How To Encourage Men To Be Full-Time Caregivers

The ‘Great Resignation’ is about more than money. Careers fade. Priorities change. The pandemic has made many of us focus on what matters most. Many of us have discovered that a happy life is not just about career. It is also about using the time we have to experience the simple things that bring us joy. This awakening has a lot to do with people leaving their jobs not to mention insisting on continuing to work from home. It would benefit business leaders to pay attention the underlying reasons for this besides demands for higher compensation.

Some business leaders have begun to be more accommodating to those who wish to continue working from home. Others have raised people’s pay. And some have pushed back against even the idea of men being caregivers. Joe Lonsdale, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, says that men who take six months of paternity leave are ‘losers’ and that ‘in the old days men had babies and worked harder to provide for their future’ which was ‘the correct masculine response.’ This comment was part of the raging debate sparked by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s decision to take paternity leave after he and his husband, Chasten, welcomed adopted twins into their family.

What business leaders who do not want to accommodate men taking time with kids have not yet done is to accommodate the massive reconsideration taking place of all of our work/life priorities. I know change is hard. I too am a latecomer to reconsidering my priorities. I’m a sixty-nine-year-old heterosexual hunting/shooting/fishing/testosterone-motivated grandfather, who wrote a bestselling book about becoming the proud father of my Marine son during his wartime service. But post-pandemic I’ve also discovered something surprising about myself: sometimes I’d rather be a full-time caregiver for my own grandchildren.

I’m using the word caregiver as a verb describing the practice of providing nurturing, creative, joy-filled childcare as a luminous gift given to children by a child minder of any gender. I’ve been doing lots of childcare for my Marine’s kids, Lucy (now thirteen), Jack (eleven), and Nora (seven)—ever since Lucy’s birth. This has been an enlightening life-changing journey. And I’m not alone in this journey. In “The pandemic has caused parents to slow down. Here’s how to preserve that pace,” Christine Koh (Washington Post, April 6, 2021) describes how many more parents have recently experienced child care:

For many parents, remote schooling meant looser schedules and room to experiment; embrace the routines that retain calm and foster independence. “I never realized how [stressful] our weekday morning routine was until we had to stop doing it,” says LaShawn Wiltz, a mother of an 11-year-old and an Atlanta writer and photographer whose work focuses on capturing everyday moments. “This past year, instead of rushing, there was time to talk a little, laugh more, and there has been no yelling, ‘We’re going to be late!’ I want to keep this slow . . . routine . . . “

When my wife Genie and I became our grandchildren’s pandemic-era day care, school, and summer camp in 2020, I felt I’d fallen into a mental state where my evolutionary instincts were better aligning with what I find most satisfying. I no longer asked myself if life is worth living the way I often did in my more striving younger years. I did however ask myself why childcare is still regarded as a mostly female calling. I did ask why work/life imbalance is not seen as the most pressing question corporate leaders should be addressing if—that is—they want to retain employees not to mention live more fulfilling lives themselves.

Long before the pandemic an exchange with my granddaughter Lucy, when she was four, helped me clarify my work/life priorities. I was on a break during an especially hectic college speaking book tour. I told Lucy how much I was missing her. Lucy reacted instantly: “So, then why are you traveling so much?”

“To sell my latest book,” I said. “I earn my living as a writer.”

She thought about this for a few moments and then stated with the candor only a child can muster, “You should write less!”

Eight years later, we experienced the coronavirus lockdowns together. Lucy had gotten her wish; I wasn’t traveling at all. No one was. Along with Genie, I was taking care of Lucy and her siblings seven days a week for eight hours a day. I’ve never been happier.

My belated awakening to the pleasure of childcare is not unique. Researchers Daniel L. Carlson (University of Utah), Richard Petts (Ball State University), and Joanna R. Pepin (University of Texas-Austin), surveyed 1,060 U.S. parents in mixed-gender marriages in late April 2020. They wanted to see how divisions of housework and childcare changed after the beginning of the pandemic. The study found that 43 percent of fathers reported pitching in more with care of older children, and 42 percent reported an overall increase in housework time. “The pandemic has reshaped the way fathers are involved with their families and children,” Craig Garfield, a professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University, said when the study was presented. This trend in enhanced fatherhood might end, but what if it’s the beginning of a more significant shift?

It seems that some of us still can’t take men’s desire to be caregivers seriously. For instance Pete Buttigieg faced some mockery from several supposedly ‘pro-family’ commentators after the story broke that the transportation secretary had been on paid paternity leave since mid-August. But the male desire to nurture once awakened is a non-negotiable force. And this has nothing to do with our sexual orientation because men too evolved to be caregivers.

Ruth Feldman has studied this. She is a psychologist and brain scientist at the Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center at Bar-Ilan University, and adjunct professor at the Child Study Center at Yale University School of Medicine. Feldman has published a series of studies describing the hormonal activity in new fathers that enhances the feeling of connection to newborn infants. Most research before Feldman’s sought to measure the bond between mothers and newborns. In contrast, the study led by Feldman researchers studied the levels of oxytocin and prolactin (a hormone produced in the pituitary gland, named because of its role in lactation) produced in fathers when interacting with their infants.

In “Father’s brain is sensitive to childcare experiences” (a study by Eyal Abraham, Talma Hendler, Irit Shapira-Lichter, Yaniv Kanat-Maymon, Orna Zagoory-Sharon, and Ruth Feldman) published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PNAS July 8, 2014), oxytocin and parenting behavior were measured in “primary-caregiving mothers, secondary-caregiving fathers, and in primary-caregiving gay fathers raising infants without maternal involvement.” As noted in the study, “Primary-caregiving fathers exhibited high amygdala activation similar to mothers, alongside high superior temporal sulcus (STS) activation.”

If companies want to retain workers in the future they will have to strive harder to accommodate parents wishing to work from home. They will provide funding for well-paid, well-trained childcare givers and open nursery schools in their companies offices and factories accessible to both blue and white collar parents working for them. Paid parental leave will be encouraged. When people leave work to care for young children, and then return to their job, there will be no social barriers (let alone stigma) inhibiting their careers. And more workers who want children will start families when it makes biological sense knowing their companies will support them.

Where flexibility to care for one’s children is encouraged more men, not just women, will stick with and be loyal to companies. The question is: will corporate leaders spend money accordingly?

Workers at all levels reject careers that cut us off from the experience of love. Companies that encourage our post-pandemic newly awakened family values ahead of old-school career striving will—ironically—find it easier to keep their workers. They will also find that those workers are happier and more productive. That’s because—to paraphrase James Carville’s quip “It’s the economy, stupid”—it’s not our jobs that define us, but our capacity to give and receive love—stupid!

It does take a village to raise the next generation. As debate rages on in Washington on the infrastructure bill (yes childcare is essential infrastructure), working families are desperate for relief. At the same time, childcare facilities struggle to attract and retain staff.  While the US government lags behind every other developed nation on policies to help working families, companies can step in and provide the support. Providing flexible work arrangements, paid maternity AND paternity leave, equal pay, and back-up childcare is a start.

With many expecting moms now hiding their pregnancies out of fear for their career advancement maybe it is time for more males to step up and affirm their own desire to be caregivers. They might even find that they like it. Free sushi and toys in the hallways of cool tech companies may work to retain workers who’d rather be adolescents but companies that want to retain grownups these days may discover that being pro-family will help even more than providing higher pay. Hint: parents want more than money more money and lunch. They don’t want to miss out on the experience of love.

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