My parents were relatively progressive and didn’t have different advice for me, their son, than from what they told my sisters. But advice is explicit, osmosis isn’t. Osmosis is unconscious. Despite our parents’ best efforts at equality, we still absorbed the fact that my dad worked full time while my mom worked half days. In fact, in our admittedly insular world, all men worked full time while moms were exactly that – moms.
The message that a boy in these circumstances receives is that when he grows up, he will work. He must work. He will have no choice but to work. That is what men do. They support their families financially.
I imagine the message a girl in these circumstances receives is that when she grows up, she may work, but she may not. She may have the choice to work or not. She may get married and not have to work.
We’d like to think that things have changed a lot. But have they really? Many more women work now than in the ’80s, but it is still far more commonly the mom who looks after the kids and the dad who goes to work.
In research that 10X conducted, we found that most women defer to their husbands when it comes to decision-making around investments and retirement planning – and that was among millennials, who we think of as more progressive and empowered.
Even anecdotally we know this to be true. For example, when couples divorce, you seldom hear of husbands fretting over the financial changes. I suspect the stress that many women in this situation feel is not only around how much money she will have, but also around how little financial control she has had. Often finances have been left to the husband, and divorced women find themselves having to budget or look after their savings and pensions themselves for the first time.
In this light, changes since my childhood seem incremental at best, and the message my own two daughters are getting is probably not very different from the one my sisters and I did.
How do I feel about that? Honestly, I’m not sure.
On the one hand, I want my daughters to grow up capable of supporting themselves, able to be self-sufficient and independent. I also want them to rage against the machine that undervalues motherhood, pays women less and still expects them to juggle family and career. On the other hand, I accept that society is the way it is and that, whether I like it or not, my daughters will internalise what they see around them.
I could sit them down for some important money talks, but they’re still young and I don’t want to burden them with adult problems. There’s plenty time for that, and I’d rather they play for as long as they can. But if I leave it until they’re adolescents, will it be too late? Our first few years in the world set the tone for the rest of our lives, if psychologists are right, and they probably are.
So what’s a dad to do? I wish I could tell you I have the answers and a five point plan, but I don’t. A lot of parenthood is made up along the way. We’re buskers, faking it until we make it.
- Sasha Sanders
