Thanks for thinking to write this, Julia! I appreciate reading how other couples navigate this and can think of a number of other strong examples. 

For my part: my beloved career at GiveWell is enabled by my husband, who is a stay-at-home-dad. He also brought our kid(s) along on my work trips (2-4 per year) for over two years when our baby-feeding configuration made it impossible for me to travel without them. 

What inspiring and practical examples!

Maybe a commitment to impact causes EA parents to cooperate at maximizing it, which means optimally distributing the parenting workload whatever society thinks. In EA with lots of conferences and hardworking impactful women, it makes sense that the man's op cost is often lower. Elsewhere couples cooperate to maximize income, but men tend to have higher earning potential so maybe the woman would often do more childcare anyway.

My sense is that parenting falls on the woman due not only to gender norms, but also higher average interest in childcare and other confounders-- so I wonder how much is caused by other effects like EAs leaning liberal, questioning social expectations in general, or EA dads somehow being more keen on parenting. Also it's unclear if EA men even contribute more than non-EA men.

I'm reminded a bit of the gender equality paradox where in the USSR, and maybe also countries with restrictive gender roles [1] there are higher rates of women in STEM and other male-dominated fields. The idea is that in liberal societies, there would be a disparity due to difference in interest, and some kinds of external factor can reduce disparities on net-- in the Soviet case because equality was enforced by the state, in other cases if there is economic interest or a lack of Western stereotypes. So EA mindset is maybe one of these external factors-- not to imply it's like Soviet central planning or anything.

[1] the research seems disputed here

As an ambitious woman reading this is so uplifting!! I live in San Francisco and many of my friends have husbands who don't do as much parenting even if they are both working. In my household we have 3 kids and we spend most of our childcare time with one parent taking care of all the kids and that's both been very egalitarian as well as given us more free time. 

I wrote more about it here: https://joyfulparentingsf.com/p/outnumbered-how-to-parent-multiple

This warms my heart, thanks for writing Julia! A note from a dad trying to be supportive: I also want to acknowledge the mothers that let dads take care of the kids their own way. While it is not possible to generalize, having observed dads with children, at least here in Scandinavia, they might do things differently. Letting fathers parent their own way and trusting them makes it much easier for dads to care for children. Someone mentioned interest in taking care of kids - this interest can be increased, in my experience drastically, by letting fathers take care of the kids in their own particular way (while somewhat anecdotal I am reminded of this article, in a society where dads take on more of a role and bring the kids to the pub equivalent).

Mom here - 2 year old and one on the way. My husband regularly takes on more parenting responsibilities so I can work on my EA aligned non-profit. He came to EAGx Austin and took full responsibility for our 3 month old so I could present and connect with others. I just came back from a weekend a EAG NYC, where he did the same. His support single-handedly allows me run Yield & Spread. Without him, I couldn't do it. Let's celebrate the dads. 

Great writeup and cool the dads at the back of the lecture theatre story made it worldwide!