Separate but equal?

FOR MOMS
Don’t overstate your partner’s contributions. After interviewing more than 150 families for her book, Richards noticed that many women feel compelled to play the one-upmanship game of “my husband’s more helpful than yours,” especially in New York, where men are expected to be more liberal and conscientious. “Not only should she be Superwoman,” Richards writes of modern moms, “she should have been able to select and marry Superman.” But overinflating your partner’s contributions or using him as a competitive chip “gives us a false sense of progress,” she says. What’s more, you can wind up harboring resentment that your partner doesn’t live up to your sell job.

Let your partner try—and fail. Richards says she’s seen many friends whisk their crying baby out of their partner’s arms or “enter into World War Three about why a few bites of hot dog aren’t an adequate supper” because they feel like they are the only one who knows how to soothe, feed and play the right way with their child. Jennifer Bienstock, mom of an 18-month-old girl in Park Slope, knows that feeling well. “I tend to think that if you want something done right, do it yourself. And my husband knows that child-care things are not his specialty.” Bienstock voices a notion even the most enlightened of us still cling to: that men and women excel in different areas, and that it is to women that parenting comes more naturally. But Richards counters that “dads often revert to doing less because they are tired of hearing how they did it the wrong way.”