Journalist turned psychologist Darcy Lockman offers a bracing look at the most pernicious problem facing modern parents—how egalitarian relationships become traditional ones when children are introduced to the household.

In an era of seemingly unprecedented feminist activism, enlightenment, and change, data shows that one area of gender inequality stubbornly persists: the disproportionate amount of parental work that falls on women, no matter their background, 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 and agree that tasks should be equally shared, mothers’ household management, mental labor, and childcare contributions still outweigh fathers’. Expecting male partners who would share, women today have been left with what political scientists call unfulfilled, rising expectations. Historically these expectations lie at the heart of revolutions, insurgencies, and civil unrest. If so many couples are living this way, and so many women are angered or just exhausted by it, why do we remain so stuck? Where is our revolution, our insurgency, our civil unrest?

Lockman identifies three tenets that have upheld the cultural gender division of labor and peels back the ways in which both men and women unintentionally perpetuate old norms. If we can all agree that equal pay for equal work should be a given, can the same apply to unpaid work? Can justice finally come home?

About the author:
Darcy Lockman is a clinical psychologist who works with couples and individuals in New York City. Her first book, Brooklyn Zoo, chronicled the year she spent working in a city hospital’s psychiatric ward. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times and the Washington Post, among others. She lives with her husband and daughters in Queens.

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Visit www.adelphi.edu/AllTheRage