The Upshot|More Fathers Who Stay at Home by Choice
Demographic Shift
More Fathers Who Stay at Home by Choice
By Claire Cain Miller
Otis Johnson said he never fathomed becoming a stay-at-home father. But soon after he was laid off from his factory job in 2009, his first of two children arrived. And even when his job prospects improved, he made the calculation that millions of mothers had made before him: "By the time I get a paycheck, it all goes to day care, or I can stay home and raise my own children."
Mr. Johnson is hardly alone.
Despite a recent small decline in the number of fathers who take care of children full-time, their numbers have doubled over the last 15 years, according to new data from Pew Research Center. And the main driver for the growth is the increase in men staying home by choice, not because of unemployment or injury. That shift reveals a structural change in gender roles in families and at work in the United States.
The number of stay-at-home fathers spiked from 2008 to 2010; it was mainly attributed to the recession and rising unemployment, which hit men hardest. So when Labor Department data showed that the number of full-time fathers began declining after 2010, people assumed that the men had found work and hadn't intended to stay at home in the first place.
For some men, that was true. But taking a longer view shows a marked increase in the number of stay-at-home fathers, to 2 million in 2012 from 1.1 million in 1989, according to Pew. Even if fathers who can't find jobs are excluded from the data, there is still a notable increase since 1989 in stay-at-home dads, said Gretchen Livingston, a senior researcher at Pew and an author of the report.
The most telling change is that just over a fifth of at-home fathers say the main reason they are home is to care for family, up from 5 percent in 1989, and that segment is the fastest-growing.
Thirty-five percent say they stay home because they are ill or disabled; 23 percent are unable to find work; and 22 percent are in school or retired. (The share of men staying home by choice might also be underreported because of remaining societal expectations of men and work, according to Karen Z. Kramer, assistant professor of family studies at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who has studied the issue.)
The reasons for the shift are many. Women, now 47 percent of the work force, are increasingly getting more education and earning more money than their husbands, so economic calculations like the one Mr. Johnson made are more common. (His wife, Amy, is a nurse on her way to becoming a nurse practitioner, so they decided she has higher earning potential than he does.)
The change can also be credited to evolving notions about gender roles at home, Ms. Kramer found in her research.
Otis Johnson of Asheville, N.C., with his son Ian, 2. Mr. Johnson is the primary caretaker for the family's children, while his wife works as a nurse.CreditAndy McMillan for The New York Times
Now that men do more with housework and child care than in previous generations, equal numbers of men and women report trouble balancing work and home life and say they would prefer to stay home if they could afford it.
Money explains some of the trend, but in an unexpected way. Nearly half of at-home fathers are living in poverty, according to Pew, and they are twice as likely to lack a high school diploma. Fourteen percent of fathers who live with their children and did not graduate from high school stay home, compared with 3 percent of those with a college degree.
But the increases are coming from those with college education; the share of less-educated fathers has stayed the same.
Jamie Willett is one of the fathers in that growing segment. He has a college degree, did some graduate work and was an independent film producer, modern dancer and photographer. When he and his wife, a software executive, had children, they decided he would take care of them.
"Ours was a conscious choice," said Mr. Willett, who lives in San Francisco and has three children, aged 8 to 18.
Public opinion lags the rise in fathers who stay home. In a Pew survey last year, just over half of people said children are better off having a mother at home, while 8 percent said the same about fathers.
Mr. Willett has observed other signs of bias.
"I now know why women are so angry," he said. "For people in the work world, their opinions on anything are considered more valid than those who just take care of children. Here's the great line: 'Well, all you do is hang at the park all day.' "
"The gender switch has been difficult because of the outside world, but very rewarding in my internal world," he said.
Mr. Johnson, who cares for his two children and three stepchildren in Asheville, N.C., has a similar point of view.
"I don't care what people say about men staying home, that it's wimpy or other explicit words," he said. "My daughter a couple weeks ago learned how to hop on one foot and she was just so excited about it. Men who don't stay home are missing out on some of the crucial moments in the child's life, and I'm blessed to be able to witness it."
A version of this article appears in print on , Section B, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: For More Fathers Who Stay at Home, It's a Choice. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe