Does society support involved fathering?
by Dr. Robert Glossop and Ish Theilheimer
"I've been struck by the fact that fathers talk about 'babysitting' while their wives are working. I think this is now changing very rapidly, and it has to." That's because most mothers of children now work outside the home, she says. Avoiding child care is simply no longer an option for most men.
Men are becoming more involved as fathers but old habits and institutional barriers slow the pace of change
Thirty years ago it was rare to see men diapering babies or dropping children off at the daycare or school. Today, it is far more common, and nearly everyone knows some man who has chosen - or had to - stay home to look after young children. Active fathering, however, is still far from being the norm.
"The biggest roadblocks to active participation by fathers in child care still are sociocultural in terms of how fathers see themselves," says Professor Donna Lero of the University of Guelph in Ontario. She was a director of the National Child Care Study, which surveyed 22,000 families across Canada.
Family economies also help perpetuate old behaviour. "If somebody earns twice what you earn, the tendency is to protect that person from the day-to-day crying of the children," Dr. Lero says. Even among parents who earn similar amounts, women tend to work harder at home.
The world of work plays a major part in shaping the lives of families - and the behaviour of dads. More and more employers are recognizing their workers' family responsibilities. "Businesses used to think of employees as employees period," says Marie Tellier, Assistant Vice-President, Employment Equity, with Canadian National in Montreal.
"They weren't parents or children of elderly people. They were just people who were supposed to come into work." She sees big changes in attitude and lifestyles among CN's employees. Three-piece-suited executives bottle-feed infants in the company's on-site daycare. Fathers say they can't work late because they have to pick up their children.
Her company is responding. Besides the daycare, it offers counselling on all kinds of family matters, flexible work options, and time off for family duties. "I wouldn't say the work environment is absolutely open to parents," she says. "But there is a little more acceptance." Acceptance and accommodation vary widely in different communities, social classes and workplaces.
Two-job families face great pressure, according to Linda Duxbury, an associate professor of business at Carleton University in Ottawa. She's part of a team that recently conducted a national study on balancing work and family. "They used to say that as women entered the workforce and there were more dual-earner families, that women would become more like men," she says. "We've observed exactly the opposite. Men are becoming more like women: stressed out, suffering the same kind of overload, the same kind of interference patterns between work and family as women traditionally have."
The burden is greatest on dual-earner, low-income families. Her survey found that an overwhelming number of parents want more flexibility in their work lives: work at home, flextime, part-time options or shifts.
Duxbury says that men in blue-collar jobs tend to hold to traditional gender roles more than men in white-collar jobs. There are exceptions, though. Sociologist Judith Stacey encountered some real surprises while researching her book Brave New Families (see Transition, September 1993).
"In a typical middle-class family, the man really does have higher career status and higher pay, and he doesn't really have much time to devote to his kids, even if he has the interest," she says. "In working-class households, the structure of work is very different." Men are more likely to be laid off or to work shifts than women. Conditions have forced many working-class men to take over at home, she says. "Part of it has to do with the kind of jobs the women had. They began to be the primary earners in the family, but they weren't earning the kind of money to pay for child care. The main method of child care among working-class people is in the family."
Julie White sees attitudes changing among working-class men. She's Manager of Community Affairs with Levi Strauss & Co, (Canada) Inc., a company that tries to provide a lot of support to working parents. She recalls a woman working in the company's Cornwall, Ontario plant who eavesdropped on "the boys" at their Friday night poker game. "They spent the first two hours of the evening talking about toilet training," the woman was amazed to discover.
The Canadian Auto Workers have negotiated contracts that include family-friendly provisions like on-site daycares, compressed work weeks, personal care days and so on. At least two locals are in plants that operate constantly, where the companies had formerly demanded a lot of overtime work. That's expensive and leads to high levels of absenteeism. The plants have moved to systems where some workers work just two 12-hour weekend shifts for a full week's pay. The programs save the companies money in overtime pay. And there is always a waiting list of employees who want that kind of schedule so they can help raise their own kids or pursue other interests.
