WASHINGTON – The percentage of American fathers who live apart from their children has doubled over the last half-century. But, to their credit, many of today’s dads are spending more than twice as much time with their kids as they did back then.
The role of mothers has changed, too, according to a Pew Research Center report that examines parents and parenting as U.S. marriage rates and traditional family households fall to historic lows.
How a father provides for his family relates to the attention he devotes to his children, the study found. College-educated men who tend to marry and get better jobs are more involved with their children than less skilled men struggling to get by.
“When a father can’t provide monetarily for his offspring, he often becomes estranged,” said Beth Latshaw, an assistant sociology professor at Appalachian State University who researches changing paternal roles. She pointed to an economic advantage for college graduates hired at companies with better benefits and family-friendly policies, contrasted with the situation for the larger ranks of low-wage workers.
“As a result, many women now raise children outside of marriage or without a father figure,” Latshaw said.
Pew’s survey and analysis of government data, released Wednesday, found that more than one in four fathers or 27 percent with children 18 or younger lived away from at least one of their kids. That number is more than double the share of fathers who lived apart from their children in 1960.
On the other hand, married fathers who live with their children are devoting more time helping their wives with caregiving at home, a task once seen almost exclusively as a woman’s duty. Such fathers on average now spend about 6.5 hours a week on child care, which includes playing, helping kids with homework or taking them to activities. That’s up from 2.6 hours in the 1960s.
