By Jamie Waters
As an NFL fullback, Patrick DiMarco faced linebackers the size of French Door fridges. But his toughest role yet, he says, is as a husband and father.
DiMarco, who now runs a sports-performance company in Columbia, S.C., starts his days reading the Bible before scrambling eggs for his two girls and two boys, aged 4 to 10, and driving them to school. In the evenings he shoots hoops and kicks soccer balls with them in the backyard, and splits the unfun stuff -- cleaning, laundry, diaper duties -- with his wife, Kirstin, 36, a stay-at-home mom. Mom and Dad dispense strict Christian teachings as they go.
"I'm gonna parent hard, but I'm also gonna love hard," said DiMarco, 37.
Even though he's a "better outdoor than indoor dad," he'll sometimes play dress-ups with his daughters. "When the time calls for me to be Prince Charming, I'm Prince Charming," he said, laughing.
Millennial dads are winning rave reviews for their can-do attitudes: a generation of Prince Charmings atoning for their absent forefathers.
In 1965 married dads with young children spent less than 10 hours a week on childcare and housework; in 2024, that number climbed to almost 30 hours, according to Lyman Stone, director of the pro-natalism initiative at the Institute for Family Studies $(IFS)$. Today's married moms, by comparison, spend just over 40 hours a week. Stone used data from the American Time Use Survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the American Heritage Time Use Study.
"Today's dads are more hands-on than any generation post-industrialization," said Misty Heggeness, principal investigator at the University of Kansas' Care Board, which tracks the care economy.
This revolution is happening on both sides of the aisle -- a surprising fact, perhaps, given the polarization of gender roles and the place of women in family and society. On one side are progressive, feminist, so-called Brooklyn Dads, who are famously driven by a belief that they should split child-rearing responsibilities with their partners equally. But it's happening on the conservative side too, even if the public image suggests otherwise: With tradwives in the air, prominent pro-natalists calling for much larger families and a manosphere putting old-school machismo back on the table, the right-wing conversation around family can seem like a throwback. The reality is often quite different.
"I think there's a gap between the performative traditionalism people may see on the internet and what they would find in the real world," said Brad Wilcox, a fellow at IFS and a sociology professor at the University of Virginia.
In interviews with conservative millennial fathers across the country, it's clear they are more modern than the political and pop-cultural images might suggest. These Heartland dads are rolling up their golf-shirt sleeves and getting spit up on. They're doing things that would've given Don Draper heart palpitations -- laundry, bath time, their daughters' hair -- while espousing fairly traditional views on religion, discipline and masculinity.
As Stone noted in a 2024 post on X, "modern 'gender conservatism' is a fascinating beast because it's like, 'Behold me, mighty patriarch, master of my house, and with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, I change diapers!'"
The Care Board used the American Time Use Survey to show that in 2024 dads spent the same ratio of non-work hours child-rearing (35%) in blue states such as New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts and in red states including Tennessee, Kansas and Indiana. When it comes to parenting, millennials across the political spectrum are closer to one another than to older generations of dads, said Heggeness.
On both sides there's an increased desire to shape kids' futures and buck the absent-father stereotype. Then there's the all-hands-on-deck logistics of modern life: Families need two-person incomes, more moms across the board are pursuing careers, many dads can now work from home -- and that diaper is not going to change itself.
Crucially, as Wilcox and Stone see it, both faith-based and feminist ideologies can push dads toward greater involvement, turning conservative-religious and liberal fathers into mirror images. "Liberals often have a notion that dads should be involved because it's unfair to moms if they're not," said Stone. "Conservatives often have a notion that dads should be involved because there's a duty of fatherhood."
Reality Check
Meiko Gilliam's days begin with a herculean task: getting his two daughters to "shake off their morning attitudes." That means putting Cheerios in front of the hangry 4- and 6-year-olds immediately. Both Gilliam, 44, and his wife, Judayah, 27, work full-time in Albuquerque, N.M. -- he's in government-vehicle sales, she's a career counselor -- and they split cooking, cleaning and diaper duties. Gilliam recently taught his 6-year-old to throw a punch; he also paints her nails.
