All the Rage

Mothers, Fathers, and the Myth of Equal Partnership

By: Darcy Lockman

Narrated by: Abby Craden

Picking up where All Joy and No Fun left off, All the Rage sets out to understand why, in an age of so-called equality, full-time working mothers still carry.

The inequity of domestic life is one of the most profound and perplexing conundrums of our time. In an era of seemingly unprecedented feminist activism, enlightenment, and change, data shows that one area of gender inequality stubbornly remains: the unequal amount of parental work that falls on women, no matter their class or professional status. All the Rage investigates the cause of this pervasive inequity to answer why, in households where both parents work full-time, mothers’ contributions - even those women who earn more than their partners - still outweigh fathers’ when it comes to raising children and maintaining a home.

How can this be? How, in a culture that has studied and lauded the benefits of fathers’ being active, present partners in child-rearing - benefits that extend far beyond the well-being of the kids themselves - can a commitment to fairness in marriage melt away upon the arrival of children?

Darcy Lockman drills deep to find answers, exploring how the feminist promise of true domestic partnership almost never, in fact, comes to pass. Starting with her own case study as ground zero, she moves outward, chronicling the experiences of a diverse cross-section of women raising children with men; visiting new mothers’ groups and pioneering co-parenting specialists; and interviewing experts across academic fields, from gender studies professors and anthropologists to neuroscientists and primatologists.

Lockman identifies three tenets that have upheld the cultural gender division of labor and peels back the reasons both men and women are culpable. Her findings are startling - and offer a catalyst for true change.

©2019 Darcy Lockman (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers

Bravo

Such a great book. It is well thought out and written. I personally loved hearing the research and data driven analysis behind all the points and chapters. Worth another read/hearing.

Omg, finally someone who gets it!

Loved it. Well voiced and not bland or flat. So happy I found this book. I literally cried to have someone finally understand what I've been trying to communicate to my husband about teamwork in our relationship and not wanting to tell him to do things. He's not a kid, lol, so he should be capable of see full trash = take out trash. Having the burden of "tell me what we need to do" is draining. Like, how could I know if I didn't go look either? Just check it! Example, but yeah.

EDIT: changing to 4 stars. I had my husband sit with me to listen to this and while it has given us some language to use like "stonewalling" and "cognitive load", much of the dialog reads as a lengthy complaint. I don't think we need three chapters at the beginning to describe women's discontent, though the data offered about couples who really are equal having more sexis an important one. Like, no duh. If she feels supported and not like a slave, of course she'll like you more. You have to be attracted to someone to want to have sex with them (usually), and how can you want that when you're full of resentment and wondering if you should just divorce and run away? Haha. But the reason I'm knocking it down a star is because it doesn't provide productive solutions to the problem. It states the problem with lots of reasons men should want to be equals and maybe don't know how to be, but doesn't give you something to work on or with to improve the situation. I would pair it with something that has constructive how tos with it.

For me, this is a huge part of the baby making decision. I already have my hands full. There's no flipping way I'm adding a second dependent on me to the equation, especially one that definitely can't help themselves for 4-6 years depending on intelligence.

My husband has started trying more, but I still get more "send me a list" or "did you venmo me for my half of the grocery?" when he could do all that himself. But listening to this together has enabled me to stop enabling his helplessness. When he does that, I say, "I'm not the house manager. Why don't you go peek at the laundry a few times a week to see if it needs to be done?" He came home with groceries the other day, though it was mostly stuff from our list on the fridge, he usually never does any shopping, so that's a big step in the right direction already. I'm trying to ease him into being independent as a human again, but also stepping back more to let him just think about things and deal with them.

Ladies, make your husbands listen to this with you if you entered the relationship as equals and he was absolutely on board about it in the past. If they still don't get it after this and want to improve sharing cognitive load of family and home tasks, they never will. Run. Don't have kids with that person.

