this @CAKitchener piece is the most quietly devastating article on the precarity of working motherhood & women's freedom I've seen in a long time. if you're a man partnered with a woman & you have or want to have kids, you need to read & think about it. https://www.thelily.com/i-had-to-choose-being-a-mother-with-no-child-care-or-summer-camps-women-are-being-edged-out-of-the-workforce/

the young mother in Indiana whose career at a bank had opened up new horizons, engaged her spirit & intellect in ways she hadn't known were possible.

the way motherhood is always framed as a detriment or distraction to a career (very many moms will tell you we're better at our jobs for skills we've learned from parenting), & a job, even a job-creating entrepreneurial job, is always weighed against serving 1 or 2 people

& this shit is *so embedded*. people who aren't examining these assumptions scare the hell out of me at work - basically, IMO anyone who brags about their arrangement to have one partner stay home can't be trusted.

(notice I didn't say "anyone who has a partner staying home". but people who brag about it, IME, think it is the One Right Way from which all other arrangements deviate. they will pity you for not being able to arrange it. this is mostly but not always men.)

& damn, my husband has worked on several teams where he was THE ONLY ONE who didn't have a wife staying home. those expectations. they ramify.

(he's cool, we're cool - we don't achieve 50/50 & we have our arguments, but we talk about it, we think about it.)

I got laid off when our daughter as 1 1/2; I called him & told him I was scared I'd be pressured to become a SAH - he said "that's not you, that's not us". we decided to keep her in daycare while I took a few months off to figure out my next step. HUGE moment in a marriage.

(mind you, a couple years earlier, I had taken a stint as sole breadwinner while he took a year to recover from burnout & figure things out. that was enlightening about the pressure. but everyone needs this kind of support from a partner)

anyway, men, if your partner is or might become a mother, please please understand how many assumptions there are about HOW CONSUMING a priority her children will be, & how illegitimate it's considered for her to have any others. even in 2020.

do care work. don't just do around the house, think & organize. (but don't just think & organize about interesting projects - share the load of the domestic work.) society doesn't really support your lady having an intellectual life; you & she together can make it possible.

protection & support of her intellect & spirit (it is hers, you don't give it to her) in the face of a society that doesn't value it, is a service of true love like no other.