With his willingness to
nurture his children and share household duties with his
partner, the modern father has finally achieved a balance between
working life and the home. But is this the reality, or
just wishful thinking on the part of "new men".
Have things really
changed when it comes to parenting? What's your experience, as
a father or partner?
Having spent the first few of years of parenting working the 60hr weeks required to maintain my family I found myself in the divorce dilemma so clearly outlined by Bettina Arndt.
With 3 kids 7 days a fortnight, mortgage, school fees and child-support payments, I have no choice now but to put in the long hours both in office and home and juggle child raising with providing for my children and ex.
It's a frustrating and thankless trap, and while I spend more time with my children it's not necessarily with the quality I would like. My kids don't value clothes shopping or dish washing or the meals I provide. What they do value is conversation, understanding, love and play.
Even though I love my job and value my career, it is how I raise my children that will be the long term measure of success in my life.
There will come a day when I cease to be an employee. I hope there never comes a day when I cease to be a father.
My God, I can't believe I agree with Professor Rosseforp! Okay, I'm not so much advocating child labour, but he does make an interesting point. The idea of children COSTING money is a relatively recent innovation in human history. Previously, you had a kid, sent them out to work at the age of 12, and they actually contributed to the running of the household.
As for Daffodil, I have to disagree. There are plenty of people who consider a nice house in an exclusive suburb more satisfying than children. For starters, a house needs cleaning less regularly. And "Dad contributed fifty times more to the runing" of your house? Was your dad a fortune teller?
Perhaps part of the problem is not just the lifestyle choices people make in terms of what they want materially and the hours they have to work to get those things, but also lifestyle choices in terms of timing of relationships.
As a general rule, people are now having children when they are older, in their 30's, and fathers are often a bit older. This usually coincides with a period in people's careers where they have more responsibility at work and thus higher wages and more demands on their time.
In the past, when people had children while they were in their early to mid-twenties they were at the career stage where they were not as responsible and therefore had more time to spend with children. As their children got older, so their career progressed and they had less time to spend with the children. However as the children were older they could stay up later etc and were thus more accessible.
The modern workplace still works basically like this, but doesn't take into account societal changes. It will have to. It is in the interest of employers to do so, even though they might not think so. Remember, it was employers who said the whole economy would come crashing down if slavery was stopped, it was employers who said the economy would come to a halt if they could not send children down mines and its employers now who cry the sky will fall if workplace practices change to incorporate modern family life. The business world is not forward thinking and never has been. It should not be allowed to dictate societal policy.
Could the people posting as Bettina and Angela give it a break. They already get more than enough media space to air their peculiar women hating views. Anyway, I don't believe for a second it is Angela. She doesn't tell us every second sentence that she has nine children and how wonderful she therefore is in relation to every other woman in the world.
It isn't easy watching your kids grow up knowing that you're missing out on so many precious moments because you're away on business or working long hours. It's hard for my wife when I am away on business or working late. Relationships suffer as a result and I am sure many men return home after working unnaturally long hours to moody/angry wives. The truth is that for most families current work practices and tax law are anti-family. With the burden of a failing health and education system, the burden of funding a generation of baby boomer pensioners who are largely unfunded, poor performing super funds, high levels of tax, and an aging population, who is going to fund all this and other social burdens? Mostly working dads, and it's costing us our relationships with our families and our children, and in an alarmingly high number of cases, men's lives. How can we then endure working, earning tax revenue for a government that amasses a multi-billion dollar tax payer funded surplus which will inevitably be returned to tax payers as tax cuts before an election?
My husband and I have this philosophy. Who ever is home looks after out very wonderful daughter, and fits in the domestic stuff on the side. When we are both home, ALL jobs are up for grabs. It takes honesty and dilligence, but ir really works.
It simply doesn't make sense to blame men for the working arrangements in most Australian families. The decision that they should take the long shift is usually made by the couple to enable mothers to work shorter hours to care for children. There's clear evidence that this is a decision most wives see in their own interests. Many men would prefer to work shorter hours and spend more time with their families but believe they are doing the right thing in remaining the major breadwinner.
