You see, my parents divorced when I was 10 years old, but in the years they were together they had a "traditional" marriage: My mother stayed home with me, my brother and my sister while my father worked as a heavy equipment operator. After their divorce, my mother chose to farm and raise us on her own, an untraditional role (at least in a small rural town in the early 1980s). I was a tomboy — you were more likely to find me climbing trees or tormenting my siblings with bugs and mud than playing with Barbies. In fact, I never learned how to cook until I moved away from home — that’s how opposed my mother was to raising me as a "girlie girl."
Yet, instead of returning to my job after the birth of my daughter, I shelved my successful marketing career in favour of days filled with
princess dolls and dishes. My marriage is very different than what Schmader’s study results predicted.