Thirty-Seven Percent of Working Dads Would Assume Mr. Mom Role if Spouse Could Financially Support Family, CareerBuilder.com’s Annual Father’s Day Survey Finds

VP of Consumer Marketing and Father of Three Offers Tips for a Better Work/Life Balance

CHICAGO.-With Dad’s Day quickly approaching, many fathers may spend their special day dreaming about being a stay-at-home dad. More than a third of working dads (37 percent) said they would leave their job if their spouse or significant other’s income could comfortably support the entire family, similar to last year’s findings. Struggling to strike the perfect balance between work and family life, 37 percent of working dads said they are willing to take a pay cut to spend more time with their children; 42 percent would take a pay cut of 10 percent or more. The CareerBuilder.com survey, “Working Dads 2008,” was conducted from February 11 to March 13, 2008 and included 955 men, employed full-time, with children under the age of 18 living at home.


Twenty-two percent of working dads said their jobs have had a negative impact on their relationships with their children, with time management playing a role in the disruption of precious family time. Less than half (46 percent) of working dads said they have missed a significant event in their child’s life in the last year due to work; 26 percent said they have missed more than three.

Leaving work at work is having a negative impact on home life. One quarter of working dads stated that they work more than 50 hours a week; more than one in five (24 percent) said they bring work home at least once, if not more, a week. Nearly half (47 percent) of working dads said they spend fewer than three hours a day with their children during the work week, while 22 percent said they spend less than two hours and 6 percent are only able to spend an hour.

Richard Castellini, Vice President of Consumer Marketing at CareerBuilder.com and father of three offers the following tips to help working dads gain a healthy balance between their work and home lives:

1.Stay in touch - Checking in periodically with the family will keep you up-to-date on the goings on at home and school. In some cases, calling home may allow you to adjust your schedule to attend last minute events.


2.Work from one household calendar - Consider putting up one calendar in the house that everyone can access and update. Baseball games, recitals and other activities should be included with business trips and longer company meetings. This will allow the whole family to be organized and reduce the amount of scheduling confusion.

3.Pull out your work only after the sun has gone down - On the nights that you bring work home, limit the amount of email checking or even working until the children have gone to sleep. When you are at home, your focus should be on your children.

4.Schedule time - A great way to make sure you and your children spend quality time together is to schedule activities with them each week. These don’t have to be eight-hour events, but more along the lines of a bike ride, a trip to the playground, or even just to play a game.

5.Invite your family to your office- Look at your schedule and block off some time for your family to stop by and see where you work and meet your co-workers. Some organizations even schedule kid-friendly potlucks with other co-workers and their families.

Survey Methodology
This survey was conducted online within the U.S. by Harris Interactive® on behalf of CareerBuilder.com among 955 U.S. male employees (employed full-time; not self-employed with at least one child under 18 years old living at home) between February 11 and March 13, 2008, respectively. Percentages for some questions are based on a subset of responses to certain questions. With a pure probability sample of 955 one could say with a 95 percent probability that the overall results have a sampling error of +/- 3.2 percentage points. Sampling error for data from sub-samples is higher and varies. A full methodology is available upon request.