Evolving Fatherhood: Part I
The societal factors making it harder for good men to be good fathers
Sometimes fathers don’t measure up.
Harsh, but true.
Here’s the evidence:
16% of all Australian families don’t have a father living in the home. In comparison, only 3% of Australian families are headed by a single father.
Both American and Australian data suggests that about 27% of non-residential fathers rarely see their kids (once-a-year or less).
Mothers spend around 40 hours more each week than fathers on unpaid work (which includes childcare and housework).
When both mothers and fathers are present together with their children, men are more likely to be engaging in recreation activities than women are.
Where women are solely responsible for their children 33% of the time that they are with their children, men are solely in charge only 8% of the time that they are with their children.
Even in families where both parents work similar amounts of time, mothers spend three times as much time physically caring for their children (such as feeding them or changing nappies), and twice as much time on child-related transport and communication (such as driving them to childcare/school or talking with their teachers).
In families where the mother is the primary earner (earning more than 60% of the household income), she still spends more time on caregiving and housework than her partner does.
Fathers get to spend proportionally more of their time with their children engaging in fun activities such as playing and talking with their kids.
Unsurprisingly, mothers with children at home are more likely to report feeling time stressed than are fathers.
In fact, one researcher concluded that “Mothers preserve time interacting with their children by accepting greater task density, in other words, working harder than fathers.” They said it, so I don’t have to.
Now, I don’t want to imply that all fathers are dead-beat dads - frequently absent and unwilling to take care of their kids even when they are present. I actually think that most dads want to be good dads, and work hard to be good dads. However, society doesn’t make it easy to be a present and engaged father.
Yes, fathers don’t measure up. But it’s not exactly their fault.
Common ‘complaints’ and the societal factors that cause them
In many ways, being a good dad is both harder and easier than being a good mum. It’s easier in that the bar is lower - a dad is a good dad for taking the kids out alone for a takeaway dinner, while a mum is a bad mum for doing the same thing. Yet it’s harder because they’re starting from further back. There are a whole lot of societal factors that get in the way of dads being present and involved, and it would take a whole book to really unpack them. Here’s a brief synopsis of some of the common complaints that are made about fathers, and the societal factors that trap men into being that way.
He doesn’t change the nappies/help put the kids to bed/give them a bath/feed the baby
Obviously, a major barrier to physically engaging in childcare is being physically absent. For many dads, being present and available to do the hard work alongside their partners just isn’t possible—they’re pulled back into work after two weeks or maybe even less. Some countries around the world have started to recognise the value of fathers having as much time off as a mother, or even shared leave with their partner. But until, at a minimum, fathers are by law able to spend the fourth trimester supporting mother and baby, going back to work early is bound to put in place a barrier to dads who might want to do the right thing, but not have that much say in the matter.
(For more about the dismal state of paternity leave in many developed nations, check out this article.)
Interestingly, taking paternity leave doesn’t just facilitate engaging in childcare tasks during the period of paternity leave - fathers who take longer leave are more likely to be involved in these tasks even 2-3 years later. Even taking just 2 weeks off can increase the likelihood that a father brushes their 3 year old’s teeth by 74%, and almost doubles the chance that he will change his 9 month old baby’s nappies.
He taps out whenever things get hard
There’s no doubt that becoming a parent is a sure-fire way of digging up any traumas that may have shaped your worldview, and casting a very uncomfortable light on them. Unfortunately, many men have grown up being told to stop crying, to ‘man up’ and not process bad things that happen to them. This warped view of what it is to be a man breeds us into shunning ‘negative’ feelings, which in turn means that when these feelings arise during parenting (which again I repeat—they will), they don’t know how to deal with them. The easiest thing to do is the thing that has been modelled through the formative years—disengage with the feelings, make them stop…and if being a present dad is what brings those feelings up, then stopping being a present dad suddenly becomes the easiest option.
He acts as though he’s helping me, but they’re his kids too
We’ve all seen TV shows and films from thirty plus years ago that depict mums as the default parent, and dads as feckless idiots who freak out at the sight of a dirty nappy. Unfortunately, those depictions are deep rooted and still endure today. Shows like The Simpsons, Peppa Pig, and Family Guy continue to portray incompetent, unintelligent fathers. Additionally, popular scripted reality TV programmes such as Love Island perpetuate gender stereotypes that all contribute to feeding and sustaining the status quo. All of these media depictions contribute to the societal standard of mums being the parent, while dads are just helping out.
