Study: Today’s dads are engaging more with their kids

+1

My wife works 5am-1:30pm so I do the morning routine for our three kids (1, 7, & 9). I work 9am-4pm and am home by 5pm. It's family time -- dinner, sports practice, homework, chores, fun -- until the kids get to bed around 8pm. After that, I'll finish tidying up for the night, make lunches for the next day, and settle in for another 1-2hr of work a few nights/wk. This schedule affords us the ability to be with our children nearly the entire time they're not in school, and is definitely worth the tradeoffs we made to facilitate it, considering the obvious alternative would be for one of us to quit their job (which not only has an opportunity cost but would also likely reduce the time the other partner had with the kids).

The practical issue is that men commit suicide more often and it seems like they suffer loneliness more often, especially at later age. The shared struggle only socialization does now work at all when you are sick or in bad situation. They also end up dependent on their wifes for keeping social network, which works until it does not. They also seem to vent their frustration in bigger angry blow ups which harms a.) themselves, b.) their families, c.) mostly other men who are most likely victims of their violence. "Not complaining" is literally about having taboo you cant talk about - it is not the same as being content. So, they lash out instead.

Men do have emotional displays, like constantly. If you work in tech, I doubt you never seen someone lash out over petty difference in coding style, change of requirements, completely loose it on analyst etc. "The lack of social skills" is often euphemism for "can keep control over negative emotions".

The other interesting issue I see is that women are according to stereotypes both a.) more cooperative and easier to work with and b.) horrible to work with - depending precisely on which variant makes women inferior in the context.

> They learned just enough to load/run software and I learned to write my own.

I have a similar story, but more from necessity; for the first few months while our dad saved up money to buy a tape drive (something he didn't know was sort of necessary when he made the initial purchase), the machine just sat there at the interpreter prompt. Luckily the reference guide and various magazines of the time had examples we could type in. That became the routine - you want to play a game, first you have to type it up. In retrospect, it's actually quite amazing how good a teacher necessity can be.

My parents were both teachers, I got a lot of time with them as such.. However my dad was just never interested in really spending time with us, other than a good 5 minutes then he was bored and wanted to do his thing.

I spent A LOT of time with my mum, she taught me programming, and after a while I was teaching her newer stuff. My mum was the real MVP, my passion for everything comes from my mother.

My father however.. well he would talk about loving to play games like pacman and galaga as a kid, but wouldn't play games with me.. Later after smartphones and facebook, he now just disappears completely.

Now I'm a father, the difference is huge, I play with my daughter, I teach her stuff.. Recently I decided to build her first computer (shes 2, same age as I was when I first got to use a computer) .. so we together restored a Macintosh Classic, and upgraded it with modern components https://cherubini.casa/macintosh-classic-948301f14cbd

One of my earlier memories is my dad going away to GW1. And when it wasn't war it was training or night flying or exchanges or just on standby while we were away. After my dad left the air force he worked in Saudi for 10 years or so, during which I spent much of my time in boarding schools.

Conversely I work from home and see my kids all the time, albeit they're still younger than my own memories. Only last week I had to two days work in London, about 3 hours commute each way, but I came home rather than stay in a hotel. It's rare we don't all sleep under the same roof.

I don't see my dad as having negative masculine attributes though, or myself as being any better. He was often used as a threat by my mother when we were misbehaving, but more often than not we were just pleased to see each other when he came home. I'm proud of him and the decisions he made, he did the best for his family often to his own detriment and the choices I was able to make just weren't available to him. At 6'5 there reverse is also true, or I'd have been doing all I could to follow the same path.