If you’re having a tough day trying to juggle the kids and housework, be thankful that you’re living in the 21st century. “Fathers today are doing much more hands-on parenting and housework than they did five and 10 years ago,” says parental-leave activist Julie Shields, who is the author of How to Avoid the Mommy Trap: A Roadmap for Sharing Parenting and Making It Work (Capital Books, August 2002).

According to the U.S. Census, the number of households with a primary-parent dad has increased by 70 percent in the last decade. The number of father-headed single households has risen by almost 50 percent in the past 30 years alone.

Win-Win Situation
Fathers are more likely to take formal paternity leave, to have that leave be paid and to take longer leave, says Shields. They are also changing diapers, waking up at night to feed babies, working flexibly, taking children to and from school and making daily involvement in their children’s lives a reality rather than just a goal. “They still do not do as much as women, however, but they now do about 75 percent as much housework as women do, up from 30 percent in 1970,” she says.

This increased involvement is good news for children, wives, marriages and the fathers themselves, says Shields, who likes to refer to these dads as “new millennium dads.” Today’s dad “has more varied responsibilities and carries more expectations of himself than his own father,” says Shields. “These include partnering with Mom in childrearing and house care.”

Shields calls this a win-win situation. The children benefit in every possible way. “The children of involved dads are more confident, secure, curious, compassionate, have more advanced math and verbal skills and see themselves as more in control of themselves and the world around them,” she says.

Happier Dads, Too
The benefits extend beyond children. “Dads who are active parents are healthier, less stressed out, have happier marriages, are less likely to divorce, have sex more often with their wives and have closer relationships with their children,” says Shields. “Mothers whose husbands are actively involved have more free time and are closer to and more appreciative and prouder of their husbands.”

When asked the reason for this gender shift, Shields says many dads have to be more involved because they’re part of dual-income households, where Mom is no longer specializing in the areas of childrearing and housework and Dad is no longer specializing in providing income. Also, in the wake of the women’s movement, many women are asking for and expect dads to help out or partner with them, even when Mom doesn’t work for pay or cuts back on her work hours, says Shields. “We have a lot more information now that dads matter quite a lot, and we know that the idealized 1950s Ward and June Cleaver type of arrangement left many dads and their children unhappy and feeling too distant from each other,” Shields says.

This is what happened to Bill Taussig, of Needham, Mass., whose parents had a traditional arrangement. “My father was not involved in parenting and, as a result, neither I nor my three siblings ever developed much of a close relationship with him,” he says.

Taussig just set up a four-day-a-week arrangement as an attorney at Fidelity Investments in Boston. While waiting on final approval from his manager, he’s hopeful that his request will be approved. With his wife expecting their third child in August, they decided it made sense for him to reduce his schedule rather than his wife reducing hers further or one of them staying home full time. He also wanted to be more involved with the schools and help out more with managing the family’s activities.

Peter Steinberg is another “enlightened” dad. A stay-at-home dad in Springfield, Va., Steinberg quit his job when his children were 4 or 5. Before he quit, his family life was stressful. “Between working, going to school, parenting two young children, we had no time to breathe,” Steinberg says. “Our weekends were spent trying to do all those chores that needed to get done. If one of our children got sick, we literally negotiated who can and was able to stay home from work.”

One day, Steinberg’s daughter asked why he worked. He wanted to say something profound, but the only thing that came out was “to pay for your daycare.” After another incident, Steinberg did some deep thinking, talked to a few people and decided to quit his job. He and his wife had long talks before deciding and even drafted a contract, which lays out their expectations of each other in their new roles.

Steinberg would like to say it’s less stressful now, but it’s not – the stress is different. “One of my roles is to make sure that everyone is supposed to be where they are supposed to be when they’re supposed to be there, and that can be stressful,” he says. “Honestly, when I stopped working full time, our lives slowed down to a normal pace. We are no longer rushing to get things done.” His wife can focus more on the kids when she comes home, and the stress has been removed from their marriage. She’s also able to pursue things in her career that she couldn’t before.

Fortunately, there generally hasn’t been much criticism of dads being more active, Shields says. “Cultural norms and expectations have changed so that dads receive less and less backlash everywhere for being involved fathers; as a society we know this is a good thing and we expect dads to be involved, in contrast to past generations who thought a good dad was a good income provider,” she says.

Steinberg’s daughters have learned that people don’t have to be stuck in traditional roles and that parents have to make the best choices for their family based on the circumstance. “My wife and I learned that before our children were born, we should have talked about work, kids, family and how to juggle it all,” Steinberg says. “Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and like all parents, we are learning.”

Want to see more?

• Daddies Do Dishes, Too: Teaching Nongender Roles to Children
• Off to Work We Go? Two Dads Sound Off
• Father Time: Striking a Balance Between Work and Home
• Talk about it!