"With this economy, and how crappy things are, you got two people trying to give 100%," said Gilliam. "People want to talk about 50-50, but that's not going to cover it when it comes to children."
"Survival mode" is how Neale Wetherall, 36, a veteran living in the southeast with two young kids, characterizes his family dynamic. Because he and his wife, Lizz, 34, work full-time -- he's in healthcare IT, she's in sales -- they rely on ready meals and split domestic chores. "It's all blurred together," he said. He wishes it weren't: If each parent has a lane, he says, you're more likely to appreciate when your partner goes above and beyond. In his view, a stay-at-home mom is "fundamentally the correct approach. It's just hard to do that today. Financially, it's not feasible."
Once a baby arrives, even the best-laid plans can fly out of the crib quicker than an unwanted Tickle Me Elmo. When Jonathan and Gabriella Jones, both 38, got married, "the agreement was that my wife would take care of everything inside the house, and my focus would be everything outside," said Jonathan. Six years on, with both parents working full-time while tending to 1- and 3-year-old boys, here's the new MO: "We lock in on what needs to get done so that the team can progress."
"The cleaning, I don't do as much as I should, I'll be honest," said Jonathan, a business consultant who handles media for a church in Dallas. "But the cooking, the diapers, preparing the bottles, I do all those things." He tries to spend 60 uninterrupted minutes a day with his sons; when he tucks the eldest into bed, they play a word game and then pray. "Fatherhood is a privilege," he said, "and my role is really setting the temperature for the household."
Several dads, including Jones and Wetherall, characterized their role as more of a disciplinarian-slash-protector and their wives as more of a nurturer.
According to Justin Gibbons, a men's counselor in Oklahoma City, conservative dads tend to act more assertively than liberal dads -- almost like a "wolverine looking after its kin." Darby Saxbe, a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California and the author of "Dad Brain," similarly associated progressive dads more with " gentle parenting," noting that conservative parents "might be more willing to just assert authority and use discipline."
Moms at Work
According to a 2025 IFS survey of married mothers with at least one young child, 83% of liberal moms work full- or part-time compared to 56% of conservatives. While that suggests young conservative married dads are more likely than their liberal counterparts to play a "neo-traditional" breadwinning role, Wilcox said conservative mothers are still working far more than in the past. That leaves their husbands to step it up at home.
When May Mailman, 38, was senior policy strategist at the White House last year, she lived in Washington, D.C., during the week, returning to her family in Houston on weekends. Her husband, David, took care of their two infant daughters with the help of a nanny (they now have a baby boy, too). "I didn't have to give birth so it was the least I could try to do," said David, 37, the CFO of a tree-relocation business.
Now May runs a consultancy firm in Houston, traveling 1-2 days a week. Their weekly domestic workload is split about 60-40, with May doing more. On weekends David takes his daughters on bike-rides and to get Costco hotdogs. Around the house, May is the organizer and David chips in wherever needed, from dishes to diapers. What is not needed is his cooking: "I can take out frozen chicken nuggets," he said.
"It's enjoyable to spend time with your kids," he said. "More importantly, we're trying to mold them into value-added members of society." He thinks he and May are more involved than older generations because they're "less trusting of institutions and where kids are getting their information. We've kind of lost that community aspect. Parents spend more time with their kids, because who else do you want your kids to spend time with?"
The Inside Man
The plan was for Jacob Pannell's wife, Lindsey, to be a stay-at-home mom in Knoxville, Tenn. But when Pannell, who has two masters degrees in healthcare, struggled to find suitable jobs, it was decided he would care for the kids while Lindsey, 37, worked full time in marketing. "My wife was further along in her career," said Pannell, 36, who has three children under 10 and is also an author. "There was a little bit of sadness," he said, "because I thought I had put in the work and effort to stick to the norm, where the man goes to work so he can provide for his family."
But overall, he said, "it's been really great. My kids have thrived."
When Pannell tells people at Bible study that he's a stay-at-home dad, he often gets confused looks from older men. "It just does not compute," he said, adding that he's heard older men say that stay-at-home dads are "lazy" and "should do more to provide for their families." Millennial dads, however, aren't just supportive -- they want tips. He said they view him as "the inside man."
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