alt Hacker NewsI feel there is a trend of not fully appreciating what fathers who spend less time with kids actually do. I think that's unfair, frankly. Many of them do things that contribute to the family in other ways.
What was my Dad busy doing? Focusing on his career in order to provide for his family. Doing hobbies that increased his skill set. Fixing the house to ensure we all had a nice safe place to live. Tending to the garden to keep the neighbours happy. Building ties with the community to increase our family's standing in the community and being able to call in favours in emergencies etc.
The 4 days off he had from his primary job, he worked multiple other jobs, creating multiple streams of family income.
It's so easy to view many of these things as him not tending to his family directly. That's incredibly short-sighted.
My mother appreciated very little of those things, and constantly nagged that he never did enough. She admitted many years later this was a big contributor to their divorce.
I think some modern opinions of parenting come from a very individualistic, transactional and reciprocal mindset. Eg "I spend 1 hour doing the dishes, you have to do something, today, and of equivalent value, to show you love us". What kind of foundation for a relationship is that? What happened to the power of a family?
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I agree with all you said.
When I read from article:
> The fact that richer and better-educated parents are freely choosing to pour more of their valuable time into childcare makes raising children sound practically like a “luxury good,” akin to buying a Rolex watch or a fragile Fabergé egg.
It kind of reflected an unawareness to me. Unless one crosses the threshold of wealth where they can afford full-time 24/7 nanny, the richer parents spending more time in childcare seems obvious and non-counterintuitive. It is more likely jobs that pay well also provide flexible working hours and locations so these parents can really afford to spend more time in childcare. And this would much more prevalent category then families who could afford hired help for child care.
On the other hand poorer parent with much stringent job conditions would be mentally and physically exhausted to provide much childcare.
> I think some modern opinions of parenting come from a very individualistic, transactional and reciprocal mindset. ..
I think family unit like almost every other thing in modern economy has fallen victim to financialization of society.
Strongly agree. I know so many men who are the sole provider for their families and their wives are unhappy about how things like childcare and household chores aren’t split more fairly, but they seem to have zero appreciation for the crushing burden of financially supporting a family for decades. It’s hard, stressful, and wears you down. Almost all of the stay at home moms I know get more sleep, more exercise, and more social time than their husbands do, once the kids are old enough for school.
I’ve also now watched many friends divorce, and I have to say, the wives who stayed at home seem to struggle a LOT more with the transition of now having to parent AND have a job, and the husbands mostly seem to be fine. And that’s despite them now paying a big chunk of their ex’s bills!
I think you have a point: many men work hard to provide stability for their family, and are effectively sacrificing family time to provide that. This kind of hard work feels undervalued in modern parenting discourse, which seems to put most value on time directly spent with children or on direct day-to-day tasks (dishes, cooking, etc).
An example anecdote: my friend works construction. Lots of long hours of hard labor. His wife is unhappy because he doesn't do more childcare, but left unanswered is how he could do more. He can't work fewer hours or move to a new job without a giant income hit. His wife can't earn enough to offset daycare costs. They already live on a fairly thin budget. From the outside, I can see how he'd feel unappreciated.
That said though there are definitely also men who aren't doing childcare OR working hard, and they're happy to have their wife do everything.