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" Dad is the first person up in the Grossman household. At 6:30 a.m., Gary, 38, jumps in the shower while his wife and kids sleep--he&amp;#039;s got a to-do list to tackle before heading to work. Once downstairs in his San Francisco house, he unloads the dishwasher and takes out the kids&amp;#039; lunches (he was up until midnight the night before making little wrapped packages of berries, bagels, pepperoni, and string cheese for Julianne, 6, and Asher, 4). &amp;quot;There are so many things to get done in the morning; it&amp;#039;s kind of amazing we make it to school on time,&amp;quot; Gary says. Next up: a load of laundry, feeding the kids, followed by getting Asher dressed and in the car (today, his wife, Michelle, will walk Julianne to school). With Asher deposited into circle time, Gary gets on the road to work: &amp;quot;I always feel torn--my commute means I can&amp;#039;t spend time helping Asher get settled in,&amp;quot; says Gary. By 9:30, he&amp;#039;s sitting at his desk, looking a little weary. For those of you keeping score at home, the guy never ate breakfast. Gary is part of a new generation of dads--men in the thick of changing diapers and playing princess tea party, all while working an average of 47 hours per week. A majority of American families have mothers who work outside the home now, according to the Center for American Progress, so dads are more than clumsy stand-ins. They have the responsibilities of a true co-parent--and the fervent opinions on BPA-free bottles and other kid issues to go with that role. They&amp;#039;ve never deserved their &amp;quot;#1 BEST DAD!&amp;quot; coffee mugs more, but they&amp;#039;re paying an emotional price. Dads now teeter on the tightrope of work and family obligations that moms have been walking for decades, and it&amp;#039;s stressing them out. While we always wanted our men to share the load, it makes you wonder. Did we really wish the guilt, anxiety, and never-enoughness on them as well?   Dads these days Meet Brandon Field, a 39-year-old nose-wiper and tantrum-tamer who also works full-time as a medical sales representative in Birmingham, AL. &amp;quot;My friends and I are way more involved than our fathers,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;My dad was around, but he didn&amp;#039;t change diapers. My wife and I share responsibilities down the middle. No one likes diaper duty, but I want to be involved in every aspect of my boys&amp;#039; lives.&amp;quot; Women are giving dads like Brandon credit for stepping up: In a REDBOOK poll, 40 percent of moms described their husbands as &amp;quot;extremely&amp;quot; hands-on fathers, and 72 percent of them said their husbands were striving to be better dads than their fathers were--and succeeding. Moms still log the most time with kids, according to a study by the Families and Work Institute, but dads are catching up. Millennial dads, born around 1980, spend 4.1 hours per day with their kids; that&amp;#039;s almost double the &amp;#039;70s dad. Gen-X dads, too, do things differently: Christopher Helman, a 38-year-old journalist from Houston, works from home, divides up parenting tasks with his wife--and clears time for fun: &amp;quot;Some days I&amp;#039;ll drop everything to play or ride bikes, and I&amp;#039;ll get back on my laptop after they go to bed. I remember exactly zero times that my dad or stepdad played with me on a weekday afternoon, and I think I&amp;#039;m closer to my kids because of that.&amp;quot; In a 2011 national study that appeared in the journal Fathering, 77 percent of men said that being a good father is important, while only 49 percent said the same about having a successful career. The priority shift has created a new bond between dads and kids, says Ruth Shavit, a longtime director of a preschool in Los Angeles. &amp;quot;Men seem more emotionally connected to their children--they sing and dance, they go to Parent and Me classes,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;There is a higher level of comfort with their kids.&amp;quot; Which, in turn, makes kids more comfortable in the world. &amp;quot;Studies show that dads who are highly involved have children who do better socially and academically,&amp;quot; says Joshua Coleman, Ph.D., a psychologist and the cochair of the Council on Contemporary Families. This is great, right? Most moms--scratch that, most women--would agree that Brad Pitt holding his kids&amp;#039; hands while crossing the street is a lot sexier than George Clooney with the girlfriend of the moment on his arm. &amp;quot;It used to be that women looked for a man with financial success, but these days, they like men who are emotionally connected and do housework,&amp;quot; Coleman says. But here&amp;#039;s the thing: Between all these parenting shindigs and happy bonding moments, Dad still needs to find time to work. The Families and Work Institute did a national study of the workforce in 2008 and found that for the first time in history, more men reported experiencing work-life conflict than women--60 percent versus 47 percent. Fathers who had demanding jobs working more than 50 hours per week were more likely to feel conflicted. To scurry home for dinner... or to be there when the boss is looking for some help at 7 p.m.? This is the kind of grueling decision women have had to make for years, and that the modern dad is forced into now. Welcome to our world, guys.  