The days of distant fathers are long gone.
By some estimates, the average amount of time fathers spend caring for their children each day has quadrupled over the past 50 years. The way they think about raising children is also changing. Today, men are almost as likely as mothers to say that raising children is an important source of meaning and a central priority in their lives. Approximately 85% of fathers identify parenthood as one of the most important aspects of their identity.
As a parenting researcher who focuses on fathers, I am pleased to see fathers so engaged with their children. It correlates with better outcomes for children and also reduces pressure on mothers.
But these gains hide a less encouraging trend. Fathers, and by extension mothers, are being asked to do more as the extended family and community networks that once supported child rearing have shrunk or deteriorated.
raising children alone
In researching my new book, The Father Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men’s Lives, I spoke with Barry Hewlett, an anthropologist who has spent his career studying hunter-gatherer fathers.
One of the societies he studies, the Aka Pygmies of central Congo, are known as “the world’s best fathers” for their dedication to raising children. Red males are frequently observed within reach of infants and play a leading role in child rearing. Children are considered the center of a man’s life.
But if you compare the amount of time Akha fathers spend caring for children with recent data on American parents, as parenting writer Tomo Kumaki recently did, you might be surprised.
According to the 2024 American Time Use Survey data, considered the gold standard of evidence on how Americans spend their time, American fathers of young children spend about 125 minutes a day on so-called “primary care,” where their primary activity is caring for their children. They end up spending an additional 394 minutes in so-called “secondary care,” where they watch their children while they do other things like prepare dinner or clean up the house.
In contrast, Hewlett’s field research shows that Akha fathers of infants spend about 57 minutes a day in primary care and 96 minutes a day in secondary care.
The minutes relayed by American fathers should be taken with a grain of salt. Comparing anthropologists’ direct observations and self-reported time diary data is unreasonable, but the data are prone to bias. Still, it’s surprising, at least based on these calculations, that today’s new fathers spend far more time raising children than societies that are said to have the best fathers in the world.
When I spoke to him about how fatherhood has changed, Hewlett said he thinks the role of fathers is more important today than ever. This is not only because mothers are more likely to have jobs outside the home, but also because there are simply fewer childcare helpers.
Taking care of children is easy when you are surrounded by relatives and neighbors in a communal environment like Aka. Fathers take care of their children, but so do many others.
A 2021 study of the Agta, another hunter-gatherer society in the Philippines’ mountains, found that only about 7% of children provided childcare to fathers. However, mothers provided only about 25%. The rest comes from siblings, grandparents, extended family, coworkers, and other community members, all of whom pitch in.
Classification
In many developed countries, daily life is structured around the nuclear family, and relatives and neighbors no longer play the central role they once did.
Today’s fathers contribute more to childcare than most practical hunter-gatherer fathers. This is because there are simply fewer villages that support communal childcare.
Even though men are being asked to take a greater role in raising children, it is becoming increasingly difficult for some men to do so. That’s because, at least in the United States, the time men can spend on childcare is increasingly stratified by class.
Journalists Derek Thompson and Aziz Sundarj analyzed multiple U.S. data collected by the Multinational Time Use Survey and were able to show that over the past 60 years, the significant increase in the amount of time fathers spend caring for children has been driven primarily by college-educated fathers.
When the Multinational Time Use Survey began in the 1960s, college-educated fathers spent just a few extra minutes per day on child care compared to non-college-educated fathers. But that difference has increased fivefold over that period, with college-educated fathers now spending 46 minutes more each day with their children than non-college-educated fathers.
So why is inequality widening? Part of the reason is because benefits like universal paid parental leave and stable, flexible work options are only available to fathers with good jobs.
Only about half of fathers in the United States take paid parental leave after the birth of a newborn because many employers don’t offer it. In theory, most fathers who don’t have access to paid leave should be able to take unpaid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. But the law doesn’t apply to small businesses or many part-time or gig jobs, leaving about 44% of workers ineligible. Low-wage fathers are also often reluctant to take time off because they can’t afford to lose their income.
The rise of what sociologists call “intensive parenting” among the most educated and wealthy parents also helps explain some of the class disparities in parenting time. As the wealth gap between America’s richest and poorest people has widened over the past 60 years, many parents have become eager to maximize their children’s success. Giving children extra time, such as monitoring their schoolwork or enrolling them in enriching activities that cost time and money, has become one of the ways privileged parents give their children an advantage.
In my opinion, practical parenting should not be a luxury. Americans must fight for policies that allow all fathers, regardless of income, to enjoy time with their children. Villages could also benefit from rehabilitation, as parents do best when they have access to community support and stronger connections with neighbors, friends, and family.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
