even the most invested male partner I could ever find would not be able to deliver the kind of childcare or domestic skills that women are capable of delivering
As a pro-natalist myself, I’m really curious about this remark. What aspect of childcare are men not capable of delivering? Is it just that they generally don’t know domestic skills or is there something you think we can’t learn as well as women?
I know men are very capable, I just sometimes get the feeling that they aren’t…
I sometimes get the sinking feeling that even the most invested male partner…
I think there are two separate things to parse out here. One is domestic work, and another is child care.
I think I largely feel this way because I see that men generally don’t have as strong domestic skills, and are not socialized in a way that they either have or highly value these skills. Laundry, cooking, cleaning, stuff like that. I get the sense that most men pick up these skills later in life, whereas a lot of women seem to have (more of) them to begin with (I know that there are plenty of counter examples for this and that it is a generalization). I think men are less likely to care about maintaining a clean household, or “running a household,” or engaging in domestic work largely for the sake of others. In some cultures, it even seems like children themselves contribute more domestic work (and/or childcare) than men do. Maybe domestic work isn’t all that important to creating a good family environment. Maybe it is.
In terms of childcare, I think men can be great, imaginative caretakers, but that on average first time fathers have much less experience with babies and children than first time mothers (again, I’m sure there are many counter examples out there, but I am talking about averages). I also believe that men tend to be more risk taking than women, and that this can manifest in their child care. In some cases, letting children take more risks might be good developmentally speaking. In other cases, not so much. If women perceive men as both a) less skilled or experienced caretakers and/or b) more risk taking, then they may be disinclined to hand the babies over. (Again, speaking in generalizations, I know there are dads out there who are very nervous / careful / risk averse / protective.)
Some larger things underlying sex differences in domestic skills and/or caretaking skills might be developmental differences or cognitive differences (chemical changes caused by gestation?) or differences in empathy. There seems to be a question of nature and nurture here that is very controversial and hard to address. Are males or females innately better caregivers or domestic workers? Or are socialization and culture fully responsible for any of these differences?
purplefern—regarding your question (2) about parental investment, and your follow-up comment above:
As an evolutionary psychologist, I tend to take a rather biological view of sex differences, and I think this can be quite helpful in thinking about sexual divisions of labor in parenting. This is not to say that people should pursue a 1950s-style male breadwinner/female housewife model in the 2020s.
Rather, it’s to say that people should learn about the deep evolutionary history of sexual selection and parental investment, the sexual divisions of labor typically found in hunter-gatherer, pastoralist, and agricultural societies, the recent historical changes in parental care patterns, etc. This helps put any negotiations between modern moms and dads in a much more realistic, grounded context.
One key insight I got from evolutionary biology is that female mammals have evolved for about 70 million years to be very high-investing parents, in terms of gestation (pregnancy), lactation (breast-feeding), foraging (finding and preparing food for offspring), and general maternal care. Whereas, male mammals are typically focused on mating rather than parenting, and typically do either zero parental care, or very minimal protection against infanticide by other males. Human males are extremely unusual in having evolved much more intensive parental care, but this happened only in the last 2-3 million years or so, and it mostly involved increased effort in hunting, protecting the kids and family from rivals within the tribe, protecting the tribe from other tribes, and doing some care-taking and teaching of kids, especially in middle childhood (ages 6-12, roughly) and adolescence (ages 12-18).
So, from the viewpoint of a modern woman who doesn’t appreciate the evolutionary history, it might be frustrating that a man is doing only 40% of the child care instead of 50%. Whereas any other female mammal might feel incredibly envious that a human male is doing 40% rather than 0% as in her own species. This is not to say that a mom shouldn’t try to negotiate with the dad to do 50%. It’s just to offer some context for why these imbalances often emerge.
In general, a frequent failure mode for busy couples with kids is that the mom and dad each feel like they’re doing much more than their partner, because their own contributions are more salient to them. I think it’s important for couples to switch duties and roles enough that they can cover for each other in emergencies, and so they have a full and salient appreciation of what each of them are doing day-to-day for their kids.
I have returned to this post after reading the entirety of Mothers and Others.
