Last week, I left my husband and our three kids at home and went to Israel for a long weekend. A close friend of mine is sick and needed cheering up. Even more than she needed the cheering up, I needed to see her. My husband understood that it was vital for me to go away, and without a moment’s hesitation encouraged me to take the trip.

“I’ll be fine with the kids,” David told me. “Actually, it will be great. I can’t wait to have a weekend with the kids all to myself,” he said, smiling.

I wasn’t sure what to make of the comment, but didn’t question it. If he was excited, so was I.

After making extensive lists for him, including how much Tylenol, Motrin, and Triaminic each child should receive, if needed, as well as who needed to be where on Monday, who should be called if there was an emergency, and a list of foods our picky 2-year-old might consider eating, I left Friday afternoon for the airport.

I didn’t worry about the kids for a second while I was in Tel Aviv. I knew that no matter what, David could handle whatever came his way. I had asked him many times if he wanted me to find a babysitter to help him during the weekend. He said no, he really wanted to be with the kids. On Monday he would have our caregiver’s help, and on Tuesday at the crack of dawn I would be home.

Upon my return, there were few surprises. David was tired. Our 2-year-old was clingy. And my 4- and 6-year-old boys? They were joyous when they laid eyes on me, and 10 minutes later, life was as usual.

What did surprise me, though, was how blown away my friends were at David’s ability to spend the weekend with the children without me.

It would hardly faze any one of them if David, or any of their husbands, had to go away for a three- or four-day business trip, leaving one of us as the sole caregiver of our children. But somehow, with David holding down the fort, it seemed rather miraculous that everyone had remained in one piece.

In a country that dedicates ample energy to discussing the wage gap between men and women in the workplace, a surprisingly smaller amount of airtime is given to discussing why the gap between men and women’s responsibilities at home has hardly shifted at all.

To be sure, men today are far more involved in day-to-day parenting than they were 50, 20, or even 10 years ago. Last year, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that since 1984, there has been an 18% increase in the number of stay-at-home fathers, with 189,000 children being cared for by a full-time father in 2002.

But these statistics are deceiving, and far less significant than they first appear, because the report also states that less than 1% of the fathers in America are stay-at-home dads. A statistic of far greater relevance is that more than 60% of all mothers are actively engaged in economic activity. What happens to the household and child-rearing chores when mom decides to go back to work?

In dual-income households, the majority of the childcare and housekeeping responsibilities still reside with the woman, and in households where the woman stays home with the children, weekends are perceived as the husband’s chance to have a break, while the wife keeps doing what she was doing all week long.

Studies have shown that while the amount of time men have devoted to parenting has increased in the past 20 years, the amount of housework that men do has remained unchanged. And on top of this, men do about the same amount of work around the house whether or not their wives work outside the home.

At first it seems pretty obvious who’s to blame here. But the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that most wives I know play a pretty hefty collaborative role in ensuring that their husbands contribute little to the home front, and just a bit more to the parenting effort.

A few years ago, Brigham Young University released a study that coined a term for the dynamic in which a woman simultaneously demands and prevents her husband’s assistance with household chores: “maternal gatekeeping.” The phenomenon is defined as having three dimensions: a mothers’ reluctance to relinquish responsibility for family matters by setting rigid standards; her need for external validation of her mothering identity; and her traditional conception of family roles.

Included in these dimensions are the many ways in which women manage, exclude, or choose their husbands’ types and levels of participation in family work. According to the study, 21% of working women may be classified as these “maternal gatekeepers.”

A good friend of mine, who works full-time, admits that she falls into this category. “My husband would kill himself if I left him with our kids for the weekend. But part of that’s my fault, I admit it. I run our house and I like things done my way. I know better than to criticize him aloud, but in my head, I always find fault with the way he does things – dresses the kids, loads the dishwasher. I might not say it, but he probably knows how I feel anyway.”

Another mother of three I know, who doesn’t work outside the home, says her husband could never manage the kids on his own. “Could he dress the kids and entertain them? Yes. But cook for them and clean up after them? I certainly wouldn’t want to see the apartment after a few days.” Does she play a role in his incompetence? “Yes and no. The kids defer to me if I’m around, so most of the time he’s off the hook. But I don’t force the issue enough. Frankly, I’m too tired.”

Let me be clear. I am in no way letting the men off the hook. I’ve seen a lot of husbands, mine included, read the paper while their wives clean up and bathe children. I’ve seen them go to the gym and play golf shamelessly while their partners juggle six other familial responsibilities. I’ve seen them helplessly and hopelessly deal with crying babies and screaming children.

But the cure for the husbands may be simpler than convincing the wives to relinquish some control, accept less-than-perfect housekeeping and parenting results from their spouses, be firm and clear about their expectations, and stop thinking that they know best about traditional maternal matters.

Recent studies have shown that husbands who share the household load have sex more often. I have a hunch that if more husbands knew just that one simple fact, they’d be out vacuuming in full force.