E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
Brett Deering for msnbc.com
Dustin Baylor closes his eyes while playing with his sons Paxton, 6, left, and Garrison, 4, after work at their home Friday, June 8, 2012 in Enid, Okla.
Dustin Baylor knew from the time he was in elementary school that he wanted to be a doctor.
All his life, he also wanted to be a dad.
What he wasn’t able to appreciate until adulthood was how challenging it might be to be awakened by his pager going off with a medical emergency just as often as by one of his three children having a bad dream, needing to go to the bathroom or just falling out of bed.
Baylor was one of dozens of dads who wrote to TODAY.com about doing it all: Excelling at work, raising kids, taking care of household chores and finding some time to spend with their spouse or partner.
Almost every dad we heard from said they wouldn’t want it any other way, although many conceded they sometimes struggle to make it through the day -- and night.
“I often feel overwhelmed trying to do it all," Baylor wrote. "I love my wife, my job and my family. But whereas men in past generations emphasized being a provider first and foremost, I think modern fathers take on many more roles."
The juggle between work and home life has long been a hot topic for women, many of whom have known from early on that they would work and raise children – and may even have watched their own moms do the same thing.
But many young dads are choosing to take a role in their home life that is more active than seen in any generation before, said Brad Harrington, executive director of the Boston College Center for Work and Family. That means they can be both less prepared for, and less adept at, juggling both roles.
“I think they are working really without a script,” Harrington said.
Related: Dad's survey shows fathers just want a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T
What’s clear is that more dads want to figure it out. Harrington and other researchers have noticed a clear and pervasive shift toward more dads choosing to do everything from change diapers to chaperone field trips.
“The expectation on the part of most fathers is they’re going to be much more engaged than their father was,” Harrington said.
And as more women work, and bring in a bigger chunk of the family’s earnings, Harrington notes that men also are finding that their spouses expect them to pitch in more on chores including laundry, dishes and grocery shopping.
“The expectation is, ‘I can’t do it all and you’re going to have to share,’” Harrington said.
Yet employers have not necessarily caught up with the evolving roles men are playing at home, leaving many feeling caught in the middle. A landmark study by the Families and Work Institute, released in 2009, found that dads actually feel more conflict between home and work life than moms do.
Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute, said the research showed that even as home lives become more egalitarian, men continue to feel pressure to fill the traditional provider role by putting in long, hard hours at work.
Galinsky says the weak economy and high jobless rate likely have exacerbated the financial pressures.
“We expect that it will either maintain or increase the conflict that men experience,” she said.
Brett Deering for msnbc.com
Dustin Baylor and his family on in Enid, Okla. Baylor is among a new generation of dads trying to 'do it all.'
Tending to patients, and kids
Baylor, 34, and his wife, a physical therapist pursuing her doctorate, have three kids ages 6, 4 and 1. On a typical day, that means the couple has to get kids to daycare, a pre-K program and kindergarten before heading out for their own work days.
In the afternoon, Baylor’s wife picks up their oldest son from school and drops him off at Baylor’s medical practice, then goes back to finish up her workday. That means Baylor and his nurse, who also has a child to watch in the afternoons, have their children in the office as they finish up their work day.
Baylor admits it can be a challenge when the kids want to run down the halls while he has patients to attend to. But he describes fondly the way his son stands on the back of his chair, chatting about the school day, while he does office work.
He recently brought more toys into his home office so his kids can be nearby when he’s on call or dealing with paperwork.
“I’m actually used to working with kids orbiting,” he said.
The desire to be an active parent is one of the reasons Baylor opted to have a family practice in Enid, Okla., rather than join a hospital staff. The decision has meant less money but more flexibility to have a child at work or take off on a family vacation.
That’s one of many ways in which Baylor is different from his own dad, who worked as a mail carrier while his mom mostly stayed home while he was younger.
But it still can be hard to juggle. Baylor and his wife decided to have kids while he was a chief medical resident, and he says he wishes he had been able to help his wife out more in those early days. Another struggle came when his middle son started having seizures because of a rare health problem. He is doing fine now.
