‘I’m Just Not Into This Multitasking Thing,’ You Guys Said, And They Were Right

Every Monday, HuffPost Parents shares the hilarious advice from top parenting experts, bloggers and stay-at-home dads on their favorite things.

This week, Slate’s Sharon Begley says that women are “getting so good at multitasking” that “any men who think men can manage as well should be congratulated and told to keep it up.” The advice in that paragraph gets quite specific, though, and some of her arguments fall flat.

Begley provides her readers with not one, but two examples of men, both of whom we now know are married and have kids, who repeatedly and incompetently cover for a female colleague. More to the point, she notes that this guy can do “almost all of [his] own housework.”

Hold on a second. If men can excel at multitasking, they will absolutely be able to do it all! But if male professionals often sound stuck in their ways as they try to juggle their professional and personal lives, this isn’t all that surprising. As I’ve written here before, men’s lives aren’t organized that much differently than women’s. A major survey of American parents in 2015 found that both mothers and fathers reported similar levels of time spent doing household chores. When asked about their “hobbies,” the number one activity was golf; the number two activity was reading, followed by playing video games. (Reminder: Kids are sitting around until 9 or later each night anyway, and talking on the phone with a man about playing golf is about as entertaining as zoning out in front of the boob tube.)

Researchers at the University of Florida found that men were more likely to delay any time off for paternity leave from their regular work-at-home schedule. (The reasons for this vary, but they’re commonly about taking care of the baby in the early weeks while their partners are at work.) They’re more likely to quit a job or take a pay cut. They are also, to be blunt, more likely to miss work. No one person, including the women whose careers they’re trying to support, can do everything, but the idea that we should see male success as a two-step transaction with the expectation that we will never be able to get everything done is out of touch with what’s actually happening in men’s lives.