Six months into the pandemic, I personally know more than a dozen women who have quit their jobs, taken extended leaves of absence, or drastically curtailed their careers to take care of their children or homeschool. All of these women are married to perfectly nice men who think their jobs are more important than their wives' jobs, despite the kind men who buy them tampons and hold up Biden Harris signs. They may not say it out loud, but it is the flip side of your wife dropping out of the workforce to educate the kids while you are stuck in the bathroom all day and taking zoom meetings.

I have been lucky so far. My kids are small enough that they don't need major help with long division or the periodic table (two things I'm not good at at all), but they're still around. All. The. Time. Yet I was able to finish my novel, start a new podcast series, and write this article because I married a man who helps me take care of my kids. [It is only because my husband takes on childcare as I do that I am able to maintain the career I have spent 20 years building. Then I started reading journalist/novelist/phenom Caitlin Moran's witty and poignant new book, More Than a Woman (opens in new tab), the follow-up to her 2011 best-selling memoir, How to Be a Woman (opens in new tab) The book is a great read. A Woman Marries the Glass Ceiling

"A woman's life is only as good as the man or woman she marries if she wants children and a job," Moran writes. 'That is the greatest truth I know. Too often, women are married to glass ceilings."

Let's reconsider for a moment. I did. And then I remembered all the unfortunate men I dated, slept with, and desperately wanted to love me in my twenties and early thirties, and how if I had married any of them, I could have accomplished all that I have accomplished in the last five years (my fifth anniversary was Saturday) ...

The answer is no.

Similarly, Caitlin Moran, if her supportive husband didn't also take care of her children, would have been able to accomplish all of this in her five years of marriage, including the feminist manifesto How to Be a Woman, the television series Raised by Wolves, the novel How to Build a Girl (open in new tab), its screenplay, and the opens in new tab), its screenplay, and the new novel More Than a Woman (a raw and entertaining roadmap of what it's like to be a woman and a mother in the middle of life).

The answer, as you probably already know, is still "fuck no." [15] [16] "Literally every inch of my success is directly related to how great a parent my husband wanted me to be. There were years when my husband would say, 'Okay, I have the house and the kids, you go to work,'" Moran told me when I recently called her to talk about the glass ceiling imposed by this marriage.

Caitlin Moran was already an accomplished journalist when she married her husband Pete Paphides, also a journalist and writer, in 1999. When they had children, they tried to share childcare as evenly as possible, but much of the early days were left to Moran, who worked from home. Between feedings and diaper changes, she literally wrote books in her head. When their daughter turned one, Paphides began working from home, allowing for a more flexible schedule.

"It's semi-ironic, though: the book about feminism would not have been possible without a man, my husband. My husband took care of all childcare for the five months I was writing the book. I was constantly aware that while I was in front of my laptop, he was with our two small children under the age of five. I needed to honor that sacrifice."

Paphides was no longer working for the company, but was the chief music correspondent for The Times of London. But when Moran finished her book, he submitted his resignation.

"The week I submitted my resignation, she finished her first manuscript," he said. 'I went to a café about a mile away and spent all day there reading. I was so excited, I felt like I was reading a future masterpiece. And I couldn't wait for other people, people all over the world, to read it. I was so proud. Thankfully, other people liked it, too." [The book exploded, selling nearly half a million copies in 16 countries. Celebrities like Lady Gaga and Kate Moss also fell in love with the book. Suddenly, Moran was offered a variety of projects, including a new book, a sitcom, and speaking engagements around the world. And like almost every woman I know, she found it incredibly difficult to turn down. [It was] pretty manic for a couple of years, and it took me about five years to do all the contracts I signed in the giddiness of the first six months," Moran says. And again, Pete was really great. Every weekend, every school holiday, he had to go out with the kids. I worked seven days a week, so I would just sadly watch the kids leave the house for a fun time at the park or the beach. I would just sit in the yard, chain-smoke on my laptop and say, 'See you in five years, kids, see you in five years.' Sorry. So I missed a good portion of their childhood, but Pete took a lot of pictures of it.

Thanks to Paphides, the glass ceiling at Moran kept getting higher and higher. Thanks to Paphides' support, Moran's career was boundless. Not necessarily.

My group of friends is no anomaly. Research during the pandemic showed that women's jobs were 1.8 times more vulnerable than men's jobs. In April of this year, the labor force participation rate of women fell to its lowest in 34 years. Women are twice as likely as men to be responsible for home education. We already do most of the domestic and emotional labor. This means that having the right partner, who sees your career and success as their equal, is coming into stark relief in ways that might have been ignored before the economy fell into a global health crisis. [Especially if you are a man whose hormones seem to be telling him that he is "meant to be." Moran knew early on that Paphides would not be her glass ceiling when she read his essay defending female pubic hair.

"He was a feminist before me. But when I was a young woman, it never occurred to me to talk about co-parenting or schedules." We never asked these questions when we got married. But now, young women need to ask them, too. I have these conversations with my daughters. If you are thinking about getting into a business deal where you are going to share your life with someone and create a human being, you have to ask them what that is like. Asking such questions can avoid 20 years of unhappiness and massive divorces; at 45, I look around at my girlfriends and see that each mother's career is as large and successful as her partner's willingness to support her and take her to childcare. This is a direct correlation. The women I know, the higher they go, the more work their husbands have to do."

I had never asked such a question. I should have, but it never occurred to me. Still, I chose the right man. A man who called me instead of texting me after we slept together for the first time, a man who first told me he loved me, a man who consistently traveled across the country to support my first book tour. Once I said "I do," it was clear that this was a man who would never constrain me or my pubes, in or out of the pandemic.

Joe Piazza is the author of the award-winning Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win and host of the podcast "Committed (opens in new tab)."