"Kidding Ourselves: Breadwinning, Babies, and Bargaining Power"
(BasicBooks: New York, 1995)
by Rhona Mahony

Synopsis

• Women have not yet achieved economic equality with men. We see this when we look at women's earnings, the consequences of divorce and separation for women, battering, and the importance of women's physical appearance for their economic well-being (w hich has been measured). All these problems stem in large part from women's nearly sole responsibility for raising children.
• Empirical research has not found evidence that women have a different negotiating style from men, but stereotypes about women can hurt them in some negotiations.
• Basic elements of negotiation, from a game-theoretic point of view. This chapter is a mini-course in negotiation, emphasizing the elements that come into play within relationships and families.
• Stories of four marriages in which we see those basic elements in action: a traditional marriage, a marriage in which a traditional young woman changes her mind and wants her husband to do more at home, an egalitarian marriage in which the couple t ries to share child raising fifty-fifty but fails, and an egalitarian marriage in which the father is the primary parent.
• Ways that women--completely unwittingly--lock themselves into child raising and lock their husbands out.
• Debunking myths that suggest that men are not tender and competent as primary parents.
• Why many so-called family-friendly policies of governments and companies don't encourage men to do more housework and child raising and so don't help women.
• The real changes necessary for millions of men to become primary parents. This chapter considers hard questions, such as whether fathers who have left their families might be attracted back into them.

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