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Modern dads enjoy being hands-on parents, yet are split about whether they spend enough time with their children, a Pew Research Council study reveals.

(Mary Iuvone/For the Times of Trenton)

They may not be happy about it, but working fathers have closed the “guilt gap” with working mothers, admitting they find it difficult to juggle work and family.

Mothers, in turn, are becoming more likely to view earning money as an important part of motherhood.

Both increasingly report they “always feel rushed.”

“Fathers and mothers are becoming more alike than ever before,” said Wendy Wang of the Pew Research Center. Pew recently asked parents to indicate how much time they spend on various activities during the day — as well as how they feel about their choices. They then compared the answers with those given by parents in 1965.

How do you compare with other working parents? Take the quiz below to find out.

The results paint a portrait of frazzled parents tugged in all directions.

"This is a good news/bad news situation," said historian Stephanie Coontz, an expert in changing family roles and the author of "A Strange Stirring," a look at women, men and families in the '60s.

The good news is that parents are sharing child-care responsibilities. "The bad news is men are under stress now, too," Coontz said.

Today’s fathers are twice as likely as mothers to feel they don’t spend enough time with their kids, even though they average far more hands-on time than dads from earlier generations: 46 percent characterized their child-rearing time as “not enough,” compared to 23 percent of mothers.

It makes sense, Wang said: The mothers, on average, spent twice as many hours as dads every week looking after their children.

In both the 1965 results and the 2012 results just released, mothers and fathers are nearly equal in the amount of combined work they do each week — whether in paid employment, housework or child-rearing.

What has changed — drastically — is who does what and what gets done.

As mothers have moved into the workplace, it has impacted how fathers spend their time as well. Modern dads have stepped up to do more housework (10 hours a week instead of four hours in 1965) — as well as more time with their children (seven hours instead of 2½ hours.)

Today’s fathers genuinely want that daily involvement with their children, said William Marsiglio, co-author of “Nurturing Dads — Social Initiatives for Contemporary Fatherhood.” Those who were raised by a father who spent time with them want to replicate that experience, while those raised by more distant fathers want to be more available to their own children, he said.

Modern working mothers don't neglect their children, actually spending more hours with them than would the mythical Betty Draper from the "Mad Men" era — who is rarely depicted actually playing with her children.



"You know how Betty just plunks the kids in from of the TV all the time? That is so true," said Coontz, who has praised the show for its historical accuracy of family roles. "Kids are in the background. It's 'Go outside and play, and come back when you're ready to go to college.' "

So what has fallen by the wayside? Housework.

Fathers are doing more and mothers are doing less, but between the two of them, they do eight fewer hours of housework than their 1965 counterparts.

Some of that is because of time-saving technology such as the microwave, Wang said. Some of the reduction is because families are hiring someone to do it.

But no doubt some things have simply been crossed off the “To Do” list entirely.

“They’re either paying someone to do it, or they’re simply reducing their expectation of what gets done,” Marsiglio said. Housework was defined as cooking, cleaning, laundry, yard work, home maintenance, bill paying and pet care.

“They’re not going to shortchange their kids,” Marsiglio said of mothers who put in more hours than ever with their children. “They may be living in dirtier houses.”

“Partly, we just don’t do the stuff,” Coontz said. “We have lower standards.”

Something else modern couples may be neglecting is their marriage and their outside friendships — to their detriment, Coontz noted. “I think we’re doing our duty by our kids. But in order to do that, we’re giving up time with our partners and time with friends.”

One powerful agent of change has been the economy. The survey compared answers given in 2009 with those given just three years later, and found noticeable changes in the attitude both fathers and mothers have to moms in the workplace.

In 2009, more than half (54 percent) of men said they thought the “ideal” set-up for a mother with children under 18 would be as a stay-at-home mother with no outside employment. By 2012, there was a whopping 17 point drop in the number of dads who cite that as the ideal. Now, only 37 percent prefer it.

“I would suspect the recession has influenced some fathers’ thinking on this,” Marsiglio said. “They may need some help supporting the family. They may be unemployed, or their hours may have been reduced, or they feel they might lose their job.” Under those circumstances, they may place a higher priority on the safety net of a wife’s paycheck.

“That’s a real sea change,” Coontz said. During the Great Depression, which forced mothers to earn any money they could, men reacted very badly to women’s intrusion into the workforce. Gender roles actually became more rigid in response.

By contrast, today’s fathers almost expect their partners will work and don’t find it threatening to the welfare of their children.

A sour economy has also made mothers take a more practical look at their choices. Now, a full third of them call full-time employment ideal — a shift away from viewing part-time work as the way to find balance.

Both mothers and fathers may still find it risky to seek more flexibility from their employers. Coontz noted that the corporate assumption that motherhood renders a worker less valuable is also starting to apply to modern, hands-on fathers.

Studies have shown that when a male employee becomes a father, he is perceived as warmer, yet still competent. But if he requests any schedule changes in order to be the father he wants to be, his stock goes down.

“The minute he actually asks for that, he begins to be discriminated against because he’s not being the ideal male,” she said.

When paid employment, child care and housework are added up, couples of both eras achieved a near parity of hours. But today's parents, between them, "work" an extra seven hours a week.



That, combined with a workplace that has been slow to recognize those changes, produces the stress that shows up in the survey results, both Coontz and Marsiglio noted.

“Parents need to stop blaming each other and make some allowance for being two people who can’t hold down three jobs,” she said.