Jeremy A. Smith - The Daddy Shift: How Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms, and Shared Parenting Are Transforming the American Family

In 2004 my son Liko was born. Everythingthe tree outside the window, the dreams I had at nightchanged .

For the first year of his life, my wife Olli stayed home with Liko. Then she went back to work and I quit my job, joining the ranks of caregiving dads .

Now it was just the two of us boys, and it was scary. Liko, a confirmed breast addict, could not nap without his mother. When I would lay him down, hed wail inconsolably, relentlessly, reach ing out to me. But when I picked him up, hed kick and arch his back, his little hands pushing against my chest. This would go on for hours .

Id put him in the stroller and walk. Hed cry and fall asleep, but if I stoppedin a bookstore, a coffee shophed wake and cry again, so I soon learned to keep moving through our San Fran cisco neighborhood, sticking to the side streets, going up the hills and down, up and down .

Time slowed, and with every minute Id feel more and more isolated, more and more anxious. I wondered: Is my life now no more than this? Id see people laughing in a picture window and want to be one of them .

In time, I learned to let that go, let myself get lost. On foggy days the hills of the city floated around us like deserted islands, the stroller a lonely raft. Id study the cornices and gables on the Victorian facades, watch the tsunami of fog spill over Twin Peaks .

Later, Liko learned to fall asleep in my arms. Id carry him through all the rooms in our apartment, stepping carefully around the bouncy seat, the swing, the baby gym, the high chair, the toy basket. Id do this for hours .

Then one momentous day, I sat down in a rocking chair and he stayed asleep. I took a book down from the bookshelf. It was the best book Id ever read; I dont remember its name. One afternoon as the room darkened, his eyes snapped open and they met mine. He smiled and said, Dada, and his small fingers curled around my forefinger .

He was glad to see me there with him. And I was glad to be there .

New Model Family

It is strange to think that such an intensely private moment might be the product of a tectonic shift in society and the economy .

Although I felt acutely isolated when I was learning to take care of my son, in fact I was not alone. Since 1965 the number of hours that men spend on child care has tripled. Since 1995 it has nearly doubled.

In 2007 the Census Bureau counted 159,000 stay-at-home dads in the United States, up from 64,000 in 1995. But these numbers tell only part of the story of male caregiving, because they exclude stay-at-home fathers who also do paying work. When we add fa thers who work part-time or from home, and who are primarily or equally responsible for taking care of kids, the number of male caregivers increases. According to a 2008 census report, for exam ple, one in four preschool children spend more time in Dads care than any other arrangement while the mother is working, though most of the fathers work at least part-time and probably do not call themselves stay-at-home dads.

Many studies find that twenty-first-century couples divide paid work, household labor, and child care far more equitably than couples in the past. Some professional dual-income couples have even achieved rough equality in their domestic divisions of labor, and one-third of working-class couples work different, complementary shifts and share care of young children. A great deal of evidence also indicates that more fathers would adopt caregiving roles if they felt it was financially feasible to do so: For example, a 2007 survey by Monster.com found that 68 percent of American men would consider staying home full-time with their kids .

The bottom line is clear: during the past decade, the number of caregiving fathers has risen dramatically. Dads now spend more time with their children than at any time since researchers started collecting longitudinally comparable data. This does not mean that Americans have achieved an egalitarian utopia. The cen sus counts 5.6 million stay-at-home moms, compared to 159,000 dads. The University of Wisconsins National Survey of Families and Households says that the average mother is doing fivetime s as much child care as the average father. When both parents work for pay, Mom still beats Dad by a four to one ratio. If men as a group have indeed increased their contributions at homeand they have they still dont come close to matching what mothers do .

However, averages can be deceptive. They reveal the big pic ture but, by doing so, obscure the many smaller pieces and coun tertrends that give it shape. In truth, we are in a period of transition when inequality coexists with progress. Some groups of men have adopted flexible gender roles and embraced cooking, cleaning, and taking care of kids, while other groups have not. The negative examples, often glorified, are everywhere, while the positive ones are often hidden and hard to find, especially for boys and young men .

It is time for twenty-first-century dads to go on the offensive. In this book I tell the stories of fathers who have embraced care-giving and egalitarian marriages, explore the hopes and ideals that inform their choices, and analyze economic and social develop ments that have made their choices possible .