While my own dadio was having brunch with my family in the Chicago burbs (without me – man I hate long distance father’s days), our man Obama was speaking on fatherhood at a Chicago church.
fatherhood
In honor of Father’s Day and dads across the land, do check out the latest on both The Daddying Movement and Reel Fathers. The latter is a collaboration between Allan Shedlin and Deborah Boldt, who are working toward the first annual REEL FATHERS Film Festival in Santa Fe on Fathers’ Day weekend 2009. How cool is that?
(Thank you, Suzanne, for the heads up!)
My dad loves to read (yes, apple doesn’t fall far from tree). For dads open to reading about, well, dadhood, here’s a host of suggestions:
Philip Lerman, Dadditude: How a Real Man Became a Real Dad
Cameron Stracher, Dinner with Dad: How I Found My Way Back to the Family Table
Kevin Powell, Who’s Gonna Take the Weight: Manhood, Race, and Power in America
Michael J. Diamond, My Father Before Me: How Fathers and Sons Influence Each Other Throughout Their Lives
Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
David Strah and Susanna Margolis, Gay Dads: A Celebration of Fatherhood
Lewis Epstein, More Coaching for Fatherhood: Teaching Men New Life Roles
David Knox, Divorced Dad’s Survival Book: How to Stay Connected with Your Kids
And, finally, though I’m not personally digging this title AT ALL, others may, and, well, it takes all kinds (this book just came out):
Bobby Mercer and Alison D. Schonwald, Quarterback Dad: A Play by Play Guide to Tackling Your New Baby
Other suggestions? Or got ideas for the perfect gift for feminist dad? Please share.
This is why I love CCF, which I blog about here a lot because they’re just such darn good providers in the knowledge business. This week they’re issuing a press release on the importance of a time use survey, with contemporary spin and flair–and an important message with policy application: “Save ATUS.” What’s ATUS you ask? Here’s a sneak peak at the release, courtesy of Virginia Rutter, who just sent it to me. Feel free to pass it on!:
Making Time for Work and Family: Got Data?
For Family Social Scientists, the American Time Use Survey Provides Valuable Information on Work, Family, and How We Endure the Conflict between the Two
June 4, 2008 Chicago Il —- Mothers do more paid work—14 hours more—than they did 40 years ago. They do less housework—exactly 14 hours fewer—too. But they do 4 hours more of childcare than in the past. How do we know? Suzanne Bianchi, University of Maryland sociologist, and her colleagues used the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), a time diary study that has been collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics since 2003.
Dads are stepping up in new ways too. Men have steadily increased their participation in housework and child care over the past 30 years. And contrary to claims of some earlier studies, dads who work less than full-time don’t use their extra time just to watch TV. Part-time worker dads do more housework (about an hour more) than full-time worker dads, and about 40 minutes more childcare. We know about these changes thanks to forthcoming work from Liana Sayer (Ohio State University) and Sanjiv Gupta (University of Massachusetts at Amherst) in which they analyzed the 2003-2005 ATUS.
But if women have given up 14 hours a week of housework and taken on 14 more hours of paid work, what else have they given up to put in 4 more hours of childcare? Here the news may be less rosy. It appears that social bonding with spouse, kin, and friends is being sacrificed to the higher standards for time with children. Bianchi and colleagues’ analysis of the ATUS reveals that, compared to 20 years ago, married working moms now spend less time with their spouse—while single moms spend less time with friends and family.
SCIENCE HELPS US KEEP UP WITH SOCIAL CHANGE
These facts illustrate the on-going revolution in how Americans spend their time—what they do at work, how men and women organize family schedules, and how children and teens spend their days. To understand changes in family life and to guide policy makers—and families themselves—about the best ways to adjust to new patterns of work and parenting, researchers collect such information. This in turn becomes the basis for news stories, advice columns and television programs that citizens rely on—and are hungry for.
The American Time Use Survey is one of those key resources. (For more information on ATUS visit http://www.bls.gov/tus/home.htm and www.saveatus.org.) As researcher Bianchi explains, “ATUS provides essential information about how Americans spend their time—time spent caring for children, cleaning the house, working for pay, and caring for sick adults.” We all rely on these jobs being done in order to keep our society running well: but it is vital for us to know how, when, and by whom they are done in our changing social world.
“The Council on Contemporary Families uses this kind of scientific research in order to understand the complex and changing dynamics of the family,” reports Evergreen State College Professor Stephanie Coontz, CCF’s Director of Research and Public Education. “Many CCF briefing papers and fact sheets rely on data from the time-use studies.” (A host of examples are at http://www.contemporaryfamilies.org/briefpapers.php.)
