Can You Have a Contract to Make a Baby

Doublex

The Pre-Pregnancy Contract

If I'm going to go a mom, I demand my husband to sign on the dotted line.

Illustration by Robert Neubecker

I've been wavering on the bailiwick of motherhood for what seems like decades. Like Ruth Graham, who wrote of her fear of parenthood on Slate not long agone, when I contemplate jumping the gap between not-mom and mom, I encounter only catastrophe. The physical changes, the financial challenge, the increased difficulty of travel—having a baby seems like proverb bye to my freedom. On the other mitt, I'm 36, and if I ever were fancy-free, I'chiliad not at present. I don't have a super-active nightlife, and I already pack little survival Ziplocs of nuts and carrots wherever I go. I'g willing to allow that being a mom might strip me of some independence, and the bright piffling faces of my nieces are a good argument that there would be ample compensation.

What I nearly worry about is that motherhood might make me detest my darling husband.

When I talk to my female friends who are moms about maternity, the conversation frequently drifts to the changes that children accept brought to their relationships with their spouses. It's not just my friends: In a survey of the psychological literature in her contempo book All Joy and No Fun, Jennifer Senior points to multiple studies cataloging the many arguments couples have after they take children. For a person like me, a feminist with a keen awareness of the generally unfair division of domestic labor, my friends' irritated gripes, or the findings in books like Arlie Hochschild'south 1989 classic The Second Shift, are little horror stories. "Many women carry into their marriage the distasteful and unwieldy brunt of resenting their husbands," Hochschild wrote. I can run into how this would happen to me, and I Practice Not Desire.

So what'southward the solution? People go prenups. What nearly drawing up a pre-pregnancy contract? (Non, under any circumstances, to be called a "prepup," equally my husband joked.) Wouldn't a not-at-all legally bounden document, outlining expectations and setting a course for periodic re-test of the division of labor, convalesce my fears, and prevent aggravation, or fights, or divorce, in the future?

I notice that any number of life challenges are more palatable when tuckered of their emotional content through quantification. Terrifying deadline? Accept a realistic look at the number of work hours available before filing, and divide the work into those chunks. Feeling disorganized? Make inventories of the things we have in the storage space. My married man would naturally prefer a much more spontaneous approach to our daily life, but it'due south that very looseness that worries me; in a "spontaneous" household, I discover, work tends to revert to the less spontaneous person, who is frequently the person who's culturally expected to carry it out. In a higher place all, there's no such thing as "natural" when it comes to domestic arrangements. A baby would seriously increase the demand for planning in our house. Why not showtime now?

In that location is a list of things I'd want if we had a kid. I'm a writer with a very flexible schedule—but the kind of mom whose work time gets bitten into when a child care crunch arises. Could I ask for a guarantee that I could accept six (vii? eight?) hours a day to myself, for work, no matter how inconvenient that system gets for him? Could I stipulate that he would demand to exist done with work at 6 or seven p.m., rather than his current workaholic quitting fourth dimension of ix:thirty or x—again, no affair what mitigating factors might arise? Could we acknowledge the unfair cultural expectation that allows fathers to take time for leisure, while denying the privilege to mothers, and try to change that in our ain lives through planning? Could I ask for him to learn to melt and shop for groceries, and then we could split that 11-hour-a-calendar week burden?

I thought this pre-pregnancy contract was a revolutionary idea, but of course we've had this conversation earlier. Feminist and novelist Alix Kates Shulman published the essay "A Marriage Agreement," which included her and her husband's own housework and kid intendance agreement, in the feminist journal Up From Under in 1970. Shulman was inspired by boyfriend Redstocking activist Pat Mainardi's "The Politics of Housework," an amazing and hilarious document, also published in 1970, detailing Mainardi'southward partner's strategies of housework avoidance.

Reading Shulman's and Mainardi'southward writing, ane notices a distinct lack of punches pulled. While we often tend to bleed the blood from the housework discussion, mentioning Pew statistics and bemoaning continued trends of inequality, Mainardi had no problem assigning blame. The comic foibles of her partner, who tries all kinds of rhetorical gambits to get out of his share of the work, are named and shamed for what they are: a man's conventionalities that women are better suited to do the kind of piece of work that nobody wants to do. (Him, to her: "I don't heed sharing the work, but you'll take to bear witness me how to do information technology." Her translation: "I ask a lot of questions and yous'll have to show me everything every time I practice information technology because I don't remember so good. Too don't try to sit down and read while I'M doing my jobs considering I'chiliad going to badger the hell out of you until it'south easier to practice them yourself.")

Mainardi'south polemic is deeply satisfying, and one tin can meet how it might inspire a young mother like Shulman, who felt trapped in a cycle of unshared chores and duties. The "Union Agreement" was meant to relieve that pressure, and to save Shulman and her hubby from divorce. Shulman's agreement started with several "principles," including the rejection of the idea that the piece of work that brings in more than money is more valuable. "The ability to earn more coin is a privilege," she wrote, "which must not exist compounded by enabling the larger earner to buy out of his/her duties and put the burden either on the partner who earns less or on another person hired from outside." Remember what you lot might virtually Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In; one of the most lasting insights of that volume, for me, was that a woman'south time spent in a career is an investment in future potential, even when the coin existence earned doesn't pay for kid care in the present day. Shulman got this, back in 1970, and made it foundational.

