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A few years ago, on a Sunday afternoon, I was exercising in my basement while my kids were watching a movie. As I stretched and tried to drown out the screeching sounds coming from my TV, I read an essay in
by titled, “Who Gets Quality Leisure?”She started out the essay by sharing a list of stereotypically male-dominated hobbies:
Fishing
Hunting
Playing in sports leagues
Watching sports on television
Watching sports live
Cycling
Distance running
Woodworking / tinkering / carpentry
Car repair
Next, she shared a list of stereotypically female hobbies:
Gardening
Fiber arts (knitting, sewing, weaving, crocheting, quilting, etc etc)
Baking
Reading
Jewelry-making
Decorating/design
Organizing
Crafts, broadly conceived
Then, in a passage that I read approximately 45 times and sent to all my friends, she wrote:
The male-coded/dominated hobbies take place (with the exception of watching sports on television) away from the home, or in a scenario where child supervision would be unsafe (in a shop). They require significant, prolonged time commitments — up to a weekend, in the case of hunting or fishing. They do not perform a task that helps provide for the family (the exception here is if someone is making sweet furniture on the regular, or if they’re feeding their family with the game they shoot).
By contrast, the female-coded/dominated hobbies take place within the domestic sphere. Several contribute to or intersect with other “homemaking” domestic tasks. They are readily interrupted, and amenable to “episodic” engagement (kind of like a soap opera — you can keep leaving and coming back again; it might take a bit to get back into the swing of things, but it isn’t catastrophe). Crucially, you can dual-task while doing them — whether that means watching kids, or being around to take out the baked potatoes, or taking a break to switch the laundry. They blend with the rhythms of domestic life.
I remember feeling all the feelings. I’d never explicitly noticed these patterns, but they were a theme in my life. My hobbies were cooking, gardening, and doing home barre videos (in my basement, frequently interrupted by my kids). My kids’ dad’s hobbies were mountain biking, long-distance running, and doing triathlons.
As many of you know, I recently joined a choir that rehearses once a week and has four concerts a year. Last weekend we had our two spring concerts, which made for a busy couple of days and some tough logistics. Several times over the course of the weekend, I ran into local mom friends who commended me for having such a bold hobby. They said things like: It’s so great that you do this for yourself.
When I heard these cheers of support, I couldn’t help but wonder whether men are ever commended for having hobbies. Do dads get patted on the back because they leave the house to go do something for themselves? I am not sure, but I suspect it’s not very common. And that’s because it’s normal and expected for dads to make time for themselves and to leave the house to do things they enjoy. For women, this kind of self-care is still the exception, rather than the norm. It’s still quite surprising to see.1
I have an idea: Let’s make it unsurprising. Let’s make it totally mundane. Let’s normalize mom hobbies. And not the hobbies that involve kids or can be done while also caretaking — no, let’s normalize the shit out of the hobbies that require mothers to leave the house, without their kids, to do something just for themselves.
I know that the traditional take on this gender imbalance is that dads should help around the house more. Less golfing, more diaper changing. And yes…. that’s true. But the flip side can also be true: Moms should get out of the house more to do things for themselves. And we should try to shrug off the guilt and shame we might feel for doing it. Our misogynistic culture tell us that mothers who prioritize themselves are bad parents. But this is a narrative that serves men and only men.
I know this kind of flippant advice can feel annoying and unwelcome. Just go take a pottery class, for goodness sake! It can feel like pressure on moms to do even more than we are already doing. Self-care should not be yet another task on our to-do lists! But maybe it’s more a matter of re-framing. It’s not so much about doing more things; it’s about a redistribution of tasks — a shift in priorities and who is being prioritized.
I know it’s also really hard to figure out parenting logistics when it comes to parental hobbies, and that it can feel tough to push against the status quo. If you’ve always been around on the weekends on or Wednesday nights, it may not feel easy to ask your partner for that time off. The norm, of course, in most U.S. households is that women do most of the parenting and domestic labor: According to the Gender Equity Policy Institute, the group of Americans with the least amount of free time is 35- to 44-year-old women. Men in this age group have a full hour per day more free time than women do.
But…. though it’s hard, I think those of us who can should push for more time time off, because once we normalize the practice, it will get much easier for everyone. And it may have broad reaching consequences for gender parity. Research suggests that intensive mothering — the idea that moms should sacrifice everything for their kids, including their free time — contributes to the persistence of gender hierarchies; if we start to unravel these expectations, we may also start to unravel the sexism and inequality that go along with them. And if our kids grow up seeing that both moms and dads deserve time to themselves, we’ll see this new normal shape generations to come.
What are your thoughts? And how have you managed to carve out time for yourself outside the home? Share in the comments!
This reminds me of how dads are so often complimented when they take their kids to the playground or (gasp!) set foot in a grocery store with a baby in tow. They’re commended because the act of dads engaging in parenting by themselves in public is still the exception rather than the rule. It shouldn’t be.