"Off-shifting" is becoming common in today's families. In many multiple-job families, one parent works a job while the other minds the homefront. Tim Catherwood, Assistant to the Canadian Director of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union(UFCW), says that the reality of women having to work outside the home -- as well as pressure from women -- is forcing many men to take on new roles. "It's starting to rub up against [men's] cushy way of life," he says. This accounts for much of the current interest in work and family issues, he says, predicting that interest will continue to grow in years to come.
The experience of men who become active fathers varies, of course. Some studies suggest that the transition is emotionally toughest for men who can't find employment. Even though they may say that their parenting activities are important, fathering just doesn't compare in social status with earning money and pursuing a career.
Even those who choose to become househusbands, however, can find it tough. Klaus Gruber of Saskatoon did that a few years ago when his wife wanted to pursue a new career. After the initial glow wore off, he was "finding it difficult to get motivated," he wrote in an article published in Connexions, the newsletter of Career Home Managers. "Even when I managed to push myself to do the housework, there was little sense of pride or fulfilment." He felt isolated. He also came to realize, however, that despite what he rationally believed, he just didn't value the work traditionally done by women. "Although I value those things cognitively, I find that I don't value them at a feeling level."
We continue to undervalue women's work, in the home and outside the home," says Donna Lero. "To the extent that that happens, men are less likely to be involved."
Then there's the case of Sweden. It leads the world in parental leave policies, child care, women's labour force participation, and so on. Still, men take paternity leave so much less frequently than women use maternity leave that the government has sponsored advertising campaigns. One ad depicts a naked man, spread-eagled and seemingly pinned to a machine gear. "A man whose work is his life becomes trapped by it," says the ad. "It's not that men want this, but that the world expects it."
Does the Swedish experience mean that men will never really change? Or is it that Swedish women have many of the same career problems that Canadian women have - lower wages, more part-time work, and professions traditionally considered "women's work" such as teaching or health care? As in North America, Swedish women do much more domestic work than men.
Ours is not the first generation to ask whether society supports active fathering. Robert Griswold teaches history at the University of Oklahoma and has just written a book called Fatherhood in America: A History (Basic Books). One of its early chapters looks at "the invention of the new fatherhood."
How to get fathers more involved with their kids has been a preoccupation for decades, he has found. Articles in popular magazines "from the '20s, '30s, '40s and '50s don't look very different" from what we're seeing today. Stories about fathers not spending enough time with their children or how-to articles teaching dads how to interact with their kids have been around for decades. "It's amazing how similar they are to what's appearing now." On the basis of his research, Griswold is unwilling to categorically state that a paradigm shift has occurred in our attitude toward fathering. To some extent, we've seen it all before, he says. "We're in a time of transition."
It's fair to ask whether society supports active parenting by women or men. Peggy Nash, Director of Women's Programs with the Canadian Auto Workers, sees growing economic pressures on families that make it tough for parents to do their jobs. Global trade and industrial transformation are making workers insecure while, at the same time, social programs are being cut back. "The free market, left to its own devices, usually won't create the social support to allow families to survive," she says.
Families, and what families do, are changing. Neither our society as a whole nor its institutions -- the workplace, schools, government -- have very clearly defined the new roles played by any of the members of today's families. It's small wonder that men feel confused, and sometimes unsupported, about their roles and responsibilities as fathers.
Yet signs of change are everywhere. "Men are starting to realize what they didn't get from their fathers," says Julie White of Levi Strauss. "They're not willing to pay the same price." If our workplaces, schools, government policies -- and personal attitudes -- continue to change as they appear to be doing, men may not have to continue to pay that price.
How can society support active fathering?
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"No one is born a good father. To be a good father is a matter of patience, study and love."- Fitzhugh Dodson |
Robert Glossop is the father of Emily and Owen and is also Director of Programs and Research for The Vanier Institute of the Family. Ish Theilheimer is the father of Sandi and also editor of Transition.
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This article first appeared in Transition (March 1994) published by the Vanier Institute of the Family. |
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Posted by the Vanier Institute of the Family, September 1996. |
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Supportive workplace policies such as flexible working arrangements, family leave, employee assistance programs, daycare programs or referrals, teleconferencing to reduce travel, options for working at home, and making information available on family topics. Small things, like the availabililty of telephones for workers to call their children at home after school, can make a big difference to a working father or mother.