Depending on someone’s interpersonal situation, I now believe that parental contributions ideally comprise the following:
Maternal care ~ 30-50%
Paternal care ~ 30-50%
Other care (mostly grandmothers/aunts/child’s siblings/mother’s friends) ~ 30-50%
It seems that “other caretakers” (most desirable being maternal grandmothers) are an absolutely essential requirement for children to thrive, even for those who have highly invested fathers and especially for those who have absent fathers.
My attitude towards absent or apathetic fathers is slightly less negative than it was before reading the book, and subsequently, my belief that successful child rearing requires a strong community of women is slightly up-weighted.
Based on the theory presented in Mothers and Others, I would update my earlier comment…
I know men are very capable, but sometimes get the feeling that they aren’t
…to instead say that men are completely capable as caretakers, but have a bit more of a choice in the matter as to how they contribute their childcare, given societal pressures and competing priorities including mating, hunting, and impressing or protecting others.
I would still be really interested to read others’ thoughts on how paternal priorities change in modern contexts (i.e. what is the modern equivalent of hunting / is hunting obsolete), or the benefits of patriarchal versus matriarchal societies!
Thank you so much Dr. Miller for all of your responses
purplefern—glad you enjoyed the ‘Mothers and Others’ book by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy!
I agree that we see a fair amount of variety in child rearing practices across cultures and time, with varying weights on maternal care, paternal care, and ‘alloparental care’ by other people, which can include close relatives, friends, or neighbors—often female, but of either sex. Modern life does make it difficult to organize informal alloparenting networks, but I guess paid child care and school try to fill the gaps.
In my experience as someone belonging to the WEIRD demographic, males in heterosexual relationships provide less domestic or child support, on average, than their spouse, where by “less” I mean both lower frequency and lower quality in terms of attention and emotional support provided. Males seem entirely capable of learning such skills, but there does seem to some discrepancy in the amount of support actually provided. I would be convinced otherwise were someone to show me a meta-analysis or two of parental care behaviors in heterosexual relationships that found, generally speaking, males and females provide analogous levels of care. In my demographic though, this does not seem to be the case.
For men reading this and thinking “I want to be an equal partner in raising kids, but I know a lot of men who intellectually want this don’t end up doing their share; what should I do”, you might be interested in my Equal Parenting Advice for Dads
As a pro-natalist myself, I’m really curious about this remark. What aspect of childcare are men not capable of delivering? Is it just that they generally don’t know domestic skills or is there something you think we can’t learn as well as women?
I know men are very capable, I just sometimes get the feeling that they aren’t…
I think there are two separate things to parse out here. One is domestic work, and another is child care.
I think I largely feel this way because I see that men generally don’t have as strong domestic skills, and are not socialized in a way that they either have or highly value these skills. Laundry, cooking, cleaning, stuff like that. I get the sense that most men pick up these skills later in life, whereas a lot of women seem to have (more of) them to begin with (I know that there are plenty of counter examples for this and that it is a generalization). I think men are less likely to care about maintaining a clean household, or “running a household,” or engaging in domestic work largely for the sake of others. In some cultures, it even seems like children themselves contribute more domestic work (and/or childcare) than men do. Maybe domestic work isn’t all that important to creating a good family environment. Maybe it is.
In terms of childcare, I think men can be great, imaginative caretakers, but that on average first time fathers have much less experience with babies and children than first time mothers (again, I’m sure there are many counter examples out there, but I am talking about averages). I also believe that men tend to be more risk taking than women, and that this can manifest in their child care. In some cases, letting children take more risks might be good developmentally speaking. In other cases, not so much. If women perceive men as both a) less skilled or experienced caretakers and/or b) more risk taking, then they may be disinclined to hand the babies over. (Again, speaking in generalizations, I know there are dads out there who are very nervous / careful / risk averse / protective.)
Some larger things underlying sex differences in domestic skills and/or caretaking skills might be developmental differences or cognitive differences (chemical changes caused by gestation?) or differences in empathy. There seems to be a question of nature and nurture here that is very controversial and hard to address. Are males or females innately better caregivers or domestic workers? Or are socialization and culture fully responsible for any of these differences?
purplefern—regarding your question (2) about parental investment, and your follow-up comment above:
As an evolutionary psychologist, I tend to take a rather biological view of sex differences, and I think this can be quite helpful in thinking about sexual divisions of labor in parenting. This is not to say that people should pursue a 1950s-style male breadwinner/female housewife model in the 2020s.
