American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were • Hacker News Board

Re: American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

#21

Post by basisword » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 9:47 PM UTC

pkaler wrote: post #13

Yup. Woke up at 6am. Child 1 woke up at 7am. Dropped her off at daycare at 8am. All the other children were being dropped off by their dads, too. Full day of work ahead. Dinner at 6pm. Bath at 7pm. Bedtime and story at 8pm. Usually calls with Bangalore from 9pm to midnight but it's Labour Day over there. Sleep at midnight. Rinse. Repeat.

My one concern with this is the risk of eventual burn out + mental health issues which will have its own impact on the children. Full time career + very present parent during the weekdays might just not be possible. WFH definitely helps make it significantly more possible though.

Also worth not forgetting that in most cases the fathers of millennials were a hell of a lot more present and emotionally available than their fathers etc. I'm sure we'll make plenty of our own mistakes that our children will try to avoid when their turn comes.

Re: American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

#22

Post by WarOnPrivacy » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 9:51 PM UTC

> Millennial fathers have roughly tripled the amount of time they spend with kids.

I think this really undersells it. My mom parented a few hours a week. My kids (like most) lived under ceaseless 24/7 adulting. The time I spent with my sons was more like a 20x increase over my parents' generation.

Past that, it seems like it's taking forever for anyone to notice the radical changes in modern parenting/childhood. Along with eliminating adult-free peer time, we've eradicated free range areas. My generation could roam (w/o adults) for miles in every direction; my kids (like most) could go from one edge of the yard to the other (credit: car culture, trespassing culture, false stranger-danger culture).

The surprising part (to me) isn't how thoroughly adults have sabotaged kids growth opportunities, it's that nearly no one seems to have noticed it.

Re: American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

#23

Post by gib444 » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 9:52 PM UTC

I feel there is a trend of not fully appreciating what fathers who spend less time with kids actually do. I think that's unfair, frankly. Many of them do things that contribute to the family in other ways.

What was my Dad busy doing? Focusing on his career in order to provide for his family. Doing hobbies that increased his skill set. Fixing the house to ensure we all had a nice safe place to live. Tending to the garden to keep the neighbours happy. Building ties with the community to increase our family's standing in the community and being able to call in favours in emergencies etc.

The 4 days off he had from his primary job, he worked multiple other jobs, creating multiple streams of family income.

It's so easy to view many of these things as him not tending to his family directly. That's incredibly short-sighted.

My mother appreciated very little of those things, and constantly nagged that he never did enough. She admitted many years later this was a big contributor to their divorce.

I think some modern opinions of parenting come from a very individualistic, transactional and reciprocal mindset. Eg "I spend 1 hour doing the dishes, you have to do something, today, and of equivalent value, to show you love us". What kind of foundation for a relationship is that? What happened to the power of a family?

Re: American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

#24

Post by whateveracct » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 9:54 PM UTC

popalchemist wrote: post #20

whateveracct wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I help with my kid a lot, and I'm remote so I do it around the clock. I take contact naps, change every diaper, watch her for periods of time so my wife is free. my wife doesn't work. and she didn't work before we had a baby. because one of our salaries was enough, so instead we work less. and again due to remote work, work has barely been top 5 in my life focus areas for the last decade.

You are by far the exception.

there's a lot of remote jobs out there

or were. tough out there rn.

Re: American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

#25

Post by nathanaldensr » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 10:04 PM UTC

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #22

> Millennial fathers have roughly tripled the amount of time they spend with kids. I think this really undersells it. My mom parented a few hours a week. My kids (like most) lived under ceaseless 24/7 adulting. The time I spent with my sons was more like a 20x increase over my parents' generation. Past that, it seems like it's taking forever for anyone to notice the radical changes in modern parenting/childhood. Alon…

Millennials on the whole are incredibly neurotic about all kinds of things. Why that is is a matter of debate.

Re: American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

#26

Post by mothballed » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 10:09 PM UTC

nathanaldensr wrote: post #25

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #22

> Millennial fathers have roughly tripled the amount of time they spend with kids. I think this really undersells it. My mom parented a few hours a week. My kids (like most) lived under ceaseless 24/7 adulting. The time I spent with my sons was more like a 20x increase over my parents' generation. Past that, it seems like it's taking forever for anyone to notice the radical changes in modern parenting/childhood. Alon…

Millennials on the whole are incredibly neurotic about all kinds of things. Why that is is a matter of debate.

