Mills's article in the Sunday Times

[MyBrainIsOutOfTune]

Did anyone read it? It's called 'Be My Baby' and is about Eleanor Mills's reaction to reading Rebecca Asher's Shattered: Modern Motherhood and the Illusion of Equality. As it says on top of the page: 'Eleanor Mills is furious with a mother who wants the state to force men to share the burden of childcare so that women can regain their independence.' It says, basically:

• women never had it so good
• most women want to be home and take care of their babies
• poor men, who are supposed to both work and take care of the babies
• and anyway, if the men should ask for leave or for their work hours to be flexible, they're seen as unmanly, so they couldn't do that, of course. Poor men again.
• and anyway, it's stupid to think that workers should be given more rights to be with their children when there's a recession on

I might have been able to read what she wrote without seeing red if she hadn't been ridiculing Asher (whose book I haven't read) throughout, by calling her arguments 'rants' and constantly exaggerating her opinions. Arghh.

Thoughts?

Thoughts?? You haven't given any yourself, but here's mine for what they are worth (I haven't read the article so am going to base my analysis on your analysis):

1. "women never had it so good" Is simply a statement of fact, women today have more rights than they did 20 years ago, 50 years ago, etc. I assume even though you seem to be arguing with Mill's analysis I will assume that you aren't arguing with this point.

1. "most women want to be home and take care of their babies" I would assume is another fact, but if you provide some links to credible studies/statistical analyses to contradict it then i will happily read them.

1. "poor men, who are supposed to both work and take care of the babies" The poor men i would assume is your opinion, without reading the article I will assume these words do not appear in it, so I will ignore this part of your point. As to the main point of the argument, I would assume that Mills is making a point about the book she is critiquing, ie. that Asher's book advocates men working more in the labour market than women while also doing equal childcare. Do you honestly feel this is fair?

1. "and anyway, if the men should ask for leave or for their work hours to be flexible, they're seen as unmanly, so they couldn't do that, of course. Poor men again." I agree with your objection to this point. Although I would like to point out that a father asking for similar treatment as a mother in regards flexible working, parental leave will in most cases NOT receive it, so your argument here is moot.

1. "and anyway, it's stupid to think that workers should be given more rights to be with their children when there's a recession on" I bet Mill's article didn't slant this point is the way you have. She is critiquing a book which is advocating giving FEMALE workers more rights to be with kids, not the androgynous "workers" as you put it.

That's my two cents, queue the, I am wrong/misogynistic/patriarchal comments telling me I am wrong, most of which will not bother to counter any argument I have made

I've just read this article and was furious too.

im22 most of what you have written either misses the point of the book or the article, which isn't a huge surprise if you haven't read either.

(1) Asher isn't arguing about whether women have ever had it so good. She is making the point that motherhood affects a woman's life more than fatherhood affects a man's. Mills manages to miss her point as do you.

(2) I don't believe it's a fact that most women want to give up work to take care of their children full time. They may want to care for babies full time but as children start school, I suspect that most want to work part time or flexibly. Working flexibly or part time is much easier if your partner is willing and able to do the same.

(3) There is no suggestion that men should do more work outside the home and take equal responsibilty for their children. Asher is suggesting that men get more rights to parental leave and flexible working so that they can take equal responsibility for their children.

(4) Again Asher argues for better rights to paternity leave so your point is moot.

(5) The book is not about giving FEMALE workers better rights to parental leave. The book is about men taking an equal part in the care of their children.

karmakameleon, I stated that I had read neither. I also stated i was basing my analysis on the OP's analysis ergo it is her that you must believe to have missed the point. As to your points, your are critiquing the book, not Mill's article giving her critique of the book, as the OP requested.

And to Lois, again, i may not have read the article as you have, but I did read the OP's post, she is asking for analysis of the Telegraph article, not on Ashers book. Since she has summarised the article for us (in an obviously academic and unbiased way), why should I bother to read it? If I wanted to argue with the contents of the article, I would do so on it's forum, not here.

im22 you have managed to read a lot into the OP that isn't there. Just as an example, where does anyone say anything about a "book which is advocating giving FEMALE workers more rights to be with kids" apart from you? How did you make that up?

As to my points, I didn't offer any critique of the book, merely corrected some inaccuracies you stated about it.

why should I bother to read it?

To stop yourself from sounding ridiculous maybe?

