This is a really fascinating article to me. I don't love the title - it's a little too aggressive. I would have sent this to my parents just because I think it's interesting, but the title sounds insulting and I didn't want to send the wrong message.

Things that stood out to me:

Dads are spending less time watching TV to spend more time with kids. Seems good!

Parents are increasingly regarding child care as a form of leisure. Interesting!

Since the 1950s, Americans have spent less time socializing and more time alone

This is sad, but I experience it as anecdotally true as a dad. It's easy to hyperfocus on work and home life at the expense of maintaining a social life. I personally don't see a lot of dads with a thriving social life. But it's sad because being a dad is hard, and wouldn't it be great if dads could bond about that? This is an area I can see I fall short of where I want to be. I would like to be a better friend and have closer friends than I do.

Highlights

  • (View Highlight)
  • Our own analysis shows that the increase in fathering time is significantly driven by changes among college-educated fathers under 45 years old. (View Highlight)
  • The rise of dad time makes more sense if parents regard childcare as a form of leisure. (View Highlight)
  • The rise of intensive parenting isn’t just about love. It’s also about fear. (View Highlight)
  • The Millennial generation was the largest in American history. But the number of seats in prestigious undergraduate schools did not keep up with the population boom. The mad scramble for scarce college seats—and, by extension, for scarce entry-level jobs at prestigious companies and organizations—inspired an extracurricular arms race among college-educated parents, which cashed out in much more parenting time. (View Highlight)
  • Modern fatherhood might have something to do with the decline of socialization, too. (View Highlight)
  • Since the 1950s, Americans have spent less time socializing and more time alone. (View Highlight)
  • That means dads are taking on some of the extra care burden that a grandparent, aunt, and older sibling might have shouldered in previous generations. (View Highlight)
  • It’s not just that moms spend more time with kids. They also pick up the most stressful responsibilities. While fathers spend more time playing sports with their children, mothers spend more than twice as much time providing medical care, planning appointments, and taking care of the so-called mental load of parenting (i.e., not just driving your kid to the birthday party, but also remembering that classmate’s birthday party existed in the first place and buying a present ahead of time). (View Highlight)
  • the more stressful the childcare activity is, the more likely mothers are to do it. (View Highlight)
  • The rise of childcare time most directly seems to replace TV and similar forms of leisure. (View Highlight)
  • Saxbe, the psychologist, points out that new parents often have short-term loss of brain volume, but older parents tend to have larger and healthier brains than their childless retired friends. (View Highlight)
  • They have less free time, are more overwhelmed, and are more likely to be exhausted while feeling like they didn’t finish everything they wanted to. (View Highlight)