Nancy Folbre is an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
“He cooks, cleans – and lets his wife climb the corporate ladder.” This perfect husband stars in a recent cover story in Bloomberg Businessweek, echoing one published in Fortune almost 10 years ago: Many women who are chief executives depend on a husband willing to take on a job that wives have traditionally performed: chief domestic officer. Unless someone else manages the home, it’s hard to compete successfully with other managers at the office.
Today’s Economist
Perspectives from expert contributors.
Role reversal generally helps reveal the importance of other people’s roles. As both stories clearly document, gender norms are loosening up, though in 2010, husbands were the sole earner in about 20 percent of all marriages, wives in about 9 percent, according to a recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Homemaker fathers seem to enjoy a little more cultural respect than they did 10 years ago, even if women remain the “default” parent. The Bloomberg Businessweek cover pictured a handsome, casually dressed young man (standing inside a giant pink baby bottle), while the Fortune cover pictured an older man dressed in a distinctly dowdy apron. Most homemaker dads would prefer the former image, and most express more commitment to child care than to housework.
But role reversal doesn’t seem like a terribly inviting prospect, even for those who prefer it to traditional gender roles. What’s bad for the goose is bad for the gander.
Adults who completely devote themselves to family care, whether they are male or female, reduce their employability and future earnings. This may not matter much for individuals at the top of the income distribution, who can live off their investments or maintain skills that allow them to work as consultants.
But it matters a great deal for those who need to find a job once their children are grown.
Specialization may increase efficiency in some tasks, but diversification also has advantages. Children might prefer a portfolio of caregivers, including both dad and mom, to one full-time specialist. And many adults would prefer to combine paid work with family work, the better to appreciate both their colleagues and their children.
As the Bloomberg Businessweek story makes clear, public policies in the Nordic countries, in particular, make it easier for parents to reconcile employment with family care. Janet Gornick and Marcia Meyers provide more details in their book “Families That Work,” along with calculations of what it would cost for the United States to move in a similar direction.
Tax policy in the United States currently discourages shared parenting, by providing significant tax benefits to breadwinners with stay-at-home spouses, whether they provide care for children or other family members in need of assistance or not.
In a recent article in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, Martha T. McCluskey explains the excruciatingly complicated federal income tax code provisions that bear on this issue.
Because married breadwinner/homemaker couples are taxed on their joint income, marriage to a full-time homemaker with zero earnings often puts a full-time breadwinner in a lower tax bracket. Inequality in earnings – as when one spouse has none – generates a marriage tax bonus.
On the other hand, marriage to a person whose earnings resemble one’s own typically offers no tax benefits. Equality in earnings eliminates the marriage tax bonus.
The bonus phases out at highest income levels but is substantial for many upper-middle class couples. The bonus is minimal for couples with income of $40,000 or less, who typically owe little in federal income taxes.
Having a stay-at-home spouse is a luxury that relatively few families can afford. Partly because they typically earn less than whites, African-American married couples are seldom able to indulge. African-Americans are also far less likely than whites to be married.
As Edward McCaffery points out in his book “Taxing Women,” the Social Security system also subsidizes stay-at-home spouses, who are eligible for a spousal benefit whether they have contributed to the Social Security system as employees or not.
Professor McCluskey asserts that the marriage tax bonus should be termed “aid for affluent husband care.” Given the existence of homemaker dads, a more accurate term is “aid for affluent spouse care.”
Whatever we call it, there is no reason to subsidize it. Beautifully decorated living rooms and gourmet meals are delightful after a long day at the office – but they shouldn’t come at taxpayers’ expense.
Raising children and taking care of other family members who genuinely need assistance does offer important public benefits. That’s why we should provide more generous public support for those activities and encourage families who share responsibilities for care.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=e5da002c1fd3157d0c0cec7ab6770ed4