“I wish I could say that I have no regrets at all, but that really wouldn’t be true. I wish I could have taken more time to just be a dad when my first son was born. I wish I could have been around constantly to shelter my second son when all those seizures were happening instead of meeting him in the emergency room. I already wish I had even more time with my daughter individually, which is not a unique problem for the youngest child of any family,” he wrote in his response to TODAY.com.
Like a lot of dads, Baylor rarely gets time for date nights or other quality time alone with his wife.
While many face the same struggle, few have to go to the lengths John Martin does to be both a father and a spouse.
‘You just get a little exhausted’
Martin, 45, received an e-mail from his high school sweetheart, whom he hadn’t heard from in 27 years, soon after his marriage ended. When they finally met up nearly a year later, a whirlwind weekend together was all it took for them to realize they still had the feelings they’d had at age 16, and within a month they were engaged.
But there was one big problem: Martin and his kids live in Denver, while his new wife and her kids live in the Seattle area.
Even as he made plans to remarry, Martin said he didn’t want to give up his major role as a parent to his two young girls. (He shares custody with their mother.)
“I was always changing diapers and putting them to bed and doing all the things that I think dads do these days,” he said. “It would be inconceivable for me not to have them at least half the time.”
To maintain his relationship with his kids and build a relationship with his new wife and teenage stepchildren, either Martin or his new wife fly back and forth to be with their spouse nearly every week. They’ve maintained that routine for close to two years, and Martin has cut his employment to 80 percent of full-time to balance it all.
“The way it worked was to leave the kids alone and to kind of rotate around them,” he said.
Martin savors watching his girls play softball and going out for family pizza night and says that while he loves his job as a lawyer, his wife and kids come first.
Still, the challenge of maintaining two households and commuting across several states can be disorienting, and tiring.
“You run low on energy in a way that your children can’t possibly understand,” he said. “Then you are a little less patient, a little less this, a little less that. You just get a little exhausted.”
The ‘all-encompassing man’
Anthony Noriega, 33, also sometimes finds himself struggling to keep up with the hectic schedule of raising four kids with his wife, who takes care of the kids and goes to school.
Like many parents, Noriega describes a life that can be a dizzying whirlwind of cooking, paying bills and getting everyone to bed after a long day at work as a web marketing specialist in Boise, Idaho.
Writing to TODAY.com, he described “the mystique of this elusive, all-encompassing man: The bread winner, the great father who engages in every aspect of their child’s lives, the super husband who can whip out a dinner with no trouble and still pay attention to his hard-working wife.”
He admits it doesn’t always go perfectly smoothly. But Noriega said his own parents struggled with addiction, and he knew from the time he was a teenager that he wanted to get married and raise his own family in a very different way. He may pine for a quiet moment, but he has no regrets about how things have turned out.
“My priorities are providing a stable foundation for my kids growing up (and) not having to worry about whether or not they’re going to have school clothes, food on the table - the things that I had to deal with as a kid,” he said in an interview.
Some dads wrote to TODAY.com to remind us that not all of them have that struggle. Scott Bouma, 35, and his wife have four kids and his wife stays home full-time.
The fact that his wife is a stay-at-home mom means that Bouma, a software engineer who lives in Helena, Mont., feels he can spend time with his family at night or on the weekends instead of dealing with a list of chores and errands he imagines dads with working spouses face.
“I feel like I’m definitely the other side,” he said in an interview. “I’m a dad who doesn’t feel pressure to do all that stuff.”
Leave a Comment:
Happy father's day, dads.
I'm 58 and I think the change of dads being more involved began with my generation. My dad was always there but my mom did not work so most of the "home stuff" was on her shoulders. It wasn't the same with my kids. My wife and I were both very involved with all aspects of the kids and the home.
My daughter has a 1 year old son, her husband passed away from cancer 6 weeks before the baby was born. As a single mom it's really hard for her to keep up physically, emotionally and financially. Luckily we are close by and can pitch in to help. Sometimes I feel like I'm a dad allover again.....which isn't a bad thing but I wish the circumstances were different for her and her son.
So everyone that voted no.... Did you do this on company time??? Get over yourselves... Work is 'hardly' work these days if you're in an office....
yeah but in this part of the country, we have lunch break and i have my personal computer/tablet i can do things with out being on company anything....
welcome to the modern world.....