“The complexity of coordinating families’ work and school schedules with the need for health care, down time, cultivation of intimacy, and everyday chores presents new challenges to couples, parents, and children in the way they spend their days,” explains Coontz. “Changes in time use help us understand how families cope with modern stresses–and also what happens when they cannot cope. Right now, the economy is slowing down, but many families find themselves speeding up. Unless we keep on top of these changes, we cannot analyze what kinds of practical support and information families need. Making sure that the data continue to be collected is an issue that cuts across partisan divisions, uniting family researchers from many different points of view.”
For further information on the American Time Use Survey, visit http://www.bls.gov/tus/home.htm.
WELL DONE, CCF!
Well, today is Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, an event I’ve long thought a brilliant conception–especially when it used to be just for girls. But I get it, I get it, esp. when it’s a case of boys seeing Mommy at Work. According to the official literature, the day is designed to be more than a career day:
For over 15 years, the program’s development of new, interactive activities and partnerships has helped us in taking girls and boys to the future they dream of.
This year’s program theme, “Making Choices for a Better World,†centers on “encouraging girls and boys to consider the options they have and make choices for a better world. This means making choices to serve the community and one’s family, to care for one’s body and health, and to make better choices that impact our environment, as well as one’s future.”
Cool. And how can you argue with that. But still, I can’t help but feel the language lost something in the translation from daughters to daughters and sons–and you know what an advocate I am for including boys/men in the feminist conversation.
Helaine Olen (co-author of Office Mate: The Employee Handbook for Finding and Managing Romance on the Job and a contributor to the forthcoming book The Maternal Is Political) has a different bone to pick, and I’m not sure how I feel about her critique. Helaine rails against it in a piece in Newsday, writing:
If the past is any guide, several million children nationwide will accompany their parents to work today, participating in the annual rite of spring known as Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day. Moms and dads across the United States will allow their kids to play in their offices, running through cube farms and “assisting” at cash registers, all in the name of breaking down the mystique that exists between work and family.
Yet in a world of home offices, moms on the playground taking business calls by cell phone, and dads answering queries on their BlackBerries at school events, it’s quite likely that children are all too aware of the importance of paid employment to their parents. What they really need is a lesson in the value of taking time to kick back and relax.
She goes on to call for an official event to teach America’s children about the importance of downtime, concluding: “We can call it Let Your Daughters and Sons See Mom and Dad Do Absolutely Nothing Day. Any takers?”
Now, I’m not a parent (yet) so maybe I’m off kilter here. But I still think the event is a good idea. What do y’all think – especially you parents out there? Is it a good thing, or a pain? Did it lose something in the translation when it switched to include boys? What’s been the experience of folks who’ve done it?
If I had a kid and I took them to work today, they’d be spending the entire day in Starbucks, watching mommy type. Thrilling, no doubt.
HAPPY APRIL 15 everyone! So Americans tend to think we’re better off than families in most other industrial countries because we pay lower income taxes. Right? NOT! As CCF reminds us today, when we factor in the higher amount Americans pay for health care, child care, and education, the comparison is not always in our favor. Where do American families’ tax dollars go and what family “value” they get in return?
For every $100 in income tax:
* $32 goes to national defense
* $19 goes to interest on the national debt
* $15 goes to supplemental programs such as TANF, child tax credits, and
farm subsidies
* $14 goes to health
* $6 goes to education, employment, and social services
* $4 goes to transportation
* $2 goes to administration of justice
* $2 goes to environment and natural resources
* $2 goes to international affairs
* $1 goes to community and regional development
* $1 goes to agriculture
* $1 goes to science, space, and technology
* $1 goes to the commerce and housing fund
Even at their height, the financial benefits of the last decade’s tax cuts for middle class families never equaled the financial benefits that citizens of many other countries receive in the form of monthly child allowances, universal health care, subsidized parental leaves and child care, and college assistance.
In most of Western Europe, citizens enjoy the right to near-universal health care. They do not have to forego routine care for financial reasons, and are not financially wiped out by catastrophic health emergencies. In America, this occurs frequently enough that one-quarter of financial bankruptcies originate in medical problems not covered by insurance. What’s more, of course, every other industrial nation in Western Europe, and most of the rest of the world as well, provides paid maternity leave, and in some cases paid paternity leave as well. In Belgium, free early childhood education is available to all children starting at the age of 2 ½.
