American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

> 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.

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.

Yup.

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.

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...

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.

As a GenX dad and now grandfather, I couldn't be happier to read this.

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.

Makes me think of this clip from Bob Odenkirk: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MNhpnEczGQA

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.

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.

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.

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.

Given the memes I see about how GenX are perceived in US, it seems now they have gone too far into the other direction.

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?

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.

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.