Fatherhood 2.0

Does being more of a father make you less of a man? To a group of committed dads assembled one night in a New Jersey diner, the answer is obvious. Sort of. Paul Haley, 38, a father of two, says women look at him when he walks down the street with his kids. "I think it's admiration," he says. Adam Wolff, also 38--with two kids and one on the way--ponders what it means to be a man. "Is my man-ness about being the breadwinner or being a good father to my kids or something else?" Michael Gerber, 36, father of a 7-month-old, asks, "Do you mean, Do we feel whipped?"

"I'm probably a little whipped," shrugs Lee Roberts, 45. He's a part-time copy editor, married to a full-time journalist, who has stayed home for nine years to raise their two children. "There are definitely some guys who look at me and think, 'What's up with him?' Do I care? Well, I guess I do a little because I just mentioned it," he says. Haley speaks up to reassure him: "Kids remember, man. All that matters is that you're there. Being there is being a man."

But what does it mean, exactly, to be a man these days? Once upon a Darwinian time, a man was the one spearing the woolly mammoth. And it wasn't so long ago that a man was that strong and silent fellow over there at the bar with the dry martini or a cold can of beer--a hardworking guy in a gray flannel suit or blue-collar work shirt. He sired children, yes, but he drew the line at diapering them. He didn't know what to expect when his wife was expecting, he didn't review bottle warmers on his daddy blog, and he most certainly didn't participate in little-girl tea parties. Today's dads plead guilty to all of the above--so what does that make them?

As we fuss and fight over the trials and dilemmas of American mothers, a quiet revolution is occurring in fatherhood. "Men today are far more involved with their families than they have been at virtually any other time in the last century," says Michael Kimmel, author of Manhood in America: A Cultural History. In the late 1970s, sociologists at the University of Michigan found that the average dad spent about a third as much time with his kids as the average mom did. By 2000, that was up to three-fourths. The number of stay-at-home fathers has tripled in the past 10 years. The Census counts less than 200,000, but those studying the phenomenon say it's probably 10 times that number. Fathers' style of parenting has changed too. Men hug their kids more, help with homework more, tell kids they love them more. Or, as sociologist Scott Coltrane of the University of California, Riverside, says, "Fathers are beginning to look more like mothers."

Many dads are challenging old definitions of manliness. "Masculinity has traditionally been associated with work and work-related success, with competition, power, prestige, dominance over women, restrictive emotionality--that's a big one," says Aaron Rochlen, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas who studies fatherhood and masculinity. "But a good parent needs to be expressive, patient, emotional, not money oriented." Though many fathers still cleave to the old archetype, Rochlen's study finds that those who don't are happier. Other research shows that fathers who stop being men of the old mold have better-adjusted children, better marriages and better work lives--better physical and mental health, even. "Basically," says Rochlen, "masculinity is bad for you."

So are sugar doughnuts and beer bongs, and men hate to let go of those too. Women forced the revolution by staging one of their own: in the 1970s they began storming into the workforce, making it harder for men to shirk child care. What's more, they showed their sons that it's possible to both work and parent. Economic forces were at work as well: for the entire 20th century, every successive generation of American men could expect to do better financially than their dads--that is, until Generation X. According to a study by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the median income for a man in his 30s in 2004 was 12% lower than it was in 1974, once adjusted for inflation. Men were forced to relinquish sole-breadwinner status for their households to stay afloat.

But how to forge a new idea of manhood for this brave new two-income world? Hollywood hasn't been much help. From Michael Keaton in the 1983 movie Mr. Mom to Adam Sandler in Big Daddy (1999) to Eddie Murphy in Daddy Day Care (2003), the sight of a man caught in the act of parenting has been a reliable laugh getter--always a good indicator of what the culture considers uncomfortable material. For every Pursuit of Happiness, there's a movie like this summer's Knocked Up, which plays not so much as a tribute to fatherhood as an effort by men to convince themselves that fatherhood is all right--and the movie's happy ending is the least plausible thing about it. One show at least managed to capture the tension: What were those seven seasons of The Sopranos about if not a man fighting to reconcile the tender pangs of a caring, new-style father with the old-school masculine ideals of violence and stoicism--not to mention the psychological damage wreaked on him by his own old-school father?

Society hasn't made it easy for newly evolved dads to feel manly either. In Rochlen's study of stay-at-home dads, those who scored low on measures of traditional masculinity professed higher degrees of happiness in their roles--as well as in their marriages, with their children and with their health. But even they worried about how the rest of the world viewed their choice--with some reason. "There's definitely a stigma out there," says Rochlen. "The dads tell stories about mothers on the playground looking at them like they're child molesters or losers."

