KINSHIP SNACKS: How To Help Redistribute the Load on Moms

Plus: Aunties explain The Auntie Bulletin; there’s a style called “auntwave”; hetero women are getting divorced; baby slings on statues; a cute kid and her cute dad.

Welcome! I’m Lisa Sibbett and this is The Auntie Bulletin, a weekly newsletter about kinship and community for people who choose to help raise other people’s kids – and the people who love us. You can read my archive here.

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How Aunties Can Help Redistribute the Load Toward Dads

Graffiti in Turin, Italy. Po via Wikimedia Commons.

In grad school, I took a class where we were asked to select an interpersonal situation in our daily lives and track people’s behavior for two hours. We were learning about quantitative research methods, so we were supposed to find something to count or quantify. I happened to be going on a group trip with a bunch of my high school friends that weekend, several of whom had young children or new babies, which felt like a good opportunity to find something to observe.

Now, you should know that I grew up with the men who would be on this trip. Due to one of those microdemographic flukes, most of the kids my age in my hometown were boys, and although I preferred to play with girls when I was young, these guys were all friends with my brothers. Over time they became my friends, too. When they started getting married, their wives also became good friends. (All of the couples in this story are straight).

Okay, so I was heading out for a weekend at the ocean with a bunch of my dude friends from growing up, their wives who were now also my friends, and some toddlers and babies. For my two-hour “research study,” I decided to track how much time the dads spent interacting with the children, versus the moms. I had some guesses about what I might observe, but I wouldn’t have bet one way or the other. I knew from experience and from reading a lot of social science research that moms tend to shoulder much of the domestic and childrearing labor, but also these dads were and are good, loving, involved dads who identify as feminists. So who knew what might happen during this one little slice of time in this one little group of families?

It was the afternoon of our first full day on the trip. There were cozy cabins in which to shelter from the wind as well as a nice campfire going outdoors. I sat down and surreptitiously started taking notes, making tally marks for each interaction and tracking overall engagement time. Want to guess what the data showed?

You got it – the moms’ duration of interaction with the little ones was several times that of the dads.

In today’s how-to, I share one easy, diplomatic, everyday way that Aunties can help disrupt dynamics like this in our loved ones’ relationships. This strategy doesn’t involve confronting anyone, and it doesn’t involve calling out the patriarchy (which can really put a damper on a weekend barbecue) – indeed, it doesn’t require saying anything to anyone at all. This strategy is stealthy. It’s quietly revolutionary in a way that most people won’t even notice. And yet, over time, making this one move again and again might start to rewire assumptions about who does what when it comes to taking care of kids.

Alright, we have arrived at Baby’s (my) First Paywall – eeeeeeee, so cute! – and if you want to find out about the subtle yet patriarchy-smashing move that I’m about to recommend, I’m afraid you’ll need to pony up. A subscription to The Auntie Bulletin is a mere $5 per month or $50 for the year, which is a good deal when you consider that it’ll buy you four whole rounds of Kinship Snacks – and in an occasional weird month with five Mondays, it’ll get you five rounds of snacks. Can you get 4-5 days’ worth of snacks at a convenience store for $5? Can you??? You cannot. $5 is like one day’s worth of snacks, maaaaybe – if you’re frugal and you don’t get a fizzy water.¹