{"id":54695,"date":"2013-04-11T11:30:49","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T16:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=54695"},"modified":"2013-04-07T21:39:42","modified_gmt":"2013-04-08T02:39:42","slug":"father-care-the-more-things-dont-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/04\/11\/father-care-the-more-things-dont-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same\/","title":{"rendered":"Father Care: The More Things Don’t Change, the More They Stay the Same"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Family Inequality<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The U.S. Census Bureau has\u00a0released<\/a>\u00a0its new\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0on childcare, written by Lynda Laughlin. This provides a good followup treatment for the\u00a0hyperventilation induced<\/a>\u00a0by fear of fathers taking over (or being relegated to) childcare.<\/p>\n

First, the trend that fits my story of\u00a0stalled gender progress<\/a>. Among married fathers with employed wives, how many are providing the \u201cprimary care\u201d for their children? That is, among the various childcare arrangements the children are in while their mother is at work, how many are in their fathers\u2019 care more than in any other arrangement? Answer: \u00a010%<\/a>, which is virtually unchanged from a quarter-century ago:<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Not a lot of change for a quarter century in which\u00a0we\u2019re told<\/a>\u00a0everything has changed.<\/p>\n

However, in fairness to the change-is-happening community, here is the trend for the percentage of fathers who say they are providing ANY care to their children while their mothers were at work.<\/p>\n

\"2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t give this much weight since it might reflect greater sensitivity to the importance of saying fathers provide care, but there you have it: it\u2019s higher, and it shows some increases up until the early 1990s, which is when gender equality in\u00a0general stalled<\/a>\u00a0on many indicators. Since the mid-1990s: Nothing.<\/p>\n

Please note these figures don\u2019t show the total contribution of fathers, but only reflects those married with children, whose wives are employed.<\/p>\n

One interesting source of father care is mothers\u2019 shiftwork. As Harriet Presser reported\u00a0two decades ago<\/a>, the 24\/7 economy stimulates some task sharing among couples. In the current report, Laughlin writes:<\/p>\n

Preschoolers whose mothers worked nights or evenings were more likely to have their father as a child care provider than those with mothers who worked a day shift (42 percent and 23 percent, respectively)<\/p><\/blockquote>\nPhilip N. Cohen is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and writes the blog Family Inequality<\/a>. You can follow him on Twitter<\/a> or Facebook<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Family Inequality. The U.S. Census Bureau has\u00a0released\u00a0its new\u00a0report\u00a0on childcare, written by Lynda Laughlin. This provides a good followup treatment for the\u00a0hyperventilation induced\u00a0by fear of fathers taking over (or being relegated to) childcare. First, the trend that fits my story of\u00a0stalled gender progress. Among married fathers with employed wives, how many are providing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,2102,2088,253,272],"class_list":["post-54695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-gender-history","tag-gender-marriagefamily","tag-history","tag-marriagefamily"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54698,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54695\/revisions\/54698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}