‘But the way he presented it was that it was a given that childcare was a woman's responsibility. That may be the case but it shouldn't be and actually it's not for a lot of us.’
I understand there’s an important point here about pushing some responsibility on to men in couples.
But do we not talk a lot on here about class analysis? The class analysis is that the vast majority of caring work is done by women, and often those women have inadequate support networks.
It is a bit like saying that we shouldn’t talk about the problems of domestic violence for women, because domestic violence shouldn’t exist, or because some women aren’t experiencing it.
And of course in other ways it is very different, because very many women don’t actually want to make arrangements with men over childcare, don’t live with a man and don’t think childcare is something that can be dealt with in the domestic sphere during a pandemic, because they are used to interdependencies with other households that they have been isolated from in a pandemic.
There’s a tension here between not stereotyping women as primary carers, acknowledging that primary carers are usually women and need support, and recognising that just because a woman has children that doesn’t mean she should have any kind of arrangement with the father.
There is also a tension between recognising that some men could do more and recognising that almost all violent and sexual crime is carried out by men, and that all of those crimes have victims.
No, women should not have all the responsibility for children, because society as a whole has a responsibility. The expectation should not be that women privately negotiate with a father or partner.