Fatherhood has reached a critical point for many dads who are caught between being an ideal employee and an ideal parent. They are asking themselves the same question working mothers have been asking for decades: Is it possible to have it all? In so many ways, dads’ struggles have caught up with moms’.
Parenting, once the sole domain of mothers, is now more equitable in terms of parents sharing the responsibility of caring for children. Today’s fathers read books on pregnancy and baby care and spend almost three times the hours a week caring for their children as they did in 1965, according to the Pew Charitable Trust. Dads are also less likely to be a household’s primary breadwinner. It’ s a welcome change that benefits everyone — especially the children.
It doesn’t seem to matter if you or the father of your children is a Millennial, Generation Xer or Baby Boomer. Researchers at the Boston College Center for Work and Family found that most dads feel torn between their jobs and their family life. Fathers want to share equally in the care of their children. The Center points out that “the old stereotype of fathers being career-centric parents and somewhat emotionally detached from family does not describe today’s fathers.”
Kristen Shockley, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Georgia, and four colleagues analyzed 350 studies involving more the 250,000 people and found that fathers and mothers feel a similar level of work-family conflict. In spite of the fact that gender roles are changing and that more mothers are in the workforce, and more men are involved in child care, men don’t openly discuss their conflict — perhaps because of the long-held conventional view of the struggling, guilt-filled working mother.
[Read: Fathers: We Must Learn From Our Children.]
Conflict Begins Early for Dads
About 7 in 10 Americans told Pew researchers that “it’s important for new babies to have equal time to bond with their mothers and fathers.” In the book “Do Fathers Matter?” by Paul Raeburn, Michael Lamb, who is one of the primary advocates of research on fathers, says that “babies and fathers become attached in the same way — and at the same time developmentally — that mothers and babies do.” So for both parents, the pull between career demands and the commitment to raising children starts with the arrival of a child.
According to Pew, roughly half of adults think employers generally put more pressure on fathers to return to work quickly after the birth or adoption of a child. Among those who took time off to care for a new baby in the past two years, only 18 percent felt that way about employers’ pressure on mothers to return to work. That is evident given that fathers took a median of one week off, while moms took off 11 weeks to care for a newborn. And yet fathers want to be with their children: 54 percent of dads feel that parenting is “rewarding all of the time.” But Shockley’s analysis, which was reported in the Journal of Applied Psychology, reminds us that the general perception remains that work-family conflict is a woman’s issue.
When it comes to caring for a new baby, 53 percent of Americans say that, breast-feeding aside, mothers do a better job than fathers, according to Pew, with only 1 percent of Americans saying dads do a better job than moms. Nonetheless, parents’ attitudes about being a mother or father are almost identical. “Dads are just as likely as moms to say that parenting is extremely important to their identity.” Fifty-seven percent of fathers said so, as did 58 percent of mothers.
[Read: How Parental Stress Negatively Affects Kids.]
Change We Need
The Center for Work and Family began studying “The New Dad” in 2010, and this year is focusing on the enormous conflict fathers experience as their role — and desire — in raising their children increases. Their latest study of 850 fathers was divided almost equally among Millennial, Generation X or Baby Boomer fathers. Conflicted fathers in all three generations scored lower on job, career and life satisfaction.
In a conversation with the American Psychological Association, Shockley underscores the Boston College finding. She told the APA she thinks the work-family conflict is “harming men, who are silently struggling and are experiencing the same amount of work-family conflict, but no one is acknowledging it.”
Paternal enthusiasm and changes in gender roles are not enough to alter deeply ingrained views about mothers “doing it all.” Because women have been exposed to the conflict for much longer, dads need to be more open and public about their own battle. They need to get over the worry that their masculinity will be threatened or that talking about the conflict they feel will have adverse career repercussions.
For starters, more male verbal demands and requests in the workplace might help improve paternity (and maternity) leave policies. We all know that U.S. family leave policies are dismal. Shockley’s study details this: “Only 9 percent of workplaces in the United Sates offer paid paternity leave, compared to 21 percent with maternity leave, with the United States ranking near last in the world on both issues. The United States, Suriname and Papua New Guinea are the only countries that don’t guarantee any paid maternity or paternity leave.”
[See: 10 Concerns Parents Have About Their Kids’ Health.]
If we can change people’s attitudes and stop thinking of the work-family conflict as strictly a mother’s problem, then we can view — and accept — mothers and fathers as equally challenged. At that point, there will be hope that both men and women can have it all.
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Are Dads as Torn Between Jobs and Family Life As Moms? originally appeared on usnews.com
