Parenting & Family Quote by Pepper Schwartz

Schwartz is poking at the polite fiction of egalitarian parenting: that modern couples have already solved the power problem and are simply negotiating chores. The phrase "lip service" is the tell. It frames equality as a stated preference that collapses under real pressure, when decisions stop being symbolic and start carrying risk: discipline, childcare, the stuff that can haunt you if it goes wrong. In that terrain, her claim goes, many women "pull rank" - not because they secretly oppose equality, but because motherhood is still treated as a higher-stakes identity with harsher consequences for failure.

The subtext is less anti-woman than anti-romance about progress. Schwartz is describing how gender equality can be performed as a value while older hierarchies persist as a default operating system. "Pull rank" also hints at a structural asymmetry: if society assumes mothers are ultimately accountable, it makes sense they'd claim final say. That's not just personal preference; it's reputational and legal exposure, family judgment, workplace penalties, the whole invisible ledger that lands on women when kids struggle.

Context matters: Schwartz writes in the long afterglow of second-wave gains and the ongoing reality of the "second shift". Men are invited into parenting, but often on probation. Her provocation is meant to unsettle the feel-good narrative that sharing diapers automatically means sharing authority, and to force the uncomfortable question: are couples aiming for equality, or merely collaboration under maternal veto?