February 12, 1998
Contact:
Lew Harris, (615) 322-2706
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Vanderbilt Divinity School Professor says Couples Must "Share it All"
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Women have gone from the "have it all" culture of the 1970s to the "do it all" of today, but what they really need to embrace is the concept of "share it all," says a Vanderbilt Divinity School professor.
Bonnie Miller-McLemore says that the best family atmosphere is based on equal participation of parents in both paid work and child care. The concept is based on Christian understanding of "equal regard."
Miller-McLemore's ideas are explored in a book she recently co-authored, "From Culture Wars to Common Ground: Religion and the American Family Debate" (Westminster John Knox Press, 1997).
The "ideal" model, she said, would be the "60-hour week," in which the parents split that amount at the work place, giving each of them added time with the family and with one another. The 60 hours could be divided between the partners as 30-30 or 40-20.
Miller-McLemore said there is evidence that the happiest families are those in which both the husband and wife have some paid employment, share household chores and child care and work fewer than two full-time positions.
The push for a more family friendly work place was used with great political effectiveness by President Bill Clinton in the 1996 presidential campaign, she said. Clinton emphasized such proposals as more hospitable job conditions for parents; more flextime; an extension of the Family and Medical Leave Act; 24 hours a year for parents to keep school appointments and take children to doctors; on-site child care at work places; modest steps toward paid paternity and maternity leaves; insurance benefits for part-time workers; and compensatory time off in lieu of overtime. These proposals seemed to acknowledge women's desire to work and the realities of the modern family.
In contrast, Republican candidate Bob Dole wanted to solve work strains with tax reductions that would lower the need for two-income families-a proposal seen as supporting the 19th century industrial family.
Miller-McLemore realizes that implementing a 60-hour week under current economic and social conditions is no simple agenda and will not work for many families, but says cultural acceptance of the importance of shared responsibility that it represents will.
An associate professor of pastoral theology and counseling and mother of three boys, she understands firsthand feeling torn between the pulls of both job and family.
"I have great empathy for women who struggle and feel guilt because of job and family responsibilities," she says. "If there are troubles, women tend to feel a greater sense of responsibility for home and family than men. We need to secure the investment of men in that responsibility. Equal regard is easier to talk about than do. It's very easy to shift back to the woman bearing the responsibility."
Miller-McLemore's book will be the subject of a day-long symposium with responses from renowned scholars in sociology, psychology and religion at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School Feb. 27, sponsored by the Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender and Sexuality.
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