Father's Day: What are American Male Parents?

When I was pregnant, I clearly knew what to expect from my husband after the birth of a child. From Ukrainian magazines, the Internet, conversations with friends and the so-called "cultural norms", I found for myself that men are beginning to take interest in children when they already know how to speak and can say something worthwhile. So, to expect help with a baby or baby does not make sense. When the time comes, the model dad will go with the child to a sporting event or fishing. I also knew that I would have a strong connection with a child, which would leave little room for a man. He will worry about this, get angry, and my duty will be to give him enough attention so that he does not feel deprived. In magazines and on the Internet, there were enough articles with advice for women on how to overcome this difficult period in marital relations.

Фото: Depositphotos

None of this happened. Not even close. From the first day, my husband took care of my son a lot. He even showed me how to change diapers because, unlike me, he had done it before. Having a baby was so much work for both of us that there was simply no time to feel neglected. And, as it turns out, establishing a deep emotional connection with a child is a family affair.

And my husband's behavior is not unique. Most of our immigrant friends from Ukraine, Israel, India, Cuba, South Korea and other countries, as well as Americans, have been actively involved in caring for their children since birth. In our nursery children brought about as many dads as moms. Someone did more, someone less, but from conversations and personal experience, I realized that it depended more on the volume of other duties and work schedules than on gender.

Evaluating my expectations already after the fact, I cannot help wondering that a man can in principle refuse a woman he loves to support at a time when she needs her most, to fight for the attention of his exhausted wife with a completely helpless being, his own a child, and also be offended when, in his opinion, his wife is undernourished for him! What, indeed, such men exist?

Modern American men are more economic than their parents.

Of course, in the United States there are different moms and dads. It is enough to read only the criminal chronicle to find a variety of cases of bullying and oversight of children.

However, on average, American men spend more time with their children than their parents did. They spend 4,4 more hours each week on children and 4,6 hours more on household chores than men did in 1965, according to a study by the White House Council of Economic Advisers. So-called millennials are more involved with children than any other age group and have high expectations of themselves as parents.

In our outskirts, men with baby strollers and babies in the playground are quite commonplace. On demand appears and supply. Today, more and more books are published with tips on raising a child, aimed specifically at men. In the online store Amazon there are hundreds of such names. Here, for example, is how to pump up muscles and at the same time strengthen the emotional connection with your offspring. It's called "Dumbbell Child".

Every time I visit Ukraine, I see more and more men with children. Some hipsters even wear babies in slings. But, according to a study by the Ukrainian Center for Social Reforms, 36% of Ukrainian men believe that they are simply not able to care for the newborn. More than half, 63%, believe that bathing, changing diapers and feeding a child are the sole responsibility of mothers. And only a little more than half of the men surveyed believe that household duties should be equally divided between a man and a woman.

Most studies show that everyone - children, moms, dads, society - benefits from the increased involvement of men in family matters.

Фото: Depositphotos

An attentive dad is a popular child in the class

Several studies have shown that children whose dads share parenting and household chores are happier, have fewer problems with emotions and behavior, and learn better.

Children who clean, walk the dog, or cook with their dads are even more popular among their peers. Scott Coltran and Michelle Adams found that schoolchildren who do household chores with their dads have more friends and fewer problems with teachers. “When men do housework for others, it teaches children cooperation and democratic family values,” writes Scott Coltran.

The wives of men who maintain equal rights in the family are more satisfied with their family life, suffer less from depression and are generally healthier. Immediately after moving to the USA, I loved watching the program “Changing My Wife”: it opened a window into the inner world of American families. Very soon, from the first frames, I could guess which of the two families had more equal relationships - where the mother was in better physical shape.

However, women with active men at home have one small problem - they are more likely to question their parenting abilities, one study found.

Фото: Depositphotos

Time with children is good for men's health.

