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Have you ever seen that gag gift for new parents called the Wheel of Responsibility? Whenever you’re faced with an unpleasant parenting task—cleaning poop off crib railings, say, or playing peekaboo for the 753rd time—you just spin the arrow on the wheel and it lands on either Mom or Dad, instantly solving your “You’re not doing enough!” squabbles. Maybe we should take this novelty item more seriously, because real life is not so simple—or so fair. More often than not, the arrow ends up on Mom. And for women who grew up swearing they’d be the anti–June Cleaver, that’s a bitter pill to swallow. In her new book Opting In: Having a Child Without Losing Yourself (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; $15), feminist author Amy Richards calls this seemingly inevitable imbalance of responsibility the Diaper Divide. Here, just a few of her surprising ideas on how to even things out.
