Dean McCartney on Parental Roles

In a CNN.com commentary, Dean Kathleen McCartney discusses how parental roles -- particularly the role of the mother -- are a societal construct that needs to change.

In the summer of 1985, I lived a dual life.

In my scholarly work, I argued that traditional gender roles -- the stay-at-home mother, the bread-winning father -- were recent cultural constructs. Throughout human history, women engaged in productive labor alongside men. It wasn't until the Industrial Revolution that men began to work outside the home, tethering women to household responsibilities and child rearing.

My thesis was that attitudes toward motherhood changed as the care of children became the exclusive responsibility of mothers. Modern motherhood is a cultural invention, I argued, not biological destiny.

When I wasn't writing academic papers, I was caring for my baby daughter, working hard to be her primary attachment figure. When she cried out in the night, I wanted her to call for Mommy, not Daddy. I recognized my desire was based on my gender, and I appreciated the irony of this. Nevertheless, I had internalized the values of my culture, and my own scholarship could not help me override this.

Read more at http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/15/opinion/mccartney-working-parents-issues/.