Now that’s some family values. But wait–before we all head off to Canada or Sweden, I think we’d better stick around to see how our election plays out. One can still hope for a president who truly values families, which I think both the Democrats running honestly do. Did anyone hear the latest about McCain calling his wife a c—? Family values starts at home, John. Remember that, dude.
Ok, nuf about candidates. Let’s talk issues. Tomorrow is the 15th anniversary of signing into law of the Family and Medical Leave Act. Check out what’s still at stake, courtesy Ellen Bravo.
I’m sick as a dog today, lying in bed with the covers pulled up to my nose (and my loyal cat at my feet). Can’t quite put a sentence together, so thought I’d just share a few quick links, following on yesterday’s post.
The Evolution of Dad Project weighs in on the Daddy Wars, noting, “The conflict isn’t being perceived between Traditional Dads and the Stay-At-Home Dads (which would be obvious manufactured companion to the ‘Mommy Wars’) but between dads who desire to have more of a work/family balance and their bosses, who are more typically dads themselves at a slightly older age and bred more on being more of a dedicated breadwinner.”
And the BBC reports on new research from the Institute for Social and Economic Research finds that mothers who work outside the home are happier than SAHMs, via Broadsheet
I hear cannons booming. Or maybe that’s just my head?
I love this piece by Stephanie Armour appearing in USA Today last week, right down to its title: “Workplace Tensions Rise as Dads Seek Family Time.†A synopsis:
Todd Scott leaves his job every day at 5 p.m. to be with his family – and even then feels guilty he isn’t spending enough time with Hunter, 4, and Anna, 1. By contrast, Scott’s boss, Steve Himmelrich, who has two children and is a more traditional-style dad, spends long days, free time and some weekends at the office. Both acknowledge these differing choices have been a source of tension between them. Their situation reflects the conflicts that are becoming increasingly common in workplaces across the nation, as fathers press for more family time and something other than a traditional career path. Dads are demanding paternity leave, flexible work schedules, telecommuting and other new benefits. They’ve also prompted several Fortune 500 companies to begin pitching such family-friendly benefits to men – and inspired a new wave of workplace discrimination complaints filed by dads.
The article cites a survey by Monster that found nearly 70% of fathers surveyed reporting that they would consider being a stay-at-home parent if money were no object. And–are you sitting down?–“the survey also found that working dads are increasingly tapping into benefits that until just a few years ago were used almost exclusively by mothers: 71% of fathers with a child under age 5 took paternity leave when it was offered by their employer.” This goes counter to what I’ve heard from researchers. Help me out here. Is this good news true?! (If it is, count me in for a happy dance.)
Analysts attribute the change to generation. Today’s fathers in their 20s and 30s don’t typically adhere to the philosophies or career tracks followed by previous generations. To wit:
For generations, “Fathers have defined success as big cars, big salaries, big homes. But dads now define success as a good relationship with their children and spouse,” says Armin Brott of Fathers At Work, an Oakland-based business that specializes in helping men find a balance between work and family. “It’s really a generational change, but it’s hard,” Brott says. “There’s tension, and there’s this sense out there that careers will suffer.”
Clearly, that sense needs to be corrected with some data. My dream is that organizations like Catalyst will soon be taking this on. Sounds like Fathers at Work is already on it. Their tagline is “Transforming Job-Family Conflict into Competitive Advantage.” And they offer companies workshops called “Balancing Father Stress and Professional Success.” I can’t wait to interview these guys for my next book.
Paul Raeburn had a great post the other week up at HuffPo on older dads on the campaign trail. Yep, Sen. Christopher Dodd, 63, has two daughters, age 6 and 2, with his second wife Jackie Clegg Dodd. And Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, 65, has two toddlers with his second wife, Jeri Kehn.
What exactly do we read in these tea leaves?, asks Paul. First, that these two candidates mirror a demographic trend. Older fathers are on the rise. That’s not too surprising. But here’s the rub: the children of older fathers face particularly high risks of schizophrenia and autism. Drrr. On a personal level, I hate hearing that stuff. But do check out Paul’s post. Paul is a journalist who writes quite smartly about various permutations of contemporary fatherhood. I keep trying to get him to guest post here, and sense that one day soon, he will!
Also on the dad front, check out Judith Warner’s response to Charlie LeDuff’s essay in Men’s Vogue, which she titles“Daddy Wars,” and which begins like so:
“One of the more pleasant outcomes of the slowly growing trend toward highly involved fatherhood has been, I’ve found, the ability to plainly see that total ninnyishness is not a uniquely female thing.” Read more.
