A New Dad for the 21st Century

It is traditionally thought that women most keenly feel the struggle between balancing home-life and work-life. However, according to a recent New York Times article, it seems that men may be finally catching up to the stress levels experienced by working mothers.

Men face a subtle prejudice in the workplace which allows little flexibility to pick up kids from school, or attend to family obligations. Complicating work stresses is the potential for women to undervalue their partner’s contributions in the home. Stephanie Coontz, a marriage historian, told the NY Times that “women don’t necessarily give his contribution the same value as theirs.” In contrast to women, men lack domestic role models to look up to, as well as any sort of precedence that would accommodate child-friendly work schedules.

There is still a huge gap in the perception of who does the most tasks at home. According to the 2008 US Families and Work report, 49 percent of men claimed had equal share of child rearing duties. Only 31 percent of women believed their husband’s played an equal role. Despite an increasingly equal balance of domestic responsibilities, Dr. Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute, attests that “women remain psychologically responsible, and that’s a burden.”