Yesterday, an historic forum took place at the White House to address the issue of work-life balance, and specifically job flexibility. Many experts and business owners with experience in offering various types of work flexibility with good results (higher productivity and employee retention, lower overall costs, less energy expenditure) were on hand to listen and share. Michelle Obama kicked off the forum, and Barack was there to deliver one of my favorite lines of all: "Workplace flexibility isn't just a women's issue. It's an issue that affects the well-being of our families and the success of our businesses."

The Obamas seem genuinely devoted to bringing our business model out of antiquity, and making it capable of meeting families where they need to be - able to balance paid work with caring for the next (and the previous) generation of Americans. They didn't make any decisions today, but they sparked what I hope will be a flame that doesn't die out.

And the best part, well - ESP-wise, is that almost everything I've read about the discussion is gender neutral. Parents need change - not just mothers. Or as Barack said: "Ultimately, it reflects our priorities as a society -- our belief that no matter what each of us does for a living, caring for our loved ones and raising the next generation is the single most important job that we have. I think it's time we started making that job a little easier for folks." I'd just add that everyone - regardless of their parenting or married status - deserves a decent shot at a balanced life.

If your partner is a fantastic parent, does that make you a crappy one? Hardly worth the energy to think about, really, but that's exactly what an MSNBC article last week describes when it comes to mothers' anxieties. The article starts out with an objectionable sentence - "Dads are helping out with childrearing more and more these days"- which gives us a big clue to the crazy-thinking of the moms in question.

The key word here is 'helping,' of course, and we find out a few sentences later that new research from Osaka University of Commerce in Japan (in collaboration with the University of Texas) reveals a drop in self-esteem in mothers who rate their husbands' parenting as high quality. Now, the 78 couples interviewed for this study were not ESP couples. They were dual-earners, and the moms spent on average triple the time caring for their babies (all had 8-month old infants) as compared to the dads. In other words, Dad may have been an involved parent, but he was probably thought of as a 'helper' by his partner.

In these quasi-traditional relationships, the mothers seemed to want to hold on to their role as primary caregiver - which makes sense since our society (and probably even more so, Japan's) expects this and has a way of making a mother feel guilty if she doesn't. Yet, the moms wanted help with the parenting too...just not so much help that their place in the family was usurped by a too-good daddy.

I can see the (sad) logic in this. But I can see a no-win situation, surely. For both partners. It puts mothers between a rock and a hard place and it cheats fathers out of the joys of full-on parenting their own way. And it sure sets a couple up for resentment rather than appreciation of their arrangement!

I bet that if this same study were done with ESP couples - meaning couples who had made a deep commitment to equal partnership in their parenting - the results would have been very different. It seems to me that the women in this study weren't really ready to let go. But in an ESP family, the eyes of both partners are wide open to the challenges of re-sculpting traditional roles and are focusing on creating balanced lives and a team approach to raising their children. In an ESP mom's soul, a competent father is the best thing in the world for her/his/their children - and her self-worth is no longer tied to what culture expects.

Whenever 'equality' is discussed in terms of marriage or parenting, it is often kept in the realm of the tangible. Here on the surface, the media talk of who is doing more of the chores - by number or by time - or even sometimes about who is handling more of the job of remembering when those chores need to be done. This is all well and good, but you've probably read our views about this before...equally sharing the chores or even the joys of parenting, or housework, or breadwinning, or time for yourself, is more of a product of the mindset of equally shared parenting than a goal unto itself.

The real meat of equality in any partnership is far more weighty and vast than the weak definition of equal chore sharing. We like to talk about equal investment, or equal value in the marriage, or equal power in decision-making. Over at the fantastic Equal Couples blog, equality is given an even broader and deeper definition - encompassing each partner's equal ability to be vulnerable in the other's presence.

I hadn't thought of equality in this way before, but it brings an important idea to light. One of my deepest wishes has always been for a marriage built on genuine intimacy, in which both of us are able to truly be ourselves - with every imperfection and work-in-progress fault out in the open. To be loved not just in spite of our shortcomings, but even for them. (I knew I'd found the right guy when I asked Marc early in our relationship if I snored, and his immediate response was "Just enough to be sexy.")

For me, the 'equality' foundation of ESP really is about equal vulnerability when I brush away all the surface stuff.

His eagerly anticipated film, The Evolution of Dad, is being released to the world in a couple of months - on Father's Day 2010. He recently released the official trailer; check it out on his site. There are lots of dads represented from all walks of life and even a few clips with me, Amy, and the kids.

Way to go, Dana! Well done.