Long gone are the days of the distant dad. According to some estimates, the average time dads spend caring for their kids each day has quadrupled over the past 50 years. Their attitudes about parenting are also changing. Today, men are about as likely as mothers to say parenting is a key source of meaning and a central priority in their lives.

Changing Trends in Fatherhood

Roughly 85% of fathers identify parenthood as one of the most important aspects of their identity. As a parenting researcher who focuses on fathers, I’m pleased to see that dads are so invested in their kids. It correlates with better outcomes for kids, and it reduces pressure on moms.

A 2021 study of another hunter-gatherer society, the Agta, which lives in the mountains of the Philippines, found that fathers provided only about 7% of child care. Mothers, however, provided only about 25%. The rest came from siblings, grandparents, extended family, peers and other community members, who all pitch in.

A Class Divide in Parenting

In much of the industrialized world, daily life is organized around the nuclear family, with relatives and neighbors playing a less central role than they once did. Today’s fathers contribute more to childcare than even the most hands-on hunter-gatherer dad, because there’s simply less of a village to support shared care.

Journalists Derek Thompson and Aziz Sunderji analyzed multiple waves of U.S. data collected by the Multinational Time Use Study and were able to show that the significant rise in the time dads spend parenting over the past 60 years has primarily been driven by college-educated fathers.

Original reporting: KTBS 3 (Shreveport) — read the source article.