Council of Economic Advisers Blog

The Changing Role of Fathers in the Workforce and Family

As part of the lead-up to the White House Summit on Working Families, we’ve been exploring policies and best practices that help both families and businesses manage the increasingly complicated interaction between work and family-life. Today, Administration officials hosted a discussion—the first of its kind at the White House—on the state of working dads and how businesses can create a win-win culture to enable these fathers to be more involved parents and better employees.

The need to rethink workplace policies to work better for parents is not just about working moms or women—working fathers are a key piece of the story as well. As the data compiled by the Council of Economic Advisers on “The Economics of Fatherhood and Work” show, the role of fatherhood has been changing with fathers taking a more hands-on approach to raising children. This change is both cultural and economic, with families responding to the reality of women’s increased role in the labor market. Nearly two-thirds of children now have either two working parents or a single parent who is working, contributing to the trend of father’s increasingly caring for children. Today, one in fourteen fathers with kids under 18 are single parents—a striking seven-fold increase since 1970—and dads are increasingly staying at home when their wives work.

Leading Academics Discuss Changes in Family Life and Implications for 21st Century Workplaces

In advance of the White House Summit on Working Families next month, we have engaged working families, business leaders, and other stakeholders from around the country to determine how best to meet the needs of 21st century families and workplaces. We continued this important conversation by meeting with academics to discuss the most recent research on working families, including changing demographics, modern marriage, workplace flexibility, and effective management practices that boost companies’ bottom lines by boosting the productivity of their workers.

At the meeting, researchers painted a picture of changing family life with fewer families having separate roles for men and women and more families struggling to combine work with their caregiving responsibilities. They also discussed the differing needs of families across the income distribution. College-educated women have children later when they are in jobs that are more demanding, but have greater income and potential for flexibility. In contrast, less-educated women are having children younger, in their early to mid-twenties, when they are in less stable jobs that are less likely to provide them with access to family and medical leave. Middle-class couples are marrying less often and later in life, cohabitation has become more common across all income levels, and divorce rates have fallen, although most notably among highly educated couples.

Research has shown that parents, particularly those who are highly educated, are spending more time with children, leaving less time for leisure. The role of mothers and fathers are converging as men are spending more time on housework and child care and both men and women are increasingly expecting women to be in the labor force. At the same time, both men and women are increasingly saying that work is interfering with family life. And since Americans are living and working longer, periods where workers will need to take time out of the labor force to provide care for themselves, their children, or their aging parents will only become more common.