Unfortunately, psychologists and social scientists haven’t done as much to dispel this view as they should have. For a long time, researchers believed that because mothers were typically the primary caregiver, that they were more important. A lot of research on attachment, discipline, and responsiveness has primarily looked at mother-infant dyads, and even when fathers were considered it was often only in addition to looking at the role of mothers. In total, there are almost 4 times as many academic articles looking at maternal-child associations as there are investigating paternal-child associations.
On top of that, there are additional policies that send the message that mothers are more important. This includes the discrepancy in maternal vs paternal leave periods, the organisation of new mothers groups by the community where dads often miss out, the emphasis of Maternal and Child health, and hospital policies that often preclude fathers from staying overnight with their newborns. Then there is also the bias that most health professionals and educators have of communicating primarily with the mother, even in cases where the father is listed as the primary contact. Finally, there is even evidence that fathers are relatively absent from children’s picture books, and when they are present they take a back seat compared to the competent and nurturing mothers. Given all that is stacked against them, it’s no wonder that many dads end up in the role of helping out rather than assuming their role as equal caregivers.
He doesn’t help out around the house
Simply put, because a lot of men never saw their dads mucking in with nappy changes, household chores or anything else you’d associate with the graft of parenting, it doesn’t occur to them that’s what’s expected when they become parents. Our worldviews are so heavily influenced by what is modelled to us when we’re young, and so generational cycles are difficult to break. Particularly for men, their participation in domestic tasks is significantly impacted by the distribution of how their parents allocated tasks between themselves.
It wouldn’t surprise most of us to know that researchers have identified a list of “feminine” household tasks - doing dishes, cooking meals, cleaning the house, doing laundry - those traditional 1950s housewife tasks. What may be surprising is that even now, our daughters still do more chores than their brothers do, everything from being more likely to make their bed all the way through to being more likely to brush the dog. If it feels like the father in your family isn’t doing enough around the house, it might be a good idea to check your own biases - are you expecting your daughter to do a greater share of household tasks than your sons? Are you perpetuating gender stereotypes in your own home?
He’s not compassionate with the kids/He engages in punitive discipline/He blows his top when things get chaotic
Men don’t often have the role models that show them how to be the fathers they want to be. In traditional gender roles, especially a generation or two ago, it was more common for fathers to be the disciplinarians and therefore more likely to administer physical punishment, including spanking, for disobedience. This was influenced by the prevailing belief that fathers should be strict, authoritative figures in the family hierarchy. While we are gaining a greater understanding of the negative impacts of punitive discipline on children’s wellbeing, it can take time to break these generational cycles. Even if he is consciously evaluating the way he was parented and making intentional decisions to do things differently, it’s still likely that he will fall back into authoritarian parenting in moments of stress.
A contributing factor is the societal standard around the expression of emotions. In general, men are expected to repress all of their emotions and deny feelings of vulnerability. To be “masculine” demands stoicism. Boys begin to learn this from as early as age 2, so it’s unsurprising that subclinical levels of alexithymia (where people struggle to understand, process, and express their emotions) have become normalised among men in our society.
Within the framework of toxic masculinity, the only sanctioned negative emotion is anger. Unsurprisingly, bottled up emotions are often expressed in angry outbursts. For many men, therapy can be incredibly useful in helping them develop the emotional regulation skills that they were denied the opportunity to learn in their childhoods.
Unfortunately, where dads don’t learn healthy mechanisms to understand and process the stresses of parenting, that processing can occur in other ways. Disproportionately more men end up finding other coping mechanisms to deal with difficult emotions, such as drugs, alcohol and gambling. Statistics show that men are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, and therefore are more likely to become addicts.
Ultimately, if you are a man struggling with your emotions, know that you are deserving of having your feelings validated. For more information about getting in touch with your emotions, see this fact sheet from MensLine Australia. Or call 1300 78 99 78 (within Australia) for free counselling and support.
We'd love to hear your thoughts! What societal factors did we miss? Has this helped you feel more compassionately towards the fathers in your life?
Oh, and before you go
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