The Life of Dad

by Anna Machin

  So, now for the ultimate test: how can LeVine’s model help us to understand the different ways dads fulfil their role? Let’s take another look at Ota, Mike, Sigis and James and their very different approaches to fathering. Both Ota and Sigis live within comparatively benign physical environments; there are relatively low rates of warfare and disease. But their economic reality is considerably harsher, with Ota’s family experiencing a hand-to-mouth existence, requiring daily hunting trips to provide food for the family, and Sigis being under pressure to produce sufficient tea at a competitive price for the commercial market from a farm that is in an increasingly tough physical environment. In their daily lives, both focus largely on the preoccupations of the second tier of LaVine’s model, those related to ensuring their children learn the subsistence skills that will enable them to be economically secure as adults. Hence Ota’s children will learn as they observe and participate in the family net hunt, whereas Sigis’ sons will be the focus of his teachings in a society that is largely dominated by men.

  In contrast, both Mike and James live in physically and economically secure environments. For them, the risk to their children lurks within the hugely complex social world in which they will have to operate as adults. For many people, success within this environment isn’t simply linked to how hard you work but what school you went to, who you play golf with and what car you drive. The two key factors that will open doors for you are who you associate with – who you know and what circles you move in – and money. Mike may not be there for every bath time or sports day, but he knows that by earning the money to send his children to the right school and allowing his eldest son to observe his social and business interactions on the golf course, he is giving his children the best foundation from which to set out on a successful life course. All those hours at the country club will ensure they know the right people and develop the correct behaviours to be accepted into their circle. Likewise, James is not his family’s main breadwinner, but he is supporting his children’s academic and social learning by ferrying them to after-school clubs, being an active PTA member and braving the world of homework. For both our Western dads, their behaviour acknowledges that within their environments the greatest risk to their children lies in their inability to navigate our complex and stratified social world. Strikingly, if you ask a father what worries them in relation to their children, they do not focus on what is taken for granted but what is at risk. For Ota and Sigis, this is economic survival; for Mike and James, it is the worry that their children won’t achieve their social and intellectual potential. If you are a dad, then you can test out LeVine’s model for yourself. Answer these two questions: What is your main role within your family? And what would you say is the greatest risk to your children? Consider your answers.

  Beyond the theory, there are a number of academic studies that support the link between the presence of a father and the survival of his children. In their contemporary study of father presence and infant mortality in the state of Georgia in the US, epidemiologists James Gaudino, Bill Jenkins and Roger Rochat used birth and death certificate records to understand the link between father involvement and survival. They compared the death rate among babies whose fathers were listed on their birth certificates – they took this as an indication of their involvement – to those whose birth certificate did not name a father. It is important to know that within this state, married mothers have the option as to whether or not to list the father while unmarried mothers must gain the written consent of the dad to do so. Regardless of the socio-economic background of the mother and the general health of the baby, babies whose fathers were not named on their birth certificate were 2.5 times more likely to die in their first year of life. That is quite some statistic. Gaudino and his team concluded that the data seemed to support the notion that fathers had a vital role to play in their children’s health.

  Why does it matter that we can find a link between the presence of a dad and a child’s chance of survival in the data? Because the story of the evolution of fatherhood that we encountered in Chapter One relies on the absolute need for fathers to turn away from a world characterized by the drive to find ever more partners, and settle for a life of domestic and familial bliss to ensure the survival of their children and, indeed, our species. Secondly, the possibility that no link will exist between child mortality and dads investing in their children has been used to suggest that dads aren’t actually all that important – an argument that you might have realized I strongly disagree with. A case in point is the 2008 study ‘Who keeps children alive?’ by sociologist Rebecca Sear and anthropologist Ruth Mace. They collected data from forty-five historical and contemporary populations about who carried out childcare and the rate of child mortality within that society. As our evolutionary story would predict, in all societies the data supported the idea that mum couldn’t raise her children without help from at least one relative. But this person was most likely to be her mum, the children’s maternal grandmother, rather than their dad. Indeed, dad only had a positive impact on child survival in one third of the societies. This rather argues against the idea that dads are essential to the survival of their children. But I’m not about to panic and rewrite Chapter One quite yet, because many of the studies Rebecca and Ruth used involved children of less than five years of age and, as will become clear, many dads in the West really step into their role during late childhood and adolescence, particularly when the time comes to teach their children. It’s that all-important role in preparing children to step into the big wide world again. Rebecca and Ruth’s study did not cover this period. Second, as is clear from Robert LeVine’s model, ensuring physical survival is really only critical to those dads who live in environments that cause them to sit on the first tier of the parenting hierarchy. If you are a dad in the West, then your motivations and activities will be different: social and economic survival are key. And sometimes that can mean being content to operate dad’s free taxi service rather than bravely protecting your children from the invading hordes.

