Today on Good Morning America they covered a long-standing myth about heterosexual couples: a man’s snoring keeps his wife/partner awake at night.
They had one of their correspondents go through a sleep study with her husband to show whether he really was keeping her awake with his snoring. The individual study showed that he snored less (one third as long as when he was alone) when he slept with her and she woke up even when he wasn’t in the room.
The piece concluded with the explanation that women are lighter sleepers than men because they are evolutionarily programmed to be caregivers and hear the calls of children and then go back to sleep easily.
This piece infuriated me, a scientist, for misrepresentation of how evolution works. Many of the situations that make it advantageous for caregivers to be light sleepers now weren’t present during early human evolution. For example, people tended to live communally, so parents didn’t need to be light sleepers to hear the cries of a child.
And even more infuriating for me as a social scientist, is the over simplification of gender roles.
We need to push back on the notion that men and women evolved with the purpose of fulfilling today’s cultural gender roles.
The segment on Good Morning America suggests that women evolved an ability to be light sleepers to better fulfill the caregiving role.
The one real advantage to being a light sleeper in the era of early human evolution was to be aware of predators (animal or human) and waking up in time to fight or flee. That is a real survival advantage that should have evolved in both men and women since they both face reduced survival and future reproduction opportunities if attacked by predators. It may be true that women are, on average, lighter sleepers than men, but I highly doubt it’s because they are evolutionarily programmed to be more attentive to their children than men.
More important than the misunderstanding of evolution in this piece is the unstated assumption that every aspect of a woman’s biology is designed to facilitate caregiving. When even minute sex differences are used as justification for existing gender roles we wander onto a slippery slope of oppressively sexist thinking. If it’s true that women are light sleepers so they can be better caregivers the rest of the argument is:
• Women are worse employees because they are light sleepers and don’t get enough rest.
• Men are poor caregivers because they don’t wake up as easily when a child cries.
• Men are better employees because they can sleep through distractions and be better rested for work the next day.
Biology is not destiny and people can develop skills or adjust behaviors to deal with their lives. For example, did the study saying that women are lighter sleepers control for whether those women were primary caregivers?
Could it be that someone (man or woman) who goes to sleep thinking that they have to get up to care for a child is a lighter sleeper? Do women learn this skill during the weeks when they are on maternity leave?
Are men, with their shorter paternity leaves (10.6 weeks vs. women’s 14.2 weeks, according to the Families and Work Institute’s 2012 National Study of Employers), and women who are primary earners forced to learn how to sleep through a child’s cries because they have to go back to work sooner?
Can American media learn to talk about sex differences without turning everything into a biological imperative to follow gender roles that are only a few generations old or is sweeping, sexist statements built into their DNA?
More moms are the main breadwinners today, while more men are pondering whether they can have it all.
“We have to come up with a model that says all workers have caregiving responsibilities, if not to kids, then aging parents, relatives. And all caregivers have something to contribute to society. That’s a cultural model we need to incorporate, and it needs structural, political and economic change.”
it’s a field with powerful ideas for cultural transformation that compels businesses to make more intelligent and humane use of people and technology.”
“We now know our competition is all over the world. The pace and the reaction time, the speed at which people are trying to process things has really increased. We’re burning up the resilience of our work force. I think we are on the verge of starting to say, ‘OK, we need to relook at how work is done.’”
don’t invest time and money in commuting. When employees have family or other personal issues they need to take care of, the feeling is that by being able to work from home you can take care of those in a much shorter period of time than commuting.”
“More people are looking for meaning in their jobs. The most important stakeholder for any company is itsown employees. The best companies recognize that a positive social and environmental impact will be critical in recruiting and retaining outstanding talent.”
readily understand that the real struggles are not having children or ambition. Women are, in fact, fierce in their ambition, but they find that they’re actually derailed by other things, like they don’t have a sponsor in their life that helps them go for it.”
“If employees are distracted by care for a child or elderly relative, it will interfere with their ability to serve our customers. The more we can help, the more focused they will be.’”
to maximize its competitiveness and development potential, each country should strive for gender equality.”
“What others see as the future of the workplace, and what parents see as a most important tool for juggling home and work, [Yahoo's] Marissa Mayer apparently sees as disposable. Putting employees back into a box is not good for Yahoo!. It is not good for workers. And it is very bad business.”
other we need to be mad at the lack of flexibility to care for kids.”
The jobless rate for veterans who have served since 9/11 is more than 9 percent, and even higher for younger and wounded vets, compared to 7.6 percent for the overall population, according to the 
My Dad Didn’t Have Work-Life Conflict
My father really didn’t experience work-life conflict similar to what many dads are feeling today.
As a business owner — he ran his own dental practice — he kept a regular and predictable schedule at work, made it for all the major school events and spent evenings and weekends with the family.
But for the most part, my parents fit the norms of the day with my mom being the primary caretaker and my dad being the sole breadwinner, and it wasn’t something they questioned.
Today the lives of dads have changed a lot from what the previous generations have experienced, and there’s a lot of questioning about the “norms” when it comes to raising a family.
It’s something I heard from a number of some of the top men and women in the work-life field we recently honored with
the Work Life Legacy Award. And something I keep seeing it in the headlines and even stories I hear from friends don’t fit the old model from TV shows.
Younger dads are spending more time taking care of their kids during workdays. And FWI’s research shows that significantly more dads in dual-earner couples are experiencing work-life conflict than in the 70’s.
I’m not a parent myself, but with Father’s Day coming this Sunday (mark your calendars and remember to call your dads), I thought it might be interesting to ask my own dad about his experiences back in the day when he was a working father in the late 70’s and 80’s.
While work-life wasn’t on the radar screen yet, he had what many fathers would probably envy today.
And I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my dad was more ahead of the curve than I expected as an involved parent and as an employer. A few months after I was born, he opened up his dental practice. My mom worked as his receptionist for the first 6 months and I was brought in to work with them every day. Happily bouncing around behind the front desk. And then the next receptionist they hired was also a new mom, and she was able to bring in her son to work each day.
For me, this reinforces the idea that parents today, dads and moms, need more support to be able to thrive in whatever their work and family situation is. In a world where one income is often not enough to sustain a family, and at a time when we are shifting the way we think about traditional gender roles, support from employers, family, our communities and other groups will make all the difference.
Happy Father’s Day Dad!