Will dad ever do his share? That is the question asked by the cover article in Sunday's edition of The New York Times Magazine. Reporter Lisa Belkin takes a look at the movement for what is called "equal parenting." The most obvious problem with "equal parenting" is that it doesn't turn out to be very equal in reality.

Belkin starts out profiling Marc and Amy Vachon, young parents of baby Maia -- and parents who intend to create their own equal model of parenting. Here is how Belkin describes their plan:

They would not be the kind of parents their parents had been -- the mother-knows-best mold. Nor the kind their friends were -- the "involved" dad married to the stressed-out working mom. Nor even, as Marc put it, "the stay-at-home dad, who is cooed at for his sensitivity but who is as isolated and financially vulnerable as the stay-at-home-mom."

Instead, they would create their own model, one in which they were parenting partners. Equals and peers. They would work equal hours, spend equal time with their children, take equal responsibility for their home. Neither would be the keeper of the mental to-do lists; neither of their careers would take precedence. Both would be equally likely to plan a birthday party or know that the car needs oil or miss work for a sick child or remember (without prompting) to stop at the store for diapers and milk. They understood that this would mean recalibrating their career ambitions, and probably their income, but what they gained, they believed, would be more valuable than what they lost.

The part of their plan that first caught my eye was the part about the "mental to-do lists." The idea that a dad's list will match a mom's in depth, clarity, or accuracy is crazy, it seems to me. I hope the magazine does a follow-up on the Vachon's experiment. I would like to know what they will learn about the reality of the parenting equation.

The significance of Belkin's article is not so much in the focus on the Vachons, however. The real interest is in the background to the story. Belkin provides a most interesting look at one of the enduring quandaries of our times -- why is it that the vast social changes of the past several decades have produced so little change in the division of domestic labor in the home?

As Belkin reports, those committed to the "equal parenting" movement share a simple assumption: "Gender should not determine the division of labor at home." This includes all that is involved in domestic life. Nevertheless, this assumption just doesn't seem to work its way into reality, even among those who say they are committed to it.

She cites Francine M. Deutsch, a professor at Mount Holyoke College and the author of Halving It All: How Equally Shared Parenting Works. "If you gave people a survey they would probably check all the answers about how things should be equal," she says. But when they explain how things actually work out in the home, "ideal does not match reality."