Dads Work as Much as Moms in Balancing Family and Fitness

Fathers, who are actively involved in their families, work as much as the mothers to balance family and fitness, says a study.

Researchers at the Kansas State University Kinesiology looked at how working parents struggle to establish a balance between work life and a fitness program without feeling pressured. As gender roles change, dads play an active role in the lives of their children. Like mothers even dads face the same challenges that include family responsibilities, guilt, lack of support, lack of time, scheduling constraints and work.  This transition to parenthood is linked with a drop in physical activity for moms as well as dads.

Despite this fact, most programs focus on encouraging physical activity among working moms only.

"A decline or lack of exercise among working parents has mostly been recognized as a female issue," Emily Mailey, an assistant professor, said. "The ethic of care theory -- that females have been socialized to meet everyone else's needs before their own -- explains why women feel guilty when they take time to exercise, though the same principle hasn't been studied for fathers."

In this study, the researchers focused on working mothers and fathers. The participants answered queries about the barriers they faced to a consistent exercise routine. The researchers noticed that it was guilt and lack of time that topped the list of barriers faced by both moms and dads.

"The guilt parents feel is because they think of exercise as a selfish behavior," Mailey said. "Fathers reported guilt related to family and taking time for themselves, whereas mothers reported guilt related to family, taking time for themselves and work."

Most of the dads reported children as a barrier in maintaining an exercise program more than mothers. Apart from this, family-related guilt was linked with the time they spent away from their dear ones. On the other hand, the mothers' guilt was linked with the time they spent away from their children.  Like fathers, the mothers don't feel guilty about not spending time with their partners.  The men feel guilty when they get involved in physical activity after kids go to bed as that time they could spend with their spouses.

Though the hurdles they reported were much similar, working moms had an additional grouse- that of work and scheduling constraints.  Most of the active fathers found time to do physical exercise during the work day but mothers were afraid of being judged by colleagues for going for workouts during or after work. 

"Regardless of their activity levels, parents view their families as the top priority," Mailey said. "Active parents were able to see exercise as something that contributed to the good of the family and that was not at odds with being good parents. As a result, they felt less guilty about taking time to exercise and were more apt to prioritize physical activity because they valued the benefits."

The finding was documented in BMC Public Health.