"As to my points, I didn't offer any critique of the book, merely corrected some inaccuracies you stated about it".

Sigh...

"(1) Asher isn't arguing about whether women..."
"(3).... Asher is suggesting that men get more rights to parental leave and flexible working so that they"
"(4) Again Asher argues"
"(5) The book is not about "

These are critiques of the book since you are telling me what you believe Asher is advocating in said book. And AGAIN, I was not arguing the book, I was arguing with the OP's analysis of the Daily Telegraph article which argues with the book

StewieGriffinsMom, simply sidestepping the point i made about your post by pretending not to know i was refering to you doesn't change the fact that you were wrong (ie that I had missed the point)

Who is Lois?

OP, I am not surprised the review made you see red. It gets really tiresome when people can't even imagine a world where men and women have an equal opportunity to look after their children and to work, especially when there are other countries where things are a lot better in this respect already.

I might buy the book too- sounds interesting.

I just googled images of Lois. Does someone have the hots for a cartoon laydee??

Please can someone who subscribes to The Times c and p the article so we can all discuss it once we have read it.

im22,

to critique: to review or analyze critically.

Sad to say, but I didn't offer analysis but statement of fact as to what the book is about.

I was arguing with the OP's analysis of the Daily Telegraph article which argues with the book

The article is in the Sunday Times. You were providing a very poor argument about an article you had not read, by making things up that were not in the article or the book that the article was about.

Today is Mother?s Day. As millions of bouquets are delivered and mothers bask in the love of their adoring families ? breakfast in bed, taken out for lunch somewhere nice and generally spoilt rotten ? they probably are not feeling all that put-upon, enslaved or, indeed, victims of a gender-derived injustice. But according to a new book the nation?s mothers have never had it so bad.

Shattered: Modern Motherhood and the Illusion of Equality is by Rebecca Asher, a former deputy editor of that bastion of all things female, Woman?s Hour. Her 270-page mega-whinge was triggered by having a baby. After a decade of freedom and earning, she argues, it is profoundly boring, not to mention unequal and unfair, to find yourself at home changing nappies.

Some may say that is what being a mother is about: after all, the whole point of being a parent is that your child?s needs trump yours. Not in Asher?s view. Her book is nothing short of a call to arms for British mothers to (wo)man the barricades and spearhead a parenting revolution.

?Feminism needs fathers,? she says. ?If women are to have more fulfilling lives when they become mothers, then men have got to step up to the plate and share responsibility for their children.? That sounds fine, but Asher?s argument is flawed. She wants a new Jerusalem where the state forces men and women to share childrelated duties equally. She believes mothers long for more equality with their husbands and wants the government to take up the cudgels so mothers can work more and fathers care more.

This seems suspect to me. A wealth of recent studies show the majority of women, particularly when their children are young, would rather be at home than at work. A YouGov poll for The Sunday Times found that 69% of women would prefer to stay at home to look after their children if money were not a problem. Research by Dr Catherine Hakim of the London School of Economics found that 38% of women wanted to ?marry up? to richer husbands so they could be housewives.

Asher is guilty of projecting onto the wider female population her own feminist values. It is common for women in interesting, highly paid jobs to assume that all women are desperate to emulate their career-oriented sisters. I have been guilty of this myself: when you are a working mother who loves her job, it is easy to see the whole of womankind through one?s own prism.

The years of writing about these issues and the torrent of emails I receive from intelligent women who have chosen to work less, or to stay at home and raise their children, have changed my mind. I now accept that while I choose to work and love the balance I have in my life with a supportive husband, who more than pulls his weight, that is not a choice most women would make.

The thesis of Asher?s polemic is: ?All I did was have a baby. What happened to my life??

When I spoke to her she described how she went from being an independent career woman in a relationship based on equality ?to feeling totally knackered, running around like a headless chicken but achieving nothing.

?Everything that I was, in relation to my life and my partner, went out the window. Of course I had expected motherhood to be hard yet wonderful, but what I hadn?t expected was that our lives would split down gender lines in separate directions. Every day I felt a terrible inequality in my life in relation to my becoming a mother.?

This was summed up for her when she saw a photograph of herself holding her two-month-old son. ?He is in rude health,? she writes. ?His complexion is peachy, his eyes shine with curiosity ... in comparison I appear to be in the grip of a life-sapping disease. My skin is sallow and drawn, the grey offset only by aubergine accents below the eyes.few months later the baby is still thriving but ?I still look deathly ... my dressing gown is covered in an appliqué of baby snot and nappy cream. My T-shirt is stiff with stale breast milk ... it is possible to pick out a slogan. It reads ?This is what a feminist looks like?: what has happened to me?

