Dads More Worried Than Moms
Featured Guest Blogger December 1st, 2008
An Election Day poll indicated that dads may be more worried about work-family balance than moms.
For parents with children under 18, 72 percent of dads and 67 percent of moms worry, on a daily basis, about work and family responsibilities. Interestingly, these numbers were nearly the same for the number of parents who say they worry about the economy (73 percent of fathers and 74 percent of mothers).
At first, this finding seemed surprising. Don’t we hear that moms are the ones balancing the home, the kids, work, the food, the pets…? But upon second glance, it made more sense. Here are a few stories that this poll may be telling:
- Fathers may be in paid working positions that allow less job flexibility and higher amounts of stress, thereby creating more worry.
- Fathers’ pay is higher on a national level, so perhaps the burden of losing their own income is enough to worry them more than mothers.
- Fathers’ compassion for their spouse’s daily work/family/kids/food/pet juggle creates more anxiety for them as the bystander than it does for moms who must get the job done.
We aren’t exactly sure of the reasons for these fathers’ worries, but we can see potential story lines.
See other work-family news updates here.
As farther and business owner I agree with the concept.
From my own personal experience, I am the major bread winner by far in my family, and that puts added stress to maintain that standard of living. If we were to lose my income, there’s no way we could make it. As a consequence, I find myself putting in more hours ( I am in sales ) at work, when I would rather be spending time with my family.
I am writing from Turkey. in our country father doesn’t worry about their children. Moms enlarge child fathers watch tv.