More Coming on What the Heck Dads Do All Day

I get the feeling we'll be talking more about division of labor in the household once I'm through digesting Lisa Belkin's exhaustive NYT Magazine piece on that looks at equally shared parenting (particularly as practiced by frequent commenters Marc and Amy), but while we're all digesting the magazine article, I thought I'd throw this press release snippet from the Council for Contemporary Families out there for everyone to chew on:

Dads are stepping up in new ways too. Men have steadily increased their participation in housework and child care over the past 30 years. And contrary to claims of some earlier studies, dads who work less than full-time don't use their extra time just to watch TV. Part-time worker dads do more housework (about an hour more) than full-time worker dads, and about 40 minutes more childcare. We know about these changes thanks to forthcoming work from Liana Sayer (Ohio State University) and Sanjiv Gupta (University of Massachusetts at Amherst) in which they analyzed the 2003-2005 ATUS.

(Whatever your feelings on the data, the real take-away is that this information comes from a governmental survey that may be on the chopping block. It really would be a shame if it were to disappear.)