
Millenial Men Aren't the Dads They Thought They'd Be - Chinjut
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/upshot/millennial-men-find-work-and-family-hard-to-balance.html?smid=tw-share
======
jacobolus
I think they’re reading too much into the data.

The inferences they’re drawing assume that the populations of “millenial men
without kids” and “millenial men with kids” are part of an otherwise uniform
group of millenial men, with attitudes changing as men go from one population
into the other showing that pre-kid egalitarian attitudes couldn’t stand up to
reality.

But this seems like an oversimplified model. There is a big selection bias
when passing to the “men with children” group. It’s likely that men who get
married and have children at a younger age probably tend to be from more
religious backgrounds, for example.

To reliably make the kind of inferences the paper is making, you would need to
survey men without children, wait a few years, then survey the same men after
they had had children, and ignore the original interviews of men who still
haven’t had children by the time of the second set of surveys.

Edit: I’m trying to track down the sources for this story, and it’s even more
confusing, as from what I can tell they’re comparing numbers from different
studies with different samples and methodologies. I really wish they would
more concretely quote exactly which numbers were coming from which source.

~~~
danieltillett
I am shocked - a published social science study with poor methodology and
dubious analysis that fits the authors political biases. It is a good thing
that this almost never happens.

~~~
jacobolus
I haven’t read the cited studies in detail, and I wouldn’t say the studies
themselves have poor methodology or dubious analysis until I’ve looked at
them.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the original studies made limited, well-
qualified claims which were then exaggerated or taken out of context by the
journalist.

The main linked sources seem to be:
[http://asr.sagepub.com/content/80/1/116.abstract](http://asr.sagepub.com/content/80/1/116.abstract)
(paywalled) and [http://www.familiesandwork.org/times-are-changing-gender-
and...](http://www.familiesandwork.org/times-are-changing-gender-and-
generation-at-work-and-at-home/)

The second of those seems to mostly just report the data they found, without
much editorializing. I’m slightly skeptical about the multiple regression at
the end, but the rest of the findings are straight-forward to interpret.

Other studies central to the article’s title argument are cited but not
directly linked by the NYT as far as I can tell. I can’t find the mentioned
surveys by the Center for Talent Innovation online anywhere; perhaps it’s pre-
published data they discussed with the NYT journalist.

~~~
danieltillett
I am even more shocked - you are telling me that journalists exaggerate! Next
you will be telling me that they just make up stuff and pass it off as
accurate and unbiased reporting.

More seriously I have been an eyewitness to a number of events reported on by
journalists over the years. Not a single one of these reports had any
resemblance to what actually happened - I guess that is why they are called
news stories and reporters hacks.

Edit. Thanks for taking the time to track down the original papers.

I should not be so harsh on social scientists as it is incredible hard to do
any real science in this area. I could not design and run a social science
study that had any scientific robustness or validity. There are just too many
confounding variables and biases.

------
ssk2
> Yet those who had children had different attitudes. Of millennial men who
> were already fathers, 53 percent said it was better for mothers and fathers
> to take on traditional roles.

Is this because (by definition) those millennials who've already had children
must then have had them at a relatively young age? That might be indicative of
a more traditional attitude towards adulthood and, by extension, towards
gender roles.

~~~
cheald
I'm 32 and technically right on the oldest edge of the "millenial" generation,
and have 3 kids (7, 4, and 1); it doesn't necessarily mean "people born in the
mid-90s".

~~~
ObviousScience
You're at the oldest edge, and you were 25 when you had your first child.

If the oldest of the group had to have children under the median, then only
those who had children young have them already.

Looking at millenials with children is a huge selection bias:

> Mothers of newborns are older now than their counterparts were two decades
> ago. In 1990, teens had a higher share of all births (13%) than did women
> ages 35 and older (9%). In 2008, the reverse was true — 10% of births were
> to teens, compared with 14% to women ages 35 and older. Each race and ethnic
> group had a higher share of mothers of newborns in 2008 who are ages 35 and
> older, and a lower share who are teens, than in 1990.

[http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/05/06/the-new-
demography...](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/05/06/the-new-demography-
of-american-motherhood/)

~~~
jon-wood
I'm at the oldest edge and had my first a little over a year ago - 30 doesn't
seem very much over the median.

------
qiqing
TL;DR: Article says we're not as good/egalitarian as we'd _like_ to be. Sure,
but the data shows that we've come a long way. And things are getting better
even faster, because technology increases productivity.