Ironically, dads who take on parenting roles once considered emasculating may simply be responding to nature. Studies have shown that men experience hormonal shifts during their female partner's pregnancy. A man's testosterone level drops after settling down to marriage and family, perhaps in preparation for parenthood, as the male hormone is thought to be incompatible with nurturing behavior. In one study, for example, men with lower amounts of testosterone were willing to hold baby dolls for a longer period of time than those with a higher count. In another, the very act of holding dolls lowered testosterone.

More evidence of nature's intent to design men as active parents might be seen in the effects of involved fathering on children. Given the politically charged debates over same-sex unions and single parenting, it is perhaps not surprising that the richest area in the nascent field of fatherhood research is in the results of fathers' absence. David Popenoe of Rutgers University has pointed to increased rates of juvenile delinquency, drug abuse and other problems among children raised without a male parent present. Research on the unique skills men bring to parenting is sparse but intriguing. Eleanor Maccoby of Stanford University has found that fathers are less likely than mothers to modify their language when speaking to their children, thus challenging their kids to expand vocabulary and cognitive skills. Fathers also tend to enforce rules more strictly and systematically in reaction to children's wrongdoing, according to educational psychologist Carol Gilligan. "Having a father isn't magic," says Armin Brott, author of seven books about fatherhood, "but it really does make a difference for the kids."

When men take on nontraditional roles in the home and family, it also makes a difference to the marriage. Coltrane of UC Riverside and John Gottman at the University of Washington found in separate studies that when men contribute to domestic labor (which is part and parcel of parenting), women interpret it as a sign of caring, experience less stress and are more likely to find themselves in the mood for sex. This is not to say that more involved fathering has erased marital tensions or that it hasn't introduced new ones. Dads admit they get fussed over for things moms do every day. "Sometimes you're treated like a dog walking on its hind legs--'Oh, look, he can do laundry!'" says Jim O'Kane, 47, a father of two in Blackstone, Mass. And some women resent ceding their role as top parent. When her daughter fell down at a birthday party, Amy Vachon, 44, of Watertown, Mass., recalls that the girl ran crying all the way across the room--to her husband Marc. "I admit it hurt at the time," she says, "mostly because I wondered what everyone thought. There's such a high standard in society for the good mother."

It's a slippery slope: a recent Pew survey found that increasingly, parents rank their relationships with their kids as more important than their relationship with their spouse. Just as interesting, they rank their job dead last. That most masculine of traits--the ability to go out into the world and bring home a buck--is receding in importance for the men of Generation X. Men's rates of labor-force participation have dropped from just above 90% in 1970 to just above 80% in 2005. Almost a third of young fathers (32%) say they dedicate more time to their children, while 28% say they devote more time to their jobs.

Big employers are beginning to catch on. Deloitte & Touche, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Xerox and IBM are urging family-friendly benefits for their male employees and touting them to male recruits. California recently became the first state to guarantee paid time off for new dads. But the U.S. still lags far behind other countries: only 12% of U.S. corporations offer paid leave for fathers of new babies (the U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act enables workers in large companies to take up to 12 weeks off, but that time is unpaid), while dads in 65 other countries are guaranteed paid paternity or parental leave; 31 countries offer 14 weeks of it or more. At companies that offer and encourage paternity leave, participation is high. KPMG reports that 80% of eligible workers have taken paternity leave since it was first offered in 2002. Still, more than half of working men say they would not take paternity leave even if it was offered, most saying they could not afford it, others fearing it would harm their careers--the same complaints long made by working women.

Today's fathers aren't the men their own fathers were but only if you insist that the nature of masculinity doesn't change--that it's a biological fact and not a mutable cultural construct. The new fathers are creating a new ideal of masculinity. It's not as Mad Men cool, but it is healthier. "The emerging and evolving norms of fatherhood and masculinity challenge men to be a different kind of guy," says Rochlen. "But on the positive side, it gives them new opportunity to embrace and enact these dimensions that are good for them and good for their families." It's even good for their emotional health. Coltrane says fatherhood is proving a "safe pathway" for men to develop and explore their nurturing side. "It's not considered wimpy or gay to hug your daughter," he adds. That's something we can all embrace.

Source: Time Magazine, Thursday, Oct. 04, 2007 By LISA TAKEUCHI CULLEN, LEV GROSSMAN