  * * *

  The role of a parent is made up of countless tasks, just ask Simon.

  I’m not aiming to be an ideal dad, because I feel I need to straddle two roles. I really feel I need to be really nurturing and really available, and [also to be] teaching and setting boundaries and all that stuff. I want them both to be powerful and brave and all those things. I always say to them the most important thing to be is kind.

  Simon, dad to Daisy (six) and Bill (five)

  Some tasks are very practical and immediate; preparing food, changing nappies, providing a comforting hug or being a source of entertainment. Others are a bit less hands-on; ensuring there is food on the table, a fire in the hearth and a secure home. And some will only bear fruit a long way in the future; building social networks to get that crucial work experience gig or saving money for college fees. To help define the sorts of tasks an individual dad or mum may carry out, we can make the distinction between direct and indirect parental care. So, caretaking, teaching and carrying a child are classed as direct care – care that involves you being hands-on and in close physical proximity to your child. Indirect care – such as protection, provisioning and building social alliances – occurs at a distance from your child but is, nevertheless, as vital to their survival as the more hands-on aspects of direct care. Until very recently, there was a distinct sexual division of parenting roles in the West; dads provided indirect care while mums did the direct care. But with the rise of the idea of the involved father in the 1980s, this demarcation began to blur. The ideal father was now one who did both – direct and indirect. He not only had to provide the food for the table, but prepare it, feed it to his child and wash the resultant debris off said child in the bath. As we will see, fathers providing direct care is a wonderful and overwhelmingly positive state of being for all members of the family and our society, but it has lured fathers into the trap, already experienced by women, of not only believing they can have it all but
that indirect care – being an ‘old-fashioned dad’ – is somehow a lesser form of parenting. This can mean that for those dads where economic necessity dictates that their balance between work and home life is skewed strongly towards work, the reality of their fathering experience may be a sense of failure and guilt that they are not doing a ‘proper’ job.

  [I want to be] protector, teacher, carer, all of that really. Just make sure he is safe and, well, happy and enjoying things. Showing him the world. Even before he was born, I was looking forward to teaching him things, showing him things and just being there for him.

  David, dad to Harry (six months)

  When I talk to expectant fathers about what role they would like to adopt following the birth of their child, the vast majority will wish, like David, to be a co-parent. To be equally as responsible as their partner for, and adept at, the direct care of their child. They want to be equal caretakers, nurturers, comforters and teachers. Following birth this is still their hope, but for many it is a difficult goal to reach – they have not bet on the vagaries of biology, society and politics. Unless we make a dramatic advance in fertility technology, it is the case that men cannot give birth. Nor can they breastfeed. So, regardless of the wishes of the parents, for all but a very few exceptions it is the mother who will be the primary carer of the child for the initial weeks of its life. This means that not only will she provide the majority of direct care, but that she is incapable of providing the key form of indirect care – money. Meaning that dad is generally the one who has to head back to work soon after baby is born. Despite political parties falling over each other to promote their family-friendly policies and everyone from TV celebrities to actors to sportsmen being drafted in to promote the idea that real men care for their children, the statistics tell a different story. Within the UK, in the period 2011 to 2012 only 0.6 per cent of new fathers made use of Additional Paternity Leave to share their wife’s maternity leave and, while doubling in the decade since 1993, today only 229,000 British fathers are stay-at-home carers compared to 2.05 million women. Within the US, census data shows that in the year 2014, 2 million men were stay-at-home parents, which is twice as many as were reported in the 1989 census and a considerably higher number than the six – yes, that’s six men in an entire country – who defined themselves as stay-at-home dads in the 1970 census.

  My work with dads suggests that these woefully low take-up rates are not a sign of a lack of intent on dads’ part to be involved but a consequence of the impossibility of successfully navigating two hurdles that stand in the way of fathers: government policies rendered unworkable by a lack of financial backing and the still-clear pay gap between men and women, which means that, financially, many couples cannot afford for dad to stay at home and mum return to work.

  Men can now share paternity leave, I think it’s three months off, but it’s only at statutory maternity pay so it’s rubbish pay anyway. You’re not really encouraged to do it if you’re going to get such low pay. I mean, a lot of men are the breadwinners, so why would they want to take such low money when women get so many months off at half pay or full pay, depending on the company? I think the government pay lip service to it but aren’t really bothered. I would have been really interested in doing it but not for that money, not when times are this tough.

