Back in 2019, I wrote a provocative piece for this blog called “The Myth of the ‘Lazy’ Father.” I drew attention to something that had irked me, as a husband and father, for a long time: Repeatedly, researchers had shown that for married couples with kids in the modern U.S.,1 total work time was pretty equitable between spouses when paid work and home work were combined—indeed, if anything, dads work a little more. And yet, the narrative always ran in the other direction, focusing on the particular types of work where moms shouldered more of the burden, such as child care, and ignoring the possibility that couples’ division of labor might simply reflect the varying preferences of men and women.
Digging deeper into the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), I showed that total work time was remarkably equal even among couples where both worked or both worked full-time (contrary to notions of a “second shift” for working moms); that breadwinners tended to work more than stay-at-home parents; and, in a finding indeed embarrassing to men, that stay-at-home moms worked way more than stay-at-home dads.
As I noted and my critics emphasized, there are many nuances to this issue and the measurement of work time—for instance, time is classified by “primary” activity, so if a parent watches TV while the kids play upstairs, that doesn’t count as child-care time. But these data jibe poorly with simple narratives of oppressive patriarchy, at least within married couples and on average.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Institute for Family Studies
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Robert VerBruggen is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
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