Dads Even More Stressed Out Than Moms

Expected to do more, fathers now feel mothers' pain at the balancing act
By Caroline Miller,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 20, 2010 9:55 AM CDT
Dads Even More Stressed Out Than Moms
59% of men in a recent study reported feeling stress from work-life conflicts.   (Shutterstock/Anna Jurkovska)

Happy Father's Day, Tara Parker-Pope writes in the New York Times: You deserve it, because it's gotten a lot harder to be a dad. Fathers, increasingly expected to pull their weight at home as well as in the office, are now as stressed about juggling it all as their wives, recent studies show. And they're caught between wives who expect them to do more of the child rearing and employers, who consider them wusses if they let family responsibilities intrude on being 100% available.

In one recent study, 59% of men in two-job families reported "work-life conflict" compared to 45% of women. “The conflict is newer to men, and it feels bigger than the same amount of conflict might feel to a woman,” says one watcher of work-life issues. “Women have been doing it for a longer time, and they have more role models.” Adds another: “This is a pretty sensitive indicator of the rise of the new ideal of the good father as a nurturing father, not just a provider father.” (More fathers stories.)

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