FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACTS:
Daniel L. Carlson / University of Utah / daniel.carlson@fcs.utah.edu
Richard J. Petts / Ball State University / rjpetts@bsu.edu
AUSTIN, TX, June 12, 2025—Dads, are you tired of getting ties and socks and grooming kits you don’t need for Father’s Day? How about flipping the script and giving your family a gift — one that will give you a lot more joy over the long run than another personalized mug or pint glass? The gift we refer to is the gift of your time in childcare and housework. It’s a gift that truly keeps on giving, benefiting you, your kids, your partner, and your relationships for years to come.
When fathers share childcare and housework equally with their partners, both they and their partners report better relationship quality, including less conflict, more relationship satisfaction, better communication, and more sexual intimacy. Children with involved dads report stronger relationships with their fathers, are healthier and happier overall, and are even less stressed as adults. Fathers themselves also benefit personally from doing childcare and housework, as enhanced relationship quality from sharing the load leads to greater life satisfaction and better physical and mental health.
The benefits of father involvement at home apply not just to physical household labor but also to cognitive labor, which is the mental work of managing a household. For example, while cooking dinner is a physical household task, planning weekly meals is a mental one. Both mothers and fathers who share such organizing and planning tasks report lower levels of stress and fewer depressive symptoms than when mothers do most of this work. Additionally, both mothers and fathers also report higher relationship satisfaction when cognitive labor is shared equally. In fact, fathers’ sharing the mental labor matters more for parents’ relationship satisfaction than the division of physical housework tasks.
So, dads, this Father’s Day think about giving your family the gift of your time in housework and childcare. Doing so might not just be the greatest Father’s Day gift you ever got or gave yourself, it’s also likely to make your wife a lot happier than the card or flowers you got her for Mother’s Day (nice as those may have been). In turn, instead of being treated as a household helper who receives orders from your wife, she may treat you as an equal partner in parenting and housework – enabling you to be closer to your family and reap all the benefits that come from these enriched relationships.