Family models in which the father is the primary caregiver of children are not common but are becoming more frequent. We will deepen this type of family organization to know how is the distribution of tasks when it is the father who takes care of the children.
A clear profile of these parents who stay at home has been drawn thanks to several recent studies, especially research conducted in the United States by Robert Frank, a professor of psychology at DePaul University in Chicago.
From it you can draw interesting conclusions, like some more exclusive roles of men or women, the influence of the father figure on children or the feelings that these parents have about their daily lives.
The study consisted in the analysis of the data of a questionnaire made among the readers of the magazine "At-Home Dad" ("Dad at home"). In total, 368 questionnaires of parents of 650 children were analyzed, parents who were the primary caretakers of raising their children.
The results were compared with a group of 490 women in charge of raising their 874 children. The study was published in 1998 with the title "Survey Says: Research on At-Home Dads" ("The survey speaks: research with parents at home").
Conclusions of the study on "parents at home"
In the houses with parents "caretakers" it was common for working mothers when they returned home to prepare dinner (we talk about American schedules, where the workday usually ends quite early compared to the Spanish).
It was also the mother who took care of the children's bathroom or the bedtime routine, as well as taking them to bed. These facts entail a more even balance between work and the "power" of parents in the home.
Children primarily cared for by parents, when they are hurt or scared, during the day or at night, they look for dad or mom, indifferently, if both are close at that time. In comparison, children raised "in the traditional way", by their mothers, look for a mother in 80% of cases.
With regard to some roles traditionally assigned to men, the trend was maintained both in families with caring parents and with mothers. If you had to drive, 80% of the times were done by men, and in terms of household maintenance, they were still the "handyman" in most families, of all kinds.
Mothers are the ones who maintain the schedules and routines in the children's habits more frequently than men, a task that they do share with them in the case of the parents-caregivers but who do not seem to fulfill the majority of "parents-traditional ".
By last, Dads in non-traditional settings feel more isolated that mothers who care for their children, imagine that, among other issues, for not finding their peers in gender every day to perform the same parenting functions. However, it is good to know that most of these caring parents feel that isolation is greatly compensated by the greater closeness they have with their children.
Childcare is shared more if it is the mother who works
As we see, the tasks seem to be shared more when it is the father who takes care of the children, while if it is the mother, the father shares less some issues related to parenting (another thing is to take the car, prune the plants or fix a tap).
I am sure that more and more parents are involved in the care and care of their children when they arrive from work after it is the mother who has been with them all day. And that, I think, is desirable in any case, also when the mother works; and that it does not seem in that case that she has not been doing anything throughout the day and has enough super powers to take care of herself and the children alone.
But it is also true that there is a lot of "father-traditional" that leaves all the responsibilities to the mothers, as if having a child was not too much with them. On the one hand, they do not know what they are missing (they and their children); On the other hand, it is a shame that women (and society) allow it or simply see it as normal.
For me, it is so normal for a father to pick up his son at school like a mother does. But many men still feel ashamed of having to go to school, and I have been able to see how they are excluded from certain conversations, notifications, meetings ...
Luckily, it is the working mothers who leave their children to the care of their parents, the first to feel happy with this fact, as we saw a few days ago.
I hope it doesn't take long for these caring parents to be normalized as one more family type and that the distribution of tasks when it is the father who takes care of his children It is equivalent to what is done when it is the mother who takes care of them. Surely the children appreciate it.
