Dads Who Do Their Share Gain Richer Family Life

At the end of his workday, he puts together a dinner that is not only nutritious but also edible. Then he washes the dishes, sweeps the floor, starts a load of laundry and helps the children with their homework before making sure they brush their teeth and get to bed on time.

Sound familiar? Probably not.

If your husband is this domestic, you have more reason than most to celebrate Father’s Day on Sunday. Your children are growing up with an enlightened male role model--one who does the nitty-gritty household chores and not just the fun stuff--and that is more unusual than you might think.

Although the women’s movement has made steady progress toward equality in the home as well as the workplace, men who do as much around the house as their wives apparently are still the exception rather than the rule.

That’s what Kristine Jablonski is hearing from the overburdened working mothers in her support groups at St. Jude Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Fullerton.

Even men who do their share of day-to-day child-care duties often draw the line when it comes to cleaning up after the little ones, says Jablonski, a Yorba Linda resident who has a master’s degree in psychiatric nursing.

However, she adds, she is seeing more men getting involved in the routine activities of their children’s lives--and that’s a big step that is sure to pay off later.

“Whenever you are paying attention to your children, whether you’re giving them a bath and making funny whale noises or changing their diaper and tickling their tummy, you’re tapping into intimacy. These are relationship-building moments with dad,” she says.

Men raised by nurturing dads who did whatever needed to be done around the house--including the least rewarding chores--tend to follow that example when they start their own families, Jablonski notes. But they often do so quietly, because they’re not sure how the guys at the office will react to talk about their latest domestic traumas and triumphs.

Being the kind of dad who does it all is “still not quite cool,” Jablonski says. “They’re not out there bragging about it.”

But their wives are.

Says Jennifer Bath, a 21-year-old Anaheim resident: “When I married Randy, I knew I was lucky, but it wasn’t until we settled into married life that I realized how lucky I was. I had a liberated man!”

Randy, 23, not only does as much cooking, cleaning and shopping as his wife, but also takes care of their 5-month-old daughter, Cassie, while Jennifer is at work.

On a typical day, Randy, who stocks shelves in a supermarket, gets home from his night shift at about 7:30 a.m.--just in time to see Jennifer off to work. Until she returns from her receptionist job at about 3 p.m., he takes care of Cassie and whatever housework needs to be done. He sleeps after Jennifer gets home--and, intermittently, when the baby naps.

Randy admits that he’s had to work harder than he expected to meet Cassie’s needs and keep their small apartment from becoming a disaster area, but, he says, “I don’t mind it because I’m doing it for Cassie.”

Jennifer wishes people wouldn’t assume Randy is just “helping out” when he’s doing what any loving, responsible dad would do if he could.

“When people at work find out Randy is taking care of Cassie, they always say how nice it is that he can ‘baby-sit’ while I’m gone,” she says. “I wonder how long we must see mothers as caretakers and fathers as merely baby-sitters. Randy certainly doesn’t see himself as a substitute mommy.”

Randy sees himself as the kind of father his dad taught him to be. When Randy was growing up, his father did as much car-pooling, cooking and cleaning as his mother.

“They both did whatever needed to be done,” Randy says, noting that the five children in his family were required to do their share, too (“and we couldn’t cut corners”).

Randy’s father expected a lot. But he also gave a lot, and that’s what Randy remembers most: “When he wasn’t working, he was home. We were always his first priority, and we always knew that.”

Randy hopes Cassie will be able to say that about him when she grows up. And Jennifer, who was raised with traditional role models, hopes her daughter will expect to marry a man like Randy instead of “just having the luck to stumble on one, as I did.”

Jane DeSelm of Irvine feels lucky, too, because her husband, David, does enough around the house to make her “the envy of several of my married female friends.”

The DeSelms, who are in their early 40s and have a 12-year-old son, both have demanding full-time jobs. She’s an administrator in the UC Irvine Extension Program, and he’s an architect/urban planner for the Irvine Co. Fortunately, they can afford to hire someone to help with the housework, but they share the rest of their domestic responsibilities equally.

It hasn’t always been that way, however.

David’s mother did so much for his family when he was growing up that he had a lot to learn before he could become an equal partner in his own home.

For a number of years, Jane did all the cooking, but it eventually became clear that she had to have help or they’d end up like many two-career couples in Orange County--eating a steady diet of fast or frozen food and dining out more often than at home.

Jane finally decided to teach David how to plan menus, shop and cook. He was eager to learn, and before long he was keeping his own file of recipes and preparing meals as often as she was.

Now, whoever gets home from work first makes dinner, working from the list of menus they plan together each week before doing the grocery shopping.

Sharing the responsibility for cooking makes it possible for them to eat at home as many as six nights a week. Jane says the dinner hour has become a special time, when her son, Dan, can count on having his busy parents’ attention.

Although it took some coaching to make David an equal partner in the kitchen, he didn’t have to be encouraged to do his share as a parent. That came naturally.

“He never flinched at changing a dirty diaper or playing with the baby,” Jane says.

When Dan was going to a parent-run day-care center, David became the first man to serve on the board, and later he got involved in the PTA. He and Jane take turns driving Dan to and from his extracurricular activities, and David is as likely as Jane to stay home from work when their son is sick.

It’s a great relief, Jane says, to be able to take a business trip and have complete confidence that the household will run smoothly while she’s gone. And it’s a joy for her to see the special bond that David has with his son as a result, she believes, of “doing all kinds of everyday things with him.”

Although David had to overcome his traditional upbringing to become an equal partner in his home, he was eager to learn, and his wife never encountered resistance when she asked him to do more.

But for Teresa and John, an Orange County couple who asked to remain anonymous, the process of becoming equal partners was slow and painful.

John was one of six children raised almost single-handedly by their mother while dad devoted himself to his medical practice. John started his marriage with his father’s idea that homemaking was strictly women’s work.

Says Teresa: “When he came home for dinner, he wanted things to be ready for him and he didn’t want any commotion in the house. At night, it was supposed to be calm and quiet here.”

She made sure it was, even though that sometimes meant stifling the natural ebullience of her two children.

Teresa did all the cooking and cleaning for years without complaining. But, she says, “I was feeling trapped, burdened and resentful.”

When she finally rebelled about five years ago, she was startled to discover she had a husband who was willing to change.

That didn’t happen overnight, however.

At first, John admits, he was furious when his wife announced that she was no longer preparing the meals or doing the dishes on her own and that everyone in the family would have to help.

Teresa, who had returned to college and was seeing a therapist, also stopped picking up after her husband.

“Wherever I dropped things, that’s where they stayed,” he says. “I kept wondering, ‘Why isn’t anyone putting these things away?’ Over time, you finally get the message.”

They began to talk in ways they never had before, and as John started doing his share of the household chores, he also became steadily more involved in the lives of his children, now ages 16 and 13.

“Even though he showed them a lot of love, he had been walled off emotionally from them,” Teresa says.

“Before, I had a much stronger sense that as a father, I was to be respected and they couldn’t talk back to me,” John explains.

Now he’s learning to listen even when they disagree, and, he says, “I’m much more able to appreciate where they are.”

The role model his father provided leads to a “sad isolation” from the family, he observes. “I’m more capable of sharing and receiving now that I can joyfully accept my responsibilities and duties.”