In honor of Father’s Day and dads across the land, do check out the latest on both The Daddying Movement and Reel Fathers. The latter is a collaboration between Allan Shedlin and Deborah Boldt, who are working toward the first annual REEL FATHERS Film Festival in Santa Fe on Fathers’ Day weekend 2009. How cool is that?
(Thank you, Suzanne, for the heads up!)
My dad loves to read (yes, apple doesn’t fall far from tree). For dads open to reading about, well, dadhood, here’s a host of suggestions:
Philip Lerman, Dadditude: How a Real Man Became a Real Dad
Cameron Stracher, Dinner with Dad: How I Found My Way Back to the Family Table
Kevin Powell, Who’s Gonna Take the Weight: Manhood, Race, and Power in America
Michael J. Diamond, My Father Before Me: How Fathers and Sons Influence Each Other Throughout Their Lives
Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
David Strah and Susanna Margolis, Gay Dads: A Celebration of Fatherhood
Lewis Epstein, More Coaching for Fatherhood: Teaching Men New Life Roles
David Knox, Divorced Dad’s Survival Book: How to Stay Connected with Your Kids
And, finally, though I’m not personally digging this title AT ALL, others may, and, well, it takes all kinds (this book just came out):
Bobby Mercer and Alison D. Schonwald, Quarterback Dad: A Play by Play Guide to Tackling Your New Baby
Other suggestions? Or got ideas for the perfect gift for feminist dad? Please share.
This is why I love CCF, which I blog about here a lot because they’re just such darn good providers in the knowledge business. This week they’re issuing a press release on the importance of a time use survey, with contemporary spin and flair–and an important message with policy application: “Save ATUS.” What’s ATUS you ask? Here’s a sneak peak at the release, courtesy of Virginia Rutter, who just sent it to me. Feel free to pass it on!:
Making Time for Work and Family: Got Data?
For Family Social Scientists, the American Time Use Survey Provides Valuable Information on Work, Family, and How We Endure the Conflict between the Two
June 4, 2008 Chicago Il —- Mothers do more paid work—14 hours more—than they did 40 years ago. They do less housework—exactly 14 hours fewer—too. But they do 4 hours more of childcare than in the past. How do we know? Suzanne Bianchi, University of Maryland sociologist, and her colleagues used the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), a time diary study that has been collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics since 2003.
Dads are stepping up in new ways too. Men have steadily increased their participation in housework and child care over the past 30 years. And contrary to claims of some earlier studies, dads who work less than full-time don’t use their extra time just to watch TV. Part-time worker dads do more housework (about an hour more) than full-time worker dads, and about 40 minutes more childcare. We know about these changes thanks to forthcoming work from Liana Sayer (Ohio State University) and Sanjiv Gupta (University of Massachusetts at Amherst) in which they analyzed the 2003-2005 ATUS.
But if women have given up 14 hours a week of housework and taken on 14 more hours of paid work, what else have they given up to put in 4 more hours of childcare? Here the news may be less rosy. It appears that social bonding with spouse, kin, and friends is being sacrificed to the higher standards for time with children. Bianchi and colleagues’ analysis of the ATUS reveals that, compared to 20 years ago, married working moms now spend less time with their spouse—while single moms spend less time with friends and family.
SCIENCE HELPS US KEEP UP WITH SOCIAL CHANGE
These facts illustrate the on-going revolution in how Americans spend their time—what they do at work, how men and women organize family schedules, and how children and teens spend their days. To understand changes in family life and to guide policy makers—and families themselves—about the best ways to adjust to new patterns of work and parenting, researchers collect such information. This in turn becomes the basis for news stories, advice columns and television programs that citizens rely on—and are hungry for.
The American Time Use Survey is one of those key resources. (For more information on ATUS visit http://www.bls.gov/tus/home.htm and www.saveatus.org.) As researcher Bianchi explains, “ATUS provides essential information about how Americans spend their time—time spent caring for children, cleaning the house, working for pay, and caring for sick adults.” We all rely on these jobs being done in order to keep our society running well: but it is vital for us to know how, when, and by whom they are done in our changing social world.
“The Council on Contemporary Families uses this kind of scientific research in order to understand the complex and changing dynamics of the family,” reports Evergreen State College Professor Stephanie Coontz, CCF’s Director of Research and Public Education. “Many CCF briefing papers and fact sheets rely on data from the time-use studies.” (A host of examples are at http://www.contemporaryfamilies.org/briefpapers.php.)
