It is also kind of forced. Modern industrial society wants to extract as much productivity out of workforce as possible. What that means is in 1965 one income was able to sustain a household but now we need two incomes. There is no dedicated support for kids now so fathers have to give up time and mothers have to exchange child-mother bonding time from kids to the company.
The real benefiter of this is the capitalist who can now have twice the workforce at the price of one.
How about we start paying market price to the parent who takes care of the kids irrespective of mothers or fathers ? Investing in next generation is way more important than making useless widgets faster.
Dad and millennial here and this change has been very noticeable in my circle of friends including myself and I’m all for it. Men have been doing their share of housework too. But I will say, it’s not all dads but enough that I think this will have a positive effect on the next generation.
I can honestly say that I don't have any time for a dad who isn't all-in for their kids. I understand if the responsibilities aren't 50/50, but if you're making mom handle everything I think you're a loser.
All my millennial dad friends clean, change diapers, cook, whatever. And make no mistake all the moms are incredibly hard-working and involved with the kids.
If I happened to meet socially a dad who wasn't doing those things I would literally make fun of them. "You're a grown man who can't change a diaper or clean a bathroom?"
Woke up at 6am. Child 1 woke up at 7am. Dropped her off at daycare at 8am. All the other children were being dropped off by their dads, too. Full day of work ahead. Dinner at 6pm. Bath at 7pm. Bedtime and story at 8pm. Usually calls with Bangalore from 9pm to midnight but it's Labour Day over there. Sleep at midnight.
Are the 9pm and later calls w/Bangalore an every day thing?
Here's my routine.
5am: wake up/coffee
5:30ish: gym
6:30ish: back, clean kitchen, take out trash, make lunch for 2 kids
7:30: nanny arrives, and I sit down at desk, and kids are now awake
8:30: walk older kid to school
9-5:30: work or whatever else. I run my own business so some days feel very busy, some the opposite. I just try to be intentional with my time.
5:30 p: start dinner
6:30 p: dinner (or earlier depending on demands)
7:30 p: kid bed time
8:15-8:30: done w/kids. time for a bit of TV or wind-down, catch up with my wife about her day for as long as I can manage to stay awake
9:30-10: bed time (ideal day)
I stopped working at night unless it is critical for a next-morning thing. That leaves me absent from some opportunities that I might otherwise get spending more time on work, but I also have more time to focus on me/marriage/non-work-life
My point in sharing is that I make space on purpose for me. Your schedule sounds (and I am presuming) like you don't have much time for you. Is that right?
Don't take this as criticism, but I wonder if you could ask the Bangalore folks to get to their point faster and get some more sleep. Very important for health.
Its kind of shocking after having an infant myself and hearing from his grandparents how little my wife and I's fathers did. One never changed a diaper and has never cooked dinner and the other looked like he had never held a baby in his life despite having 3 kids. I can't imagine not being incredibly hands on and involved.
My mom left the house as a kid. Dad worked and did it all during the week. Definitely felt like this was a rare thing growing up. I did spend time with my mom on the weekend though.
As a father I try and balance it out but I definitely don’t do as much as my dad did growing up.
I think this only applies to certain segments of society. My child has type 1 so I'm active on Facebook groups for parents. The number of mums who say their partner is not involved really at all in their child's care is so sad. The child's own father can't supervise their child solo because they can't manage the care. And then the divorced parents. Oh boy...
> Millennial fathers have roughly tripled the amount of time they spend with kids.
I think this really undersells it. My mom parented a few hours a week. My kids (like most) lived under ceaseless 24/7 adulting. The time I spent with my sons was more like a 20x increase over my parents' generation.
Past that, it seems like it's taking forever for anyone to notice the radical changes in modern parenting/childhood. Along with eliminating adult-free peer time, we've eradicated free range areas. My generation could roam (w/o adults) for miles in every direction; my kids (like most) could go from one edge of the yard to the other (credit: car culture, trespassing culture, false stranger-danger culture).
The surprising part (to me) isn't how thoroughly adults have sabotaged kids growth opportunities, it's that nearly no one seems to have noticed it.
I agree this is a terrible loss. On the other hand, new dads are actually learning how to feel their feelings, communicate those feelings in a healthy way, and tell their children they love them.
Millennial dads were (mostly) a distant mess who for whatever reason saw the expression of feelings as "weak".
