Millennial fathers spend, on average, triple the amount of time with their children compared to dads in the 1960s. It’s no straightforward golden age – parenting today is for many a complex juggle – but the shift in roles has been profound, with children and society poised to benefit. In this series, we meet two men who are dadding differently, and the fatherhood scientist who’s tracking the rise of more involved dads.
Fatherhood in focus #2: Anna Machin, evolutionary anthropologist and mother-of-two
No longer just breadwinners or disciplinarians, the shift that modern fathers have undergone is of huge value to society, Machin says.
‘Involved.’ There, in a single word: the modern dad. Stepping up. Pulling his weight. Doing his bit. Not just the antithesis of absent, but the engaged, enthusiastic, up-in-the-middle-of-the-night kind of co-parent.
Should we be so surprised? Yes, he looks markedly different from yesterday’s dad. Almost unrecognisable, in truth.
It’s this evolution of fatherhood that fascinates Anna Machin, an evolutionary anthropologist and author of The Life of Dad: The Making of the Modern Father. But what’s behind this overhaul of paternal norms? Practical reasons exist, she says. Think, dual working households (so more help needed at home), greater mobility (so grandparent babysitters are less available), and a stretched NHS (so far less postpartum care).
Yet, Machin insists today’s new-look dads are actually far more normal than our traditional ‘childcare equals women’s work’ culture leads us to believe. Homo sapiens is a rare specimen, in fact, being among the 5% of mammals that are evolutionarily conditioned to co-parent (other standouts include empire penguins, arctic wolves and marmosets).
