Stay Home Dads? Not If They Can Go Hide at Work

Today’s Scotsman reports on a study that found men’s attitudes toward work don’t change when they become fathers. So if you want a stay-at-home-dad, you better pre-select one prior to fertilisation. Here is a telling quote from the article:

• The study found about three-quarters of men were happy with their working hours, while a quarter wanted to work fewer hours. Fewer than 1 per cent wanted to increase their hours. But these preferences did not change when the men became fathers. They did not want to work shorter – or longer – hours.
• Dr Esther Dermott, who led the research, said: “What professional men value most about their jobs is their ability to control their working hours so that they can leave early to go to school functions or parents’ meetings – and this flexibility was also what other men most wanted.”
• The study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, also found no evidence men were adopting a “female model” of parenthood, whereby mothers combine part-time work with raising children.

While men might take more time off right after their children are born, they settle right back into their old work patterns after that.

I blame mothering blogs like this one for driving men back to their professions. We’ve been too successful. We’ve cleared the mystique. It was engineered like a smokescreen to make life seem full of cuddles and uninterrupted bliss. Instead, we have shown blog readers – some of whom are men – that life with children is often full of crying, domestic drudgery and other less attractive stuff. And, what’s more, we’ve ruined that idea that tomorrow, or tha day after that might return us to something less exhausting.
Sometimes, I would give anything to just go hide in a nice office for eight or nine hours, eat in a cafeteria and then get to be everyone’s favourite playmate when I come home. It would really beat the acrobatics I have to do in order to squeeze 8 working hours out of 24 parenting hours.