Must read for men

It was almost overwhelming how often this book described the patterns of inequity that exist in my own marriage, and the things my wife says her friends also experience with their husbands. The mental load is a real thing, and this book is an incredible resource for helping to get your head out of your ...
Any man who is surprised by the resentment women feel needs to read this.

Worth a read

Though there is a fair amount of research cited, this book is mostly a nuanced articulation of the challenges working mothers face around division of household and childcare labor. Understanding that this is indeed happening is a crucial step towards changing it.

A book for any couple thinking of having kids

This book had some great insights backed by science. There are few mothers who wouldn't connect with the stories in this book. I wish it wasn't so heavily targeted at women as I think this should be mandatory reading for men in committed relationships.

The book that more women need

This book was amazing! It really laid out my biggest concerns about having children and made me feel like I'm no longer being gaslighted. Women doing most of the work of childcare is a result of our patriarchal society and deep socialization... It is NOT "natural". We need to fight the system and I feel like this book is a great start. We need to fight the system for everyone's happiness.

Validating

Loved the content and the performance. This book is everything I've felt for so many years actually written out and explained.

A great book, eye opening if you are a man

Reading this book I had the chance to see a different perspective on parenting and on house labouring and distribution of tasks.
I believe that both men and women need to be equally involved into a relationship and into parenting.

Amazing book!

Thank you for putting down on paper everything that women all over the world have known and felt for decades. I feel seen and heard. I feel validated. I feel overwhelmed with what we are trying to achieve as women in this world. The weight of it seems to always fall to us, but hopefully, men will read this book as well and finally take it upon themselves to pick up their equal share and do the right thing... and their kids will see them doing it.

FINALLY, an author comes along and NAILS it!

I'm a mother of 2, married to a progressive husband who, in so many ways, is my very best friend. Before we had children, we knew one another for well over a decade and I would have insisted on his being a feminist and egalitarian thinker. Again, before we had children. Then, somehow, little by little and, then, all at once, the lion's share of domestic labor fell into my lap. Not only the obvious stuff like childcare. Something more insidious set in, as my head filled with mental lists, the work of "noticing" detailed necessities around the household, a kind of air-traffic-control of domestic details swirling around my head, daily. The laundry, replenishing groceries, responding to bday party RSVP's, clipping toe nails, brushing teeth, all of the things, that, taken together, add up to our children's quality of life.

In short, responsibility for the standards we live in, they fell on me. The cost has been my freedom, and the effect--as Ms. Lockman puts it--is my shocking new status as second class citizen in my own home.

Not to mention, similar to Ms. Lockman, I never saw it coming.

Before I read this book, I could never seem to locate any articles, parenting blogs, FB posts, academic articles or anything that would describe so precisely the nuances of this horrendous cycle. Always, the writing seemed to fall short, misidentifying the central role that men play in generating the problem. Failing to identify it as their issue before it spills over to become a dynamic matter, between us.

Then I picked up ALL THE RAGE, and Ms. Lockman finally, FINALLY spoke to the sophisticated presentation of this issue, of supposedly 'progressive' men who seem entirely unaware that their ideas of equality do more to change their perceptions of themselves than they do to actually change their day-to-day behavior.

ALL THE RAGE gets to the heart of the matter: casting aside comparisons between modern day progressive men vs the Don Draper dads of the past, instead directing our attention where it truly belongs: an unapologetic, side-by-side comparison of the workload **between fathers and mothers**. Are men allowed to get away with doing less--at the expense of their partners? THAT is the question. Period. Point blank. And, if so, then why?

Ms. Lockman draws upon history and social science research, but her focus is squarely on the personal. So accurate are her nuanced descriptions of these every day inequities, I felt she was with me in my home, observing and writing about the most complicated and confusing points of tension between my husband and I, as we struggle to reconcile who we thought we would be as parents with who we really are. The takeaways are validating, heartbreaking and enraging all the at once.

Brava! Thank you Ms. Lockman, for directing the conversation where it truly belongs, finally.