, if you put in as much time and effort into mothering as a "good father" does with fathering, would you still be considered a "good mother"?
That's not meant as a knock on fathers. I just think that a guy having a career and being considered a "good father" (i.e. having it "all") is not equivalent to having that same career and being considered a "good mother." So if you're looking at men as having it "all" (having a career and being good dads) and then try to have it "all" as a woman (having an equivalent career and being a good mom), it's no surprise that you'll burn out. Because at that point you won't be achieving the same as what men currently have, you'll be achieving
more due to the higher expectations placed on mothers. On the other hand, if you expect a man to gun for a successful career in one of those high-paying jobs
and do housework/child rearing at the same level as mothers do now, you're setting him up for failure. I still think it's the case that no one, men or women, have it "all." Everybody makes tradeoffs.
And in some ways, it makes sense for things to be the way they are. It's no surprise the men focus on their careers more given that all that is absolutely necessary for a man to have a kid is about 2 minutes of effort and a woman's investment is months (years, if you include breastfeeding) along with the difficulties of pregnancy and labor. It's less of a risk to the child for me to go off and do something dangerous which earns lots of resources but could potentially get me killed than it is for the mother. If she dies during the pregnancy, the baby dies too. If I die, her and the kid's life is more difficult, but it still goes on.
What I think we're seeing is the modern equivalent of this playing out in couples today. They're deciding how to divide the labor between the two of them and it still makes sense more of the time for men to go do those dangerous, odd-hour and long-hour jobs at the expense of their health and safety. And given that pregnancy/childbirth takes women out of the labor force for a few months, men have an advantage when it comes to earning promotions. They have more opportunity to land that big contract or shine during a presentation during the time when a woman is on leave which leads to higher visibility among management. To maximize that advantage, it makes sense for men to focus more on their career. And so these pressures nudge more women into the role of primary caregiver and more men into the role of primary breadwinner, even among two-income families.
But both of our problems would be alleviated if men were encouraged to be more involved at home and there was more pressure on employers to support working parents.
I definitely agree with the need to pressure employers. We ought to force employers to provide equivalent amounts of mandatory paid paternity and maternity leave (and more than the 0 we get now). It might not be medically necessary for a father to take time off like it is for a mother but it would allow both to spend critical time bonding with the newborn as well as negate the competitive advantage men have in the workplace in this area. And if it requires employers to hire more people to cover for the increased amount of time off, then so much the better. Prices would go up though. But I think we're paying that cost in other ways currently, so that's a tradeoff I'd be okay with.
