Report: After Baby, Fathers Do Less; Mothers, More

When Jamie Daniel had her son, Owen, now 10 months old, it was only after the baby’s birth that she and her husband discussed their household division of labor. Daniel, the director of programming at The Connecticut Forum, wanted to return to work after Owen’s birth, but she’d seen friends have the same intention, only to find that their jobs, with added baby-workload, proved too challenging. Those early discussions were, said Daniel, “one of the things that has worked in our favor.”

That makes her household unusually egalitarian. A recent Ohio State University report says that after the birth of a family’s first child, new fathers’ baby-related workloads increased by 40 minutes a day, while mothers’ workloads increased by up to two hours daily – even while men believe they were pulling equal weight at home. And this is without factoring in breast-feeding.