In the black-and-white world of 1950s television, the role of fathers was uncomplicated: They brought home the bacon and left the child-rearing to their stay-at-home wives.
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Today, fathers are expected to be more than just breadwinners. They are expected to be fully engaged in the lives of their children.
And yet, when they lose their jobs, it is the loss of the role of provider that can leave fathers reeling.
"As far as we've come ... there's still this mentality — and it's part of the way men are wired — they're really wired around this idea of protection and provision," said Vincent DiCaro, senior director of public affairs for the National Fatherhood Initiative.
Lori J. Rank, administrator of Pennsylvania CareerLink of Lancaster County, a partnership of agencies that provide services to people unemployed and seeking training, said joblessness is hard enough on single people without dependents. "If you're a care provider, it's a whole different ball game," she said, and that goes for men and women alike.
Men have been particularly hard-hit by this recession. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in May rose to 7.5 percent for women and to 9.8 percent for men.
So this Father's Day, a great many American dads are dealing with the uncertainties and the challenges of joblessness.
Bittersweet holidayJohn Longenecker, 44, of rural Lancaster County, said that he almost wishes Father's Day would go unremarked this year. "It's going to be a bittersweet type of thing," he said. "I'm not feeling really proud right now."
Longenecker, a married father of three school-age children, was laid off from his job as a custom cabinetmaker in March. He's been a cabinetmaker for 18 years.
He said he worked hard to become skilled at his craft, and he often worked long hours. So, when he found himself at home in March, he said he knew he couldn't just sit around.
Even as he searches for a job, he's been making himself useful at home, doing laundry, preparing meals, painting rooms, looking after his kids. Longenecker said he cannot imagine his own father, who was a farmer, making pasta or hanging out laundry, or doing any of the hands-on tasks of parenting.
"He spent time with his children, and I never doubted that he loved all of us, but there was that definite separation. ... The mom takes care of the house and kids, and the father is the breadwinner," Longenecker said.
Longenecker said that he never has seen himself as the Ward Cleaver type, sitting in his favorite chair, "while my wife lifts my feet to vacuum."
His wife, Sandy, is in school, training as a practical nurse. She said her husband is "a very humble person, but he's a great father." He's never once taken out his frustration at being out of work on his family, she said, noting, "I think he tries to focus on the positives, and one of those positives is getting more time with the children."
In the spring, Longenecker took charge of preparing breakfast and making sure his youngest child, who's 6, had what she needed for school. "In the early goings, it was a little humbling, because she would say, 'Daddy, don't you have work to do?' "Longenecker said.
In the afternoons, he braved what he described as "some strange looks" from the moms at his daughter's school, when he started picking up his daughter at the end of her day.
Before long, he started noticing that other dads had joined the ranks of the waiting parents. "I haven't tapped anyone on the shoulder, but I'm pretty sure the reason they were there is they've either been scaled back in hours [at work] or been laid off," Longenecker said.
Longenecker said he's enjoyed the time he's had to interact with his children, and he thinks that these past few months have taught him to "roll with the punches."
Nevertheless, he said, "I will welcome going back to work."
He said that some men might decide to stay at home with their children, if their wives are securely employed and earning enough to support the family. But he said he doesn't see the idea of fathers as breadwinners ever going away.
Way men thinkDiCaro, of the National Fatherhood Initiative, noted that "old cultural values die hard," especially when they're tied to "the way men think, and the way they are."
But fathering is about more than providing for a child's material needs, DiCaro said, maintaining that "good dads need to provide, nurture and guide."
"The key, really, is to look at fatherhood from a child's perspective, rather than from your own perspective," he said. "What does a child need from their dad?"
From a child's perspective, a father's nurturing and guidance might be the most important parts of fathering, he noted.
He said that keeping this in mind won't make an unemployed father's problems go away, but it might ease the pressure he feels.
DiCaro said, "It's not like it's an either-or thing: You lose your job, and therefore you should forsake ever working again, and become Nurturing Guy."
