Stay-at-home dads do LESS childcare than working mothers

This statistic is sure to make a lot of eyes roll.

It’s been found that stay-at-home dads do less childcare than mothers who spend their days working. A study by the Australian Institute of Family Studies found that working mums putting down over 35 hours a week in an office, still come home and do more childcare than their partners who have been home all day. The research used 2,500 Australian couples to test the theory and found that stay-at-home dads spent 19 hours a week on childcare in comparison to the 21 hours working mums spent. However, dads are spending more time doing the housework with 28 hours a week going towards home maintenance, five hours more than their working partners.

"For many, becoming a stay-at-home dad is an economic decision, driven by unemployment, under-employment or disability and not a lifestyle choice to spend more time on parenting," the institute's director Anne Hollonds said of the findings.

Senior researcher, Jennifer Baxter, says the research doesn’t reveal all the answers, however, saying:

"There are unanswered things about what those (stay-at-home) dads are doing that's not captured in our data.”