Fathers are pulling a little more weight

It’s fascinating how different people live, how they organize their lives at home, at work, on the weekends, everything. Even my friends, colleagues and neighbours live dramatically different lives even though we share similar cultures, incomes and ideals.

Maybe I’m thinking about this because last week I had the opportunity to travel to Spain and take in — briefly though it was — a new culture. I love seeing how other people live and I love learning that my view of the world is not the only view of the world.

For example, the food is different. Before this trip, I would have never imagined saying something at dinner like, “Oh, no I don’t think I need any more octopus. I had it for lunch. Couldn’t eat another tentacle.”

The coffee is different. In Spain I could not find a giant 20 oz or even a 15 oz cup of my favourite — hot, black coffee in a huge to-go cup with lid. These drinks generally carry me for my frequent one-hour commutes. In Spain I never had one coffee in one car.

They love their coffee there but they drink it in small portions and they actually stop their lives for a moment to savour it. Popular drinks included small cups of espresso or cortado, which is espresso with warm milk. I really don’t like milk in my coffee so I had to order my coffee Americano style — espresso with hot water. It’s as close as I ever got to a medium black all week.

I brought a bit of Spain home with me on my first day back to work. When I took coffee breaks in the morning and the afternoon, I walked away from my desk and found a comfortable place to sit for 10 minutes and enjoy what I was drinking instead of mindlessly slurping between keyboard strokes.

The language, of course, is a big difference too. Our luggage didn’t arrive in Spain when we did so on Day 1 I found myself wandering the town looking to purchase deodorant and hair gel. The deodorant was easy to pantomime but the shop keepers couldn’t decipher my plea for hair gel. I tried mousse, hairspray, pomade but no matter how many synonyms I tried or how much I acted out styling my hair, they just wanted to sell me shampoo. I checked the mirror and I understand why.

You don’t have to travel across the world to see how differently we all live.

A story came out this week about Canadian home life and how domestic tasks are divided among mothers and fathers in family households. The study looks at the division of household chores and the changes that have occurred from 1986 to 2015 and the study shows that there have been changes — for the dads. Fathers are doing more chores than ever before while moms are doing the same amount as always and that same amount is a lot more than the dads.

While most moms have consistently performed tasks like making meals and helping with housework, dads are taking on a greater share of the workload. Just not as great as moms.

For example, in 1986, 29 per cent of fathers helped prepare meals. By 2015, it was up to 59 per cent. In 1986, 51 per cent of fathers helped with housework and that rose to 76 per cent by 2015. The percentage of moms helping with these chores remains much higher than the dads.

It’s interesting because I know that in almost every household of everyone I know these numbers will be a little different. Or a lot different.

People I know live in so many different ways. I have friends and colleagues where one partner works outside the home, one works inside the home. Other families are busy with two partners working outside the house. They all seem busy all the time — working, taking care of a house, delivering kids to school or daycare or taking care of them at home.

In 1986, I was a teenager and my parents both worked. They worked shifts so my father often made supper. I think that’s fairly progressive, but he also had no idea how a washing machine worked.

In our home, my wife and I both work and we generally take turns preparing meals until we are both too exhausted and we go out or we get pizza.

And, in fact, we do pay someone to clean our house every other week. It’s not that I don’t like cleaning toilets but having this support is money well spent.

It allows us to spend our weekends finding activities we enjoy or just relaxing and drinking giant, giant coffees.