Last time, I shared the intentions (mutuality) and tactics (emphasize us, balance a decision portfolio) couples used to make sense of and manage power in their relationship. Today, the rubber meets the road and we find out how well that worked out for them.
Tl; dr: not spectacularly! Most of the couples in both Jaclyn’s and my samples reproduced gender-traditional dynamics in one or more key ways. Either they made career-related choices driven more by his interests than hers, or they relied disproportionately on her labor to keep the household humming. Or both.
These outcomes are not all that surprising given everything else we know about gender inequality. But nor are they the outcomes we’d expect if mutuality was carrying the day, as most couples told us they intended. Ironically, Jaclyn and I found that it was partly the rhetoric of mutuality that seemed to be getting in the way of actual mutuality.
Here’s the punchline from our paper:
“Couples insisted they were successfully practicing mutuality without accurately tracking whose interests were served and whose labor promoted those interests, suggesting that an uninterrogated belief in the mutuality myth constitutes the updated consensus upholding men’s invisible power.”
That’s a mouthful—though, I like to think, relatively tame by academic standards. Put in simpler terms, we’re arguing that couples were talking the mutuality talk but not always checking to make sure they were also walking the walk.
Jaclyn’s interview sample, you may recall, was comprised of couples at a major turning point: one or both partners was finishing up a professional degree and conducting a national job search. For several of these couples, the “emphasize us” tactic—the one where individual viewpoints were obscured or erased in favor of a single, joint vision—was twisted into something that looked more like emphasizing him. The couple indeed converged on a decision—move here, take this job—that they framed as mutually beneficial. Yet there were glaring asymmetries in the associated costs and benefits for each spouse.
In one particularly stark case, Anthony and Cristina agreed to relocate from the Midwest to D.C. so that Anthony could enroll in his first-choice Ph.D. program. That meant Cristina had to turn down an appealing job offer in their current city (Anthony also had a grad school offer there, albeit one he liked less than the D.C. program) in favor of…unemployment in D.C. Yet both partners held the mutuality line, arguing that the D.C. move would ultimately “open more doors” for each of them and “be valuable for us in the future.”
“The future” loomed large for several other of Jaclyn’s couples, who followed the decision-portfolio-balancing strategy of taking turns. Typically, he won today, with the expectation that she’d get her turn down the line. The problem was that moving for his career often meant taking a step back from hers. In the process, the family became dependent on his earnings in a way that made prioritizing her work later very difficult. (One of the unique factors of Jaclyn’s research is that she conducted interviews over the course of five years, so she could check to see what happened after the couple made their big moves.)
Meanwhile, the couples I interviewed were largely dealing with more quotidian issues than cross-country moves. For these couples, power imbalances showed up most often through inequalities in decision-making labor.
Within the domestic sphere, most of my couples were keen to present themselves as equal partners who worked together to advance their children’s interests. But the parenting vision they presented as joint was often generated by her and then okayed by him. This meant women were frequently getting the short end of the power stick. They were “getting their way,” sure, but that way was typically centered more on what they felt was in the best interests of the kids than on what they wanted for themselves personally. Plus, they had to do the legwork to figure out the best path forward, which was considerably more labor-intensive than men’s up/down vote.
Some couples did recognize women’s greater authority—and labor—in the domestic sphere. But they often used that to justify men’s greater authority in another part of their portfolio: the career space. My respondent Nathan put it this way: “I’m supporting [my wife’s] vision when she wants to set vision, and she’s supporting my vision when I want to set vision. But we don’t typically have competing visions.”
Rather, Nathan took the lead in setting the parameters around things like where the family could live (to be close to his job) and what hours his wife Liz could work (since the couple had only limited childcare, and she filled in the rest). But in return, he happily deferred to Liz’s wishes on most matters having to do with their toddler.
Nathan presented this arrangement as balanced. And indeed, in a different kind of society—one that valued care and wasn’t quite so capitalistic—Liz and Nathan’s domains might indeed be equivalent. In our own, however, Liz’s part of the “portfolio” carried a lot less social value than his.
Jaclyn and I conclude the paper by talking about the academic implications of our findings, but I imagine this audience will be more interested in some practical takeaways for those seeking to manage power in their own relationship. Here are three:
Much as one might wish for power dynamics to be irrelevant in a long-term committed relationship, two people are unlikely to have identical preferences and interests. It’s probably better to acknowledge this fact directly than cling to the hope of perfect mutuality.
When you do contemplate power, make sure to consider processes as well as outcomes. Yes, keeping an eye on who is getting their way how often is important. But it’s also critical to understand what cognitive and emotional labor each partner is expending to get to that result.
Interrogate your conception of a “balanced” portfolio. Dividing and conquering, taking turns, and related strategies are not problematic in themselves, but the rhetoric of “balance” can sometimes paper over inequalities. Are the things you’re balancing really of equivalent value?
Reading recommendation: I am recently back from a Spring Break vacation, and while the trip was more stressful than I bargained for, I did get a lot of great reading time in. The best was the latest novel by Laurie Frankel, Family Family. It’s the story of an adoptive family, written—according to Frankel’s author’s note—to counter the doom-and-gloom narratives that typify adoption stories. The primary descriptor that comes to mind is “charming”; other appropriate adjectives are funny, heartwarming, nuanced. I am a sucker for multi-generational stories that unfold over years, and this novel falls squarely in that category!