An unexpected upside to lockdown: men have discovered housework

Brigid Schulte and Haley Swenson wrote for The Guardian on how the pandemic has affected men's roles at home:

Men’s involvement in household labor is often “situational”, meaning they’ll pitch in or take over when they have no other choice. Men whose wives work opposite schedules from them or who work evening shifts and are home with the kids during the day tend to do more. And when men lost jobs in the Great Recession of 2008 and took on more work at home, many began to move away from the breadwinner identity and reported more meaning as active and engaged fathers.

That’s been Jay Lane’s experience. Furloughed and on unemployment since the beginning of the pandemic from his customer service job, he’s not only been a much more hands-on caregiver to his baby daughter – “I never realized how many diapers a baby can go through” – but he’s been there to watch her learn to crawl and take her first steps. “I want to make sure I keep building those bonds with her,” even after he goes back to work, he said, “so she can count on me as well.”