Sounds like you choose to live in a place without free range area. My neighborhood is covered with kids. Lots of kids on e-bikes after school on the main roads too. Plus a lot of packed are revamping side walks to accommodate bikes, golf cars, e-bikes and everyone on foot.
I'm encountering people in their lower 20's who seem to really struggle emotionally, and use psychological lingo to describe themselves and each other in a way that really didn't exist when I was in my 20's.
On the one hand this is great - I am a huge supporter of understanding and accepting ourselves non-pejoratively - anxiety, depression, etc.
On the flip side they talk sometimes like the forces are from outside them, like they have no agency.
And they also talk like the words came from somewhere else, "My generation compared to previous generations..." <- unless you lived those previous generations, which is impossible, you heard that from somewhere, probably a paper, and probably from a professor in school.
I feel there is a trend of not fully appreciating what fathers who spend less time with kids actually do. I think that's unfair, frankly. Many of them do things that contribute to the family in other ways.
What was my Dad busy doing? Focusing on his career in order to provide for his family. Doing hobbies that increased his skill set. Fixing the house to ensure we all had a nice safe place to live. Tending to the garden to keep the neighbours happy. Building ties with the community to increase our family's standing in the community and being able to call in favours in emergencies etc.
The 4 days off he had from his primary job, he worked multiple other jobs, creating multiple streams of family income.
It's so easy to view many of these things as him not tending to his family directly. That's incredibly short-sighted.
My mother appreciated very little of those things, and constantly nagged that he never did enough. She admitted many years later this was a big contributor to their divorce.
I think some modern opinions of parenting come from a very individualistic, transactional and reciprocal mindset. Eg "I spend 1 hour doing the dishes, you have to do something, today, and of equivalent value, to show you love us". What kind of foundation for a relationship is that? What happened to the power of a family?
Correct. As I've grown older as a man I've realized how much pressure dad was under and never said anything. Women have the space to complain about the responsibilities foisted on them. Men have never had that and still don't.
You can see this in how people respond to complaints of lazy spouses. If a woman complains, everyone is by default on her side. If a man complains, even if it's obviously true his wife is not doing enough, he is still the one blamed because maybe he wasn't nice to his wife or something.
Just a note for Dads doing more than their parents - it’s quality more than quantity. Be fully present with your kids more than trying to kill yourself fitting more hours in. That’s what matters.
Bad parenting tends to be more of the type that isn’t engaged. Kids don’t hate you for going to work. They are hurt if you come home and ignore them.
Yeah, I'm a little skeptical as well. I remember dad being home, but not specifically focused on me. Sometimes seeing dad at home, doing his thing, was a great way of learning.
I think as kids we learned by example more than hands-on-taught.
Second sibling born - turns out I didn't get to be the parent, I get to look after the parents. I'm tired, exhausted, utterly miserable, barely scraping by. All those fancy ideals I thought old age provided for don't exist. Nursing homes? Hah, that's $340 a day up here in the middle of nowhere. I ain't making that a day. I get to do it myself.
I wonder what percentage of folks are now stuck in caretaking instead of raising their own families themselves. I basically predict my family line is extinct after my generation.
We were latchkey kids. The key to the house door was tied around our neck using a shoelace. When the street lights came on, it meant going home. Both parents worked to afford the house and the kids' expenses.
I can't help but wonder about the relationship between fathers (and, in fact, all parents) spending more time with their children, and people choosing to have fewer children, and later.
I think it's unquestionably true that fathers spending more time with their children is, on the whole, much better for those children.
But it's also true that it's a huge problem for society that people are having fewer children. And I think you can make a reasonable argument that increasing expectations around the quality of parenting are party of that trend.
> I don’t know who told MacRumors what (and their sourcing is just “MacRumors has learned”), but I know for a fact that it is not true that the teams working on the Vision platform have “been redistributed to other teams within Apple.”
Good to know! I thought it was a bit weird for the team to have been disbanded so abruptly. Perhaps if this aspect of the story is not correct, other aspects will turn out to have been untrue as well.
Not directly relevant to the article, but I'm curious if anyone else has connected the fact that fathers are spending more time being close with their children at the same time average global testosterone levels have dropped without a solid explanation?
To be clear, I'm not trying to point a causal arrow here, or even say it's good or bad. I read a study the other day that asserted that fathers who spent more time parenting have measurably lower testosterone levels, and that the delta correlates to the amount of time spent.