This the starting point for a rant about how mothers bear the brunt of child-rearing. Well, we do have wombs and the wherewithal to breastfeed, so perhaps that is not so surprising. But she is having none of the biological explanations.

Asher believes government policy props up a system in which men are alienated from their children, forcing women to become the primary parent because mothers take maternity leave while fathers go back to work. This, she argues, gets parents off on the wrong foot, turning them into stereotypes: men as breadwinners and women as their children?s prime carers.

This is anathema to Asher, who is furious that it is mothers who become baby experts and are expected to fix doctor?s appointments, know the local children?s groups, buy clothes and arrange playdates while men swan off to the office (the implication being they are putting their feet up, Googling and guzzling Starbucks).

This female ?burden?, she argues, is at odds with the equality her generation of women was led to expect. She thought ? even though she took a year?s maternity leave and someone had to support the family ? that her husband was also going to do half the work at home and share half the burden.

Asher?s solution to ensuring the male sex puts its shoulder to the wheel (and never again gets away with arriving home just as the children are bathed, read to and falling asleep, thus avoiding the suicide hour of family meltdown) is social engineering through public policy on a grand scale.

This, she suggests, should begin before the birth. Men should be given time off work for antenatal classes and be forced to take several months of fully paid paternity leave, left in sole charge of the baby while the mother goes back to work.

The aim is for fathers to learn to be as capable in charge of their babies as the mother is and to be sufficiently bonded to want to take joint responsibility for their offspring ? leading to a more equal society.

Her inspiration is Iceland (where fathers have three months? paid paternity leave so long as the mother goes back to work) and Sweden (which earmarks a chunk of paid leave exclusively for men).

Such policies, Asher argues, produce more truly egalitarian societies where men and women share responsibility for childcare. Her book is a call for similar policies to be introduced in Britain.

Those doting daddies David Cameron and Nick Clegg are trying to oblige. Today is not only Mother?s Day but also the date from which new fathers are legally entitled to take six months? (unpaid) paternity leave. ?If a mother returns to work before the end of her maternity leave,? said Clegg, ?the father will be able to take the remaining time, up to a maximum of six months.is only the start. Clegg talks of bringing in a right to flexible working for both parents by 2015 and extended periods of parental leave. Is this what parents want?

?In the 1980s and 1990s family policy followed public demand. This new right to six months of paternity leave is ahead of the curve,? said Julia Margo of Demos, the policy think tank.

?There are some largely urban middle-class families where the mothers are the main earners and the fathers take on more of a domestic role, driven in the past few years by the recession, which has seen a cull of typically middle-class male jobs in banking and housing. But in most of middle England and poorer families men and women take on more traditional roles and there is still hostility to the idea of daddy daycare. For most men it is not something they aspire to.is determined to pin the government?s new man credentials to the mast. He said the old rules, where only women were entitled to paid leave (with men getting a paltry two weeks after the birth) were ?Edwardian?.

?These old rules patronised women and marginalised men,? he said. ?They?re based on a view of life in which mothers stay at home and fathers are the breadwinners. Women suffer. Mothers are expected to take on the vast bulk of childcare themselves. If they don?t, they often feel judged. If they do, they worry about being penalised at work. So it?s no surprise that many working women feel they can?t win.

?Children suffer, too often missing out on time with their fathers ? time that is desperately important to their development. We know that where fathers are involved in their children?s lives they develop better friendships, they learn to empathise, they have higher self-esteem and they achieve better at school. Kirby, a family policy expert, is not so sure: ?Clegg is in danger of confusing the importance of fathers being an active presence in their children?s lives ... with them actually being around as carers for their children during the day.

?The truth is there is very little evidence on the impact of father-care on children and the lessons from Norway and Sweden are also not clear-cut. Because of the immensely generous maternity benefits in those societies, women are overwhelmingly employed in the public sector. Private companies are terrified to hire them.has also been observed by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, the American work-life balance expert, who argues that European women ?are being killed with kindness. These immensely generous maternity provisions are putting employers off hiring them and making it harder for women to progress in the workforce?.

