What moms can learn from dads

[Woodmonkey]

When Andrew McDade's first daughter, Ana, was born nine years ago, he and his wife, Eliza, made a very modern decision: He would stay home to raise their kids. The reasons were partly financial — Andrew was a teacher and Eliza worked in finance — and "I'm more suited to it," he adds.

(Illustration by Web Bryant, USA TODAY)

Indeed, McDade, who now lives in Ridgewood, N.J., took to fatherhood with gusto. But he soon realized there was another part of the job description: dealing with unsolicited maternal advice. Moms "would walk up to me and say, 'The baby's head is tilted!' " when he carted Anna around in the BabyBjörn. On the playground, they'd check whether he was doing OK. "It was funny," he says, "They thought, 'I know better.' "

Perhaps they were right. Women still do the bulk of child care. On average, full-time working fathers provide about 40% less child care on a daily basis than do their female counterparts, according to the Census' annual American Time Use Survey of married parents with kids younger than 6.

Families such as McDade's, in which the dad is the primary caretaker, are still rare. When I interviewed McDade, he ignored a call from a mom friend who then left a message saying, "No national publication wants to talk to me about being a primary caregiver! You're so special!"

Growing trend

But these families are less rare than they once were. "I'm not the big exception anymore," McDade says. As men are taking on primary parenting roles, researchers are discovering that these dads do things a little differently — and sometimes a little better — than more traditional families. While moms thought they had a lot to teach McDade, primary parent dads have four main lessons they're teaching moms, too:

1. It's OK to keep a hand in the workforce. Though the number has risen about 50% in the past three years, there are still only about 150,000 "pure" stay-at-home dads such as McDade around the USA. But 2002 Census figures show dads are the primary parent in about 20% of families with young kids and working moms.

This means that the more common experience is that of Jeremy Adam Smith, a dad in San Francisco. When he was the primary parent for his son, Liko, he woke up early every morning to write and consult for four hours before going xinto daddy mode. As a result, Smith, author of the forthcoming Twenty-First-Century Dad: How Stay-At-Home Fathers (and Breadwinning Moms) Are Transforming the American Family, was able to transition into full-time work at Greater Good magazine once Liko was older. With women, the plethora of mommy-war books present motherhood as a stark choice: You work or stay home.

Men like Smith understand there is a middle ground. "We don't really have a good word for combining primary caregiving and worker roles," he says. Many men and women do both. But men he interviewed "feel a lot less anxiety" about maintaining a professional identity.

2. You don't have to do the laundry. Moms who stay home with children often assume they must cook, clean and run errands as well. Married, non-employed moms of young kids spend 1.61 hours a day on housework and 1.41 hours on food prep and clean-up. Some dads excel in these areas. But statistically, married non-employed dads of young kids spend just 0.42 hours a day on housework and 0.64 hours on food chores. Clearly, with men, domestic work and child care are being negotiated as separate jobs.

"When you think about it, the task of caring for kids is logically different from doing the housework," says Joan C. Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at Hastings College of the Law in California. There's no reason that the person who rocks the cradle also needs to pick up the dry cleaning.

Separate duties

This can frustrate breadwinning moms who assume they're getting a package deal. But "guys have it right here," says Williams, who has studied the caregiving arrangements of hundreds of families. If all couples negotiated housework and child care separately, "that would ultimately help a lot of women."

3. Parents are people, too. So what do dads do with the time they're not dusting? "They give themselves more permission to have leisure time — to watch ball games or go out," says Bill Doherty, a professor of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota. He counsels families and finds that "men tend to have almost no ambivalence" about this.

Many moms would likewise enjoy life more if they demanded that their husbands take the kids two nights a week and all day Saturday so they could run, shop or whatever makes them happiest. Which leads to the last point:

4. Kids need both parents. In traditional families, dads tend to delegate most child-related decisions to mom. But women, even when they are breadwinners, are "not willing to outsource their children's childhoods, even to their husbands," says Williams. While Smith was the primary parent, his wife worked about 35 hours a week (rather than 70), and took care of their son every morning.

McDade's wife has now transitioned to a shorter work week and volunteers at school on her day off. This leads to a more equitable distribution of parental quality time. That, in turn, might lead to a more equitable view of life.

"My daughters don't see the world as mommy stays home and daddy goes to work," McDade says. "They don't use the conventional logic." Plus, they have no cavities and "no big facial scars," he jokes.

He must be doing something right.

The Source