The Unhealthy Father

This weekend The Wall Street Journal published yet another article about women going back to keep their families afloat when their husbands are out of a job.  The piece didn’t have any very new insights; the story was typical: mother is home with her children for many years, father’s business fails, mother has to find work, father has now taken on homemaking responsibilities.  The article ended with this:

In the Grenz household in Sacramento, Calif., it is Mr. Grenz who has taken on more of the household duties while also trying to rebuild his business. Their new arrangement has resulted in home-cooked dinners being replaced by frozen pizzas and other quick meals such as burritos and quesadillas the kids can make themselves. Some extracurricular activities, such as traveling soccer teams, have also been dropped.

Of course, it should be no more difficult for Mr. Grenz to cook healthy meals or be a “soccer dad” than it was for Mrs. Grenz.  But the assumption is that if the father is home-making we must accept that some things will fall by the wayside.  Men can’t be expected to be as conscientious as their wives about health or childcare.

Contrast this with our expectations of women.  Back in September a particularly frustrating study was released in Great Britain suggesting that working mothers have children who eat less healthy food and spend more time in front of television and computer screens.  Though the researchers took pains to say that the study was no an indictment of working women, plenty of mainstream publications, including The Guardian (“Working Mothers Have Unhealthiest Children, Study Finds“) and The BBC (“Working Mothers’ Children Unfit“).

The researchers made clear that they see the study as support for better government policies that help working mothers make healthy choices.  And government support is necessary on many levels to improve the lives of working women and their children.  However, it occurs to me that the involvement of fathers — teaching Dads to cook healthful meals, exercise and spend quality time with their children — could do more than any legislation in this area.

In many ways two-parent families already have a support network: each other.  And yet, the burden of caring for children still falls disproportionately on women, regardless of their work situation.  It’s true that women’s issues need high level advocacy at the government level, but women’s happiness also needs to be supported by their partners at home.

The Wall Street Journal piece and the reports on the health study are just a few examples of a culture that regularly lets men off the hook for being less than ideal parents, while excoriating women.  Wonder why women are unhappy?  Maybe it’s because expectations are so much higher of them than of men.  No one would suggest that a man working a 50 or 60 hour week also be responsible for nightly home-cooked meals or stimulating daily extra-curricular activities, but women routinely are made to feel guilty for failing in these areas.

Instead of testing the hypothesis that working mothers have less healthy children, maybe we could think about a study that explores whether families with two equally active and engaged parents have healthier habits.  And looking at those results, it might be wise to think about programs that encourage fathers to be as conscientious as mothers, and develop services for single-parent families services that offer the same benefits as two-parent households.

Related links:

• Lylah Alphonse at Write. Edit. Repeat. comments on the study suggesting that children of working mothers are less healthy.
• Though their children are apparently “unfit,” another study published in the same journal purports that working mothers themselves are healthier than their stay-at-home counterparts.
• Quick recipes for the working parent from Work it, Mom!  I bet even a father could make some of these.
• An interesting post on healthy and not so healthy choices from Cathy Arnst at Businessweek’s Working Parents blog.