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During the past 20 years, the author has watch China move from being a developing country into an industrial superpower
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Mulhern understood that his wife faced “extraordinary pressure” during her two terms, including a $1.7 billion budget deficit and the bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler. She had limited time for their three children, who were 6, 11, and 14 when she was elected, and even less for him. “I didn’t want to say, ‘hey, you missed my birthday’ or ‘you haven’t even noticed what happened with the kids,’ but I sometimes felt resentful,” he says.
Mulhern says he complained to his wife that they spent 95 percent of the little time they had together talking about her work. He missed the attention she used to give him but felt humiliated asking for it. He gradually changed his expectations. He stopped waiting for Granholm to call him in the middle of the day to share what had happened at meetings they’d spent time talking about the prior evening. And he realized he couldn’t recreate for her all the memorable or awkward moments he had with their children—like the time he found his daughter and her high school friends in the outdoor shower, “ostensibly with their clothes on. I had to call all the parents and tell them, as a courtesy, ‘I want you to know this happened at the Governor’s mansion,’ ” he says. “While my wife was battling the Republican head of the State Senate, I had a teenage daughter who was a more formidable opponent.”
When Granholm left office and was asked “what’s next?,” she said, “it’s Dan’s turn.” As a former governor, though, she’s the one with more obvious opportunities. Later this month, Granholm launches a daily political commentary show on Current TV. She’s also teaching at the University of California at Berkeley, where Dan has a part-time gig thanks to his wife.
“The employment opportunities that come my way—and my salary potential—aren’t what my wife’s are now,” says Mulhern. He plans to continue to teach, write, and do some consulting, while also taking care of their 14-year-old son. “Someone has to be focused on him every day,” he says.
The experiences and reflections of powerful women and their at-home husbands could lead to changes at work so that neither women nor men have to sacrifice their careers or families. “There’s no reason women should feel guilty about achieving great success, but there should be a way for success to include professional and personal happiness for everyone,” says Get to Work author Hirshman. “If you have to kill yourself at work, that’s bad for everyone.”
Kathleen Christensen agrees. As program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, she has focused on work and family issues and says we’re back to the 1950s, only “instead of Jane at home, it’s John. But it’s still one person doing 100 percent of work outside the home and the other doing 100 percent at home.” Just as we saw the Feminine Mystique in the 1960s among frustrated housewives, Christensen predicts, “we may see the Masculine Mystique in 2020.”
The children of couples who have reversed roles know the stakes better than anyone. One morning last year, when Dawn Lepore was packing for a business trip to New York, her nine-year-old daughter burst into tears. “I don’t want you to travel so much,” Elizabeth told her mother. Lepore hugged her, called her school, and said her daughter would be staying home that morning. Then she rescheduled her flight until much later that day. “There have been times when what Elizabeth wants most is a mom who stays home and bakes cookies,” she says.
Lepore is sometimes concerned that her children won’t be ambitious because they’ve often heard her complain about how exhausted she is after work. But they’re much closer to their father than kids whose dads work full-time, and they have a different perspective about men’s and women’s potential. When a friend of her daughter’s said that fathers go to offices every day, Lepore recalls, “Elizabeth replied, ‘Don’t be silly, dads are at home.’ ”
Hymowitz is an editor-at-large for Bloomberg News.
