Maybe what we need is a 36-hour day

The NYT has a new article on women's mother's participation in the labor market: though, as the article itself concedes, it's impossible to know if the hypothesis being presented is accurate, I must say: it feels right to me.

. . . the research suggests that women may have already hit a wall in the amount of work that they can pack into a week. From 1965 to 1995, Professor Bianchi found, the average time mothers spent doing paid work jumped to almost 26 hours a week from 9 hours. The time spent on housework fell commensurately, to 19 hours from 32.

Then the trend stalled. From 1995 to 2003, mothers, on average, spent about the same amount of time on household chores, but their work outside the home fell by almost four hours a week.

"Looking toward the future," said Francine D. Blau, a professor of economics at Cornell University, "one can question how much further increases in women's participation can be had without more reallocation of household work."

Part of what I like about this argument is that it provides a clean, clear, human alternative to the endless ridiculous "mommy wars" that we all know are wrong, but can't help fighting: if, broadly speaking, we've wrung about all we can out of the 24 hours in a day, then it makes sense both that some women would step back from the grueling regime in favor of a more balanced personal life, regardless of the possible risks they run in doing so: when you've reached the limit of your energy, you can't keep going and that's all there is to it. It also makes sense that women who are still trying to hang onto the stressful balancing act of career, children, and coupledom would feel that they're singlehandedly carrying the world on their shoulders. And given the pressures on all of us, of course we're all defensive and insistent and argumentative about our choices. When you're half-exhausted, you're gonna be impatient and irritable, and when you've made a reasonable but painful decision, you're gonna be touchy if someone questions whether or not it was the right one.

I wonder if the guys are as tired as we are. And if not, whether they'll have to get to this point, too, before things will change.