Millenial Men Aren't the Dads They Thought They'd Be

I think they’re reading too much into the data.

The inferences they’re drawing assume that the populations of “millenial men without kids” and “millenial men with kids” are part of an otherwise uniform group of millenial men, with attitudes changing as men go from one population into the other showing that pre-kid egalitarian attitudes couldn’t stand up to reality.

But this seems like an oversimplified model. There is a big selection bias when passing to the “men with children” group. It’s likely that men who get married and have children at a younger age probably tend to be from more religious backgrounds, for example.

To reliably make the kind of inferences the paper is making, you would need to survey men without children, wait a few years, then survey the same men after they had had children, and ignore the original interviews of men who still haven’t had children by the time of the second set of surveys.

Edit: I’m trying to track down the sources for this story, and it’s even more confusing, as from what I can tell they’re comparing numbers from different studies with different samples and methodologies. I really wish they would more concretely quote exactly which numbers were coming from which source.

> Yet those who had children had different attitudes. Of millennial men who were already fathers, 53 percent said it was better for mothers and fathers to take on traditional roles.

Is this because (by definition) those millennials who've already had children must then have had them at a relatively young age? That might be indicative of a more traditional attitude towards adulthood and, by extension, towards gender roles.

TL;DR: Article says we're not as good/egalitarian as we'd like to be. Sure, but the data shows that we've come a long way. And things are getting better even faster, because technology increases productivity.

I recently saw a more current version of the graph from this NYTimes article (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/us/17kids.html), but the data indicates that both mothers and fathers in the U.S. are actually spending more time on childcare than they used to. Both. The biggest difference was in housework, which I believe has dropped quite a bit further in the past decade.

What seems relevant here (and not addressed in this article) is the extent to which technology powers social change like this. Social attitudes (the 'ideals') change because productivity gains due to technology means that household chores no longer take 40 hours+ per week.

I'm pretty sure the data from the 2010's doesn't take Instacart and other on-demand-everything into account because it has yet to be everywhere, but just think how awesome everything will be in this coming decade!

Millennial families also have to deal with the stigma of 24/7 supervision of their children. A few generations ago, kids roamed the streets until supper time. Now if you let your kid walk to the park, you get arrested for negligence. We're obsessed with work, we're obsessed with being over-protective, and we're entitled to everything.

And let's be honest - men are in no hurry to pick up a second job when they can reluctantly blame the office's policies for why they can't pitch in more.

And how exactly is family leave or flexible work hours explained to single workers? Assuming married couples got policies changed so they could somehow both split their time between child-rearing and office work, single people will probably have to make up whatever time is lost. Because the question isn't "Do I have time to both work and raise this child", it's "How can I be at the office and dropping Timmy off at soccer practice at the same time?"

To make everything fair between single workers and working families you'd have to allow a workforce-wide reduction in hours, possibly accompanied by hiring more. Why do I get the feeling that might not happen?

The compromise here that would keep workplaces fair, is to not compromise for families, and force everyone to work the same hours. Which would require either that families get part-time jobs, or that one of them be 'the breadwinner'.

This also assumes the 2-parent model will remain the exclusive model this century. The next big fight might be over polycules for the right to co-parent if they're not a biological parent. Which would actually make time-sharing much easier, as it splits the work up amongst more people. But that's probably a good 50 years out.

Some of it is that parenting isn't always as much fun as you dream it will be. It's easy to idealize before you have kids. I love mine and am as dedicated a dad as I can be, but I'm also glad I get to go to work every day.

For a nuanced look at the complex emotions of parenting, I highly recommend Jennifer Senior's book "All Joy and No Fun" (http://www.amazon.com/All-Joy-No-Fun-Parenthood/dp/006207224...). There's a condensed version here: http://nymag.com/news/features/67024/

I can very much relate to this. I'm 31 years old and have two kids, and my attitude was and is quite egalitarian.

Yet it's my wife who works part time, and I do full time. Mostly because my baseline salary is much higher than hers, and doing it the other way around would hurt our financial situation severely. And kids are expensive too.

I try to make it up by not working crazy hours, playing with / taking care of the kids (and laundry) when I get home etc., but it's tough. There's only so much energy left after an intense day of work (even if it's "just" eight hours), and between that and the kids, time and energy for anything else is very scarce. It leaves me with the feeling of living only for work and the family, not much left for myself.

Am I the only one that thought the link for this headline would go to The Onion, not The Grey Lady?

Short-term waves ride on top of long-term waves, but if we want an accurate picture of reality, we need to simultaneously remember the short-term and long-term waves. The trough of one wave can mitigate the peak of another wave, should their frequency be off in such a way that they interfere with each other. Likewise, with social trends. Any article about what men think about marriage and fatherhood should be juxtaposed with the facts about the rise of single-parenting (and the fact that the majority of single parents are women).

