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Main St. • Royal Oak 548-4422 Advertising in The Jewish News Gets Results Place Your Ad Today. Call 354-6060 104 FRIDAY, AUGUST 24, 1990 However, even outside help does not resolve the second- shift problem. It's really a "his-and-hers" issue that re- quire an attitude change about sharing. Wives become upset when they see their husbands watching TV, read- ing a newspaper or relaxing with the children while they're busy running the household. Wives need "down time," too. When responsibilities aren't shared, working wives often make two big mistakes. First, they nag. Second, they react with sullen, quiet resentment. Both approaches fail, because they're negative, say the experts. One way to handle the situ- ation is to apply negotiating skills developed in the work- place to the home — but in a loving way. Encourage the husband to become involved and then ensure his con- tinued involvement with ver- bal reward. Saying "thank you" is important. So is in- volving the children, so they'll see the family working as a team and see their father sharing. Women are warned against perfectionism. Men complain that their wives delegate housework and then redo it themselves. Dr. Renee Magid, author of When Mothers and Fathers Work, says that if a wife delegates responsibility she also has to delegate ownership. "You have to trust your husband and let him do the job his way. If you don't, you won't get very far in shar- ing." The goal, says Dr. Magid, an associate professor at Beaver College, in Pennsyl- vania, "is to create the feeling that this is teamwork. It's im- portant to come away feeling like everybody wins." This idea of teamwork may be even harder to instill in husbands whose spouses work at home. While it is now estimated that 70 percent of working wives/mothers go out to work each day, there is still a hefty percentage who have to, or choose to, work at home. Must they automatically do more of the second shift? "Until recently, I was doing all the housework. There was no division of chores — Bob who's a sound engineer, was never home till late every night. I was really a single parent," says Jill G., 38-years- old, an illustrator of children's books and mother of two girls. "I always felt my primary role was mother, but I also love my work. I decided, however, to give the kids a childhood at home with a parent rather than pay for a substitute or day care." Jill does freelance projects at home but has had to trade off some career growth by turn- ing down jobs that would have interfered with her family's needs. A turning point in their schedule came two years ago, when the family moved into a much larger house. "I needed Bob's help to maintain the house, and I wanted the girls to see their father helping me," says Jill. When she started asking her husband for help, she got it, but only gradually. "For the past two years I've been continually communicating and negoti- ating. Bob is much more in- volved now in parenting and chores. When he comes home I know I can go off duty and leave everything to him while I'm up in the studio working. And I also feel that sharing household chores is really a major way my husband shows he loves me. So it definitely can affect a marriage." One myth that was explod- ed in the 1980s was the con- cept of the "superwoman." In trying to juggle a job, mar- riage, mothering and house- work, working women found that no one can do it all. In the 1990s, the trend is the three-career couple: his job, her job and their parent- ing. Even when dual-career couples have a housekeeper, the woman still bears the greater responsibility for child care and household management. So it's usually the fast-track wife who cuts back when the child is very young. Even though a younger generation of men — par- ticularly today's twenty- somethings — have grown up in households in which their mothers worked, it does not necessarily follow that chores in the home will be shared fifty/fifty. Women have changed, the work force has changed, but men and the workplace have yet to adapt to these changes. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild doesn't place the blame sole- ly on husbands, explaining that men are pressured by their wives to do more at home, although they live in a society where they are measured by their success in the workplace. Perhaps the problem is not so much who winds up taking care of the household and children, but work schedules that are incompatible with family life. ❑ This article first appeared in the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent's "INSIDE" magazine.