Iceland?s economic collapse has forced its government to cut the amount paid to fathers on paternity leave and fewer are taking it up. The timing could not be worse in Britain, too, given our fiscal squeeze.

?Those of us lucky enough to have jobs are having to go the extra mile to keep them,? said Kirby. ?Workplaces are stressful, demanding, busy places and the recession is fuelling that. At a time when competitiveness is paramount for the economy, this is not the time to be introducing massive new employee benefits. Asher's assertion that women feel trapped in their maternal roles and would rather be in the office seems to fly in the face of the facts. The past decade has seen a boom in all things home-oriented. As Kirby puts it, ?home-making is having a moment?.

Far from being isolated in their caring roles, mothers are largely freed by appliances from the heavy domestic drudgery of the past. With the internet and mobile phones they can engage in wider life. The popularity ? and growing political force ? of ?mummy? websites are witness to that.

Justine Roberts, founder of Mumsnet, said: ?When we survey our members they either want to work flexibly or part-time or to stay at home and look after their children, but to be respected for that choice without it being seen as unfeminist.working full-time felt overburdened by also having to put in a double shift on the domestic front and would, she said, appreciate some more help from their men.

Far from being isolated in their caring roles, mothers are largely freed by appliances from the heavy domestic drudgery of the past. With the internet and mobile phones they can engage in wider life. The popularity ? and growing political force ? of ?mummy? websites are witness to that.

Justine Roberts, founder of Mumsnet, said: ?When we survey our members they either want to work flexibly or part-time or to stay at home and look after their children, but to be respected for that choice without it being seen as unfeminist.working full-time felt overburdened by also having to put in a double shift on the domestic front and would, she said, appreciate some more help from their men.

Fair enough: men can be useless, obsessing over ?cooking dinner? when the dishwasher needs emptying, the cat?s been sick, the sheets have not been changed for two weeks and the nine-year-old needs picking up from Brownies. Yet it is the men in Asher?s book that to me command most sympathy. They cannot win. She berates them for assuming a breadwinner role but also for their lack of involvement at home.

As her husband puts it after she has given him a hard time for ?tapping away on his BlackBerry? when she is trying to go to sleep (the poor man was trying to catch up on the emails he had missed because he came home to help her): ?I feel as if I get nothing right, I?m failing at work and I?m failing at home." Rather than feeling sympathetic, this cheers Asher up; her husband?s use of the working mother?s favourite moan is, she reckons, ?a perverse kind of equality?.

She realises there is something odd going on here. The mothers in her book are, she admits, ?inconsistent, claiming they are frustrated with having to deal with the majority of the domestic burden, yet at the same time unwilling to cede any control over home life?.

She describes control-freak mothers who will not allow their husbands to dress the children or make the supper because, as one says, ?I am not confident that it would be done to my standards ... I?ve done it all this far. So, yes, it?s better if I do it. Such women, Asher argues, ?become invested in their identity as the unsupported domestic drudge and seek to maintain it rather than reverse it?. She quotes one called Jane: ?If I?m completely honest, there is almost a bit of a martyr thing going on. I resent it, so I go on and on about it to make a point." Poor men. Damned if they do, damned if they don?t. It seems to me they are stuck in a classic dilemma.

?When I married my wife she was a lawyer, like me,? said David, 42. ?When she had our first child I assumed that after six months or so she would go back to work. But she didn?t. And then we had another baby. And now it?s been four years or so and, without us discussing it, I?ve become the sole breadwinner and she?s a stay-at-home mum.

?Yet I don?t get to enjoy any of the perks of the old-style breadwinner; there?s no supper on the table when I get in. More often she hands me a screaming child and looks grumpy that I haven?t been there. But I?m doing my best and I?m stuck with the grind of paying the mortgage and keeping us all for the next 25 years; I don?t remember signing up to that.many men say they want to spend more time with their children, few ask their bosses for the flexible hours that Asher says they should have, or the four-day week that her husband now works.

Steve, 38, explained why: ?If you ask for flexi-time you?re seen as a wimp, unmanly, not in the career game.fathers described how hard it is to face up to an older generation of men who have sacrificed family lives on the altars of their careers and say you want to make a different choice. ?I would like to work more family-friendly hours,? one breadwinner said. ?But it is frowned upon for men to ask. You are seen as not fully committed. It is much easier for women to ask for those concessions and be heard than it is for fathers.fathers need to man up a bit and show some courage if they want family-friendly hours. But Asher?s analysis, blaming ?the system? for forcing women into choosing part-time work or staying at home with their children, seemed bewilderingly retro to most mothers I spoke to.