I don't know if it's the parent that is neurotic so much as that it only takes 1 of 1000 assholes, who now have their little snitch device in their pocket 24/7, to call the child snatchers (CPS). And the child snatchers are legally barred from revealing who your accuser is, so the anonymous cowards can fuck up your life for weeks at no cost to themselves and with the utmost convenience. This effectively means every single person who views your child, now has veto powers on your parenting. The end result of that is people parent in the most paranoid, liability averting way possible.

When I was a kid the Karens against childhood autonomy existed but it actually cost them time and money to rat us out since they would have to drive home to a telephone, so long as we didn't play near houses. If an asshole raised hell we were gone by the time they could call the authorities.

Re: American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

#27

Post by mschuster91 » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 10:21 PM UTC

basisword wrote: post #21

pkaler wrote: post #13

Yup. Woke up at 6am. Child 1 woke up at 7am. Dropped her off at daycare at 8am. All the other children were being dropped off by their dads, too. Full day of work ahead. Dinner at 6pm. Bath at 7pm. Bedtime and story at 8pm. Usually calls with Bangalore from 9pm to midnight but it's Labour Day over there. Sleep at midnight. Rinse. Repeat.

My one concern with this is the risk of eventual burn out + mental health issues which will have its own impact on the children. Full time career + very present parent during the weekdays might just not be possible. WFH definitely helps make it significantly more possible though. Also worth not forgetting that in most cases the fathers of millennials were a hell of a lot more present and emotionally available than th…

> Full time career + very present parent during the weekdays might just not be possible.

Guess why birth rates are crashing - and why they crash hardest in Asia, especially Japan.

Re: American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

#28

Post by K0balt » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 10:23 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #15

mlboss wrote: post #2

It is also kind of forced. Modern industrial society wants to extract as much productivity out of workforce as possible. What that means is in 1965 one income was able to sustain a household but now we need two incomes. There is no dedicated support for kids now so fathers have to give up time and mothers have to exchange child-mother bonding time from kids to the company. The real benefiter of this is the capitalist…

Kind of forced economically but also culturally. In the 1950s, fathers worked and paid for everything. Mothers raised the kids. This was taught in schools, girls were steered into marriage, motherhood, and housekeeping and men into vocations or college. Let's not pretend that many women didn't go to work so they could have more, and feel like they were a more complete person. Many people just don't want to be pigeonh…

Don’t imagine that it wasn’t heavily promoted by industrialites after they saw that after ww2 they could increase the labor force by 30 percent without paying more than they were before.

Everything that starts out with a few well meaning people is, especially now, immediately turned into an astroturfing campaign to fuel some specific economic or political (is there really a difference?) end.

Re: American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

#29

Post by WarOnPrivacy » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 10:23 PM UTC

nathanaldensr wrote: post #25

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #22

> Millennial fathers have roughly tripled the amount of time they spend with kids. I think this really undersells it. My mom parented a few hours a week. My kids (like most) lived under ceaseless 24/7 adulting. The time I spent with my sons was more like a 20x increase over my parents' generation. Past that, it seems like it's taking forever for anyone to notice the radical changes in modern parenting/childhood. Alon…

Millennials on the whole are incredibly neurotic about all kinds of things. Why that is is a matter of debate.

> Millennials on the whole are incredibly neurotic about all kinds of things.

Truly, this hasn't been my experience. I'm GenX (edit: not GenZ), my parents were Silent Gen (WWII vets) and my kids are Millennials. My 25yo kids understand behavior and psychology better than my parents ever did.

The reason my kids grew up imprisoned is there was nowhere for them to go. The risk to their well-being was never from strangers but from cars and police.

Re: American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

#30

Post by mothballed » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 10:24 PM UTC

hagbard_c wrote: post #19

mlboss wrote: post #2

It is also kind of forced. Modern industrial society wants to extract as much productivity out of workforce as possible. What that means is in 1965 one income was able to sustain a household but now we need two incomes. There is no dedicated support for kids now so fathers have to give up time and mothers have to exchange child-mother bonding time from kids to the company. The real benefiter of this is the capitalist…

> The real benefiter of this is the capitalist ... Tired old socialist rhetoric. The real benefiter of this is the state which can now have many times the tax base at the price of none. Where women used to take care of the children and do the housekeeping those tasks are now often done by paid day care, taxed by the state and paid help, again taxed by the state. From a single tax payer a family - father, mother, two…

It's hilarious how the government used Rosy the Riveter to convince women that being liberated is slaving away building death machines for the state to literally blow up all our money, while sending your kids to people who don't give two fucks for them, all while moving all that domestic stuff to the GDP so they can tax the shit out of it.