Do At-Home Dads Help or Hurt Work-Life Balance?

By Rebeldad Brian Reid

For a long time, I've assumed I was doing right by society and my kids by being an active dad. I was thrilled to find academics that linked involved fathers to everything from reduced contact with juvenile justice to lower rates of teen pregnancy. And I thought that by throwing gender roles to the wind that I was part of a tiny revolution that would change the way that the home and the workplace operated.

But lately, I've been forced to reconsider whether at-home dads do much to promote work-life balance or actually hurt the cause.

It all started with a wonderful profile of at-home dads in and around San Francisco by the San Francisco Chronicle. Though a compelling and honest look at an interesting group of guys, a Salon piece raised a reasonable question: Aren't stories about at-home dads just celebrating traditional work-family choices? Does flipping the genders make a difference?

This has prompted a crisis of conscience. Are stay-at-home dads just making it easier for go-to-work moms to assume the mantle of "ideal worker," logging long hours in a culture that always puts the company first? After all, having a spouse at home -- regardless of your sex -- makes it easier to log those 60-hour-plus workweeks, and it's hard to work 12-hour days and champion work-family balance at the same time.

On the flip side, I do believe that families with an at-home dad have a humanizing effect on the workplace, and that go-to-work moms are better advocates for workplace balance and sanity than their male counterparts -- though this assumption itself relies on a certain gender stereotype. And I think at-home dads -- when they return to the workforce -- are more likely to fight for corporate policies that respect family needs. But there's not much data to support these assumptions.

So, I'll throw it out to you: Are at-home fathers a help or a hindrance in getting to better work-life policies in the workplace?

Brian Reid writes about parenting and work-family balance. You can read his blog at rebeldad.com.

By Brian Reid |  August 10, 2006; 7:00 AM ET  | Category:  Dads , Division of Labor , Guest Blogs , Workplaces
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