One mother of two who had read the book as soon as it came out last week described it as profoundly irritating. ?I wanted to hit her and hurl it against the wall,? she said.

?It?s such a whinge. It totally ignores the fact that women today have so many choices. In fact we?ve never had it so good. We can choose to work, or work a bit, and if we?re lucky enough to have partners to support us we can choose to stay at home.

?Asher is massively bitter about the demands children make of women but that is what becoming a mother means: the baby?s needs trump yours. Maybe that is what modern women ? spoilt by having a decade where they can work hard and play hard and follow their own whims ? find hardest to take: their needs no longer come first. Well, that is parenthood. That?s the deal when you become a mum.?

Happy Mother?s Day.

Copy pasted for im22's benefit.

Thank you karma, And my apologies for mistaking which paper it was in.

That said, I will now waste my time re arguing your 5 points from earlier:

(1) Asher isn't arguing about whether women have ever had it so good. She is making the point that motherhood affects a woman's life more than fatherhood affects a man's. Mills manages to miss her point as do you.
Really? From the article I see, it seems that child rearing effecting men's lives differently, that you attribute more importance to the ways in which the mothers life is affected is an opinion, which is how you attribute the more

(2) I don't believe it's a fact that most women want to give up work to take care of their children full time. They may want to care for babies full time but as children start school, I suspect that most want to work part time or flexibly. Working flexibly or part time is much easier if your partner is willing and able to do the same.
"A YouGov poll for The Sunday Times found that 69% of women would prefer to stay at home to look after their children if money were not a problem. Research by Dr Catherine Hakim of the London School of Economics found that 38% of women wanted to ?marry up? to richer husbands so they could be housewives" Where does it say that their opinion changes once school age is reached? Whether you believe it to be a fact or not is irrelevant, what is relevant is the opinion of the majority of women who are faced with the choice in this situation

(3) There is no suggestion that men should do more work outside the home and take equal responsibilty for their children. Asher is suggesting that men get more rights to parental leave and flexible working so that they can take equal responsibility for their children.
As your point states, she wants men to get "more rights" to parental leave, based on the Sweden and Iceland models, in neither of which is the parental leave close to being equal, and therefore how can the work/childcare balance be equal
As an aside, I would like to point out that earning/paying for things in the breadwinner role does constitute taking responsibility, although I'm sure that fact is irrelevant to you

(4) Again Asher argues for better rights to paternity leave so your point is moot
My point (that men do not receive equal flexible working etc to help with the childcare) that you are considering rendered moot here was a point aimed at the OP's opinion that men don't ask for flexible time because it would seem unmanly, not at any point raised in the article. That said I am glad that Asher argues for them, even if she does so out of the wrong intentions

(5) The book is not about giving FEMALE workers better rights to parental leave. The book is about men taking an equal part in the care of their children
OK, I made a wrong assumption about the book there. Having now read the article though, it also seems to me that you are wrong. The book seems to be about forcing men to take an equal part of what, is in your (and Asher's) opinion, the caring of the children whether either mother or father want to

im22, I'll try again, but how much gets through depends on the intelligence of the reader.

(1) I do not attribute more importance to the ways in which the mothers life is affected. Asher believes that men and women bear differing amounts of the burden of parenthood. This is from her website:

Becoming a mother is a tremendously rewarding experience, but for all the current talk of shared parenting, women still find themselves bearing primary responsibility for bringing up their children, to the detriment of everything else in their lives. Fathers, conversely, are dragooned into the role of main earner, becoming semi-detached from their families.

That is what her book is about. Not about how well mothers are doing compared to other times but to fathers. Mills doesn't seem to get that. Nor do you.

(2) Have you read Hakim's research? Some is available on the LSE website. Take a look at this. The top line shows that 60% (varies from 40 to 80%) of women want to combine work with family. If you go to the bottom, she puts the figure at 69% for the UK.

(3) In your original point you said:

"As to the main point of the argument, I would assume that Mills is making a point about the book she is critiquing, ie. that Asher's book advocates men working more in the labour market than women while also doing equal childcare."

Asher advocates no such thing. She wants balance for both parents.

(4) How do you know what Asher's intentions are? Have you read the book?

