Here's A Shock for Women

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The kids are clearly the biggest beneficiaries. When Kathleen first learned her dad would stay home, she was aghast: "What will I tell people you do?" she asked. Now her grades have improved, her spirit is back, and Steve is a hit with her classmates, who call him for help with math homework. Gershon Dublon is delighted that his dad still packs a brown-bag lunch for him; not many of his friends eat homemade lunches. "I came out on top," he says. These kids are proud of their career moms too. The Stevenses' daughter, Jennifer Zechman, recalls that her mother dropped everything to help when Jennifer had her first baby. For two weeks Anne cleaned, cooked, and did laundry, much to Jennifer's amusement. "I'm like, 'Who are you?' " Zechman laughed. "She never does those things."

The dividends for these working wives

--peace of mind, no distractions, the ability to focus single-mindedly on work-are precisely the ones their male counterparts have always had. Ursula Burns can apply her energy to Xerox because husband Lloyd has applied his analytical skill to creating a family flow chart: grocery shopping, fixing the roof, carpooling, doctor's appointments, music lessons-the megabytes of daily minutiae. Then, of course, he executes all these tasks. When Ursula arrives home, she quizzes the kids on their homework, but she never has to worry about the trumpet that got left behind. Without this division of labor, she says, "forget it. It would be impossible for me. Impossible."