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A study conducted recently by the Australian Institute of Family Studies has found a marked difference in the amount of child care that stay-at-home dads do when compared to stay-at-home mums.
Stay-at-home fathering is still an uncommon approach to raising a family in Australia. The study found that there were 68,500 families with stay-at-home dads, which is just 4 per cent of two-parent heterosexual families.
This is a big difference to the 495,600 families with stay-at-home mums, which is 31 per cent of two-parent families. 57 per cent of families had both parents undertaking some paid work, and the remaining 7 per cent were families in which neither parent did any paid work.
The study found that dads were staying at home for several different reasons. For those families where the mum was working full time, 29 per cent of stay-at-home dads were not looking for work, 12 per cent were unemployed (but seeking work), and 8 per cent were on leave.
The study also found that the age of the children differed for stay-at-home dads. Stay-at-home mums were much more likely to have younger children, with 53 per cent of stay-at-home mums caring for 0 to 2 year olds. Conversely, 57 per cent of stay-at-home dads were caring for 6 to 14 year olds, as opposed to just 21 per cent caring for 0 to 2 year olds.
Interestingly, in stay-at-home-dad families, mothers and fathers still spent similar amounts of time on child care – 21 hours and 19 hours, respectively. Fathers spent a little more time on housework than mothers – 28 and 23 hours, respectively. But when compared to stay-at-home mum families this isn't reversed. Instead, mothers spent 37 hours on child care and 37 hours on housework, while the father spent just 13 hours on each.
The study also found that the traditional gender roles remained when caring for sick children. In stay-at-home-dad families, 50 per cent of the care for sick kids was done by dads, 19 per cent was done by mums, and 31 per cent was shared. But for stay-at-home-mum families 91 per cent of mothers cared for the child, and just 1 per cent of dads did, 8 per cent was shared.
Because mums tend to stay at home to care for younger children, that could account for the increased level of child care for stay-at-home mums as opposed to stay-at-home dads, because young children demand more care. But it doesn’t explain why dads didn’t take on more of the housework.
AIFS senior research fellow, Dr Jennifer Baxter, told the Guardian, "It's whoever has the time available … but perhaps in some families there are quite gendered roles about who does what," she said.
"There are unanswered things about what those [stay-at-home] dads are doing that’s not captured in our data."
She believed that due to financial demands where households increasingly need a dual income, there wouldn't be a change in the number of stay-at-home dads in the future, but there could be a change in fathers adopting more flexible working arrangements, which could then lead to them picking up more of the housework and child care responsibilities.
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