Dads providing more personal help to kids than in previous generations

Young people living in two-parent households are getting more support at home than their own parents and grandparents did when they were young. They can turn to their father or their mother if they have a personal problem.

The change is owed to the fact that dads are stepping up more in a personal way, taking on more of a caregiver role than did fathers in the past.

“We saw that for young people today who were raised in two-parent households, they actually get significantly more support from their fathers compared to young people one or two generations ago,” said Sam Pressler, a practitioner fellow at the University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy and also a research affiliate at the Harvard Human Flourishing Program. “What you’re also seeing is that there’s kind of a compounding benefit to the children of those parents, where not only are they getting the support of a mother, now they’re also getting the support of a much more actively involved and present father.”

What’s good news for some kids, though, doesn’t benefit children who don’t live with both parents, according to findings of the 2024 American Social Capital Survey by Pressler and Daniel A. Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. That suggests that children raised in single-parent homes face a bigger emotional resource gap compared to peers raised by both parents and also compared to previous generations in single-parent homes.

The survey report, “ Disconnected: The Growing Class Divide in American Civic Life ,” looks at relationships, including not just how parents and children interact, but also friendships and the degrees of support that people can count on if something goes wrong or a need arises.

For many Americans, finding someone to provide a small loan, a place to stay for a few days or care for the kids in a crisis is itself a crisis.

Parents who help solve problems

The report said that 6 in 10 young adults raised by both their parents said they could count on their dad to help with a personal problem as they were being raised. Fewer than half of older adults raised in two-parent homes said that. “So even though fewer American children today grow up with present fathers, those who do are more connected to them,” write Cox and Pressler

The report noted, however, that young men were more apt to say they could turn to their father for help with a personal problem when they were kids, compared to young women. While two-thirds of young men said that, just over half of young women report that was true in their formative years.

The survey found that 82% of young men and 75% of young women said they could turn to their moms for help when they were younger.

Because dads are often more involved day-to-day in two-parent households than they were in the past, the gap in support and resources for children in single-parent households compared to those in two-parent households has grown.

The report didn’t cover how fathers are more involved, but rather quantified involvement, Pressler said. The findings were robust when it came to being able to rely on both parents in a two-parent home for support with personal challenges.

The survey included responses from 6,597 U.S. adults by phone in the Ipsos “KnowledgePanel.” Conducted March 29 to April 14, 70% of the surveys were on cell phones and 30% via landline. The responses were weighted for gender by age, race, ethnicity, education, census region, metropolitan status, household income and 2020 presidential vote choice. The margin of error is plus or minus 1.3 percentage points.

Will friends (if you have any) step up?

The report also finds a growing class divide in who people can count someone on if they need help — and education attainment makes a difference.

Previous generations were more likely to have a circle of friends, the report found.

Friendships have not recovered from the ravages of the pandemic, per the report, which said that 17% of Americans say they have no close friends, a category that does not include relatives. Eighteen percent have one or two good friends, a third have three to five and a quarter have at least six good friends.

The educational gap on the question of friends is striking: Not quite one-fourth of Americans who got no further than a high school diploma say they have no close friends, compared to just 1 in 10 college graduates. Those with high school diplomas or less are twice as likely than those without a college education to have six or more close friends (33% vs. 17%). In previous generations, by the way, college graduates were not more likely than others to have large circles of friends.

That education divide is even bigger for Black Americans, with 35% of those with high school or less saying they have no close friends, compared to 25% of Hispanics and 19% of whites who didn’t pursue education beyond high school.

Pressler said the size of the friendship gap surprised him, including that it widened so much over the last generation. “And then, within that — and I hadn’t seen this before — looking at the way class and race intersect within this data: 24% of people without degrees saying they have no close friends, but then 35% of Black Americans without degrees saying they have no close friends.”

Among college graduates, the numbers are similar regardless of race: 8% of white, 7% of Hispanic and 11% of Black adults say they don’t have any friends. The survey revealed, too, that Americans have not only fewer friends, but those they do have may not live nearby. One-fourth of Americans say that most or all of their friends and relatives live nearby, while 44% say few or none of them do.

That brings up a very big question: To whom do you turn when you need help?

The good news is that about two-thirds of Americans say they have at least a couple of people who could give them a ride, provide emotional support or help them move. Slightly fewer said they know people who’d take them to a doctor’s appointment or put them up for a few days. In an emergency, 62% think they could find someone to watch their kids, while 57% would be able to borrow $200 from someone they know. Roughly half said they could find help getting a new job. And exactly half said someone they know would take care of them if they got sick.

Again, those who are college educated are more likely to have multiple people they could turn to for those types of help.

There’s a “massive educational divide” when it comes to borrowing money. The report said that while 70% of college graduates said at a least a couple people would loan them $200, only 44% of those without a college degree said the same. “More than 1 in 5 (21%) Americans with a high school education or less say there is no one from whom they could borrow this amount of money.”

Those with higher education are also more likely to have someone to listen to their problems and provide emotional support.

Lonely in America

Loneliness is increasingly getting attention in the U.S. In an advisory on the mental health pressures on parents issued Wednesday, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy noted that parents feel disconnected and overwhelmed, but often lack resources, including people who will provide support.

Pressler notes that some of the loneliness discourse “feels like it puts the problem on the individual. It’s like, if you’re lonely, you should go make friends. If you’re lonely, you should try this app.” The report he co-authored “really points to just how structural and cultural it is. When you have one group of people that is by an order of magnitude so much more disconnected from friendships and from community groups, that seems to be signaling something deeper than just individual initiative and responsibility can resolve,” he said.

The report also links gaps in friendship and relationships to levels of social support. He notes the 20-percentage point gap between college degree holders and those without one when it comes to finding people who will help in specific ways if needed, from a small cash loan to a car ride or babysitting. “Looking particularly at Black Americans without degrees, you have a 20-plus percent of folks who wouldn’t have anywhere to go if they lost their housing. And that’s the difference between being in a stable, supportive environment. This affects the tangible fabric of our lives,” Pressler said.

The survey points out a need for spaces and places where people can form, participate in and nurture relationships. And there’s again an educational gap: The better-educated have more access to and options in that realm.

The places people go, the institutions they embrace such as churches, schools and community settings, introduce people to each other. Often what engages someone in community life is having someone bring you along to experience community, according to Pressler.

Financial resources may play a part, he added, but it’s not the whole story.

Civic life has “kind of shifted to become more pay-to-play and that’s happening at every stage of the life course. But you can belong to a religious congregation and maybe you’re asked to donate or pay tithes, but you don’t have to. That’s technically financially accessible and we’re still seeing a class divide in religious membership,” said Pressler, who noted that 39% of people with a college degree say they participate, compared to 27% of those with no degree.

He said other elements, like the changing nature of work, where people with higher education tend to have more agency and schedule control, “potentially provides you with more leisure time, whereas a lot of the kind of stable middle class jobs have disappeared and often people are working in retail or service sectors where they have variable or unpredictable schedules that make it hard to plan to spend time with family in the community.”