Before Tim became my business partner, he and I worked together as managers at a plastics recycling plant. Tim's wife was a healthcare tech with years of specialized training. At the time of the story I'm about to tell, they had two toddlers at home, just a year apart in age.

Tim was our operations manager, responsible for ensuring our 24/7 line kept running 24/7. That sometimes meant he worked long, unpredictable hours.

His wife was a critical worker on a hospital floor full of critically ill people. Her schedule was much more predictable, but not very flexible. (Not that it should matter to this story, but her salary was quite a lot bigger than Tim's at the time.)

One day, Tim and I were on a three-way call with our out-of-state boss about resolving some hiccup in production. The boss wanted Tim at the plant and on the floor right away to get a handle on how serious the problem was.

Tim said he he had to get his kids to preschool first and would need to wait until they opened, then he'd drive straight to the plant.

"Preschool?" the boss said. "What do you have a wife for? Let her take care of the kids so you can get to work."

Tim's wife was at her hospital job, which Tim explained, and he made a joke about the "what do you have a wife for" crack, but the owner was serious. He made clear many times that he doesn't believe child care is appropriate work for a man. He's not shy about expressing it. (And he was relatively young then, btw. His own children weren't much older than Tim's at the time.)

In a bigger company, maybe he wouldn't be able to get away with saying something like that, but he'd still be able to act on the belief as long as he was careful not to articulate it too clearly.

I think this is pretty common in the world world, perhaps more common in family-owned businesses like the one Tim and I worked for then.