We’ve also eradicated the unsupervised peer socialization that kids experienced with the free range. It’s common for a child these days to only ever be around other kids in very supervised environments with adults present (play dates, school, organized activities).

Spending long chunks of time with no adults, in a large mixed-age group, is a less and less common experience.

I spent some time in a remote fishing village in Madagascar and that was one of the things that surprised me the most - kids would spend all day together in an unsupervised mob roaming around the village, from the youngest ones who were just old enough to walk independently to age 8-10 or so (older than that and you had things to do).

I also enjoyed this essay on the topic: https://unpublishablepapers.substack.com/p/where-do-the-chil...

> nearly no one seems to have noticed it.

I'm very curious how much time you spend talking about parenting and consuming either social media or professional content about parenting, because those topics are so deeply embedded in parenting today that it's like saying "nobody seems to have noticed the internet".

I’ve noticed that people don’t notice when the kids are free range anymore, because they’re all connected to an international network and pinging their location every minute.

Millennials on the whole are incredibly neurotic about all kinds of things. Why that is is a matter of debate.

If you’re a dad and live in the same house as your kids the time comes naturally… men have been purposefully fleeing it throughout history.

So its not a matter of “killing yourself to get more time” … its a matter of not abandoning your kids and wife to make time for your hobbies or whatever

And it’s great.

My one concern with this is the risk of eventual burn out + mental health issues which will have its own impact on the children. Full time career + very present parent during the weekdays might just not be possible. WFH definitely helps make it significantly more possible though.

Also worth not forgetting that in most cases the fathers of millennials were a hell of a lot more present and emotionally available than their fathers etc. I'm sure we'll make plenty of our own mistakes that our children will try to avoid when their turn comes.

"The number of mums who say their partner is not involved really at all in their child's care is so sad."

While that can be true, I wonder how much of it is true. It's pretty common in therapy to hear partners saying the other one doesn't contribute, but further investigation can often turn up observation biases.

That's the thing about trends in aggregate data. It tells very little about the details of any particular situation. There are almost certainly a wide variety of subgroups where this particular trend doesn't hold, and others where the changes are even more dramatic.

But the aggregate trend is quite clear.

Im gay and because of that was disowned. My partner has a brother “K” and K has three children. Watching K show up in basic ways for his kids, like remembering what songs they like and teaching them sports is the fastest way to make me ugly cry.

Thanks to anyone reading this if you’re trying to be a good dad. You’re making the world a better place in ways you don’t even see

Yeah the weight of housing could be a little less though :)

If fathers spending more time with their children is better for the children but worse for ~~society~~the economy, is that really even a question worth considering?

Screw the economy, love your kid (or kids).

I think it is. It's discouraged and unspoken, but a lot of men don't like spending time with children. I mean for weeks or months, sure, but when you have a kid it drags on for years 24/7 and nothing but having your own child will really reveal to you how that turns out for you.

As it turns out, I don't enjoy extended time with children. My bad, but I power through it for the sake of the child. In older times that would be no problem, my wife would deal with that. Instead I stopped at 1 when I realized I am not the kind of person who enjoys being equally involved with children.

There’s often been a “kids are mom’s until they’re dad’s” thing going on - dads do whatever with babies and younger children but the older children get heavily involved.

Of course, 50+ years ago diaper changing was often skilled labor (as was cooking) - it’s much easier to change a modern diaper and cook a modern ready-to-make meal.

I think you have a point: many men work hard to provide stability for their family, and are effectively sacrificing family time to provide that. This kind of hard work feels undervalued in modern parenting discourse, which seems to put most value on time directly spent with children or on direct day-to-day tasks (dishes, cooking, etc).

An example anecdote: my friend works construction. Lots of long hours of hard labor. His wife is unhappy because he doesn't do more childcare, but left unanswered is how he could do more. He can't work fewer hours or move to a new job without a giant income hit. His wife can't earn enough to offset daycare costs. They already live on a fairly thin budget. From the outside, I can see how he'd feel unappreciated.

That said though there are definitely also men who aren't doing childcare OR working hard, and they're happy to have their wife do everything.

My spouse and I are single-income and I still try. It's not about economic output, but rather there are things I want my son to know that I can only teach him by being present in his life.

> How about we start paying market price to the parent who takes care of the kids irrespective of mothers or fathers ? Investing in next generation is way more important than making useless widgets faster.

Considering that the current political majority in the US wants people to have more kids, this would be a really reasonable thing to do if they were serious about that.

I help with my kid a lot, and I'm remote so I do it around the clock. I take contact naps, change every diaper, watch her for periods of time so my wife is free.

my wife doesn't work. and she didn't work before we had a baby. because one of our salaries was enough, so instead we work less. and again due to remote work, work has barely been top 5 in my life focus areas for the last decade.

Kind of forced economically but also culturally.

In the 1950s, fathers worked and paid for everything. Mothers raised the kids. This was taught in schools, girls were steered into marriage, motherhood, and housekeeping and men into vocations or college.

Let's not pretend that many women didn't go to work so they could have more, and feel like they were a more complete person. Many people just don't want to be pigeonholed into roles defined by tradition, and the 1960s were a huge rebellion against this. This wasn't some grand capitalist scheme.

It's still possible to raise a family on one professional income, if you live like most people did in the 1960s. Can you do it on minimum wage? No, but you couldn't do it then either.

> 1965

You may not like it, but women benefited a lot. And fought a lot to get those benefits.

Not just in terms of money. They are beaten less. When they are beaten or constantly insulted, they can leave and feed themselves.

Have to disagree as a father. The real benefit is the father and child who are now bonding. That doesn't mean the mother can't also bond, it just means it's not one sided.

> The real benefiter of this is the capitalist ...

Tired old socialist rhetoric.

The real benefiter of this is the state which can now have many times the tax base at the price of none. Where women used to take care of the children and do the housekeeping those tasks are now often done by paid day care, taxed by the state and paid help, again taxed by the state. From a single tax payer a family - father, mother, two children - now supplies two tax payers and several 'downstream' tax payers.