While many still question whether or not we have achieved gender equality, especially in the workplace, there is no doubt that there has been a paradigm shift in parenting in the last 25 years.  Men have accepted a larger role in maintaining the home and caring for the children.  In Arlie Hochschild’s The Second Shift, which was published in 1989, she concludes that while women were entering the full-time workforce in increasing numbers, their responsibilities at home had not decreased or kept pace with the changes in demands on women’s time and energy. After a full day of work outside the home, women were still coming home to all the duties of maintaining a home, meals, and caring for young children (hence the book’s title, Second Shift).

Since 1989 most men I know of my generation have become fathers and are very involved with taking care of the house and the children.  One man I know is solely responsible for doing the family’s laundry (mainly because he doesn’t trust anyone else to do it by his standards, but who’s to argue?) Long gone is the stereotypical image of the nuclear family of the 1950s in which father came home from work, briefcase in hand, changed into his slippers and turned on the television to watch the evening news while the stay at home mother cooked a full course dinner.  One only has to look as far as a playground on a weekend morning  - or my friend’s white socks - to witness the increasingly hands-on role of today’s fathers.  Still, ask most women and they will tell you that they are doing the lion’s share of the work at home.  

Just as women experienced a shift in their roles by combining work inside the home with jobs outside the home, men have experienced a similar shift, combining jobs outside the home with an increased role at home and with the children.  Women are fortunate to have Working Mother magazine and organizations that focus on support for working mothers.  “Work-life balance” has become a part of our everyday parlance, thanks in large part to these organizations and the hard work of impassioned women.  But where is the support for this new generation of involved fathers who take for granted that they will wake up in the middle of the night for a bottle feeding, do the dishes, or take their young daughter to a friend’s birthday party?  Do men need the support that women seem to crave?  Moreover, if men had more support, would they increase their share of responsibilities at home and help us to achieve true partnerships and equality in our homes, if not our workplaces?

One weekday morning at a Starbuck’s crowded with office workers I noticed a man in a baseball cap in line with a toddler in a stroller.  At the time I happened to be chatting with a friend about this idea of  support for working fathers, so I turned and asked the man if he was a stay at home father.  He was a part-time stay at home Dad. Aha!  I asked if he felt he needed any support as a stay at home father or with work-life balance, to which he responded, “I don’t need it.  My wife needs her mommy groups and all, but I don’t.”  It made me wonder, when men get together, do they discuss parenting styles and how best to juggle work and parenthood?  I wanted to sit down over coffee with the man and probe a little further, but my friend hustled me back to the office, where I promptly called my husband and asked if he would pick up the kids and make dinner that night. Thankfully, he did.