How has fathers involvement with their kids changed in the last several years?
Suzanne Bianchi: Dads are spending more time in child care, and it’s not just the fun playing-with-kids stuff, it’s across the board. They do all the basic caregiver kinds of things: the feeding, the diaper-changing, taking them to the doctor. But it’s still the case that mothers do far more child care than fathers. Are men taking on a bigger role at home because mothers have entered the labor force in larger numbers? Yes, but that’s only part of the picture. We expected that the dads who were really involved were going to be the dads who had working spouses. In fact, dads are more involved over time whether their spouse is working outside the home or not. And that would suggest that it’s not just about more women working, it’s about the dads themselves and how they feel that they’re supposed to parent. And why is their sense of their responsibilities changing? Dads had a clearer message in the 1960s about how they were supposed to behave: they were supposed to earn a living. Maybe now
