Did you know that according to the Census Bureau fathers are just “child care”?
It’s not baby-sitting when Daddy does it. Who wouldn’t agree with that? The U.S. Census Bureau, apparently. When both parents are present in the household, the Census Bureau assumes for the purposes of its “Who’s Minding the Kids?” report, that the mother is the “designated parent.” And when the designated parent is working or at school, the bureau would like to know who’s providing child care.
If the answer is Daddy, as it was 26 percent of the time when these numbers were last released, in 2005, and 32 percent of the time in 2010, the Census Bureau calls that “care.” But if Mom is caring for a child while Dad’s at work, that’s not a “child care arrangement,” but something else. Parenting, presumably.
“Regardless of how much families have changed over the last 50 years women are still primarily responsible for work in the home,” said Lynda Laughlin of the Census Bureau’s Fertility and Family Statistics Branch. “We try to look at child care as more of a form of work support.” A mother, said Ms. Laughlin, is “not only caring for the child only while Dad works. She’s probably caring for the child 24 hours and so Dad is able to go to work regardless.”
That bears repeating. If, every morning, I go off to work and my husband stays home with a child, that’s a “child care arrangement” in the eyes of this governmental institution. If the reverse is true, it’s not. I asked Ms. Laughlin if the Census Bureau collected data on the hours mothers spend offering “work support” to their husbands. “No,” she said. “We don’t report it in that direction.”
Uh. What.
I mean… what?
My father woke up at 4 am every morning so he could be home from work in time to pick me and my sister up from school; he made us dinner, helped us with our homework, put us to bed. My mother, although a lovely woman, is constitutionally unable of working less than fifty hours a week. However, according to the Census bureau, my mother is the primary caregiver because… it says “F” on her driver’s license? I guess?
Man. I didn’t realize that being called “he” is enough to transform your dedication to your children into a mere child care arrangement.
So this is a personal issue for me, of course. But not just for me. For every person who was raised by their father. For every stay-at-home dad and every working father who sacrificed to help take care of his kids. For every man who wants to watch his children grow up. For everyone who knows a great person who was primarily raised by their dad.
I mean, seriously, Census Bureau? How hard is it to have a “designated parent” question? “Which parent is the designated/primary parent (i.e. the parent that provides the majority of child care)?” That is literally one question, Census Bureau. I am sure you can ask one more fucking question in order not to erase men who provide the primary care for their children, and not to paint fathers as glorified babysitters.
Don’t give me this “we’re just reflecting the realities of society” bullshit. You know what causes the realities of society? Shit like this that devalues fathers’ contributions to raising children and ignores the millions of loving men who take care of their children and prioritize being involved in their children’s lives. How are we supposed to have a society that changes and becomes better if shit like this is holding us back?
And society is getting better (nearly a third of the time, in heterosexual couples, when Mom isn’t taking care of the kids, Dad is– up from only a quarter of the time five years ago). It’s about time the Census reflected it.
USian readers, contact your senators and your representatives. Everyone, tweet, blog, Facebook, and generally promote the hell out of this shit. We can’t let this stand.
My husband called himself the babysitter today because I was posses that he slept in till noon with 2 sick kids in the house while I was working. Also didn’t check temperature of child who had on/off fever all week
I come home from work, house is pretty clean, all laundry left for me to fold, son has fever of 101.6 I ask him why he didn’t check the temperature and it turns into a huge fight as he designates himself the babysitter.
My husband and I work opposite shifts because we do not want our daughter in daycare (and it’s freaking expensive). My husband is a PARENT. So am I. It is a blatant travesty to call my husband’s important role in our daughter’s life “babysitting.” The Census people need to pull their sexist heads out of their sexist asses and give parents of both sexes their due.
@Wolf – “As a side note there’s also something squicky about the notion of childcare as essentially “work support” that I’m finding hard to articulate.”
I think it may have to do with the notion that child rearing and by extension domestic management (housekeeping) is not considered “real work”. The real job is what brings money into the house. The real job is what daddy does. The “work support” is what Mommy does to enable daddy to exercise his utility.
Claaaaassic Ozy’s Law here. If dad is just a caregiver and not a real parent, moms who leave the kids with dad while they’re at work are shirking their maternal duties by abandoning their children with a mere babysitter. Oh, and there’s no real reason to get upset at dads who don’t actively participate in parenting, because that’s not his job (and if he does it, of course, he’s shirking his real duties and/or fucking the kid up because he’s naturally incompetent at women’s work anyway). As a side note there’s also something squicky about the notion of childcare as… Read more »
Please do, Daisy. Open thread is up. And no, I do not know how you are going to tie the two together.
“Uh. What. I mean… what?” Ozy, I really hope this is just your coy way of expressing outrage rather than an actual expression of surprise. Because this situation surprises no one who has been paying attention. Ths leads right into the man-as-child-molester-by-default meme that is so commonsensical to bigoted people. @Monika “So when people are curious about how much time kids spend in childcare, they will find a number that includes time spent with fathers? How did anyone think this was a good idea?” I hadn’t thought of that explanation but that makes total sense now that you say it.… Read more »
Since both custody and how parents are viewed differently by government have come up, one of those things that is a small part of that whole “family court bias” that is a core MRA item has a similar source:
An unemployed father is incapable of providing and is thus a less fit parent and less deserving of custody. An unemployed mother is a primary caregiver and thus more deserving of custody.