Instead, he said he'd encourage fathers who lose their jobs to use the time to work on areas of fathering they may have been neglecting. Work-family balance is often seen as a concern mostly for women, but it's also an issue for men, he said.
The National Fatherhood Initiative conducted a national survey on dads' attitudes toward fatherhood. The men surveyed said that work responsibilities were their No. 1 obstacle to being a good dad, DiCaro said.
"The silver lining to this recession is that more and more dads may come to a balanced perspective on what it means to be a dad," DiCaro said.
Jeremy Adam Smith is the author of a recently published book, "The Daddy Shift: How Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms, and Shared Parenting Are Transforming the American Family." He also is the founder of Daddy Dialectic, a parenting blog.
Smith said his book argues that "our definition of fatherhood has expanded beyond breadwinning to include a capacity for caregiving." This has happened, he said, because more fathers are staying home with their children, and dual-earner couples are sharing care.
Still, he acknowledged, "The ghost of the breadwinning father persists." In terms of American culture, and in terms of public policy, fathers continue to be seen primarily as breadwinners, he said.
And some men "do feel like failures if they're no longer breadwinners," Smith said, noting that the pain some experience over joblessness should not be minimized.
He said he believes men are helped by spending time with their children. "You have to prize that time, even if you weren't looking for it," he said.
"Taking the time to connect with your children can help you survive that period ... and even help repair the damage to your psyche," he said. "It's just a way of surviving. It's a way of giving some meaning to what is happening to you."
He said he encourages newly unemployed fathers to focus on acquiring the skills needed to care for kids, to "develop the competencies of being a full-time parent."
Staying at home with children is "seen as this state of powerlessness," Smith said, but when he stayed home to care for his young son, "I became a more effective parent and that gave me a sense of power."
Smith said he was not merely "standing on some lofty perch, lecturing fathers about how they should respond to layoffs."
He found out recently that he's going to be laid off from his job as a magazine editor. He said he's spent many recent nights sitting awake, worrying. At those times, he said, he goes to look at his son and thinks, "This is what's important."
It helps if men can see other men in similar situations, he said. But unfortunately, a father who's at home with his kids because of joblessness has to deal with a double-whammy of isolation. "One, you're a stay-at-home parent, so you're isolated," Smith said. "Two, you've just been laid off, so you're isolated."
He said he would urge men in this situation to "get out there," and socialize with other parents, or become more active at church or at their children's schools, or in the community. "That will help your state of mind, help your parenting, and it will help you find a job," Smith said.
Kids not toldOne Lancaster County father said he hasn't even told his children that he was laid off from his job at a publishing company in January. For that reason, he asked to be identified only by his first name, Bob.
"I figure, why should they have that burden if it's not necessary?" Bob said.
When he was first laid off, he said, he would be on his computer when his kids came home from school, and so his children assumed he was working from home. For about a month, he said, he sat around, waiting for his phone to ring.
"Once reality set in," he said, "I thought I had to take control."
Last month, Bob started at Job Club, a federally funded program run by the Lancaster Employment and Training Agency at CareerLink. It's an intensive program that teaches job-seeking skills to people who meet certain criteria.
He said he thinks it's taking a little longer to find a new job because he wants to stay in this area for his children, who are settled in school here, and have established friendships here.
His wife, he said, is a stay-at-home mother. "I always knew it was a difficult job," he said, "but you appreciate it more when you're around 24 hours a day."
He said he's always tried to make time for his kids. His joblessness, he said, hasn't shaken his sense of himself as a good father. "I think I'm the good dad that I've always been," Bob said.
Nevertheless, he said he sees himself as his family's provider, and he's working as hard as he can to find a job. "That's why I do what I do. That's why I work — for my family," he said.
Bob said he tries not to dwell on his worries — his middle son, for instance, has a chronic medical condition — because if he does, he said, "then I'll lose the battle, and I'm trying to stay focused on the objective of getting another job."
"You can't control what happens to you," he said, "but you can control how you react."
Suzanne Cassidy is a staff writer for the Sunday News. Her e-mail address is scassidy@lnpnews.com.
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