For men, in addition to benefits in the form of children who study well and happy wives, active fatherhood brings with it additional dividends. Such men are physically and psychologically healthy: they lose their bad habits, rarely slow down, if necessary, with a visit to the doctor, they risk their health less, they drink less and smoke. Undoubtedly, a walk in the park with a child is much healthier than drinking strong drinks with friends.

And these men talk about the emotional satisfaction of raising their children, often unknown to the previous generation of men. There are many older people in the world who discovered the joys of fatherhood only when they became grandfathers. Yes, my grandfather could spend little time on my father when he was a child. But already with me and my sister, his grandchildren, he invested to the fullest when we were sent to them for the summer.

Demographers point out that in industrialized countries, where women are firmly entrenched in the workplace, male participation in the family is one of the factors contributing to high birth rates. In Sweden, where dads even take parental leave, there are 1,9 children per woman, according to the World Bank. In Italy, where more machismo sentiments prevail, it is 1,4. In Ukraine - 1,5.

Especially bad with this business in Singapore. Here, one woman has less than 1,1 child. English demographer Fred Pierce describes Singapore as a country without children: it is very difficult to meet parents with strollers or even older children. Singapore’s prime minister, Li Xian Long, who has four children, calls on compatriots to help their wives: “If men throw everything on their wives or wives will have to choose between work and motherhood, they will go on strike against childbearing”. He asks men not to be shy about changing diapers: "If I can do this, anyone can."

Фото: Depositphotos

How labor shortages helped women in Sweden

Interestingly, such changes in modern developed countries took place literally in one generation. In his book The Price of Motherhood, Anne Crittenden cites the example of Sweden’s experience. One of her interlocutors, Greger Hutt, says that when he was a child, he did not see men at all: “Many boys did not meet a man during the day until they had performed 10 years. It was a real apartheid system. ” And already becoming the adult speechwriter of the former prime minister of the country, the Hutt found itself in a completely different reality. Before his work on the speech, his boss Ingvar Karlsson was interested in whose turn it was to pick up a child from kindergarten and adjust to the family schedule of a subordinate.

Crittenden sees two main reasons for this. First, faced with a shortage of workers in 60, the government had to make a choice between immigrants and mothers. Stockholm chose mothers. The government had to lure women with children to work, creating attractive conditions for them: paid leave to care for a child, subsidized kindergartens, more flexibility in work. This did not happen in the USA, in part because of the constantly high level of immigration.

Secondly, women with higher education want to work and have professional self-realization. Families are forced to adapt. This process is in the United States. With rare exceptions, Crittenden writes, the more money a woman makes, the more serious her husband treats her as a professional. He no longer has problems to take the child to the doctor if the wife is busy at work. At the same time, women with a low level of education, regardless of their nationality, are more inclined to keep their husband from the child and refuse to share the household burden, even if the man is ready to give a shoulder, the researcher writes.

And here, Crittenden writes, cultural traditions and nationality are less important than economic needs. Even immigrant men from patriarchal countries like Lebanon or Iran help with children when women start making money.

Фото: Depositphotos

Active dads lose testosterone, but not for long

It all looks cool, but there is one study that I think readers should know about. Studies by Lee Getter, Catherine Vine-Edwards and others show that during pregnancy and for a certain time after the birth of a child, the level of the hormone testosterone in men decreases, and the stress hormone cortisol increases. And this happens only with those men who fully assume the role of the father. Moreover, the more dad feeds, pumps and swaddles silly, the lower the level of his male hormone.

Of course, you can react to this information in different ways. You can embrace your courage and stay away from your own descendants. The researcher convinces us to look at his results differently - active fatherhood is provided for by nature. Since prehistoric times, low testosterone levels have (temporarily) made a man more sensitive to the needs of his baby and less sensitive to the advances of the brunette from the next cave. If this is any consolation to anyone, similar tricks with testosterone also occur in birds and monkeys.

The original column is published on the website. Ukrainian service “Voice of America”.

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