“The complexity of coordinating families’ work and school schedules with the need for health care, down time, cultivation of intimacy, and everyday chores presents new challenges to couples, parents, and children in the way they spend their days,” explains Coontz. “Changes in time use help us understand how families cope with modern stresses–and also what happens when they cannot cope. Right now, the economy is slowing down, but many families find themselves speeding up. Unless we keep on top of these changes, we cannot analyze what kinds of practical support and information families need. Making sure that the data continue to be collected is an issue that cuts across partisan divisions, uniting family researchers from many different points of view.”
For further information on the American Time Use Survey, visit http://www.bls.gov/tus/home.htm.
WELL DONE, CCF!
Well, today is Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, an event I’ve long thought a brilliant conception–especially when it used to be just for girls. But I get it, I get it, esp. when it’s a case of boys seeing Mommy at Work. According to the official literature, the day is designed to be more than a career day:
For over 15 years, the program’s development of new, interactive activities and partnerships has helped us in taking girls and boys to the future they dream of.
This year’s program theme, “Making Choices for a Better World,†centers on “encouraging girls and boys to consider the options they have and make choices for a better world. This means making choices to serve the community and one’s family, to care for one’s body and health, and to make better choices that impact our environment, as well as one’s future.”
Cool. And how can you argue with that. But still, I can’t help but feel the language lost something in the translation from daughters to daughters and sons–and you know what an advocate I am for including boys/men in the feminist conversation.
Helaine Olen (co-author of Office Mate: The Employee Handbook for Finding and Managing Romance on the Job and a contributor to the forthcoming book The Maternal Is Political) has a different bone to pick, and I’m not sure how I feel about her critique. Helaine rails against it in a piece in Newsday, writing:
If the past is any guide, several million children nationwide will accompany their parents to work today, participating in the annual rite of spring known as Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day. Moms and dads across the United States will allow their kids to play in their offices, running through cube farms and “assisting” at cash registers, all in the name of breaking down the mystique that exists between work and family.
Yet in a world of home offices, moms on the playground taking business calls by cell phone, and dads answering queries on their BlackBerries at school events, it’s quite likely that children are all too aware of the importance of paid employment to their parents. What they really need is a lesson in the value of taking time to kick back and relax.
She goes on to call for an official event to teach America’s children about the importance of downtime, concluding: “We can call it Let Your Daughters and Sons See Mom and Dad Do Absolutely Nothing Day. Any takers?”
Now, I’m not a parent (yet) so maybe I’m off kilter here. But I still think the event is a good idea. What do y’all think – especially you parents out there? Is it a good thing, or a pain? Did it lose something in the translation when it switched to include boys? What’s been the experience of folks who’ve done it?
If I had a kid and I took them to work today, they’d be spending the entire day in Starbucks, watching mommy type. Thrilling, no doubt.
HAPPY APRIL 15 everyone! So Americans tend to think we’re better off than families in most other industrial countries because we pay lower income taxes. Right? NOT! As CCF reminds us today, when we factor in the higher amount Americans pay for health care, child care, and education, the comparison is not always in our favor. Where do American families’ tax dollars go and what family “value” they get in return?
For every $100 in income tax:
* $32 goes to national defense
* $19 goes to interest on the national debt
* $15 goes to supplemental programs such as TANF, child tax credits, and
farm subsidies
* $14 goes to health
* $6 goes to education, employment, and social services
* $4 goes to transportation
* $2 goes to administration of justice
* $2 goes to environment and natural resources
* $2 goes to international affairs
* $1 goes to community and regional development
* $1 goes to agriculture
* $1 goes to science, space, and technology
* $1 goes to the commerce and housing fund
Even at their height, the financial benefits of the last decade’s tax cuts for middle class families never equaled the financial benefits that citizens of many other countries receive in the form of monthly child allowances, universal health care, subsidized parental leaves and child care, and college assistance.
In most of Western Europe, citizens enjoy the right to near-universal health care. They do not have to forego routine care for financial reasons, and are not financially wiped out by catastrophic health emergencies. In America, this occurs frequently enough that one-quarter of financial bankruptcies originate in medical problems not covered by insurance. What’s more, of course, every other industrial nation in Western Europe, and most of the rest of the world as well, provides paid maternity leave, and in some cases paid paternity leave as well. In Belgium, free early childhood education is available to all children starting at the age of 2 ½.
