The NYT is on a sociology of the US family tear it seems.  On Sunday it was marriage, and today, the household division of labor and child-rearing:

Despite the surge of women into the work force, mothers are spending at
least as much time with their children today as they did 40 years ago,
and the amount of child care and housework performed by fathers has
sharply increased, researchers say in a new study, based on analysis of
thousands of personal diaries.

   Lots of implications here but let me focus on my own peculiar concern: this strikes me as good from a modern Confucian point of view.

    Confucianism tells us that we build ethical lives from the inside out: first attending to our closest loving relationships, and then moving from those relationships (while always still cultivating them) to concern for our friends and neighbors and, then, outward to the world at large.  Family, or some modern social network that plays the part of family, is the center of this virtuous dynamic. 

     And that is what the numbers in this survey suggest: American parents, singly or married, continue to spend a significant amount of time attending to the needs of their young children.  Of course, this must be understood in a modern, globalized industrial/post-industrial context.  So, work takes up a lot of time.  But work is being shared and, what struck me about the chart below, is that it seems that men are putting in more time to participate in child care:

      I know: men are bad about housework.  And the child care numbers for men are still low.  But the increase for father’s child care is good, from a Confucian point of view (it may also be true that father’s work time supports total hours of child care – i.e. that of both mothers and fathers – to increase significantly in the past five years).

     The "traditional" father works/mother stays home with kids model is bad from a Confucian perspective, because it takes men away from their daily, human connections with the family, the primary medium of their progress toward Humanity.  Men should be immersed in family life because that is how they can build ethical lives.   I know that this pushes against what we might call "actually existing Confucianism," the real historical experience of Confucianism tied to patriarchal power.  But that only shows how far historical "Confucianism" deviated from the humane ideals of Confucius. 

     Now, it is true that Confucius, and Mencius, said that a father should not be his son’s teacher (Mencius is best on this; he says that a teacher must put himself in an adversarial role at times, and such adversity might damage the loving relationship of father and son).  This suggests a certain distance between a father and his children.  And it is also true that the duty of a child to his or her parents could be understood, in Confucian terms, to be greater than the duty of parents to their children. 

     But as attitudes and social practices of child-rearing have changed over time (i.e. parents having fewer children and thus focusing more on the children they have), men should shift, or broaden, the focus of their ethical lives accordingly.  This is not to say that elders should be ignored or avoided.  Let’s put it in more positive terms.  The change in social expectations about child-rearing opens up new avenues for men to develop their ethical selves. They should still attend to their parents – but perhaps with less intensity, since elders may want their own independence – but take more time to care for their children, and through their children learn what it is to be humane.

    To make Confucianism relevant for modern life, we have to adapt the general principles to contemporary realities.  In some ways, and I think child care is key here, the modern adaptation of Confucius might be more true to Confucian principles of Humanity than what "actually existing Confucianism" was.

    So, men, keep changing those diapers – you will find your ethical selves there!