Posted on 23. Sep, 2004 by Brian Reid in General

OK, OK … it’s time to turn the attention to a parenting magazine that believes in thoughtful, in-depth explorations of modern parenthood: Brain, Child, which ran a thoughtful, in-depth and disappointing look at at-home dads (sort of). (Thanks to Matt for the link. I am late to the party on the commentary. See this dead-on post from Half Changed World for additional insight.)

The article is a long one, and it asks an interesting question: where the hell are the men in all these stories about women and work-life balance being written by Caitlin Flanagan in the Atlantic and Lisa Belkin in the NYT Magazine, among others. It’s a good question and one I’ve asked before. The author has all her facts right, and she talks to some of my favorite thinkers: Crittenden, Pruett, Baylies, Hilling.

Sadly, the conclusions are, by and large, wrong. The answer to “where the hell are the men,” is “work,” and the author, Stacey Evers, spends most of the article arguing that at-home fathers are a) extremely rare and b) likely to stay that way, barring a “seismic ground shift.”

This post could go on a long, long time, so let me take brief aim at just three of Evers’ myths:

1) At-home fathers are rare: The story goes into great detail about the Census numbers from last year that cut our numbers from around two million to 105,000, explaining that once you cut out all those dads who are part-time workers, shift workers or flextime guys, the number of at-home dads dwindles. (See here for my take on the numbers.) Of course, the number of dads working reduced or flexible schedules to be more involved is jumping, but Evers seems much more fascinated by the small and virtually meaningless 105,000 number. Her message: this group is too small to bother with.

2) Men make too much to stay home: Look, women continue to get the short end of the stick in the workforce. No question whatsoever on the wage gap issue, and Evers makes that completely clear. But in emphasizing that men on average are better wage earners, she forgets that few marriages conform to a national average. Here is a better stat: in dual-earner couples, 30 percent of women outearn their husbands. If Evers personal-finance argument was true, at-home dads would indeed be outnumbered by at-home moms … by about two-to-one, not 56-to-1 (the current ratio). We have a long way to go toward income equality, but we’re way closer to that than to caregiver equality. The two don’t seem to be very closely linked.

3) Men are locked into the provider mindset: Again, a lot of men are indeed still slaves to the workplace, but the number of men looking for more flexibility for family reasons is jumping. Longtime at-home dads (Hilling, Baylies) will tell you that respect for what they do has grown in quantum leaps over a relatively short period of time. Evers gathers quotes from businessmen, lawyers and a CEO (for Pete’s sake!) who claim at-home dads are stigmatized by their inability to provide, but the reality on the (play)ground is that those social stereotypes are fading. The story seems to be stuck in Mr. Mom land (1983).

There’s a lot else not to like here, and HCW hits much of it in her post. It’s too bad, really, given the time obviously spent on the article. And I know a lot of the people she spoke to — I can’t imagine Hogan and Peter sharing the story’s pessimism.

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  1. Justa Dad

    23. Sep, 2004

    I added rebaldad to the links on my site, The Distance. I really don’t get that many hits, but I need the HTML practice.
    Anyway, I like your blog, and if you don’t mind I’ll keep it on there. If not let me know and I’ll take it off.

  2. Elizabeth

    23. Sep, 2004

    As always, it’s good to hear your perspective on these things. You should write to Brain, Child — unlike the mainstream parenting magazines, I bet they’d run your letter.

    Thanks for the plug, but the link isn’t working — the extra slash at the end does it in. The link should be:

    http://elb.typepad.com/halfchangedworld/2004/09/brain_child_on_.html

  3. amy

    24. Sep, 2004

    rD, is the dual-income stat longitudinal? In English, my question looking at that 30% figure is, “Does that take into account couples where the woman used to work, but quit because the guy outearns her big?” If you take those women out of the picture and pretend they weren’t ever there, you’re going to get a picture skewed toward dual-income wage equality or women outearning the men.

    Just curious about that one.

  4. Rebel Dad

    24. Sep, 2004

    Amy -

    I’ll look it up, but I think it refers to dual-income couples. That certainly skews the stat toward equality, but it probably accurately describes the situation of most pre-kid marriages. My point is when a kid *does* comes around and someone has to drop out of the workforce, you can’t come close to explaining the gender role breakdown that emerges by family finances alone.

    — rD

  5. Dan Jacobson

    28. Sep, 2004

    So why exactly do part-time, flex time, etc. fathers not count toward the total? If they’re at home with the kid(s) in the caregiver capacity even for part of the week, does that not make them at home fathers? I ask not to be snotty, but because I really want to know what the reasoning was behind the exclusion…

  6. Rebel Dad

    28. Sep, 2004

    Dan -

    I suspect it’s because demographers like nice, solid catagories. How much caregiving makes one a “primary caregiver”? No one knows … the elegance of the old-fashioned survey that generated the two-million-dad-caretakers number was that it was self-reported. You were the primary caregiver if your wife said so. Captures what people really think, but damn squishy from a number-crunching point of view.
    -rD

  7. Dan Jacobson

    28. Sep, 2004

    That makes sense. Thanks.

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