A few years ago, Lisa and I were at our nephew’s hockey game. Don’t know if you have ever been to a kid’s ice hockey game, but the players look mostly the same – a mass of pads topped with a helmet with a screen hiding their faces. Well, as we watched, a kid skated by with a long pony tail sticking out the back of her helmet. Our then 7-year old daughter turned to us and asked: “Can girls play hockey?” We were floored.
We had been raising our daughter in a home in which (we thought) gender posed no limits. But, here we were, sitting with our daughter who thought that being a girl precluded her from a sport she wanted to try.
We enrolled Katie in hockey promptly and started to discuss her view of the world with her. We learned that we had not been nearly explicit enough in the messages we wanted our daughters to hear. We had completely missed the boat. As Katie would now put it: this was a parental epic fail.
Having missed the boat so badly at home, I spoke to some of the women at work to see if I was as clueless there. Turns out I was. Another epic fail. More than 50% of law school graduates are women, so I had wrongly assumed that the numbers of women leaders in the law would catch up over time. Nice theory. Completely contrary to the evidence, but nice theory. Over the ensuing years, I have looked at the efforts of many of the world’s most prominent law firms, including my own, to see what improvements have been made and still can be made. The results are a decidedly mixed bag. And, the issues transcend a single law firm or even our own industry.
The article you will get if you click below points to one of the underlying issues – who is the primary caregiver of the kids? Who comes running to school when your child gets ill? Who takes the kids to their doctor’s appointments? Who does all of the damn driving every afternoon as kids go from school to piano, to religion, to soccer, to basketball, to dancing, to play practice, to dinner, to the tutor, to their public service project, to boy scouts, to girl scouts, to see grandma? Whoever that is, odds are that they are not a partner in a law firm.
Ultimately, the ability of any of us to succeed at work and be good parents depends on the balance of work responsibilities and home responsibilities. How have you struck that balance? Does it work for you? What would you change? It would be great to hear how our class is handling this.
The Census Bureau Counts Fathers as 'Child Care' - NYTimes.com
Another, perhaps relevant article from today's NYT also discusses what educated women expect in a mate. Interesting reading. For the article, click here. For a bit of data on this point, from the male perspective, the following, also from the New York Times was interesting:
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