Mr. Moorstedt, you have two children and, according to yourself, you were considered a very dedicated father. Why wasn’t that enough for you?
To be honest, for a while I had pinned myself some kind of gold paternity medal because I thought I was doing more than everyone else. Until I realized that’s a pretty stupid argument. And that it annoyed my wife when I was praised by her or my mother for my commitment. And, above all, that this praise was not an appreciation of my great achievement, but a sign of the low expectations that are still placed on fathers.
What do you mean?
I have always seen myself as a so-called modern man who naturally does half of the so-called care work in the family. But at some point I noticed that I went to the gym more often than my wife did to post-natal exercises. That I let my wife do things like cutting my nails, pediatrician appointments or organizing meetings with other children as a matter of course. And of course I sat in the office until the evening when my older daughter took her first steps. I had to admit that I was interacting more with the average father than I would have liked – he spends 2.19 hours a day with the children compared to 5.12 hours with the mother. This state was not good for my wife, not good for my relationship with her, and not good for me either.
So you could very well have drawn on your own wealth of experience for a book about modern fathers. But you’ve also done some impressive research.
For one, I really wanted to understand why I was suddenly performing such traditional role patterns. On the other hand, the impression should not be given that once again a man has discovered a topic for himself and is now explaining to the world how the roles are really divided. In fact, I stand – as the saying goes – on the shoulders of giants. More precisely, on the shoulders of scientific giants. Because it is mainly women, sociologists, economists and psychologists who do research on the topic.
What surprised you most in your explorations of fair sharing of family chores?
The result of various studies with so-called enlightened couples. So people who, in theory, have perfectly understood that there are no biological differences between the sexes that would justify these enormous differences in family workloads. Scientists were able to show that educated and materially well-off couples not only live up to traditional role models, but also simply deny that their family life has anything to do with structural inequality. They tend to explain the traditional division in terms of individual preferences or talents. For example: “She has a different need for cleanliness”, “She is simply more organized”, “She is simply much better at it than I am”.
You named the chapters of your book after such classic male excuses. Another is: “She won’t let me.” In fact, I know the phenomenon from my environment: women who think that a child left to the father alone would suffer serious damage. . .
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