The Gender Nerd Podcast

Over the last few years, we’ve gotten a steady stream of takes on the dire state of marriage. Less people are getting married, and some of the traditional reasons to do so - financial security, feeling of obligation, the necessity of bringing children into a settled family - are not longer as compelling. Young women, in particular, are less likely to say they want to get marry someday.Sociologist Abigail Ocobock wondered: what about people who only recently got the right to marry? what can same-sex couples tell us about the power of the institution? Her study, published in the book “Marriage Material: How an Enduring Institution Is Changing Same-Sex Relationships,” found that marriage retains its cultural power - and that having the right to marry transformed same-sex relationships.Listen to our conversation about what same-sex couples can teach all of us about the power of marriage, and how to make it more equal. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit naomidarom.substack.com

Kate Mangino was a gender expert working around the world to promote equality, until she realized she didn’t have equality at home. That realization set her on a path to explore what it would take to make domestic labor more equal, so that women are no longer expected to carry the mental, emotional, and physical burden of maintaining a life and household.She explores this question in her book, Equal Partners: Improving Gender Equality at Home and her podcast with Rachel Childs, Equal-ish.We talked about why it's so hard to form equal partnerships, why we shouldn't throw fathers a parade for doing more than their fathers, and what gives her hope.Music by Greylock by Blue dot sessions This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit naomidarom.substack.com

Hi! The Gender Nerd is now a biweekly podcast, with smart conversations about gender, sexuality, culture and power. Listen here, on Apple or on Spotify. Poet and author Nancy Reddy struggled through early motherhood, from breastfeeding to sleep schedules. What made it worse was her sense that she was failing at some test of ideal motherhood: she had believed that motherhood should be instinctive and fulfilling, that she should just know what to do. Once Nancy started sleeping nights again, she set out to discover who put those unrealistic ideas in her head. Her book, “The Good Mother Myth,” interrogates how a bunch of mid-20 century men-experts, who probably haven’t changed a single diaper between them, shaped our ideas of mothers as vessels for their children’s needs and nothing more.I talked to Nancy about the real meaning of the “good enough mother,” what happens when we lack a model of fatherhood, and why some researchers believed a wire frame covered in cloth could raise our children just fine. Take a listen! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit naomidarom.substack.com