Decided long ago that I did not want kids or family life. It has made my life much simpler. No high blood pressure. No heart attacks. No gray hairs. Free to travel. Have plenty of money to do whatever I want. And no alimony or child support. In a nutshell, I have been living the life of a retiree ever since I left school. My dogs eat better than most people and have many acres to run around.
Pity, you will never know the feeling of your kids rushing to the door to meet you when you come home from work.
Wait until you get old, and don't have anyone to take care of you!
My two golden retrievers and one lab are my family. They wait at the door and smother me when I come home. Not everyone is meant to have kids.
If the fear of getting old and not having kids to take of you is the major motivation to have kids, that is very selfish. My brother and his wife had that same fear and adopted a kid when they were in their 50's. So the kid, when she reaches college years, will have to take care of two old parents. Pretty sad.
I commend you for making that decision and sticking to it, once you realized you didn't really want to parent. Parenting is a big job!....but it does have some great rewards if you are open to it!
Right on Road Warrior, I too made that choice a long time ago. I realized I am too selfish with my time to ever give it up to raise kids, I love the fact that if I wanna take a road trip with my friends or GF that I can do so without wondering whose gonna baby sit.....and bigbaldguy I have 5 nieces and nephews whom I adore and who adore me so I have someone to change my Depends when I get old, I am and was more of a dad to them then their own worthless parents....
If you're going to complain about having kids, then don't have them. If you can't afford to get divorced, don't get married. If you don't have enough time to take care of your responsibilities at work, quit. A bunch of crybabies around here. It's like everybody think's they are soooo special, and have soooo many more responsibilities than anybody else; get over yourself.
Since 1998, I've been a single mom with 2 kids to raise. I work full time too, and , and I'm managing pretty well. Of course there are challenges though. Working moms and dads have the same challenges, especially if they are devoted to parenting (as they should be!), and responsible about thier jobs. I raised one child successfully already and did the best I can to support him, love him, set an example, be there for him, etc. My second child is almost raised and she's doing well too. Just do your best, enjoy the journey, focus on the positive, count your blessings, and your children will learn good values from you, and appreciate you.
The article states "dads more active than in any generation seen before," and this is not at all true. It is only since the 1950's and the re-orientation of American families to meet the corporate structure's needs for employees to be ready, willing and able to move at will, work whatever schedules, relocate as many times and distances as the job requires; that dads involvement in the family has been reduced. Before then, the nuclear family was identifiable by the facts of: multiple generations living in the same household, dads, moms, kids and grandparents working together on the family farm or in the family business or down the street and still in their neighborhood--for most, if not all of their childhoods. This is, if anything, a renaissance of family involvement or reintegration. The difference now is that grandma/pas are still back home in Iowa while Mom and Dad are out in Silicon Valley and Auntie is down in Texas while Uncle landed in Michigan, etc. and all their kids and relations are everywhere else. So, new problem? Opportunity? You tell me.
I think workplaces have to be more generous with paternity leave. Men do a lot more at home now than they used to in the past, because many women now share the workplace role with them.
My husband gets "paternity leave", but it's in the form of sick time. If you have used all your sick time at his place of work, you wouldn't be allowed to take paternity leave. Fortunately, my husband hasn't needed to use his sick time, so he will be taking off a whole month to help me out.
As for raising children in general, I think men are equally responsible for everything at work as they are at home. Women who work are expected to juggle everything, so men should be able to balance everything out as well. My hubby and I are equal breadwinners, work equal hours, and split everything equally at home (although it was difficult to get him to do this in the beginning).
Wow, welcome to the world of the single mom. You're lucky to have a wife/partner to share the load. Some of us were not so lucky. To do everything and to do it well is a challenge for anyone.
In the past Dad's worked outside the home, did home repairs and the lawn. Then they got to come in, sit in the recliner and drink a beer while the wife did everything else. It's about time Dad's pulled their fair share.
You do realize that there are single fathers out there? I was one of them until recently.
ashleyaddams... no he cannot get fired because of his kids specifically, but he can get fired for an attendance problem, regardless of the "why" behind missing the day. I have seen many situations where someone calls in or leaves early for bogus reasons, I don't feel like working, I forgot to write a paper, the weather is nice so I want to go to the lake and then the 5th time is because a family member is in the hospital... but if they are under a system with a strict policy, the "why" does not matter. Then these people go around saying they were fired because their kid was sick or whatever, and actually they were fired because it was the 5th time they missed work in a 30 day period. Union or not, Union "rules" are agreed to by the company. If the rule is 5, then so be it. Sorry kind of offtopic, but it stuck out in what you said and then what laos Deo said.