I recently saw a more current version of the graph from this NYTimes article
([http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/us/17kids.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/us/17kids.html)),
but the data indicates that both mothers and fathers in the U.S. are actually
spending more time on childcare than they used to. Both. The biggest
difference was in housework, which I believe has dropped quite a bit further
in the past decade.

What seems relevant here (and not addressed in this article) is the extent to
which technology powers social change like this. Social attitudes (the
'ideals') change because productivity gains due to technology means that
household chores no longer take 40 hours+ per week.

I'm pretty sure the data from the 2010's doesn't take Instacart and other on-
demand-everything into account because it has yet to be everywhere, but just
think how awesome everything will be in this coming decade!

------
peterwwillis
Millennial families also have to deal with the stigma of 24/7 supervision of
their children. A few generations ago, kids roamed the streets until supper
time. Now if you let your kid walk to the park, you get arrested for
negligence. We're obsessed with work, we're obsessed with being over-
protective, and we're entitled to everything.

And let's be honest - men are in no hurry to pick up a second job when they
can reluctantly blame the office's policies for why they can't pitch in more.

And how exactly is family leave or flexible work hours explained to single
workers? Assuming married couples got policies changed so they could somehow
both split their time between child-rearing and office work, single people
will probably have to make up whatever time is lost. Because the question
isn't "Do I have time to both work and raise this child", it's "How can I be
at the office and dropping Timmy off at soccer practice at the same time?"

To make everything fair between single workers and working families you'd have
to allow a workforce-wide reduction in hours, possibly accompanied by hiring
more. Why do I get the feeling that might not happen?

The compromise here that would keep workplaces fair, is to not compromise for
families, and force everyone to work the same hours. Which would require
either that families get part-time jobs, or that one of them be 'the
breadwinner'.

This also assumes the 2-parent model will remain the exclusive model this
century. The next big fight might be over polycules for the right to co-parent
if they're not a biological parent. Which would actually make time-sharing
much easier, as it splits the work up amongst more people. But that's probably
a good 50 years out.

~~~
prawn
You make good points and I agree with your reluctance to assume that employers
will do much that doesn't suit them, but I think you'd obviously see a change
in pay for any reduced work.

Of course, whether a breadwinning parent can resist $x for 5 days over $0.8x
for 4 days equivalent to spend more time with their family is another issue.
The rat race means people constantly want more, usually at any cost. If you
work fewer 9-5 hours, I imagine you have to endure more time resisting out of
office work, rogue calls, etc.

Perhaps once AR/VR offices are more common and companies are more comfortable
with teleworkers, we could see people do full-time equivalent but with a
couple of hours from 8-10pm to make up for being home from 3-5pm for after-
school family time.

We also currently waste a significant amount of time commuting...

~~~
peterwwillis
If the 'making up work later' example weren't exclusive to white collar
workers who already have the flexibility to take their work home it might make
sense, but i'm fairly certain that's a small percentage. The public sector,
blue collar jobs, service jobs... these would be difficult to impossible to do
remote, and on one's own time. We are the very lucky small minority who are
not location- or shift-constrained.

The article is addressing millennials at large who all want to share the
responsibilities of child-rearing and bread-winning. I think this is an
incredibly difficult change to make for the majority of millennials and their
employers - without screwing somebody over, that is. I'm pretty sure if it
does get implemented it'll be at the expense of singles.

~~~
prawn
Good points.

Though I think we may eventually see some service workers operate remotely via
video or similar. That won't cover everything, but at least some.

------
gammarator
Some of it is that parenting isn't always as much fun as you dream it will be.
It's easy to idealize before you have kids. I love mine and am as dedicated a
dad as I can be, but I'm also glad I get to go to work every day.

For a nuanced look at the complex emotions of parenting, I highly recommend
Jennifer Senior's book "All Joy and No Fun" ([http://www.amazon.com/All-Joy-
No-Fun-Parenthood/dp/006207224...](http://www.amazon.com/All-Joy-No-Fun-
Parenthood/dp/0062072242)). There's a condensed version here:
[http://nymag.com/news/features/67024/](http://nymag.com/news/features/67024/)

~~~
zzalpha
I've always found that piece to be interesting in that it spends the majority
of the article citing studies and illustrating examples for how difficult
child rearing is and how unhappy parents are. In the process the author raises
the disconnect between that reality versus the contradictory feelings parents
espouse... How they can be so much less happy yet will claim the opposite.

And then right at the end the author makes an about face and goes out of their
way to defend parenthood... Seeming to inadvertently demonstrate that very
delusion.