  Colin, dad to Freya (six months)

  Today’s dad may want to be involved, but he hasn’t relinquished his instinct to protect and provide, which means that taking a damaging financial risk to stay at home is, for dad, a risk to survival too far. On top of this, many men come up against an apparently immovable workplace culture that dictates that women have maternity leave and men, at the very most, take a couple of weeks of paternity leave and return to a working environment that has most likely been largely unaffected by their newly minted father status. Despite the term ‘family friendly’ implying that policies that allow for the accommodation of parenting within the working career should apply equally to men and women, for many men, broaching the subject of flexible working or shared parenting leave is still a daunting, uphill struggle. This means that for men like Dylan, their aspirations to be present quickly come up against the very hard reality of a deep-seated cultural antipathy towards hands-on dads:

  Last week we were away on holiday for a week and I got to spend a load of time with Freddie and my wife, and it is amazing to see him grow in that space of time and how he changes. That was really great, but the problem – and this is the hard bit – is I work in London. I’m leaving the house at 6.30 in the morning before he is even awake and I get home at 7.15 at night when his bedtime is 7.30. So, I’m getting fifteen minutes a day with him. Being away with him has made me realize what I am missing, and it is hard because you want to see everything, but I’ve still got to pay the bills. So, reality kicks in . . . You want to do one thing but need to do the other.

  Dylan, dad to Freddie (six months)

  As a result, one of the key issues for Western fathers is juggling the twin demands of wanting to provide direct care but needing to provide indirect care. They have hit upon the dilemma that is all too familiar to the working mother: how do you balance work and home life sufficiently well to make sure you are at least doing a pretty decent job of both? For many men, the tension that can exist between their direct and indirect roles can come as a very unwelcome dose of reality very early on in their fatherhood journey. Rights to paternity leave vary widely around the world. One of the starkest representations of the gulf that still exists between maternity and paternity rights is the fact that only ninety-two of the world’s 196 countries have statutory paternity leave and in a half of these this is limited to three weeks or less. This is in contrast to the global right to maternity leave. It is hard not to view these statistics as evidence of society’s continuing belief that dads just aren’t that relevant in the childcare story.

  Where paternity leave does exist and is adequately funded, it is overwhelmingly taken up by fathers. In the UK, where there is a statutory right to two weeks of leave, over 90 per cent of new fathers take some form of paternity leave, and my experience of interviewing dads is that it is not only a precious opportunity to come to terms with their new status and get to know the new member of the family but vital to keeping the family show on the road. Caring for a newborn is an exhausting mix of changing, feeding and cuddling and, if mum is breastfeeding, being stuck on the sofa every two to three hours with a baby that can take up to an hour to feed. As a consequence, dads are vital. They can lighten the load by being chief nappy-changer, cuddler, tea-maker and visitor-wrangler. And where mum has had a tough time at birth, they may even become their baby’s primary carer as she recovers. But because of this intense involvement during paternity leave, returning to work can be a severe and unwelcome shock. Take Reuben’s experience:

  I wasn’t looking forward to [the return to work]. I could have stayed off for longer. I kind of dreaded coming back because it is such a stark change being at home all the time to being at work five days a week. I didn’t enjoy it, to be honest. But what it has made me determined to do is work more flexibly. It changed my outlook on work. It is not going to get in the way of seeing [my son] as much as possible.

  Reuben, dad to Charlie (twenty months)

  Dads go from complete submersion in baby world back to a workplace where it is likely their daily routine will be largely unchanged by the profound events in their home life. Indeed, it is one of the points of tension that I believe should be high-lighted to dads before their first birth, so that they can prepare emotionally and practically for this swift reality check and, if it is possible, ease this abrupt transition by using some holiday to enable a more staged return to work over several weeks. Unfortunately, the multitasking, hands-on celebrity dad is the exception, an exception cushioned by a considerable amount of money and, in all likelihood, unseen help. The question arises as to what the more regular dad battling with the twin demands of home and work – direct and indirect care – is su
pposed to do in these circumstances.

  Sometimes, as much as I want to help and stuff, it’s not something I can really help with. Like the night-time feedings and when [my daughter] is crying and wants settling, it is Mummy that she wants. I don’t know whether I feel angrier and less useful . . . it can get a bit frustrating sometimes, but it is to be expected. I definitely hope in the future, if something bad happens or she needs someone to talk to, it won’t instantly be only Mum she can talk to. Kids have different relationships with their mum and their dad, I’m sure there is some scope for them both to be good relationships.