Excerpt
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Back in 1989, a little more than a million fathers stayed at home with their children for a variety of reasons. More than two decades later, that number has doubled. In a recent report, the Pew Research Center said it grew to its highest point, 2.2 million in the U.S. in 2010, just after the official end of the great recession.
The number has dipped since then, but there are still more dads at home than has traditionally been the case. In fact, fathers now account for 16 percent of all stay-at-home parents.
The reasons for this are a complex mix.
We explore that with two people, Kim Parker who is with the Pew Research Center, and Scott Coltrane, a provost at the University of Oregon who has long studied this very subject. He recently spoke at a recent White House summit on working dads.
So, Kim, let me start with you. What’s the reason behind this surge in the last 20 years?
KIM PARKER, Pew Research Center: Well, there’s a variety of reasons.
You alluded to the end of the recession and how we saw that number spike to 2.2 million in 2010, and clearly what was going on there in part was increases in unemployment, and men having difficulty, fathers having difficulty finding jobs.
But the biggest factor in the long-term growth in the number of stay-at-home dads is the growing share of dads who say that they’re at home primarily to care for their family and for their children. And so that’s what’s been driving this long-term trend from 1989 to the present.
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