According to Joseph Pleck, the role of fathers has noticeably changed in the United States over time. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the father held the role of moral teacher. It was his duty to teach his children reading and writing as well as to ensure they were educated religiously and morally. He was also in charge of the courtship of his children and arranging their marriages. By the twentieth century, parenting responsibilities became highly gendered and the role of the father decreased significantly. The idea of maternal custody gained importance, and with the influence of the industrial revolution, the father's relationship became increasingly distant from his children. However, he still maintained his duty as moral overseer and established discipline. Today, the dominant role of fathers is that of bread winner, with an emphasis on providing for the family, financially in particular. The ideal of the new father has emerged though and is on the rise, which holds the vision of the father being equally as involved as the mother in day to day child care and raising the children. I see this ideal as the primary expectation of fathers today. Fathers now are expected to be involved in all aspects of their children's lives, both of their sons and daughters, and are expected to share the responsibilities in the household that were typically reserved for mothers in the past. I believe that fathers today are expected to shed the heightened masculine stereotype of being the bread winner and adopt a nurturing and involved role instead.
According to Francice Deutsch, couples with children decide to work alternating shifts mainly for financial reasons, especially influenced by the high cost of child care. Many couples also believe that children should be raised by their family for optimum nurturing and development, and are worried about placing the care of their child in the hands of strangers. The decision based on monetary troubles directly relates to class, as a couple of lower socioeconomic standings often to not have the money to pay for outside child care. Choosing to work alternating shifts for this reason is not limited to lower class couples though, as many couples who could afford child care simply do not want to spend that much money on it. The psychological reasons for working alternating shifts is often attributed to the working class. Traditional gender ideology is more highly supported among the working class, who still carry with them the ideal of traditional family life, where the father goes to work and the mother stays home to care for the children. I don't think that I would select an alternating shift policy when I start a family, as although it is economically beneficial, it sets a very rigid schedule for couples, and I feel like it would allow for very little time for my husband and I to be together. So while we would both be spending important time raising our child, we would be lacking the significant time of raising our child together and interacting as a family.
According to Dorothy Roberts, the societal forces that discourage family participation of black fathers include the cultural acceptance of single mothers, as well as the high unemployment and incarceration rates among black men. The elements of black fatherhood that led to the creation of the myth of the Absent Black Father rests highly on the fact that black fathers were not included in the separate spheres ideology. Black men are stigmatized with the label of not being able to financially care for their families, and are overwhelmingly noticed for the instances of negativity surrounding unmarried black fathers, such as illegitimacy and lack of commitment, rather than noticed for the instances where they actually do contribute to their children's wellbeing. Many patterns of black men's behavior actually contradict this myth, especially the fact that black fathers prove to maintain strong contact with their children even when separated from them, and actually provided more informal care and support than white absent fathers.