UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND LAW REVIEWVolume 34, No. 3SPRING 2011
"Trophy Husbands" and "Opt-Out" Moms
Beth A. Burkstrand-Reid (fn*)
Introduction
Before women were "opting out" of the workforce (as depicted by the New York Times)(fn1) to stay at home with their children, a subset of fathers had already done so.(fn2) The 2002 Fortune cover story titled Trophy Husbands documented the "dramatic shift afoot" of well-off, educated men leaving paid work in order to tend to the home and kids in support of their powerful wives' careers:(fn3) "Trophy Husbands? Arm candy? Are you kidding? While their fast-track wives go to work, stay-at-home husbands mind the kids. They deserve a trophy for trading places."(fn4) The article portrayed these men as taking one for the team: hitting a sacrifice fly so that their wives could advance.
Nearly one year later, The Opt-Out Revolution, an article in the New York Times Magazine, asked why women-especially well-educated, socioeconomically secure women-were leaving paid work. "Why don't women run the world?" it asked. "Maybe it's because they don't want to."(fn5) The story quoted highly educated, professional women, who left paid work to be full-time caregivers.(fn6) An exemplary quote, offered toward the beginning of the article by a woman with a graduate degree, neatly summarized the piece: "Maternity provides an escape hatch that paternity does not. Having a baby provides a graceful, convenient exit."(fn7) In the same article, Professor Joan Williams articulated a strong critique of the "choice" rhetoric depicting women as opting out of paid work.(fn8) In her book, she argues that many women do not opt out of paid work but are pushed out by "family-hostile" policies.(fn9) Although The Opt-Out Revolution ultimately concluded that the workplace should change to address the needs of working mothers, as Williams pointed out, "the typical opt-out story never gets there."(fn10)
On the surface, Trophy Husbands and The Opt-Out Revolution appear to be strangely disparate commentaries on what is arguably the same act: leaving paid work for the unpaid work of being an at-home parent. But the media portrayals of these parents are decidedly gendered. Fathers are portrayed as heroes for being at home, while women are dropouts or even, in their own words, traitors for turning their backs on the feminist revolution that enabled them to work in the first place.(fn11) Although these discordant representations of at-home parents are distressing, they are even more troubling because they obscure greater truths. First, each story demonstrates that when a mother or a father leaves the paid workforce, we cannot assume it was the product of free choice. Second, presenting these decisions as "choices" in the media may actually harm the drive for work-family law reform.
The argument that women do not drop out but are, in fact, pushed out of the labor force is a central theme of Williams's writing and research, including her most recent book, Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter.(fn12) This Essay seeks to build on Wil-liams's work by using Fortune's Trophy Husbands, an article contemporary to the now-infamous The Opt-Out Revolution, as an entrée into a broad discussion about how fathers fit into the opt-out conversation. Part I briefly describes the current demographics and descriptive qualities of at-home-father families, noting that the challenge of defining who is an at-home father is reflected in both the media and U.S. Census Bureau statistics. It then describes the New York Times' The Opt-Out Revolution and Fortune's Trophy Husbands, two germinal opt-out stories, both of which elevated storylines that persist in national(fn13) and international media today.(fn14) Part II examines whether men in Trophy Husbands actually opted out of paid work or were pushed out by family-unfriendly employment policies, ultimately concluding that some of the men featured may have been pushed out of paid work, at least in part. Part III then discusses how these two opt-out stories may affect the conversations surrounding work-life balance and law reform. The Essay ultimately concludes that the laudatory media coverage of at-home-dad families may actually harm work-family law reform efforts.
I. Men Minding The Children: At-Home-Father Families(fn15)
Any discussion of at-home fathers must start with two seemingly simple inquiries: (1) how is "at-home father" defined and (2) how many at-home fathers are there? The answers to these queries are far from clear. This is problematic: if we cannot understand who is actually an at-home parent, we cannot hope to understand the implications of that decision. Neither the media nor the government brings clarity to this conundrum.
One might presume that, at a minimum, an at-home parent is one who has given up paid work. That assumption may be wrong. As Fortune shows, at-home fathers often keep at least a toe in the labor market by taking part-time consulting or other paid work.(fn16) Some at-home mothers do as well.(fn17) In other words, at-home parents, as portrayed by the media, may lack what we assume as the central characteristic of at-home parents: a singular focus on being a (unpaid) caregiver. Are parents who are both primary caregivers and part-time paid workers "at-home parents"? Are they "working parents"? Or are they a type of parent (and therefore part of a type of family) that has yet to be defined?
The normative questions raised by media coverage of at-home parents are also unresolved by the government's definition of "at-home parents." If the media is overinclusive in its definition of at-home parents, the census is exactly the opposite: excluding many parents from the definition of "at-home parent" even though they serve as primary family ca-regivers. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, an at-home father is a father "not in the labor force" for fifty-two weeks of the prior year and who is "caring for family" while his spouse works.(fn18) The definition of "not in the labor force" is complex, but it generally means that the father is not working at all and is not looking for paid work.(fn19) Some self-defined (and media-defined) "at-home fathers," then, are excluded from the census count because (1) they work part-time (e.g., shift work or work on a freelance or contractual basis) or (2) they are seeking paid employment.(fn20) For these reasons, the census definition of "at-home parents" may exclude a significant number of fathers. For example, one survey indicated that 37% of at-home fathers "were in transition between jobs or careers" and were therefore at home temporarily, presumably excluding them from the census definition.(fn21) Moreover, depending on how long and how hard a father looks for paid work, he may be excluded from census numbers even if he is serving as the family's primary caregiver.
Because the definition of "at-home father" is unclear, the real number of at-home fathers is difficult to determine. In 2008 there were 158,000 at-home fathers, as compared with 5.1 million at-home mothers, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.(fn22) Men between forty and forty-four years old represented the highest number of at-home fathers.(fn23) But we also know that as of 2005, fathers served as primary caretakers for approximately 18% of all children four years old and younger-some two million children-who had an employed mother.(fn24) Unsurprisingly, households with the highest reported incomes had the greatest number of at-home fathers.(fn25) These numbers, again, are based on census data and all of the potential problems that are implied.
Beyond their numbers, it is difficult not to essentialize at-home fathers based on the way they are portrayed in the media: as educationally and socioeconomically privileged men.(fn26) For example, Trophy Husbands takes pains to emphasize that the at-home fathers featured are high-level professionals married to women executives at companies such as Charles Schwab, J.P. Morgan-Chase, Xerox, Sun, Verizon, and Coca-Cola.(fn27) The women included in The Opt-Out Revolution were similarly advantaged. Some attended elite educational institutions, some earned graduate degrees, and some occupied high-status professions; but unlike the wives in Trophy Husbands, they left paid work.(fn28)
Undoubtedly, however, at-home parenting generally-and at-home fatherhood specifically-is not homogenous. Many at-home-father families fall below the poverty line, are not heterosexual, or have varied cultural and geographic backgrounds-all facts which are often over-looked.(fn29) At-home fathers with fewer financial resources are likely un-derrepresented in research: for example, they may have greater difficulty participating in research on their family structure or be less connected to the manner in which the research is conducted.(fn30) Still, articles such as Trophy Husbands and The Opt-Out Revolution portray at-home parenthood as a province exclusively for the wealthy and a product of choice when, in fact, at-home fathers, for example, may be pushed out of paid work by economic realities beyond their control. If the parents in either Trophy Husbands or Opt-Out Revolution fall outside the privileged work-education-socioeconomic-status triad often depicted in the media, it is not apparent.
II. (True or False) Choice(fn31)
"Choice" is a loaded word, as Williams's writing and research on...
