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Changing role of fathers

Northern Life Canada June 11 2005

Not so long ago a father’s job was to bring home a pay cheque

 

Not so long ago a father’s job was to bring home a pay cheque, cut the grass, fix things and tell the kids when they were misbehaving. There was a fairly strict dividing line between the roles of mothers and fathers.

 

Now it’s different. Families have changed in the past 25 years, and male and female roles are not as clear as they once were. While research shows that mothers still spend more time with children and working on domestic tasks than fathers do, the gap has narrowed.

 

The idea that the average father spends only 20 minutes a day with his children has been exposed as a myth. Fathers are now involved in most aspects of child care.

 

On any given day, you can see fathers doing lots of things that were once considered the work of a mother: changing diapers, taking children to school and day care and even looking after children while their partner is at work. At the same time, more mothers are spending more time in the traditionally male domain of working outside the home

 

While the roles of both fathers and mothers have changed, the two genders have experienced those changes in different ways.

 

For mothers, the changes came about as a result of women wanting or needing to be more involved in the outside world of work and careers.

 

For fathers, the changes came about partly as a result of what women were doing. With mothers spending more time away from home, they had less time for at-home work including child care.

 

One growing phenomenon in Canadian families is off-shifting, where mothers and fathers stagger their work time so as to be able to keep at least one parent at home caring for children while having the benefits of a second income. A small, but gradually increasing, number of men have taken on the role of stay-at-home parent while their spouse works full-time.

 

In some ways the transition to these new roles has been a little slower for men since, at first, they were adapting to changes initiated by women. However, many fathers have welcomed the opportunity to become more involved in their children’s lives. Many simply see involved fathering as a

normal part of modern day parenting.

 

John Hoffman works for the Father Involvement Initiative - Ontario Network. Visit http://www.cfii.ca/ for more information.