America’s Great Dad Divide

This Father’s Day, the state of American fatherhood is strong.

Data show that fathers are investing record amounts of attention, affection, and time in their children. As Derek Thompson and Aziz Sunderji wrote in April, dads are spending nearly quadruple the number of hours their grandfathers spent with their kids. Richard Reeves, the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, wrote in May that men “have massively increased the amount of childcare and housework they are doing.” This month, University of Southern California psychologist Darby Saxbe celebrated the fact that “parenting time for fathers has been trending upward for decades.”

Thompson and Sunderji summarized it well: Today’s dads are becoming “the parents their fathers never were.”

What is behind the rise of the Super Dads? The answer lies in an underreported societal shift: Marriage in America is becoming stabler. Over the past decade, divorce and single parenthood have fallen so much that a majority of American kids will grow up with their father in the home for the entirety of childhood. And married fathers spend 13 times more time caring for their children than fathers who don’t live with them.

For children and fathers alike, it’s the best of times.