Look at recent results emerging from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. Analysis of HILDA data by Yi-Ping Tseng of the Melbourne Institute shows wives with the highest life satisfaction in Australia are in families where either the man is the sole earner or working significantly longer hours than the woman. Most families fit one of these patterns, with one-third (31 per cent) in sole-earner families and almost half (45 per cent) with full-timer husbands and part-timer wives (in these families the men average 48 hours a week paid work, compared with 25 hours for the wives). In the remaining one-fifth of families where both work full-time, wives show less life satisfaction.
Tseng found wives in male-breadwinner families also report more satisfaction with their partners and are most likely to see their partners as doing a good job as fathers - more so than the two full-timer families.
Researchers at the Australian Institute of Family Studies recently used this HILDA data to look at men working very long hours (60 plus) and found when men were happy working these hours, their partners seemed particularly content with their relationships. Fifty seven per cent of these men would prefer shorter hours with a commensurate salary drop, yet almost a quarter were not happy with their workload but didn't want a change in hours - a finding the researchers suggest may reflect the need to preserve a salary level while resenting time away from their families. Dr Michael Bittman at the University of NSW has found that fathers see their commitment to paid work as the major barrier to being effective parents, with 68 per cent of fathers unhappy about not spending enough time with children.
So women are hardly marching in the streets demanding their husbands work shorter hours. Hell, no. It's clear that most wives feel it is in their family's interest to keep their husband's nose to the grindstone, even if it means he misses out on time with children. And men are also accepting of this arrangement - until their marriages fall apart. For it is then the crunch comes and breadwinning fathers lose out badly.
That's the irony. The married men who once were rated most highly by their wives - as partners and fathers - then have their willingness to support their families count against them. When it comes to a battle over custody, men who worked those long hours are least likely to be allowed shared care and usually end up with fortnightly contact. In fact, the divorced father wanting to see more of his children may be required by the Family Court to keep working those long hours to maintain his former family in the manner to which they are accustomed. Suggesting that married men drop back to part-time work to spend more time with their children may set them up for post-divorce custody settlements but it isn't going to pay the mortgage or allow mothers time-out to be with their families. It will be a sad thing for our society if this debate convinces men that breadwinning is a mug's game and they should look out for number one - just in case.
Sadly though, it isn't always for the big buck as you describe or for a shiny new car.
Oftentimes its for the kid's school uniforms, or for mere survival.
There will be many more orphans of economic rationalism, until we realise that money isn't nearly as important as people.
It is getting increasingly difficult to balance work with play and parenting. Work wants more of your time & effort, play seems to disappear down to nothing, and as for parenting, we are nearly always in the wrong because of the time at work. Our society is pushing the user-pays, but at the same time governments have severely weakened our education system at all levels. Again user pays which means the rich can get educated even if they are dumb. To me we seem to have our priorities skewed.
Very little has changed. In the majority of relationships that I manage to observe through my friends, I see the following: men working full time, madly trying to be ideal fathers and still fit in the occasional game of golf or footy (and some exercise to stay looking attractive and healthy to their partner and themselves), and slip out to rekindle some kind of contact with their wives - they feel cross because they feel neglected and want some time focused on them. Women working or staying at home women (and believe me, work is easier - at least you have an award and a modicum of respect), run constantly whilst trying to be attractive, fit, healthy, interesting to their partners, doing assorted jobs that noone really wants to do, and feeling cross that their husbands don't give them enough time or attention. And it's all for the big buck so that we can have that nicer car or move to a more salubrious neighbourhood, far too often. When are we going to realise that economic rationalism doesn't feed our souls and hearts and if anything, makes us even lonelier??? If anything, my Dad contributed fifty times more to the runing of our house as children and to the active parenting of the four of us. I don't see any relationships around me of people in my age bracket - mid thirties - that comes anywhere near. And I adored my Dad then and I still do now - and you know what? He actually knows me as a person. And I am lucky.
