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As a writer, I’ve always believed that words are powerful, but I’ve never taken them too seriously. In college, I was the one not-so-subtly rolling my eyes when people complained that first-year students should be called “freshpeople*,” not “freshmen.” There is a point where we become too PC, and we’re so careful about phrasing every word so carefully that the words themselves become a distraction, tearing you away from the heart of the conversation.
However, there are some cases where a shift in word choice can have a powerful effect on the way we view ourselves and the world, opening us up to a new way of thinking. When Anne-Marie Slaughter, author of Unfinished Business and former director of U.S. Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department, told Glamour she thought we needed to start referring to “working parents” and particularly, “working fathers,” I had to stop and re-read her sentence. She made a compelling point: “Working mom” was such a commonplace term, but when does anybody refer to a man as a “working dad?” He’s just a man.
Her rationale was interesting: The phrases put emphasis that once a man becomes a dad, his life doesn’t need to change that much, but when a woman becomes a mom, she’s either “working” or “stay-at-home,” and there are heavy stigmas attached to each. Slaughter argues that not considering fathers with jobs “working dads” subtly puts the pressure on women to scale back and sacrifice their careers when they have kids — and it also pushes men away from taking on a bigger role in parenting.
“Imagine that you came in to work for a guy and he said, ‘Well, I’m biologically better at this, but I’ll micromanage you until you can do it.’ You’d sue him! But that’s how we treat our husbands at home,” Slaughter writes.
This bickering over word choice may be a little extreme, but it’s interesting to think about, particularly as more companies in the U.S. start to consider paid paternity leave. In my mind, maternity and paternity leave seem crucial for bonding with a baby and adjusting to a whole new way of life; it just seems like a powerful way to get both partners on the same page, sharing the work of raising a child, if companies would allow it. It’s an expensive undertaking for businesses, for sure, but it could help lower the wage gap, according to some reports, and that level of support could boost employee morale overall.
In my mind, this discussion can’t end with simply changing a word or phrase, and I’m sure Slaughter doesn’t intend for it to, either. What this does achieve, however, is a renewed conversation about finding work/life balance and encouraging men and women to feel comfortable creating the parenting situation that works best for them, not adopting whatever model they grew up with, or what seems biologically or traditionally ‘reasonable.’
It’s much easier to change how we speak than how we act (or what we, deep down in our I’d-never-say-this-out-loud-but-secretly-think-it hearts, believe), but starting a conversation is the first step. What are your thoughts on this?
*You could certainly make a similar argument for saying ‘freshpeople,’ though in my experience as a woman in college, I never felt discouraged or held back by being called a ‘freshman.’ To me, the term was gender neutral, so the fight to change that term doesn’t appeal to me as much as others.
This post is part of Life Between Weekends’ Tuesday Takeaway series. Every Tuesday, we’ll share the most compelling insight we’ve gleaned from a book, movie, tour, documentary or article to inspire you during the workday.
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