Full-Time Dads;
The E-Magazine for Caregiver Fathers
Issue 3, originally appeared in print - August 1991
"We do not have a category in our language yet to think about "working fathers" as a group that could have distinct needs. "Working Mother" means conflict: if the mother is working outside the home, who is caring for the children? "Working Father" is a redundancy: men work, simple as that."
James Levine
"To show a child what has once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own, so that there is now double delight seen in the glow of burst and affection, this is happiness."
J.B. Priestly
"If you've never seen a really fully-developed look of disgust, tell your son how you conducted yourself when you were a boy."
K Hubbard
"A majority of adult American men no longer seek or are satisfied by conventional job success. For men, self-fulfillment has become severed from success."
Betty Friedan, The Second Stage
"Boy's raised with nurturant, caring, highly involved fathers in the home develop a primary male identity - they can model themselves on their father from the youngest age. They do not need to prove that they are real men by being tough, violent, obsessed with dominance. Their model of masculinity includes nurturance caring, and empathy which they experienced from their fathers. Since they are secure in their masculinity, they do not have the need to look down at and disparage everything feminine in order to establish a masculine identity." Miriam Miedziam, Ph. D.
A 1989 Washington Post poll indicated that 4% of fathers polled in the metropolitan Washington, DC, area did not work outside the home. An additional 48% of fathers indicated that they reduced their work hours in order to spend more time with their families and 23% said that they had declined a promotion because it would have meant spending less time with their families.
The Washington Post, June 1990
A 1990 poll conducted by The Los Angeles Times revealed that 39% of the fathers surveyed would quit their jobs if they could stay home with their children. 57% of fathers and 55% of mothers said they felt guilty about spending too little time with their children. 51% of fathers polled said their work interfered with their parental responsibilities.
The Los Angeles Time, August 1990
A 1989 New York Times poll found 83% of employed mothers and 72% of employed fathers say they are torn between the demands of their jobs and the desire to spend more time with their families.
The New York Times, 1989
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