And he mirrors many of today’s dads, who are so changed from yesterday’s. In Fournier I saw my two brothers, who don’t adore their children any more than our father adored us but who do it with a gentler, tenderer touch, unafraid to broach discussions and display emotions that most men once shrank from.

In Fournier I saw the baseball player Adam LaRoche, who made headlines last month when he quit the Chicago White Sox and walked away from a $13 million salary because a White Sox executive told him that he could no longer do what he’d done with his previous team, the Washington Nationals: have his son, now 14, accompany him daily to practices.

“Of one thing I am certain,” LaRoche said in a statement that addressed family and fatherhood. “We will regret not spending enough time with our kids, not the other way around.” The reaction in the baseball world was as telling as his decision. He drew seemingly universal praise from fellow players, including the ones on the White Sox whom he was leaving behind.

LaRoche is lucky, of course, to have the economic freedom to make the choice that he did.

And Paul Ryan, the Republican speaker of the House, is equally lucky to be able to insist on tight parameters around how much time he’ll spend away from Wisconsin and his three children, as he did when being pressed to take on his current role. Ryan warned colleagues: “I cannot and will not give up my family time.”

Michael Kimmel, a sociologist who has written extensively about modern men, told me that while he couldn’t know the ratio of earnestness to image burnishing in Ryan’s proclamation, “it’s interesting that it has currency now. Not that long ago, men would have been policed and sanctioned for prioritizing family. They’ll still get some of that, but it’s also admired.”

That’s progress, no question, but with more than a germ of injustice in it: Women still have to make assurances that family obligations won’t slow them down at work, while men are increasingly encountering applause for hitting the brakes.

According to surveys by the Pew Research Center, men spend almost three times the number of hours a week with their children as they did half a century ago. And they feel conflicted about not devoting more. While 23 percent of mothers said they shortchanged their kids on time, 46 percent of fathers did.