Divorce Propaganda and the Myth of the Do-Nothing Dad

The surprising truth about the family workload

Scroll through social media long enough, and you’ll encounter a genre of content so pervasive it’s become its own ecosystem. The exhausted mother is filming herself doing all the tasks her husband “doesn’t even notice.“ Exploding viral threads about being the “primary parent“ and “invisible mental load“ rack up millions of views. The comments section inevitably transforms into an empathetic support group—and then, almost always, into something else entirely.

I call it divorce propaganda: a divisive and addictive bandwagon full of keyboard warriors with a favorite target: the do-nothing dad.

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The Constellation of Lies

The narrative assembles itself piece by piece: Men don’t know their kids’ shoe sizes. They couldn’t name their pediatrician. They’ve never signed a permission slip. Because dad isn’t called when a child gets sick at school, he must not be pulling his weight. Mix in statistics about women out-earning men in college degrees, add commentary about the “second shift”—the idea that working mothers come home to a full additional job of housework and childcare that fathers ignore—and sprinkle in messaging that reframes traditionally male characteristics like strength and assertiveness as “toxic.” You’ve now constructed a constellation aimed at one conclusion: men are a net negative when it comes to family life.

The implicit—and sometimes explicit—message? Marriage is a life sentence to being overworked, under-appreciated, and unhappy. You’d be better off alone. Your kids might even be happier with a stepdad who “shares the load.” Hey, they could even get a second Christmas.

There’s just one problem: the data doesn’t support it.

What the Numbers Actually Show

According to an analysis of the American Time Use Survey published by the Institute for Family Studies, American fathers now spend an average of 7.8 hours per week taking care of their children at home—up by a full hour per week in just two decades. College-educated fathers with children under 18 spend an average of 10 hours and 12 minutes per week on child care, up by more than 2 hours since 2003.

But here’s the finding that lays the do-nothing dad myth to rest: research from the Pew Research Center, Brookings Institution, and American Enterprise Institute all confirm the same thing. When you combine paid work, housework, child care, and shopping, married fathers actually work slightly more total hours than married mothers—roughly 59 hours per week compared to 55.

The pattern holds across virtually every household configuration. In dual-income households, dads work 62 hours, while moms work 59 hours. When both parents work full-time, it’s 63 to 62. Even in households where dad works full-time and mom is out of the workforce, the working dad still logs 62 hours of total work—more than the 46 hours logged by a stay-at-home mom.

There is one notable exception: stay-at-home dads dramatically underperform stay-at-home moms, working just 33 hours compared to 46 hours. That’s a real gap, and it’s worth studying. But stay-at-home dads are rare—and even accounting for this exception, the overall data is clear: the “do-nothing dad” is a myth.

The complaint isn’t really about workload. It’s about the type of work.

Yes, mothers do more child care and housework. And fathers do more paid work. The “primary parent” framing only works if you define parenting narrowly—if knowing which kid is allergic to what counts, but providing income stability doesn’t. If remembering teacher names counts, but coaching the soccer team doesn’t. If scheduling doctor appointments counts, but maintaining the family vehicles doesn’t. It’s a rigged game designed to make one parent “real” and the other a bystander in his own family.

The Pattern of Propaganda

Here’s how the propaganda works. It begins with sympathy. A woman posts about feeling overwhelmed—and that’s legitimate. Motherhood can be difficult (so can fatherhood, by the way). Every marriage goes through seasons that are trying. Anyone who’s done both knows the weight of it.

But what comes next from these virtual therapy sessions isn’t often what a good friend would offer. A good friend would listen, guide, push back, and redirect when appropriate. They’re not just a source of affirmation—they occasionally hold up a mirror to help you see things as they really are, not just as you wish they would be.

Instead, the algorithm delivers something else: validation without challenge, sympathy without solution, connection without accountability. The comments pile on:

“You’re the primary parent. No one understands your workload.”

“Your kids won’t truly be happy until you’re happy.”

“You deserve someone who shares the load. Your kids might even be happier.”

And my personal favorite: “Have you considered that he might be a narcissist?”

Ah, yes—” narcissist. “
If you ran a Google Trends search on that term, you’d find it has skyrocketed exponentially over the past decade. It’s become the go-to diagnosis for the divorce propagandists. But here’s what they won’t tell you: Narcissistic Personality Disorder affects approximately 0.5% to 1% of the general population, according to the American Psychiatric Association. The odds that a woman’s husband has a clinical personality disorder are extraordinarily low. But the term has been weaponized far beyond its clinical meaning.

It’s not just dealing with a conflict. It’s not just going through a hard season. No, it’s dealing with someone who has a mental condition. Normal marital challenges—the kind a lifelong, indissoluble covenant is supposed to provide space and safety to work through—get reframed as dangerous pathology. The echo chamber reinforces. And suddenly, ending your marriage seems not just acceptable, but noble. Maybe even most destructively, it seems kind and selfless.