Now that’s some family values. But wait–before we all head off to Canada or Sweden, I think we’d better stick around to see how our election plays out. One can still hope for a president who truly values families, which I think both the Democrats running honestly do. Did anyone hear the latest about McCain calling his wife a c—? Family values starts at home, John. Remember that, dude.
Ok, nuf about candidates. Let’s talk issues. Tomorrow is the 15th anniversary of signing into law of the Family and Medical Leave Act. Check out what’s still at stake, courtesy Ellen Bravo.
I’m sick as a dog today, lying in bed with the covers pulled up to my nose (and my loyal cat at my feet). Can’t quite put a sentence together, so thought I’d just share a few quick links, following on yesterday’s post.
The Evolution of Dad Project weighs in on the Daddy Wars, noting, “The conflict isn’t being perceived between Traditional Dads and the Stay-At-Home Dads (which would be obvious manufactured companion to the ‘Mommy Wars’) but between dads who desire to have more of a work/family balance and their bosses, who are more typically dads themselves at a slightly older age and bred more on being more of a dedicated breadwinner.”
And the BBC reports on new research from the Institute for Social and Economic Research finds that mothers who work outside the home are happier than SAHMs, via Broadsheet
I hear cannons booming. Or maybe that’s just my head?
I love this piece by Stephanie Armour appearing in USA Today last week, right down to its title: “Workplace Tensions Rise as Dads Seek Family Time.†A synopsis:
Todd Scott leaves his job every day at 5 p.m. to be with his family – and even then feels guilty he isn’t spending enough time with Hunter, 4, and Anna, 1. By contrast, Scott’s boss, Steve Himmelrich, who has two children and is a more traditional-style dad, spends long days, free time and some weekends at the office. Both acknowledge these differing choices have been a source of tension between them. Their situation reflects the conflicts that are becoming increasingly common in workplaces across the nation, as fathers press for more family time and something other than a traditional career path. Dads are demanding paternity leave, flexible work schedules, telecommuting and other new benefits. They’ve also prompted several Fortune 500 companies to begin pitching such family-friendly benefits to men – and inspired a new wave of workplace discrimination complaints filed by dads.
The article cites a survey by Monster that found nearly 70% of fathers surveyed reporting that they would consider being a stay-at-home parent if money were no object. And–are you sitting down?–“the survey also found that working dads are increasingly tapping into benefits that until just a few years ago were used almost exclusively by mothers: 71% of fathers with a child under age 5 took paternity leave when it was offered by their employer.” This goes counter to what I’ve heard from researchers. Help me out here. Is this good news true?! (If it is, count me in for a happy dance.)
Analysts attribute the change to generation. Today’s fathers in their 20s and 30s don’t typically adhere to the philosophies or career tracks followed by previous generations. To wit:
For generations, “Fathers have defined success as big cars, big salaries, big homes. But dads now define success as a good relationship with their children and spouse,” says Armin Brott of Fathers At Work, an Oakland-based business that specializes in helping men find a balance between work and family. “It’s really a generational change, but it’s hard,” Brott says. “There’s tension, and there’s this sense out there that careers will suffer.”
Clearly, that sense needs to be corrected with some data. My dream is that organizations like Catalyst will soon be taking this on. Sounds like Fathers at Work is already on it. Their tagline is “Transforming Job-Family Conflict into Competitive Advantage.” And they offer companies workshops called “Balancing Father Stress and Professional Success.” I can’t wait to interview these guys for my next book.
Paul Raeburn had a great post the other week up at HuffPo on older dads on the campaign trail. Yep, Sen. Christopher Dodd, 63, has two daughters, age 6 and 2, with his second wife Jackie Clegg Dodd. And Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, 65, has two toddlers with his second wife, Jeri Kehn.
What exactly do we read in these tea leaves?, asks Paul. First, that these two candidates mirror a demographic trend. Older fathers are on the rise. That’s not too surprising. But here’s the rub: the children of older fathers face particularly high risks of schizophrenia and autism. Drrr. On a personal level, I hate hearing that stuff. But do check out Paul’s post. Paul is a journalist who writes quite smartly about various permutations of contemporary fatherhood. I keep trying to get him to guest post here, and sense that one day soon, he will!
Also on the dad front, check out Judith Warner’s response to Charlie LeDuff’s essay in Men’s Vogue, which she titles“Daddy Wars,” and which begins like so:
“One of the more pleasant outcomes of the slowly growing trend toward highly involved fatherhood has been, I’ve found, the ability to plainly see that total ninnyishness is not a uniquely female thing.” Read more.