This idea prompted a backfire from the likes of Norman Mailer, who wrote in The Prisoner of Sexual practice that he would rather see a loved woman "sprain her back before a hundred sinks of dishes in a calendar month" than assistance her "if his own piece of work should suffer … unless her work was as valuable as his own"—a matter on which Mailer would, of class, be the judge. (Shulman after wrote that upon seeing this passage, she felt "exquisite triumph"— Mailer's adverse reaction was proof that she had hit upon the meat of the matter.)

The chore breakup and schedule, which followed the Shulman document'south "principles," was simply as revolutionary. Dispassionately, Shulman listed all of what she later called the "insidiously unacknowledged" jobs of parents, no matter how pocket-size: transportation, helping with homework, fielding calls from babysitters, getting upwards with distressed children in the night. The idea was to make these "petty," invisible tasks obvious, and to demand that they be shared.

The Shulmans made the cover of Life in April 1972, and a photographer captured husband Martin folding sheets, a cigar clamped betwixt his jaws. The Life article pointed to several other "fifty-50 marriages" "cropping up all over the country." Coverage in New York and Redbook followed. Yet the truly equal union has yet to sweep the nation.

When I inquire my happily married parents, who both worked while raising 3 children in the 1970s and 1980s, most division of labor, my father says, "I was e'er willing to do whatsoever your mother told me to do." That's exactly the problem: I don't want to be the Helm. My mom was the Helm for our family unit, and at present she organizes compulsively, unable to become rid of the addiction. I'm the Captain in my business firm already when it comes to boring inventory-related things like remembering whether or not nosotros take newspaper towels, and I don't much similar the feeling. When I hear somebody referring to a "honey exercise" list—a common cultural artifact of women's captaincy—I want to puke.

Hochschild describes this equally the problem of mothers feeling more responsible—a blazon of emotional labor that tin can add together much time to the 2d shift.

More women kept track of doctors' appointments and arranged for playmates to come over. More than mothers than fathers worried about the tail on a kid's Halloween costume or a altogether present for a school friend. They were more likely to think about their children while at work and to check in by phone with the baby-sitter.

Shulman pointed out this difference in her contract, including it as a primary principle: "As parents we believe that nosotros must share all responsibility for taking intendance of the children and domicile—not merely the piece of work, just the responsibleness."

My cousin, who has a 3-year-former son, is the Captain, and she told me that she combines kid care with household chores, unable to but do ane thing at a fourth dimension considering of her awareness of everything that needs to be done. The Helm is in critical danger of becoming a "scold," a "nag," or the "unfun parent," always rushing kids from 1 affair to another because she's trying to cram in housework and other family admin along with child care. Meanwhile, when it'south his plow, her hubby dedicates himself wholeheartedly to child care.

The Union Understanding appeals to me because it has the power to distribute the captaincy. If my cousin's husband knew (was not reminded but knew on his ain) that he had to go selection up a prescription on his child care day—and he took that office seriously, as seriously as she would—and then my cousin wouldn't have to worry virtually that errand anymore.

Practise you, parent reading this, think to yourself: "What a cold fish! Maybe she just shouldn't have kids?" Possibly information technology'southward true. A friend told me that she was so excited about having a baby, she had the opposite impulse to mine. While I want to shock my husband with Shulman'southward extensive list of duties (or an updated version thereof), she massaged the data for her reluctant partner, making charts and graphs to show him how easily a baby could fit into their lives.

Parents may also think I'yard crazy to assume that I'll be able to anticipate needs and duties before knowing what my future-kid is like. Another mom friend told me as much, pointing out that while each of her children are abrasive to breast-stroke in their ain ways, her husband doesn't listen giving her daughter a bath, and she feels the same about her son. This is a situation that they could never accept anticipated 4 years ago, when making the determination to conceive.

But here'south why I still call up my approach is businesslike. In their ten-year study of 100 couples' transition into parenthood, psychologists Carolyn and Philip Cowan institute that couples that had differing understandings of what life with a kid might be like were at the highest risk of conflicts. They saw that partners who succeeded at being parents and maintaining good marriages "accept a process for discussing issues; they don't avoid conflict and they don't prolong fruitless stalemates." The Cowans emphasized the importance of setting an agenda for these conversations, getting over the idea that a "date" to talk is "terribly artificial," and instead seeing the "checkup" equally an outlet. Perhaps our contract could stipulate a weekly summit—a fourth dimension to re-evaluate the division of labor, based on whatever strange bathing preferences (or dietary needs, or hobbies, or …) might evolve. Certainly, information technology would serve as a foundational document, which could be referred to whenever disputes arise.

If whatsoever readers have tried this approach, and information technology'due south worked, I'd honey to know. Time, she marcheth on; I have to make this conclusion somehow. Pro and con list, anyone?

kimballeurgentlem.blogspot.com

Source: https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/07/pre-pregnancy-contract-signing-on-the-dotted-line-to-avoid-household-conflict.html

Share this post