I see a 29 year old couple with a single child and 2 professional jobs. They daycare the kid and having bought their small condo about a year before the crash and are seriously underwater on their mortgage through no fault of their own. You cannot find a happier family. They work hard, and play frequently with their 2 year old. Reminds us that it works better with two parents pulling their share. and life is better if you decide you are going to be happy. God bless the perents of children with serious health problems and still stay grounded as to who they are and what they have to do. They are wonderful. Another guy was telling me his friend has a 15 yr old girl who pitched a fit when Dad wouldn't let her out at 1 AM to go to a party. Course we parents know if she goes out to parties at those hours it won't be long and another single parent will be around.
boo frikkin hoo for the man who can't figure out what is most important....ooooooooo please mr. company make some new rules, so I don't have to stress myself and do what women have to do every day
hike down that skirt MR., your VAG is showing!
I will give the fathers the same sympathy and applause that we have received all these years. I have a hard time believing that it is much more difficult for fathers than mothers to "have it all". Especially when this change is recent and that most of single parent families have the mother as the head of household.
No, not all companies provide paternity leave, and might frown on men leaving work early. But these same companies pay men more than women, and promote men over women. The excuse? It's either "he has a family to support" (so do I, and without a wife) or that women take more time off than men for domestic reasons.
agree with you and AMerican Citizen above.
Here's a lifestyle alternative that is appealing to more and more people: don't get married and don't have kids.
For those that say it depends on the work place, please let the rest of us uninformed dads know. I might have to change careers.
It's a crap shoot what you get from an employer. My current one is quite good about time off for family issues. We even get 24 annual hours time off for "Family/community" reasons, which means I can take a couple of hours off for a school event or a doctor's visit for my daughter without using vacarion or sick time.
On the other hand at a previous employer I had a real hardcase for a manager. He once tome me, "I need people working for me whose first priority is the job. I don't care if you have a family, but your family's problems are not my problems, and if you can't be here whenever I want you here then I'll find somebody who can."
I just got fired from sleeping on the job 1 night because I have 2 children to take care of when I get off work and 3 more who come home later in the afternoon. I have to go to work at night and take care of the whole house by day while my wife is in school and when she comes home I'm back off to work. My wife respects me but i don't believe the jobs understand fathers and the sacrifice we pay for taking care of our house.
These are tough times for both Men and Women alike - Balancing work and family. My wife and I are both on second marriage and each have children from prior marriage (None of our own). As much as possible we try to share duties and spend quality time with the kids. She currently makes more as a Physical therapist than I do as a Data Analyst. I could make more if I relocated - but decided it was more important to be a Father to my sons than make more money. I do feel it is harder for Women to balance work and home when children are involved and the natural motherly instincts become a factor. My wife struggles everyday if she is working too much and not having enough time with her daughter. Conversely, it drives her crazy to not have work to "Hang her hat" on and the satisfaction of helping other people overcome there disabilities. I think were problems enter in are when husband and wife exist as individuals - "who makes the most", "Who does the most", "Who is best parent". If they don't work together and get over the selfishness (Plague of society) - then they are doomed for disappointment and hardships.
It is a great position to be in. I worked and raised two. I have one through college and one more who is a junior at her university. I worked hard and made an effort to be there for all the important things. I missed nothing that they can remember. There is an old saying that if you want something done, give it to a busy person. They'll complete it faster.
It could be worse. They could have debilitating health issues or they could lose their jobs in a highly specialized field with no new positions available to them, then they would have neither the time or the money to raise their kids!
There is a great new book by Philip Hardin called, "Lions Were Born to Roar: A Man's Guide to Tackling Life and Relationships"that can help men find their way and provide a framework for finding happiness in their life.
Why are articles about men written by women. Are there no male authors that can give an more personal in touch accounting. it is the same a a man writing about periods or post menopausal issues. Come on MSN, hire male writers for male issues.