Description: The Daddy Shift is an accessible, personal, and deeply researched book about a growing phenomenon among American families: fathers who stay at home from work and take a larger role in raising children. What happens when dads stay home? And what does it mean for the larger society?In chapters that alternate between large-scale analysis and beautifully written close-up portraits of men and their partners, Smith traces the complications, myths, psychology, sociology, and history of a new set of social relationships. He explores the hopes and ideals that inform men's choices, and analyzes the economic and social developments that have made their choices possible.Filled with stories as well as entertaining history and research, Smith's book is a guide for thoughtful readers to a terrain more and more families are exploring.
Review Quotes: Jeremy Adam Smith is a most purposeful father, a periodic Stay-at-Home Dad who sees his role as not just a choice that's best for his family but as a sign of a rapidly changing societal landscape. . . . His new book, The Daddy Shift, is a chronicle of a time that he predicts we will look back upon as the start of permanent change.--Lisa Belkin, New York Times
"A combination of scholarly research (citing economic and historical trends, sociological and psychological studies, and labor statistics), revealing profiles of stay-at-home dads and their families, and poignant anecdotes from Smith's own life. The personal passages are the book's most affecting ones, as Smith reveals himself not as some know-it-all superdad but as a learn-as-you-go parent who had to sort out his own complex feelings."--Regan McMahon, San Francisco Chronicle "His investigations are very well researched, and he's pursued them with a rigorous intellectual integrity that makes his arguments engagingly persuasive. The result is an impressive book that even the childless should read, for at essence, The Daddy Shift is not just about stay-at-home dads, but about the changing roles of men and women in society."--Mothering "A gentle but persistent appeal to get beyond all those preconceived notions and make the choices that work best for ourselves and our families."--Body + Soul "Forty years ago, a man who wanted to share child care equally with his wife would have been called 'deviant, ' and a wife who wanted him to would have been condemned as an 'unnatural' mother. The Daddy Shift shows how far we have come and how much we have to gain by completing this revolution in marriage and parenthood."--Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage