Stephanie Kuntz

And I just think to talk to people, explain to people the kind of earworms that have been handed down to us, all of these traditions.

assumptions about who likes what, who can do what.

I call them earworms because they echo in our head and they kind of get in the way of building new melodies and new rhythms to work together.

So it may not always be that the men are intentionally

not stepping up to the plate.

But they and the whole way that society is organized means that they can't step up to the plate.

Let me give you an example.

It makes a lot of sense in a heterosexual marriage for the woman who bears the child to stay home in the early days.

You know, it was quite a physical thing.

You may be nursing.

And so it makes a lot of sense.

And it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be that way forever.

It doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to not be able to continue your work.

But the longer it goes on, the more tempting it is for people to see the mother

as the one who is the person in charge of the child.

And if the man is out of the home, even with the best intentions, he doesn't understand just how much work and how urgently that work has to be done.

So you begin to get into this pattern that may not be at all conscious on either people's part.

But if you don't actually say, no, this is something that will happen to us given the way

our work is organized and the way child care works in society, we have to actively fight against this happening.

And that takes a lot of thought.