Self-competence in women

An interesting post based on Do involved dads erode moms’ self-competence?  published in the journal Personal Relationships.

"From the paper:

Mothers’ self-competence was independent of how many hours they spent with their baby or how fervently their husbands praised their parenting. Rather, it was their husbands’ childcare performance that was associated with their self-competence. In particular, the more time their husbands spent engaged in skillful caregiving, the lower the self-competence of mothers sank.

Why is this so? Again from the paper:

... recent social changes may have convinced many Americans that women should enter the workplace and their husbands should share the caregiving. Yet, the ideal that parenting is primarily the wife’s responsibility has survived."

May be this applies not only to parenting but also to any chores stereotyped  based on gender. Having said that self-competence in men definitely deteriorates when their is disparity between the earnings.

Irony is the thought of doing good is great but act of doing good is worse. No wonder white lies thrive in many relationships.