(5) I'm not aware of Asher wishing to "force" men to take equal care of their children as Mills claims, but maybe I haven't got to that part of the book yet. Perhaps you could refer me to the right chapter.

Have been away, so haven't seen this until now. Thanks for answering! Am slightly confused as to why anyone would want to respond to my (obviously very thoughtful and academic) summary of an article and immediately assume that I'm saying something other than the article without even reading the article, but still interesting..

The assumption that the 'poor men' had to be my words illustrate my point about Mills's language. It makes it impossible to take what she says seriously when she has to start out with calling a book a 'mega-whinge'. And the lovely introduction about all the mothers 'basking in the love of their adoring families' at the beginning, conjuring up a 50's style lovely family which you obviously have to be an evil witch to want to find fault with.

I included the point about mothers' never having it so good, not because I disagreed, but because whenever this point is included, it is inferred that we should shut up already and enjoy what we've got. There's an ongoing debate in the newspaper where I live that started with a man saying that women should be happy that equality had come so far - what with him changing diapers and crawling on the floor with his children and all.

The idea that men shouldn't ask for flexible leave or other childcare rights because they wouldn't receive them anyway is interesting, because I'd imaging that is where it stops for most people. This is what the world is like, so we have to deal with it, and so on. But if you want to change something, you'd have to push further, and not be satisfied with 'it's just the way it is.'

Also, for the life of me, I can't understand what the point about maternity rights' being so good in Scandinavia that companies don't want to hire women anymore is saying about anything. Surely, if men and women had equal rights to be home with their children (and exercised those rights), employers wouldn't have this reason for discriminating against women anymore?

I haven't read the book, I did read the ST article. My general feeling is that sometimes it can be hard to adjust to motherhood. My generation (those with young children) have never had it so "good" in that we have more options about our work, and more requirements materially than previous generations. My mother's schoolfriends aimed at getting a secretarial job out of school before they married their childhood sweethearts and had babies and were SAHMs. That was the norm for them. Now, some argue they need to work to pay the bills which include nice cars, gadgets, clothes and holidays - things which were not on my parents' radar. Others want to work because, after 15odd years of a career they've worked hard for, they enjoy it/don't want to give it up (step off the ladder for5 years)/cannot face days spent knee deep in nappies and playdoh. That's also their choice. Some have to work to pay the bills. Some don't.

It seems that Asher falls in to the category that has found it hard to adjust to the reality that staying at home with baby can be. It is tiring, routine and you can feel like you have morphed into the 1960's housewife - preparing dinner for husband and keeping house and children tidy and organised. As a mother, you do have to put others before yourself, which can be hard for a woman used to living the life at work and play that she wants rather than what others need. I don't know what the situation with her partner is, but it is not possible for all dh/dps to work part-time along with the mother and still pay the bills as she is suggesting.

What baffles me is that the situation is worth moaning about. I rather agree with the person quoted at the end of the article. Motherhood - parenthood - changes your life and you cease to be the centre of the universe (although, bizarrely, you are the centre of your child's). Few women are completely happy trying to balance work, life, money, time but you should, when you sign up for parenthood, just try to do the best job at it as you can. Asher writing a book saying that it changes a woman's life more than it changes a man's is stating the obvious. However, I can't help but feel that maybe she wouldn't be happy if it didn't (there's a comment in the article about not letting men do jobs because they don't do them well enough anyway)
....and if she didn't like herself staring back from the photos grey and covered in dried baby milk, then she can do something about it. Certainly, our mothers and grandmothers wouldn't have let that happen!

As a bit of an aside, I met up with a couple today who I hadn't seen in ages and in the interim they have had a child. They now both work part time and seem to truly 50/50 on the parenting/housework/paid work thing. I admit to quizzing them (gently) on their set up in the light of many threads on MN.

And it struck me that the person who really has the choice in most of these situations is the man. All the talk about women's choices between SAHM/WOHM is largely specious unless the man effectively grants that choice by agreeing to take up 100% of his 50%. I am certain that I have missed that point being made many times over on this forum, but it just hit home today.

I can't see why Asher was ranting-if you don't want to be the one doing the child care then don't have children-or agree with your DH first.
I feel very priviledged to have been the main carer and it beats any paid employment hands down. I can't imagine the sheer misery of having to go out of the home leaving DH doing the child care.
Surely it is just a thing for couples to decide before the have DCs. My DH would have hated it, so we were well suited. If neither of you want to be the main carer why not have a child free life?