October 15, 2020 by Robert Franklin, JD, Member, National Board of Directors
One of the few silver linings to an otherwise dismal 2020 has been our ever-increasing willingness to ignore Hollywood personalities who are ever-ready to look down from their Olympian heights and inform us, the great unwashed, of what we need to do and think. Particularly during the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak, movie and recording stars seemed to be more than usually moved to opine and with more than their usual cluelessness.
Still, opine they do (SimpleMost, 10/8/20). In this case, Keira Knightly deigns to provide a few words on what “we” do regarding fathers and the workplace and what “we” should be doing. Thank goodness. I was waiting with bated breath.
Interestingly, the article’s writer, Claire Gillespie, clearly believes that Knightly is saying something she’s actually not. Here’s Gillespie’s set-up.
It’s not easy to balance motherhood and work. Millions of moms can attest to that, and nobody has any easy answers. But what about fatherhood and work? Generally, dads aren’t asked about the juggling act, and actress Keira Knightley thinks it’s about time they were.
Gillespie’s right that fathers are rarely asked about how they juggle work and family. That’s probably because, overwhelmingly, the answer is already known. How dads handle their obligations to their children is generally to work more hours, provide more resources and have personal time with their children when they can.
But whatever the reason “we” don’t ask fathers about how they juggle work and childcare, Knightly’s point is quite different.
“Why do we not expect a working man to be looking after their children as much as their partner is?” Knightley asked.
She doesn’t wonder why we don’t ask fathers, she’s demanding that fathers do more hands-on care, a different matter altogether.
And, if she knew the basics of her chosen topic, she’d know the answer to her question. But she doesn’t. She’s absorbed the decades-old public narrative about fathers not doing their share of childcare, mothers working a “second shift,” and related nonsense. But what she hasn’t done is consult the known facts of the matter. Yes, they’re just a couple of mouse clicks away, but Knightly, like so many others, hasn’t taken the trouble to, literally, lift a finger. After all, it’s so much easier to have an opinion if you don’t let facts get in the way. And, since the press always seems to want to know what actors and actresses have to say about matters about which they’re ignorant, why make the effort?
Those pesky facts of course are that someone has to bring home the bacon and that someone tends very strongly to be fathers. Countless studies over several decades demonstrate that, even the best educated and most highly motivated women tend to cut their hours at paid work when their first child arrives. If their family finances permit, they tend to drop out of the rat race entirely.
They do that because they’re powerfully motivated by parenting hormones to devote their full energies to nurturing and caring for their offspring. Hominin females have been doing that for hundreds of thousands of years, and yet people like Knightly convince themselves that the only reason women don’t do more paid work is their male partners’ lack of interest in their children.
How many studies and surveys do people like Knightly need before they notice the obvious – that mothers’ preference for childcare over paid work is what’s calling the shots about who does what when mothers and fathers allocate their time. Dr. Catherine Hakim has plenty of information from women and men who live in the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Overwhelmingly, those women prefer childcare and home duties to paid work and men prefer the converse. And that of course makes for a nice meshing of roles and always has, should Knightly care to notice.
Nor does she notice information from, say, the Department of Labor’s American Time Use Survey that, for many years, has shown men doing more and more childcare and that, when hours spent in childcare and paid work are combined, men and women do statistically equal amounts.
Finally, Knightly has no clue about the single factor that most predicts a man’s getting divorced – the loss of his job. Why might that be? Why should income provision play such an important role in a woman’s attachment to a man? Because that too is how we’ve evolved. For eons, females looked to the dominant male hierarchy for individuals with whom to mate. Over all that time, some 60% of males didn’t get to mate because they hadn’t attained high enough status. And membership in the male hierarchy tended strongly to be a matter of territory protection and resource provision. And what is today’s earning but resource provision?
All this is news to Knightly and her ilk. As is so often the case, toney Hollywood celebs feel entitled to opine on subjects about which they haven’t the most basic information. They’re good people to ignore. It’s a beneficial trend that more and more people are doing so.