The Life of a Dad, by the Numbers

The Washington Post today took a crack at the Maryland time diary stats (the New York Times had the data a few months ago, but this is worth taking a second look), with a page one story that was focused on misplaced mommy guilt. But ... they also ran a sidebar on what the dads are up to. As we've noted before, the hours of child care that dads are putting in are up, and accelerating, but we're still lagging way behind moms.

The stats show that the problem isn't the lazy, couch potato dad -- it's the workaholic. The piece noted:

Perhaps even more striking, the total workloads of married mothers and fathers -- when paid work is added to child care and housework -- is roughly equal, at 65 hours a week for mothers and 64 hours for fathers.

In short, the time not spent with the family isn't spent fishin' or drinkin' beer or watching da Bears. It's spent at work. So if we want to revolutionize the American family, we gave to keep working to revolutionize the workplace.