There are a variety of sources that can be quoted on this issue, and depending which source you look at, you will see different numbers. However, my point is not about any particular set of numbers, but only about the need to remember the underlying trend. Just for the sake of having an example, I'll post one set of numbers, but no one should treat these numbers as being especially accurate:

"About 4 out 10 children were born to unwed mothers. Nearly two-thirds are born to mothers under the age of 30. ...According to U.S. Census Bureau, out of about 12 million single parent families in 2014, more than 80% were headed by single mothers."

https://singlemotherguide.com/single-mother-statistics/

Although any particular set of numbers can be questioned, the trend is beyond all doubt: the number of single-parents in the USA (and much of Europe) is increasing.

This trend overlaps with another trend, which is the big increase in divorce in the USA, which occurred between 1900 and 1970. The book by Carter and Glick (1976) looked at this data in great detail. In 1900 the USA had a divorce rate of 5%, whereas by 1970 the rate was close to 50%.

Since 1980 the divorce rate in the USA has declined slightly, but it remains high compared to earlier eras. More than 35% of all marriages end before their 20th anniversary.

When you combine the 40% single-parenthood statistic with the 35% divorce rate of 20 years, you end up with a figure of almost 75% of all children being born into unions that do not last during the years the child is growing up. However, it is worth noting, the 40% and the 35% are not mutually exclusive groups, so the rate is not actually 75%. Some people become parents while they are single, but they later get married. But this number doesn't dramatically shift the reality: the vast majority of kids come from romantic unions which are over before the child reaches their 18th birthday.

The people most likely to remain single while parenting fall into 2 groups: the very poor and those who are culturally non-conformists. A side-effect of the above trends is that the men who do get married tend to be more traditional than the average. Whereas 50 years ago there was no political division regarding marriage, in the future we can expect considerable political differences between those who have kids inside of marriage, versus those who have kids outside of marriage.

Some people regard the advent of single parenting as a radically modern phenomenon but it is worth considering it in light of the Grandmother Hypothesis, which explains menopause in women partly as a way of funneling needed resources to grandchildren. This theory is highly controversial. An early study concluded that in the Hazda tribe, the majority of all calories going to children came from the child's grandmother, although recent studies have disputed that, and it seems clear that the majority of protein comes from men who go hunting:

"On the whole, [men] contribute 43% of all daily kilocalories arriving in camp, but 50% among married couples, and 69% among those with nursing infants (Marlowe 2003a)"

http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/ppoint/menopause-short.pdf

That evidence can be read either way, but if you are traditionalist, and you believe women with young children are typically dependent on men, I think the surprising thing about this research was how many calories are brought in by the grandmothers. Whether that figure is 40% or 60% seems to me a minor point, the larger point is that is an important percentage. More so, I would guess that if a man went missing (died in war, died of disease, etc) the grandmother might then step up her efforts to bring in more calories for the children. So at least some aspects of single-parenthood have ancient roots (indeed, men have always died in war).

Those are the long-term trends.

There are medium-term trends, such as the decline of male wages since 1973, which forces men to work longer hours. Whereas in 1973 the typical American worker had more vacation time than the typical European worker, the situation has now dramatically reversed. The German worker regards 8 weeks of vacation as their sacred right, whereas most American workers can hardly dream of getting so much vacation time. This reality limits the amount of time that men can spend with their kids.

Then there are the short-term trends, such as the high levels of unemployment brought about by the Great Recession of 2008. Whatever ideals a young man might have about marriage and child rearing, the economic environment has been challenging for all but a privileged few.

I don't mean to imply that any of these trends are necessarily The Absolute Truth about fatherhood circa 2015, I only mean that to have an accurate read on the situation, one has to remember all of the trends, and how they happen to conjunct at the current moment.

Extremely summarised (and cynical) form of the story: twentysomething idealism meets life experience :)

In order to meet the requirements to fulfill the lifestyle desired in the article, it's more than just "workplaces must modernise". It's a societal shift. People have to be prepared for 'work hours' to shorten or move around... from a customer point of view, for example. It's not as simple as waggling a finger at employers - expectations have to be managed at all points in the chain.

The problem is that you can't be both the bread winner and give equal time to your kids. One will always suffer over the other.

It's much better to have one bread winner and one care giver. It's been like this for most of human history and it has worked very well. I'm not sure why these new-age articles and psychologists think that they can somehow change it.

It must be late, because I looked in the comments section on the article and to my surprise I found interesting ideas and view points. I'll look again tomorrow.