It's a good article and, as a father, I experience and certify what it says. It presents the causes of the main observed fact (more time for kids) which happens anywhere in the Western world at least. But it can't go further and explain what general social changes cause all that. For me, in no order, they are:
Financial strains (family disposable income, high cost of living, wealth inequality)
Expand of electronic device use (from TVs to modern ones) and their apps
Convergence of gender roles, making males less masculine
General loss of classical values, promotion of easy life, short term goals and superficial qualities leading to misery and deactivation
It isn’t said in this article, but as an elder millennial and a guy that’s talked about this exact thing with peers, it’s that we don’t want to repeat the mistakes of our parents. Boomers, the parents of millennials, are perhaps the worst generation to have ever existed and we carry a lot of baggage over it.
Mostly in the short sleep period, but also in the 'free time' too. I tend to get about 30 minutes at the end of the day, after all have (finally) gone to sleep, but still.
This measures fatherhood in terms of time spent with children. I question whether that metric is of any value what so ever. Is a farmer a better farmer because he/she spends hours in the field? Or is the correct measure of a farmer the crops?
This article, and the place it has on Hackernews and the quality of "commments" raises serious questions for me about Hacker News as a whole, the moderation, the readers and mechanism.
My complaint is not that this kind of thing exists. My complaint is that something better does not.
Dad of 2 under 5: would be curious to know if there has been a change in the role of grandparents and especially how parents (particularly Mums’) desire to get along with grandparents (in-laws) and what role is that playing in the increase in the ‘mental load’ and the stressful part of Mums’ parenting.
Can a good part of the mental load be attributed to the need for the parents to ‘do it all’ themselves rather than share the load and responsibility with other loved ones and caregivers without the need to tightly control all aspects of parenting?
On a separate note - Insta is constantly feeding my wife with versions of parenting which is completely unattainable. That really is at the heart of the mental load we are experiencing in our situation of raising two under five. If only Insta was banned, life would have been far more better for parents.
My well being is judged now by whether I took the time to watch a movie with my daughter, take my son out to fly a rc plane and so forth... so easy to dig into the daily grind ... not sure what life is about but I sure a shit know misery it born from abandoning your kids and the sickness that brings inside is insidious.
If I do nothing both will be in their rooms all day. Makes me sick.
37 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 56.3 ms ] threadThe real benefiter of this is the capitalist who can now have twice the workforce at the price of one.
How about we start paying market price to the parent who takes care of the kids irrespective of mothers or fathers ? Investing in next generation is way more important than making useless widgets faster.
All my millennial dad friends clean, change diapers, cook, whatever. And make no mistake all the moms are incredibly hard-working and involved with the kids.
If I happened to meet socially a dad who wasn't doing those things I would literally make fun of them. "You're a grown man who can't change a diaper or clean a bathroom?"
Every dad wants his sons to be a better father than he was. Glad to see it happening.
Nothing strengthens the knees like the weight of responsibility.
Woke up at 6am. Child 1 woke up at 7am. Dropped her off at daycare at 8am. All the other children were being dropped off by their dads, too. Full day of work ahead. Dinner at 6pm. Bath at 7pm. Bedtime and story at 8pm. Usually calls with Bangalore from 9pm to midnight but it's Labour Day over there. Sleep at midnight.
Rinse. Repeat.
Here's my routine.
5am: wake up/coffee
5:30ish: gym
6:30ish: back, clean kitchen, take out trash, make lunch for 2 kids
7:30: nanny arrives, and I sit down at desk, and kids are now awake
8:30: walk older kid to school
9-5:30: work or whatever else. I run my own business so some days feel very busy, some the opposite. I just try to be intentional with my time.
5:30 p: start dinner
6:30 p: dinner (or earlier depending on demands)
7:30 p: kid bed time
8:15-8:30: done w/kids. time for a bit of TV or wind-down, catch up with my wife about her day for as long as I can manage to stay awake
9:30-10: bed time (ideal day)
I stopped working at night unless it is critical for a next-morning thing. That leaves me absent from some opportunities that I might otherwise get spending more time on work, but I also have more time to focus on me/marriage/non-work-life
My point in sharing is that I make space on purpose for me. Your schedule sounds (and I am presuming) like you don't have much time for you. Is that right?
As a father I try and balance it out but I definitely don’t do as much as my dad did growing up.
