--- title: Daddy Day Care: Why Does the Government Consider Dads “Babysitters”? description: Earlier this month, I kissed my family goodbye and flew 3,000 miles away for a week-long work trip. My husband was left in charge, his... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7139241/daddy-day-care-why-does-the-government-consider-dads-babysitters/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2012-02-17T16:33:22.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-16T10:35:34.353Z article:section: Health og:title: Daddy Day Care: Why Does the Government Consider Dads “Babysitters”? og:description: Earlier this month, I kissed my family goodbye and flew 3,000 miles away for a week-long work trip. My husband was left in charge, his... og:url: https://time.com/archive/7139241/daddy-day-care-why-does-the-government-consider-dads-babysitters/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt01cf40ee92caa820/698a93d247ca383bd53c3b0b/129843053-resize.jpg?branch=production&width=600&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 600 og:image:height: 338 og:image:alt: 129843053.resize og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Daddy Day Care: Why Does the Government Consider Dads “Babysitters”? twitter:description: Earlier this month, I kissed my family goodbye and flew 3,000 miles away for a week-long work trip. My husband was left in charge, his... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt01cf40ee92caa820/698a93d247ca383bd53c3b0b/129843053-resize.jpg?branch=production&width=600&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Health](/section/health/) # Daddy Day Care: Why Does the Government Consider Dads "Babysitters"? > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Health Matters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Health Matters is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The latest health news and expert advice on living well. Health Matters makes the fast-moving world of health more useful, surprising and human, from the latest science and medical breakthroughs to practical ideas for living better. 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It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=aa01bd29-f7ca-41db-a372-25d422ae6de0&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Feb 17, 2012 4:33 PM UTC  Pilar Barrionuevo / age fotostock / Getty Images by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Feb 17, 2012 4:33 PM UTC Earlier this month, I kissed my family goodbye and flew 3,000 miles away for a week-long work trip. My husband was left in charge, his first time being alone with the kids for that long. If he was nervous, he didn’t let on. It was, in my view, a great and generous example of co-parenting. Yet had the U.S. Census Bureau assessed what was going on, they would not have considered this an example of a guy simply carrying out his dadly duties; instead, his paternal ministerings — the dinners cooked, laundry folded (well, some of it) and quarrels arbitrated — would have been classified as child care. Mothers are still the “designated parents” while fathers are…unpaid help? What?!? “Regardless of how much families have changed over the last 50 years women are still primarily responsible for work in the home,” Lynda Laughlin of the Census Bureau’s Fertility and Family Statistics Branch [told](http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/the-census-bureau-counts-fathers-as-child-care/) The New York _Times_’ Motherlode blog. “We try to look at child care as more of a form of work support.” So I travel for work and my husband takes over, and that’s “work support.” But it’s “parenting” when I help with homework and bandage scraped knees and dispense kisses while my husband returns emails from his boss? That’s so 1950s. No doubt, we’ve moved toward a more egalitarian society over the years: men work, women work. There’s no news there. Surveys bear out the shift toward co-parenting: according to the Families and Work Institute (FWI), which studies the changing workforce and its impact on families, men are spending more time caring for kids. In 1977, the U.S. Department of Labor asked people to react to the following statement: it’s better for all involved if the man earns the money and the woman takes care of the home and children. Then, 74% of men and 52% of women agreed; in 2008, when FWI repeated the survey, just 40% of men and 37% of women concurred. “Women still do the lion’s share of childcare,” says Ellen Galinsky, the institute’s president. “But fathers want to be and they are more involved with their children.” Moreover, as KJ Dell’Antonia notes on Motherlode, “It’s not baby-sitting when Daddy does it.” Still, even the most equality-minded among us may unwittingly perpetuate the stereotype that fathers can’t care for kids as well as mothers. Moms, I’m talking to you. While preparing for my trip, for example, I made sure to meticulously update our Google calendar with names, phone numbers and addresses of places the kids needed to be. The family still flubbed gymnastics. But they took an intrepid day trip that involved a ferry ride. It all balances out. At [The Huffington Post](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristin-maschka/childcare-census%5Fb%5F1272219.html), author Kristin Maschka made the case that fathers find the attitude that they don’t — and can’t — parent as well as moms insulting. “Can you imagine someone telling a mother how great she is to babysit her own children while her husband is out of town?” she wrote. Well, no: --- > “” --- Once I was back home, my husband admitted that the week had been tough. What I think he was really saying was that it was hard being a single parent. Nothing new there; parenting on your own _is_ hard. But it’s not necessarily any more taxing for a man than for a woman. Being away for a week made me realize that although my husband does things differently than I do, he’s every bit as capable of ruling the roost. Yes, I came home to a (very) disheveled house. But I also came home to some (very) happy kids who’d had a great week with their dad. Can’t wait for my next trip away. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7139241/daddy-day-care-why-does-the-government-consider-dads-babysitters/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7139241/daddy-day-care-why-does-the-government-consider-dads-babysitters/"},"headline":"Daddy Day Care: Why Does the Government Consider Dads \"Babysitters\"?","datePublished":"2012-02-17T16:33:22.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-16T10:35:34.353Z","description":"Earlier this month, I kissed my family goodbye and flew 3,000 miles away for a week-long work trip. 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