Of course, the author is a parent.

~~~
plonh
Have you ever been obsessed with a hobby, past the point that it is really
fun? Spent all night debugging a program? Kids are like that. How we find
meaning and what we find fun aren't always the same.

~~~
zzalpha
I think you miss my point.

Taking no position on the topic, what I find fascinating is how the author
seems to inadvertently be displaying the very behaviour the article is
describing, even though with all their research you'd expect they'd be best
equipped not to.

There's something very... Meta... About that, I think.

~~~
mcphage
> what I find fascinating is how the author seems to inadvertently be
> displaying the very behaviour the article is describing, even though with
> all their research you'd expect they'd be best equipped not to.

The article is about how parenting is stressful but (ultimately) rewarding,
and you're surprised that the author of it finds parenting stressful but
(ultimately) rewarding? Did you expect she'd find it not stressful, or that
she'd find it not rewarding?

~~~
zzalpha
No that's the point.

The article is almost _entirely_ about the fact that parenting is terribly
stressfulamd parents are actually far less happy than they seem to be able to
admit to themselves.

The only bit that attempts to redeem parenting is right near the end, in a way
that always to me felt like rationalization, in the way a parent might
rationalize their choice just as previously described in the article.

This meta nature to me, given it was written by a parent, seems to highlight
that very conflict: its a written embodiment of the mental contradiction
parents experience.

~~~
mcphage
I guess I don't see the contradiction you see. Parenting is stressful, and
definitely can cause unhappiness. But it _is_ rewarding. That's not a
contradiction; they're separate axes. (The author discusses this when making
the square of rewarding-vs-enjoyable).

I guess you can claim that the feeling that it's rewarding is a false
rationalization, but... I'm not really sure how you'd argue that. "You only
think it's rewarding, but it's not!". I'm not sure how you could demonstrate
something like that.

------
perlgeek
I can very much relate to this. I'm 31 years old and have two kids, and my
attitude was and is quite egalitarian.

Yet it's my wife who works part time, and I do full time. Mostly because my
baseline salary is much higher than hers, and doing it the other way around
would hurt our financial situation severely. And kids are expensive too.

I try to make it up by not working crazy hours, playing with / taking care of
the kids (and laundry) when I get home etc., but it's tough. There's only so
much energy left after an intense day of work (even if it's "just" eight
hours), and between that and the kids, time and energy for anything else is
very scarce. It leaves me with the feeling of living only for work and the
family, not much left for myself.

------
steveax
Am I the only one that thought the link for this headline would go to The
Onion, not The Grey Lady?

------
lkrubner
Short-term waves ride on top of long-term waves, but if we want an accurate
picture of reality, we need to simultaneously remember the short-term and
long-term waves. The trough of one wave can mitigate the peak of another wave,
should their frequency be off in such a way that they interfere with each
other. Likewise, with social trends. Any article about what men think about
marriage and fatherhood should be juxtaposed with the facts about the rise of
single-parenting (and the fact that the majority of single parents are women).

There are a variety of sources that can be quoted on this issue, and depending
which source you look at, you will see different numbers. However, my point is
not about any particular set of numbers, but only about the need to remember
the underlying trend. Just for the sake of having an example, I'll post one
set of numbers, but no one should treat these numbers as being especially
accurate:

"About 4 out 10 children were born to unwed mothers. Nearly two-thirds are
born to mothers under the age of 30. ...According to U.S. Census Bureau, out
of about 12 million single parent families in 2014, more than 80% were headed
by single mothers."

[https://singlemotherguide.com/single-mother-
statistics/](https://singlemotherguide.com/single-mother-statistics/)

Although any particular set of numbers can be questioned, the trend is beyond
all doubt: the number of single-parents in the USA (and much of Europe) is
increasing.

This trend overlaps with another trend, which is the big increase in divorce
in the USA, which occurred between 1900 and 1970. The book by Carter and Glick
(1976) looked at this data in great detail. In 1900 the USA had a divorce rate
of 5%, whereas by 1970 the rate was close to 50%.

Since 1980 the divorce rate in the USA has declined slightly, but it remains
high compared to earlier eras. More than 35% of all marriages end before their
20th anniversary.

When you combine the 40% single-parenthood statistic with the 35% divorce rate
of 20 years, you end up with a figure of almost 75% of all children being born
into unions that do not last during the years the child is growing up.
However, it is worth noting, the 40% and the 35% are not mutually exclusive
groups, so the rate is not actually 75%. Some people become parents while they
are single, but they later get married. But this number doesn't dramatically
shift the reality: the vast majority of kids come from romantic unions which
are over before the child reaches their 18th birthday.

The people most likely to remain single while parenting fall into 2 groups:
the very poor and those who are culturally non-conformists. A side-effect of
the above trends is that the men who do get married tend to be more
traditional than the average. Whereas 50 years ago there was no political
division regarding marriage, in the future we can expect considerable
political differences between those who have kids inside of marriage, versus
those who have kids outside of marriage.

Some people regard the advent of single parenting as a radically modern
phenomenon but it is worth considering it in light of the Grandmother
Hypothesis, which explains menopause in women partly as a way of funneling
needed resources to grandchildren. This theory is highly controversial. An
early study concluded that in the Hazda tribe, the majority of all calories
going to children came from the child's grandmother, although recent studies
have disputed that, and it seems clear that the majority of protein comes from
men who go hunting:

"On the whole, [men] contribute 43% of all daily kilocalories arriving in
camp, but 50% among married couples, and 69% among those with nursing infants
(Marlowe 2003a)"

[http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/ppoint/menopause-
short.pdf](http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/ppoint/menopause-short.pdf)

That evidence can be read either way, but if you are traditionalist, and you
believe women with young children are typically dependent on men, I think the
surprising thing about this research was how many calories are brought in by
the grandmothers. Whether that figure is 40% or 60% seems to me a minor point,
the larger point is that is an important percentage. More so, I would guess
that if a man went missing (died in war, died of disease, etc) the grandmother
might then step up her efforts to bring in more calories for the children. So
at least some aspects of single-parenthood have ancient roots (indeed, men
have always died in war).

Those are the long-term trends.

There are medium-term trends, such as the decline of male wages since 1973,
which forces men to work longer hours. Whereas in 1973 the typical American
worker had more vacation time than the typical European worker, the situation
has now dramatically reversed. The German worker regards 8 weeks of vacation
as their sacred right, whereas most American workers can hardly dream of
getting so much vacation time. This reality limits the amount of time that men
can spend with their kids.

Then there are the short-term trends, such as the high levels of unemployment
brought about by the Great Recession of 2008. Whatever ideals a young man
might have about marriage and child rearing, the economic environment has been
challenging for all but a privileged few.

I don't mean to imply that any of these trends are necessarily The Absolute
Truth about fatherhood circa 2015, I only mean that to have an accurate read
on the situation, one has to remember all of the trends, and how they happen
to conjunct at the current moment.

------
vacri
Extremely summarised (and cynical) form of the story: twentysomething idealism
meets life experience :)

In order to meet the requirements to fulfill the lifestyle desired in the
article, it's more than just "workplaces must modernise". It's a societal
shift. People have to be prepared for 'work hours' to shorten or move
around... from a _customer_ point of view, for example. It's not as simple as
waggling a finger at employers - expectations have to be managed at all points
in the chain.