I think this really undersells it. My mom parented a few hours a week. My kids (like most) lived under ceaseless 24/7 adulting. The time I spent with my sons was more like a 20x increase over my parents' generation.
Past that, it seems like it's taking forever for anyone to notice the radical changes in modern parenting/childhood. Along with eliminating adult-free peer time, we've eradicated free range areas. My generation could roam (w/o adults) for miles in every direction; my kids (like most) could go from one edge of the yard to the other (credit: car culture, trespassing culture, false stranger-danger culture).
The surprising part (to me) isn't how thoroughly adults have sabotaged kids growth opportunities, it's that nearly no one seems to have noticed it.
Millennial dads were (mostly) a distant mess who for whatever reason saw the expression of feelings as "weak".
On the one hand this is great - I am a huge supporter of understanding and accepting ourselves non-pejoratively - anxiety, depression, etc.
On the flip side they talk sometimes like the forces are from outside them, like they have no agency.
And they also talk like the words came from somewhere else, "My generation compared to previous generations..." <- unless you lived those previous generations, which is impossible, you heard that from somewhere, probably a paper, and probably from a professor in school.
What was my Dad busy doing? Focusing on his career in order to provide for his family. Doing hobbies that increased his skill set. Fixing the house to ensure we all had a nice safe place to live. Tending to the garden to keep the neighbours happy. Building ties with the community to increase our family's standing in the community and being able to call in favours in emergencies etc.
The 4 days off he had from his primary job, he worked multiple other jobs, creating multiple streams of family income.
It's so easy to view many of these things as him not tending to his family directly. That's incredibly short-sighted.
My mother appreciated very little of those things, and constantly nagged that he never did enough. She admitted many years later this was a big contributor to their divorce.
I think some modern opinions of parenting come from a very individualistic, transactional and reciprocal mindset. Eg "I spend 1 hour doing the dishes, you have to do something, today, and of equivalent value, to show you love us". What kind of foundation for a relationship is that? What happened to the power of a family?
You can see this in how people respond to complaints of lazy spouses. If a woman complains, everyone is by default on her side. If a man complains, even if it's obviously true his wife is not doing enough, he is still the one blamed because maybe he wasn't nice to his wife or something.
Bad parenting tends to be more of the type that isn’t engaged. Kids don’t hate you for going to work. They are hurt if you come home and ignore them.
I think as kids we learned by example more than hands-on-taught.
I wonder what percentage of folks are now stuck in caretaking instead of raising their own families themselves. I basically predict my family line is extinct after my generation.
I think it's unquestionably true that fathers spending more time with their children is, on the whole, much better for those children.
But it's also true that it's a huge problem for society that people are having fewer children. And I think you can make a reasonable argument that increasing expectations around the quality of parenting are party of that trend.
Good to know! I thought it was a bit weird for the team to have been disbanded so abruptly. Perhaps if this aspect of the story is not correct, other aspects will turn out to have been untrue as well.
To be clear, I'm not trying to point a causal arrow here, or even say it's good or bad. I read a study the other day that asserted that fathers who spent more time parenting have measurably lower testosterone levels, and that the delta correlates to the amount of time spent.
Financial strains (family disposable income, high cost of living, wealth inequality)
Expand of electronic device use (from TVs to modern ones) and their apps
Convergence of gender roles, making males less masculine
General loss of classical values, promotion of easy life, short term goals and superficial qualities leading to misery and deactivation
I mentioned that I really felt how a space marine feels some days: https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Daily_rituals_of_a_Space_Ma...
Mostly in the short sleep period, but also in the 'free time' too. I tend to get about 30 minutes at the end of the day, after all have (finally) gone to sleep, but still.
This article, and the place it has on Hackernews and the quality of "commments" raises serious questions for me about Hacker News as a whole, the moderation, the readers and mechanism.
My complaint is not that this kind of thing exists. My complaint is that something better does not.
Can a good part of the mental load be attributed to the need for the parents to ‘do it all’ themselves rather than share the load and responsibility with other loved ones and caregivers without the need to tightly control all aspects of parenting?
On a separate note - Insta is constantly feeding my wife with versions of parenting which is completely unattainable. That really is at the heart of the mental load we are experiencing in our situation of raising two under five. If only Insta was banned, life would have been far more better for parents.
If I do nothing both will be in their rooms all day. Makes me sick.