"The Daddy Trap"

Originally appeared in TEXAS LAWYER

Kathleen J. Wu is a commercial real estate lawyer and managing partner of the Dallas office of Houston's Andrews & Kurth. Her e-mail address is kathleenwu@akllp.com. The views represented here are her own and do not represent those of the firm.

Copyright 1999, Texas Lawyer. All rights reserved.

Women Aren't the Only Ones Crying "Uncle"

We spend a lot of time in this piece lamenting the trials and tribulations of women in the workplace. And, from where I sit, that is time well spent.

But, it turns out that many men feel just as conflicted and torn about this work/family thing as women do. According to a recent survey by Business Week magazine, men today sincerely want to be more involved in the lives of their children, and they're being expected by their working spouses to take on more and more of the child-care and household responsibilities. But neither their jobs nor society are cutting them any slack.

Very few companies offer paternity leave, and even those that do have few takers because men don't feel like they can take the leave without it adversely affecting their careers. And, on a day-to-day basis, men are finding it difficult to be "daddy on the spot" because they don't want to appear "soft."

As much as women may moan about the conflicting demands of our jobs vs. our families, society has essentially sanctioned that conflict. It's part of our culture. Our co-workers may be disappointed when we quit or scale back our jobs to stay home with the kids, but nobody is all that shocked. It's what women do.

But if a man decides to go part-time to devote himself to his family, or even take paternity leave, the whole world looks at him askance. Is he some kind of slacker? What kind of man would prefer taking his kids to the park over closing a megadeal?

I'm hard-pressed to think of a single man I know who has taken paternity leave or otherwise adjusted his job to spend more time with his family. And this isn't entirely because men have no desire to do so. It's that many of them feel they shouldn't; that a father's job is to provide, not nurture. Of course it doesn't help the situation that very few companies or law firms offer paid paternity leave (getting paid maternity leave is hard enough).

Stick Your Neck Out

According to a study by the Families & Work Institute, married men said they spent 2.1 hours per work day on household chores in 1997, up from 1.2 hours in 1977. They also said they spent 2.3 hours per work day on child care, half an hour more than two decades earlier. In both areas, women reported spending less time on these matters than they did in 1977.

But a study by Business Week, published in the magazine's Sept. 21 issue, found that more men than women felt their jobs ask too much at the expense of their family. Among professional/technical workers, 42 percent of men felt that way, as opposed to only 38 percent of women.

It almost makes one long for the days when men and women had their predictable roles in life, and nobody was expected to veer outside their destiny. Dad worked and kept a roof over his family's head while mom stayed home and tended to the chores. The only drawback to that arrangement was that it left many women feeling like drones and dads seldom more than a vague presence in their children's lives.

The only solution to this quandary is for more men to stick their necks out. Unless men start taking paternity leave, unless they carve time out of their days to take their children to the pediatrician, unless they insist that their jobs allow them to put their fatherly duties ahead of their jobs on occasion, it's never going to be OK for them to do so.

As one new father I know puts it, "Some of my male co-workers think I'm "soft" because I'm taking time off to spend with my new baby. I can already see that being a good dad and having a career isn't going to be easy."

The legal profession, and all service professions for that matter, are especially problematic. When a client needs your expertise, and he needs it now, you seldom get to put him off because your kid is sick. And it's next to impossible to take any kind of lengthy leave if it means you'll risk losing a client.

Having struggled with this issue myself, I realize it's not any easier on women partners who take maternity leave to maintain client contact. But, again, it would have been "OK" with the world had I dropped the ball for a time after the birth of my son. Not so for my husband.

Still, there are ways to navigate these waters. Even if a lawyer needs to be on call for his clients, he doesn't always have to be at the office to do it. Spending a few days or weeks working from home isn't easy (just ask any mom who's done it), but it is doable.

I hate to admit it, but the day men demand balance in their lives at the same decibel level that women do, is the day we might actually come close to getting it.