Viewing men as breadwinners and women as homemakers represents an antiquated way of thinking.
Thankfully, The Wall Street Journal recently brought attention to this with the article, “How Can the U.S. Get More Women in the Workforce? Ask Canada.” As the title suggests, Canada has a significantly higher percentage of women in the workforce compared to the U.S., and the article examines what the U.S. can do to follow in Canada’s footsteps to increase its percentage.
However, the article omits a crucial answer to the question posed by the headline: make shared parenting the norm after divorce or separation. With Women’s Equality Day having been this Saturday, Aug. 26, now is the time to act.
The reality is that our nation’s family courts still award sole custody to mothers in more than 80 percent of child custody cases. While this feels like a custody battle “victory” at first, over the course of time, mothers realize that they have been trapped in the homemaker role – a place far, far away from the workforce. Our nation’s antiquated family courts are standing in the way of women’s advancement in the workplace. Treating mothers as homemakers (and fathers only as breadwinners who pay child support) keeps women in a position of dependency and is out of touch with modern society.