Some San Jose fathers might want to be stay-at-home parents if they did not need the income from work. A 2015 study conducted nationwide by Pew Research Center found that about 48 percent of fathers expressed this wish. While a majority of the general public believed that children benefited from having one stay-at-home parent, they were split on whether this should be the mother or father. Over half said it did not matter, but 45 percent said the mother was better. Just 1 percent said the father was better.
Almost the same number of fathers and mothers said that being a parent was important to their identity. From 1965 to 2015, fathers nearly tripled the amount of time they spent on child care to seven hours. This was still less than half the amount of time that mothers reported, 15 hours, and almost twice as many fathers as mothers said they felt like they did not spend enough time with their children.
About 70 percent of people said it was just as important for fathers to bond with a new baby as mothers. However, while nearly half of people said both mothers and fathers did an equally good job of caring for a new baby, 53 percent said mothers did a better job than fathers.
The amount of time each parent spends with the child may be significant in a child custody case. For example, if one parent wants primary custody but the other parent was the main caregiver, this may hurt the custody bid. However, there are a number of different arrangements that parents might pursue. They may work out a joint custody agreement, or they may agree on one having primary physical custody but do so in negotiations instead of through litigation.