~~~
IsaacL
Funny and accurate summary.

I'm 25 (and planning to marry and have children) but I'm realistic about what
child-raising will be like, and don't entertain egalitarian fantasies. This is
partly because I went through two divorces in my childhood (mum & dad, then
mum & stepfather); and also because my parents were quite liberal.

People who've had traditional upbringings can daydream about bringing up their
own children in a more liberal way, but having lived it from the inside -- it
does have advantages but there are also glaring flaws.

------
paulhauggis
The problem is that you can't be both the bread winner and give equal time to
your kids. One will always suffer over the other.

It's much better to have one bread winner and one care giver. It's been like
this for most of human history and it has worked very well. I'm not sure why
these new-age articles and psychologists think that they can somehow change
it.

~~~
1stranger
"Because that's how it's always been" is rarely a sound argument.

~~~
brc
Actually, it is a pretty sound argument when it comes to describing human
behaviour.

Things are often they way they are because it works on a macro and micro
level. Sure, some things get into weird feedback loops and drift to silliness,
but for the most part, if you see something working for a lot of people,
they're not doing it just because of tradition.

The OP is absolutely correct in that many people will find it better to
specialise in child-rearing and income-generation for a two-parent family.
That doesn't mean one doesn't do child rearing and the other never works, but
the primary responsibilities will fall down that way.

That's how it has been for a millennia or three, and that's likely how it will
stay. Behaviours like this are all about reproductive success so that's why
they the way they are.

~~~
plonh
Have you not noticed that a few centuries ago society and technology made
evolutionary instincts for reproductive success mostly obsolete? Do you think
that a boy with a stay at home dad will fail to impregnate a woman before be
dies?

------
sosuke
It must be late, because I looked in the comments section on the article and
to my surprise I found interesting ideas and view points. I'll look again
tomorrow.

