Today's fathers are choosing to be more involved with their children

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Dad, you've always been great. But now, you're so much better. The proof is in the amount of time you spend with your kids.

The typical dad devotes 6.5 hours per week to his kids, according to a University of Maryland study. That's still not as much as mom's 13 hours, but it's more than double the time fathers spent with children 30 years ago.

The same study says the amount of father-child bonding time shot up 65 percent from 1995 to 2000.

"Today's dads are definitely more engaged," says Larry Ro-Trock, a family therapist and psychologist in Kansas City, Mo. "That stereotype of fathers being unavailable is going away."

About 40 percent of the calls Ro-Trock gets are from fathers who want to improve their relationship with their children. When he started his therapy practice more than 20 years ago, nearly all calls for family counseling came from women.

Cal Richert, who runs "Discipline Without Damage" parenting seminars and a day care with his wife, Carolyn, in Overland Park, Kan., sees the same pattern. More than a decade ago it was invariably moms who would drop off their kids and pick them up, who would miss work when kids were sick and who took them to routine doctor's visits. Moms also were the ones who initially called inquiring about child care.

"But in the past five years, all that's changed to 50-50," Richert says. "Co-parenting has become the norm, not the exception."

Doug Most of Boston sees more classes devoted to father-and-child play time. He and his best friends get together with their kids to go to the museum or out to eat. And he has memorized the phone number of his children's pediatrician. All these are things he doesn't think his own father would have done when he was growing up.

"Don't get me wrong, my dad was wonderful and went to all my baseball and basketball games," says Most, who wrote the June cover story "The New Face of Fatherhood" for Parents magazine. "But gender roles have loosened now. As the world is changing, today's dads want to have a different relationship with their kids than they do with their dads."

EQUAL PARENTING

Obviously, much of this societal shift comes from the proliferation of dual-income households. Dad isn't the breadwinner like he was a few decades ago, so duties are split.

Bryan and Trinessa Fisk of Blue Springs, Mo., both work full-time jobs. They take turns driving their three children to and from day care. They divvy up bath time. When Trinessa cooks he sets the table, and vice versa. He recently made chicken fried rice one night and baked pork chops another.

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"My mom taught all of us kids to cook so we would take care of ourselves," says Bryan, an advertising supervisor for Argosy casino and a disc jockey. "I can't come home and just expect to wait until my wife makes dinner for me. We've both had long days."

Trinessa, a customer service coordinator at Harrah's casino, doesn't think her family's arrangement is unusual.

"But when I went on a girls' trip to Texas a few weeks ago, my friends asked who was taking care of the kids," she says. "I told them my husband. They treated me like I had won the lottery."

Bryan also cleans the bathrooms, folds the laundry, empties the dishwasher and vacuums. Besides taking care of business, he loves playing with 3-year-old daughter Brooklyn and sons Marcus, 6, and Ethan, 2 at a nearby park. The other day, they had a water fight in the driveway.

"Family comes before personal stuff," he says. His "guy time" typically consists of going to the movies or out for ice cream with his best friend and all their kids. "It's a blast. I wouldn't want it any other way."

When Bryan hosts parties, it's not the old-school situation of all the moms watching the kids while the guys segregate themselves to watch sports in the basement.

"My family is from Guam, and the men take an active role with kids and cooking," he says. "I've learned from both my mom and dad that to be a good parent, you do what needs to be done and have fun, too."

STAY-AT-HOME DADS

Another reason fathers are getting more involved is that three times as many dads stay at home than they did a decade ago. That number still has room to grow: A University of Missouri-St. Louis study found that 25 percent of married women out-earn their husbands.

Jim Russo of Lawrence, Kan., already was working from home as a freelance book editor when his first child, Nile, was born. When his wife, Whitney Baker, returned to work as a book and paper conservator at the University of Kansas, he would try to tackle his own job at night.

"It didn't work because I was tired, and she was tired," Russo says. "She was the primary breadwinner to begin with, plus I enjoyed being at home with our son. So it made the decision easy."

Now Nile is 4, and the couple also have a 9-month-old daughter, Elinor. Russo takes them to story time at the library and Nile to a messy-hands art class at the Lawrence Art Center.

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"I feel connected to them," he says. "My dad was a long-distance truck driver who was gone weeks at a time. It was hard for him to fit back into the routine of our lives. I've been around my kids 24 hours a day as long as they've been around."

But being a stay-at-home dad, like being a stay-at-home mom, has its downsides. Russo feels isolated from other people. And he knows being out of the workforce for a while is going to make it harder to return.

"Sometimes I'll get this at social events: ' Are you just staying at home?'" Russo says. "Others give me accolades women wouldn't get, like, 'You stay at home? How wonderful!' I think being a stay-at-home dad also means that expectations are a lot lower. If the kids still have their limbs at the end of the day, it's considered a success."

Despite the social hitches, the benefits are awesome. Russo loves observing how quickly his kids pick up language. And he values the joy of discovery along with his kids.

"Nile is really into fish right now, so I'm learning about sharks and manta rays, too," he says. "It's a lot of fun."

Russo always has done the cooking and the outdoor maintenance at the house but definitely not cleaning. That often falls short. The same is true of Adell Hendon of Parkville, Mo., who works from home while caring for his 4-month-old son, Noah.

"I feel like it's more accepted now for a dad to stay at home," says Hendon, a party promoter. "I love being around (Noah). He changes every day. Recently he figured out how to scream. He's usually calm, but when he's hungry, watch out."

Noah's nursery is also the office in Hendon's apartment, which he shares with his fiance and Noah's mother, Adrienne Luna. Hendon leaves the room when Noah naps. When he's working, Noah sits in a bouncer seat next to his desk. He changes Noah's diapers and takes him to his routine checkups, so many in that first year of life.

"I don't think me or other stay-at-home dads deserve a medal," Hendon says. "We're just doing what needs to be done."

FUTURE OF FATHERHOOD

The upcoming generation of fathers might be the best yet.

In 2000, researchers at the Families and Work Institute in New York City asked high school students from around the country to imagine their adulthood. About 60 percent of the boys said they planned to reduce their working hours when they became fathers.

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That change of attitude is what Ro-Trock is seeing at his therapy practice, too. More fathers making financial sacrifices, forgoing better-paying jobs because it would mean spending less time with their children. Or the job would require moving out of a school district or neighborhood their kids love. He's also seeing more divorced fathers putting differences aside to be more involved with their kids.

It's good for kids and dads when fathers are more engaged, says Ro-Trock. The children grow up more confident, taking on the instinctive male values their fathers pass on: strength, protectiveness and a desire to excel. And the fathers are less likely to suffer from isolation and depression.

"These days, in the blurring of sociological roles with work and household, fathers are taking on what I call the careful use of maleness," he says. "They're much more compassionate, and that's a good thing."

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© 2008, The Kansas City Star.