Seems like that kind of view would have a similar source.
It seems a self-repeating cycle – if one assumes that men are only “babysitters”, then “men” are not likely to want the job since it’s demeaning/beneath them/the hired help/not actively engaged in child’s life anyway, so they won’t choose to be primary caregivers, so the census reflects a minority of men as the “designated parent” and therefore reports it, which implies that it’s a bad job for men to take, so they won’t …
There’s just so much wrong there, it’s hard to know where to start.
So when people are curious about how much time kids spend in childcare, they will find a number that includes time spent with fathers? How did anyone think this was a good idea?
My Daddy was the one who fed me every bite during every one of my serious childhood illnesses! My father taught me, a girl, to drive a tractor on the farm, to ride a horse, a bicycle, etc. My mother did plenty, but it was a real parenting partneship as you used to see on farms, especially! This citified stuff is for sissies. Real men PARENT and NURTURE as fathers, I am here to tell you! My own son certainly PARENTS my two grandchildren along with their wonderful mother.
Yeah Debaser, we were just talking about that, “mommy’s morning out”–doesn’t daddy get one? I guess daddy is so tough, he don’t need no stinkin morning out! Debaser, I would like to ask you a sort of argumentative question, so I will be asking you in the next open thread, stay tuned. (nothing bad or nasty, just very curious) It’s daddy oriented. In fact, I managed to combine daddy and Elevatorgate into one question, and you might be able to figure out what it is. I write what I write and take the angle I take because I don’t want… Read more »
Note the name from the linked article in the “parenting” section in the New York Times. “Motherlode” Most parenting sections are named with some variation of “mommy”. It’s systemic. The word all these people are looking for is “parent”. So for the linked article in the OP…the bloggers there can ask for their employers to change the name of their blog to reflect the fact that dads matter too. I’m glad they write about how the government is part of the problem but they should also look in the mirror. (And note, I write what I write and take the… Read more »
That’s the rub though. If the census bureau and by extension the government, sees fathers as nothing more than glorified babysitters, what chance do fathers really have of being taken seriously in the parenting forum? It would appear that, once again, fathers are valued for their utility if grudgingly in this respect, acknowledging that we are capable of “filling in” until the primary caregiver returns. Honestly, I’m surprised that we are given even that much credit given how the media tends to portray fathers as the parenting equivalent of a Keystone Kop. Never mind that my wife and I have… Read more »
My dad was my only care-giver from the age of 13 onwards. Not primary. Only. This type of skewed ‘fact finding’ gives me that bubbling type rage where you don’t know who to direct it at (the census obviously, but that doesn’t feel like enough).
What stings the most though is the thought of all the dads reading or hearing themselves referred to as a ‘child care arrangement’. Dads are parents too. I know that doesn’t need saying to you guys, but it bears repeating loudly and often to wear down this awful narrative.
*facepalm* Do Not Want. Honestly I think the concept of “designated parent” is kind of stupid in the first place – it certainly wouldn’t mean anything in my household; my parents raised me just about equally, I really can’t say one or the other spent more time – let alone automatically assuming that the mother is it.
And in addition to devaluing father’s contributions, it seems to automatically assume one mother and one father. Hello heteronormativity, how happy to see you I am not.
It seems like it would be better to just treat mothers and fathers the same way. The whole concept of designated parent is a bit screwed-up, even if implemented in a gender neutral way. And it’s not like there’s any value in NOT measuring the time mothers spend in childcare tasks to enable fathers to work.
That’s not what the report says. The report doesn’t make the distinction the article is claiming it does.
Okay, first, your Dad sounds pretty awesome.
Second, this is horrible nitpicking, but I think it should be “constitutionally incapable of,” not “unable of.”
Finally, this was pretty much exactly the point of that article that I posted on the ‘splaining thread.
Actually, it’s more than “just one question”. It’s a monkeywrench in the gears that adds in larger margins of errors and could potentially end up with less useful data and/or harder-to-interpret results. One can’t entirely fault them for wanting to avoid that. Though if you take things in consideration that a “larger margin of error” is better than “always wrong”, and one could mostly fix things by just assuming that the genders of the parents are irrelevant, then clearly they’re not justified for continuing this way even if you can’t entirely fault them for it. Even that doesn’t account for… Read more »
Great post. This is incredibly frustrating. I’ve been a stay at home Dad to my boys for six years. These kind of assumptions can drive me crazy. It happens on many levels in society. We have even had a few people convey sympathy to my wife when we tell them how we live because they ‘assume’ that I AM just babysitting – sitting around watching the kids – and that my wife comes home from work to cook clean etc. Pisses us both off.
I agree – one fucking question.
This is ridiculous. My father and mother split work time so that she worked evenings and he worked during the day. My mom could bring us to school or the bus stop, and get us from school if absolutely necessary, while my dad would be with us at night so that we could eat dinner together, do homework, and hang out. This resulted in my parents seeing each other very little during the week, but it let both my brother and I get time with each parent, and let my mom and dad play equal roles in our lives. My… Read more »
This. Entire. Post.
My father was also a stay-at-home dad and my primary caregiver for the first few years of my life (and had 50/50 custody of me after my parents split). He was NOT just a babysitter, he was a @(*#(ING PARENT.