Couples exist around the world today who defy the ubiquitous social norms that women do a disproportionate share of housework and childcare. Francine Deutsch examines 25 case studies of equally sharing couples from 22 countries as diverse as Iceland and Indonesia, Brazil, and Bhutan. These nonconformists possess the self-confidence to weather social criticism. The women go beyond endorsing equality; they feel entitled to it. Both husbands and wives reject essentialist views that women have a superior capacity for nurturance. Some couples are shaped by egalitarian parental models, but others emphatically reject the conventional parental models they witnessed. Most put family at the center of their lives. Equality is created by the undoing of gender. Men undo gender by unmooring their identities from paid work and embracing the caregiving parts of themselves. Equally sharing women undo gender when they treat their careers as seriously as their husbands do, and make room in their families for men to share parenting.
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