Nobody ever asks a father how he manages to combine marriage and a career.

The quote exposes a double standard: caregiving and domestic labor are presumed to be women’s responsibilities, so women are asked to justify how they can be both spouses/parents and professionals. Men, by contrast, are assumed to have careers as their primary identity, with marriage and fatherhood treated as non-disruptive or supported by someone else’s labor. By highlighting what “nobody ever asks,” Ewing uses absence as evidence—social expectations are revealed not only by what is said, but by what goes unquestioned. The line functions as a compact critique of structural sexism in workplaces and in everyday conversation.