Oh, the guilt Steve Lovell is a 44-year-old director of advertising at a media company in Minneapolis. His job requires him to travel nearly half the time, and although he tries very hard to &amp;quot;plug in&amp;quot; with his two daughters when he&amp;#039;s home, by coaching soccer, helping with homework, and eating lunch with them at school, he still feels very guilty. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve missed birthdays,&amp;quot; says Steve. &amp;quot;But I&amp;#039;ve also missed out on work opportunities because I don&amp;#039;t want to uproot my kids. To some degree, it feels like you&amp;#039;re letting everyone down a little.&amp;quot; Men&amp;#039;s roles might be changing, but one thing remains the same: &amp;quot;Being a breadwinner is still an important part of male identity,&amp;quot; says Ellen Galinsky, the president of the Families and Work Institute. Even though fathers average three more hours of work per week than their childless male counterparts, they feel extra pressure to demonstrate their commitment. &amp;quot;I usually go back to work after putting the kids to bed at night, and sometimes I&amp;#039;ll send an email at 3 o&amp;#039;clock in the morning to prove that I&amp;#039;m working,&amp;quot; says Gary. Most days he eats at his desk to alleviate the guilt of leaving a couple of hours earlier than some childless colleagues do. Working less is not an option for worried fathers, the workforce study found. Andrew Miller, 38, was a marketing exec for an investment fund in New York City when his first child was born. His wife was scheduled for a C-section, so he went to human resources to ask how much paternity leave he was due. &amp;quot;Nothing,&amp;quot; he remembers. &amp;quot;This company didn&amp;#039;t care that I was having a baby. If I wanted to keep my job, I had to keep it up. So I worked on a big presentation from the hospital room and was back in the office the next day.&amp;quot; In interview after interview, fathers said the same thing: If you&amp;#039;re not disappointing the boss, you&amp;#039;re disappointing the other boss--the one who just lost a tooth. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve missed quite a few things for my eldest daughter, like school plays,&amp;quot; says Kevin Box, a 36-year-old paramedic from Helena, MT. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll take my ambulance to her events, but I&amp;#039;ll be called away on an emergency. It&amp;#039;s very hard knowing that when she looks up, you are not going to be there.&amp;quot; The guilt becomes a part of life: Benjamin Campbell, a 38-year-old father of four who works in the development office of a small Wisconsin college, is still raking himself over the coals for missing his daughter Sadie&amp;#039;s 4th birthday: &amp;quot;I messed up the dates for a business trip. She thought it was cool to have a video chat on the iPad, but not being there is just the worst feeling as a parent.&amp;quot;   And don&amp;#039;t forget your marriage Another big finding from that workforce study: Men with working wives felt more stress than those with a stay-at-home partner. Of course there&amp;#039;s friction: Working parents must constantly draw &amp;quot;Whose turn is it this time?&amp;quot; straws. &amp;quot;When marital roles are undefined, more conversations need to happen about who does what,&amp;quot; says Coleman. Gary and Michelle&amp;#039;s nanny took a month off recently, and the two of them had to decide on a daily basis who would ditch work early and pick up the kids. &amp;quot;We try to divide it equally--but there&amp;#039;s always the sneaking suspicion that your career is taking more hits than your partner&amp;#039;s,&amp;quot; Gary says. So, is shared parenting nothing but trouble? No, but you have to recognize the particular brand of havoc it can wreak on a marriage. &amp;quot;Couples who share child care and housework do negotiate more--and that negotiation can look like conflict, especially over standards like how something should be done,&amp;quot; says Scott Coltrane, Ph.D., a sociologist at the University of Oregon. Gary and Michelle recently fought over Asher&amp;#039;s bedtime, to the point where Gary ended up sleeping on the couch. &amp;quot;My wife is a project manager par excellence,&amp;quot; says Gary. &amp;quot;But sometimes I feel like I&amp;#039;m being ordered around.&amp;quot; If you can wade through such issues with your spouse, however, the potential for family joy might be greater than ever before. Gary acknowledges that when the load is shared, there&amp;#039;s a sense that someone always has your back: &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s a lot of work to be done, and Michelle and I are exhausted, but we&amp;#039;re in it together--and happy.&amp;quot; On his way home, Gary has to run a few errands, so even though he (guiltily) left the office at 4:30 p.m., he&amp;#039;s missed dinner with the kids. Soon it&amp;#039;s bedtime, and after reading the last gripping chapter of Julianne&amp;#039;s Rainbow Fairy book, Gary drops off to sleep next to her. Soon, he&amp;#039;ll groggily rouse himself to check his work email, prep tomorrow&amp;#039;s lunches, wash the dishes. But for now, this father can shrug off the psychic load that comes with being a modern dad, because he&amp;#039;s right where he most wants to be, beside his daughter under a small pink blanket. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/mom-kids/advice/a14752/working-dad-stories/>