Modern dads enjoy more involvement with their children

When Stephen Miller became a father, he entered into his new calling with a definite idea of what fatherhood is about.

Based on the fathers, good and not-so-good, that he had known, “I had in my mind what a father should be,” Miller says. “So I tried to live up to that.”

Miller, 40, works in corporate communications and is dad to Emma, 5½. And while the nuts-and-bolts details of fatherhood were, at first, a bit sketchy, “I just wanted to be the best father I could be for her,” Miller says.

“It’s caring. It’s understanding. But it’s not being friends, even at this age. You still have to be, not a disciplinarian, but at least teach her right from wrong. It’s just being a positive influence and letting her know that she’s loved all the time.”

That’s a pretty solid definition of “father,” even in an era in which the definition and perception of “father” and “fatherhood” continues to expand to include everything from traditional (whatever that might mean) dads to whatever new iteration of the words society can devise.

Consider it an evolution, or an expansion, or, even, a blurring of long-held notions of fatherhood — none of which, says Troy McGinnis, a professor of sociology at the College of Southern Nevada, is necessarily a bad thing.

Sure, a word like “blurry” can have “a negative connotation,” McGinnis says. “But what’s really happening is, it looks like the distinction between, say, ‘motherhood’ and ‘fatherhood’ in terms of function and content, those roles are changing.”

And, he says, the changing or expansion of formerly narrow roles can help to make the experience of fatherhood “much more rich” for today’s dads.

For instance, “there are many more things fathers can do now,” McGinnis says. “They can express more emotion than 25 or 30 years ago. They can engage in child caregiving.”

Obviously, specific notions of fatherhood and what fathers are and do vary from dad to dad. For Miller, being a father includes playing with dolls with Emma and listening to Taylor Swift in the car with her. And, he says, “I love to take her out and buy her clothes and things like that.”

Shopping for clothes with a daughter might not be an activity a, say, mid-1950s dad would have considered among his duties. But, for Miller, it seems a natural outgrowth of what any father would desire for a child.

“I think fathers would want to be more involved with their kids,” says Miller. In fact, Miller notes when he visits the park with Emma, he sees “more fathers there with their kids than mothers. I don’t know if they’re single dads or married dads or whatever, but it’s interesting to see that. But I do think (dads) just want to be more involved.”

“I think the definitions of a father continue to expand,” says Peter Gray, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and author of “Fatherhood: Evolution and Human Paternal Behavior.”

“I think the definitions of father have expanded socially,” Gray says. “They also have expanded technically, compared to just a couple of decades ago, and, from an evolutionary standpoint.”

Among the forces that have pulled at, modified or helped to continue the evolution of fatherhood in ways that might be unrecognizable to dads of decades ago is economics.

For example, as women entered the workforce and dual-income families became more the norm, the traditional division of duties between Mom and Dad increasingly disappeared, with both Dad and Mom taking on responsibility for child care tasks.

“I think so much of this is defined by the fact we live in a culture and an economy where both parties have to work,” says Ron Heezen, executive director of the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District, who entered the ranks of fatherhood at age 30 and now is the grandfather of four.

“(Today) both parents work, so each parent has to take both roles at certain times,” Heezen says. “So if Mom is at work and the baby makes a mess, the diapers have to be changed, period, not waiting until (Mom) gets home.”

Heezen also knows of families in which wives earn more money or could make more money than husbands, and in which dads then take on more of the tasks traditionally associated with mothers.

Some of this fatherhood evolution has been driven “a lot by the economy,” Heezen says. “It’s driven a lot by necessity.”

Advances in medicine also have helped to expand the definition of fatherhood. Not that long ago, for instance, “most gay men who were fathers were men who had had children in heterosexual partnerships and then came out later in life,” Gray says, “whereas, now, we have gay fathers who would be adopting.”

Beyond adoption, there also exists the opportunity for gay men to become fathers through in vitro fertilization, using one partner’s sperm, a surrogate and donor eggs. Even a few decades ago, “that just wasn’t a feasible alternative,” Gray says.

Changing ideas about marriage also have helped to evolve the notion of fathers. Today, McGinnis says, marriage is less clearly defined, making more complex the more traditional notion that “ ‘Father’ was the man who was married to the mother.”

With all of these evolutionary moves, fatherhood still may be widely identified — even among dads themselves — with such traditional duties as, for example, “provisioning,” or being considered the family’s main breadwinner, Gray says.

“This can still be quite challenging when you approach that this is still central to your identity and value, even if you also recognize the importance of your direct involvement with your own kids or as step-figure.”

Miller — who says he prefers thinking of changes in notions of fatherhood as “evolution” — says it’s liberating to create a personal concept of fatherhood that serves both him and Emma best, without having to worry about traditional conceptions of what “fatherhood” means or of what others might think.

“I think it does go to family or a person’s beliefs that weigh on how they react to things or how they sense it should be,” he says. “But you just can’t worry about that. You just have to worry about your child and make sure they’re healthy and happy.”

Gray says many fathers do find particularly satisfying the opportunities that exist to take on a greater role in child care and development. For example, he says, research suggests that, in the United States, men spend more time doing things like changing diapers compared to a generation ago.

“I think it’s a great time to be a father,” McGinnis says. “You’ve got a lot more room to do a lot more.”

Besides, however else fatherhood might evolve, it probably never will alter the core characteristic of being a dad.

“I think the basis of any person’s action as father and mother is love,” Heezen says. “And if you can’t express love to a child, then you’re not doing a good job, whatever you feel your role is.”

Traditionalists might lament the disappearance of the traditional “gender binary” model of fatherhood, McGinnis says, but “why would we care about that if we’re getting better parents out of it, and not just better parents in married (relationships) but better parents in all areas of society?”

Contact reporter John Przybys at 702-383-0280 or jprzybys@reviewjournal.com or follow @JJPrzybys on Twitter.