Rather, it’s to say that people should learn about the deep evolutionary history of sexual selection and parental investment, the sexual divisions of labor typically found in hunter-gatherer, pastoralist, and agricultural societies, the recent historical changes in parental care patterns, etc. This helps put any negotiations between modern moms and dads in a much more realistic, grounded context.
One key insight I got from evolutionary biology is that female mammals have evolved for about 70 million years to be very high-investing parents, in terms of gestation (pregnancy), lactation (breast-feeding), foraging (finding and preparing food for offspring), and general maternal care. Whereas, male mammals are typically focused on mating rather than parenting, and typically do either zero parental care, or very minimal protection against infanticide by other males. Human males are extremely unusual in having evolved much more intensive parental care, but this happened only in the last 2-3 million years or so, and it mostly involved increased effort in hunting, protecting the kids and family from rivals within the tribe, protecting the tribe from other tribes, and doing some care-taking and teaching of kids, especially in middle childhood (ages 6-12, roughly) and adolescence (ages 12-18).
So, from the viewpoint of a modern woman who doesn’t appreciate the evolutionary history, it might be frustrating that a man is doing only 40% of the child care instead of 50%. Whereas any other female mammal might feel incredibly envious that a human male is doing 40% rather than 0% as in her own species. This is not to say that a mom shouldn’t try to negotiate with the dad to do 50%. It’s just to offer some context for why these imbalances often emerge.
In general, a frequent failure mode for busy couples with kids is that the mom and dad each feel like they’re doing much more than their partner, because their own contributions are more salient to them. I think it’s important for couples to switch duties and roles enough that they can cover for each other in emergencies, and so they have a full and salient appreciation of what each of them are doing day-to-day for their kids.
I have returned to this post after reading the entirety of Mothers and Others.
Depending on someone’s interpersonal situation, I now believe that parental contributions ideally comprise the following:
Maternal care ~ 30-50%
Paternal care ~ 30-50%
Other care (mostly grandmothers/aunts/child’s siblings/mother’s friends) ~ 30-50%
It seems that “other caretakers” (most desirable being maternal grandmothers) are an absolutely essential requirement for children to thrive, even for those who have highly invested fathers and especially for those who have absent fathers.
My attitude towards absent or apathetic fathers is slightly less negative than it was before reading the book, and subsequently, my belief that successful child rearing requires a strong community of women is slightly up-weighted.
Based on the theory presented in Mothers and Others, I would update my earlier comment…
…to instead say that men are completely capable as caretakers, but have a bit more of a choice in the matter as to how they contribute their childcare, given societal pressures and competing priorities including mating, hunting, and impressing or protecting others.
I would still be really interested to read others’ thoughts on how paternal priorities change in modern contexts (i.e. what is the modern equivalent of hunting / is hunting obsolete), or the benefits of patriarchal versus matriarchal societies!
Thank you so much Dr. Miller for all of your responses
purplefern—glad you enjoyed the ‘Mothers and Others’ book by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy!
I agree that we see a fair amount of variety in child rearing practices across cultures and time, with varying weights on maternal care, paternal care, and ‘alloparental care’ by other people, which can include close relatives, friends, or neighbors—often female, but of either sex. Modern life does make it difficult to organize informal alloparenting networks, but I guess paid child care and school try to fill the gaps.
In my experience as someone belonging to the WEIRD demographic, males in heterosexual relationships provide less domestic or child support, on average, than their spouse, where by “less” I mean both lower frequency and lower quality in terms of attention and emotional support provided. Males seem entirely capable of learning such skills, but there does seem to some discrepancy in the amount of support actually provided. I would be convinced otherwise were someone to show me a meta-analysis or two of parental care behaviors in heterosexual relationships that found, generally speaking, males and females provide analogous levels of care. In my demographic though, this does not seem to be the case.
For men reading this and thinking “I want to be an equal partner in raising kids, but I know a lot of men who intellectually want this don’t end up doing their share; what should I do”, you might be interested in my Equal Parenting Advice for Dads
N of 1 here, but FWIW this has very much not been my experience (gestating and breastfeeding aside).