Rodney, I challenge you to do it for a week on one average income (30- 35 grand on government figures). I assure you there would be no leisurely coffees, no dance classes and trips to the zoo would be few and far between. You would spend much of your time deciding whether to cut down on medications, food or rent.
I have noticed over the last couple of years that not only are some dads seeing their kids for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, but also at lunchtime! I think its a fantastic idea that wives bring the kids into the city to have lunch with dad! (provided that the wife is the primary carer). From my own experiences, it makes for a happy worker! Even bringing the kids into work for an hour can change the mood at work for everyone - well, i shouldn't generalise like that - some of us like to hear the little voices around from time to time, others just get grouchy and annoyed!
I say that this is a fantastic change in attitudes in the workplace and should be encouraged, but as with everything, its going to take some time to evolve.
Spot on - every cafe in my neighbourhood is full all day of women with prams who don't look overburdened with onerous responsibility
Gymbaroo, coffee mornings, dance and swimming classes, trips to the zoo - a tough job, but I guess someone's got to do it
Men should get out to work and work hard to drive the economy along. Without the cut and thrust of modern capitalist life there will be no trickle-down effect to raise living standards of ordinary people. If women choose to participate, let them. As for children, let the market place decide. It was the market place which brought us child labour in the 1800s and slavery, too. When family life IS work life, the balance has been achieved.
I agree with Oliver's point on the 'balance' only being avalable to those with higher income or sepcialised jobs which allow for such freedoms. It must also be said that there exist double standards for Dad's. Many people seem to encourage men to participate in their child's upbringing but as a full time father I've encountered critisizem from all sides for may lack of a 'real job'. One of my partner's co-workers ever went as far to call me 'a leach' and that I should be finanially supporting her, never mind her degree and much higher earning potential.
As the youngest of four boys, the parenting responsibilities for myself was largely left to my mother. (This was 30 years ago) My 3 older brothers all had the luxury of my fathers guideance, help & leadership as they were growing up until they reached about 16. I am not sure why this occured but I can assure you in some respects it affected my attitdue towards my father and althought I know there were other factors affecting the family, but it simply came down the his need to provide for the family financially and it wasn't until I was 12/13 that my mother also went out and got herself a part-time job and not because the family needed the money, but because she was bored at home. My relationship with my father now is warm, loving and close (he even apologised for not being there when I was young), he tries so much harder now with the grand children and it also makes me want to be there more for my neices & nephews as they grow up. Parents today have to juggle a plethora of diffrents things affecting their life, family & relationships that simple did not exist when our parents first had children - things (I believe) were more insular & less outside help was offered or even accepted because of social stigma attached. My mother still wishes they had child care centre's when we were all kids. All in all, big kudos to all those fathers out there doing their best to be there for the kids as much as they can & trying to balance work & family commitments.
It is most certainly a myth that the modern father has finally achieved a balance between working life and the home. I'm just a 9 to 5 five days a week kind of guy and in reality during the week I get to have perhaps 1 hour in the morning and 2 hours in the evening my children and most of that time is spent eating meals, dressing them and dealing with sleepy heads - not exactly quality time. It's only on the weekends that I get to spend an extended time with the children when they are at their best. I find it hard to believe that a father working more than 60 hours a week can have much time at all with his children - what kind of hours do they keep?
I'm quite envious of my wife when she tells me of the music and swimming lessons, story time at the library, the picnics in the park and realise that I'd love to participate in that more. On the infrequent occasions that I have been able to participate I've noticed just how few dads there are - it's a woman's world. For me to be able to participate I would have to work part-time (if I could) and in order to pay the bills my wife would have to work part-time (if she could get it) to make up the difference. The odd thing is even if this situation could be arrived at the family income would be lowered as we'd lose the single income family tax benefit. Strange but true.
9 to 5 Dad
Who cares who stays at home, if the wife wants to pop em out and head back to work so be it, if the hubby wants to stay home so be it, who cares as long as the kids are getting the best possible care.