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The Million Dollar Question

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Breaking Through the Misinformation

Here’s another piece of misinformation worth correcting: women don’t need encouragement to divorce. They are already, by far, the initiators. Women initiate approximately 69% of all divorces, according to research from Stanford sociologist Michael Rosenfeld. This isn’t a new phenomenon—women have held a “predominant role in initiating divorces in the U.S. as far back as there is data from a variety of sources, back to the 1940s.”

And here’s the tragic irony: the data overwhelmingly suggests divorce isn’t good for them—or their happiness.

The 2022 General Social Survey—described as “the nation’s preeminent social barometer”—reveals that married mothers are the happiest demographic among women. Among married women with children ages 18-55, 40% report being “very happy,” compared to just 22% of unmarried, childless women. Research from the University of Chicago confirms that marriage is “the most important differentiator” of who is happy in America—married people are 30 percentage points happier than unmarried people.

The propaganda promises that leaving will bring relief, freedom, and happiness. The data shows something else entirely: women who stay married are nearly twice as likely to report being “very happy” as those who don’t. The algorithm is selling a lie.

A Necessary Disclaimer

Let me be unequivocal: no one is trying to convince women to stay in an abusive marriage.

If someone is abusing you, has abandoned you, or is being unfaithful to you, you have every right to leave. We can grieve the dissolution of any marriage without shaming those who leave under these circumstances.

It’s also worth noting: in cases of betrayal, I have walked alongside many couples who collected the pieces and attempted to put them back together. When it works, it can be a powerful testimony to children, family, and the community.

Why am I saying all of this? Because every time I write on this topic, bad actors come out of the woodwork to claim I’m trying to trap women in terrible situations. But here’s the reality: the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction that we are in no danger of a TikTok trend promoting staying in dangerous marriages. The cultural messaging today overwhelmingly encourages women to leave—often at the first sign of difficulty, with no abuse or abandonment in the picture at all. The propaganda I’m describing doesn’t protect women from bad marriages; it convinces women in ordinary marriages that they’re in bad ones.

What Happens If They Win

So what happens if these propagandists succeed? What happens if confidence in marriage continues to erode, if dads continue to be denigrated, if more women are convinced that dissolution is liberation?

The consequences aren’t hypothetical. We’re already living them.

For men: The suicide rate among divorced people is more than three times that of married adults. But for divorced men specifically, the numbers are staggering: divorced men are eight to nine times more likely to die by suicide than divorced women. Ten divorced men take their own lives every day in America. The rate of suicide for separated men is nearly five times higher than for married men, and for separated men under 35, it’s 8.6 times higher.

Divorced men drink more, smoke more, engage in riskier behavior, avoid medical care, and die of preventable diseases at higher rates. For many men, their wife and children are their primary—sometimes only—source of emotional support. When that’s severed, the results are catastrophic.

For children: Children from fatherless homes are twice as likely to drop out of high school, twice as likely to end up in jail, four times more likely to live in poverty, and nine times more likely to need help for emotional or behavioral problems. 63% of youth suicides come from fatherless homes. 85% of children with behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes. 70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions grew up without fathers.

Girls raised without fathers are more than twice as likely to become pregnant as teenagers. Boys raised without fathers are significantly more likely to engage in criminal activity. Nearly three decades of research demonstrate that children living with their married, biological parents consistently have better physical, emotional, and academic outcomes.

For communities: Marriage is the key to self-sufficient families and a small federal government. Strong families need less intervention. When marriages hold, communities hold. Every societal institution designed to catch people when they fall—jails, rehab clinics, homeless shelters, foster care—shrinks when marriages thrive.

This is what happens when the propagandists win. This is what’s at stake.

The Truth We Need to Tell

Fatherlessness is a tragedy—one that ripples across generations, across communities, across the very fabric of society. And to be sure, we all know examples of men who failed to live up to their responsibilities. There are no excuses for them.

But the divorce propagandists have a targeted goal: to use the exceptions to create the rule. Destroy confidence in dads. Destroy confidence in marriage. And watch the institutions that hold society together crumble.

We can’t let them win.

Marriage works. Dads matter. The propaganda is lying to you.

If you’re a woman looking for a partner: find a good man. Marry him. Build something that lasts.

If you have a good dad: thank him. Tell him what he means to you. The world is working overtime to convince him he’s unnecessary—remind him he’s not.

If you are a good dad: be encouraged. The long hours, the thankless tasks, the quiet sacrifices—they matter more than the culture will ever admit. You are doing the work that holds societies together. Don’t believe the lie that you’re replaceable. You’re not.

Marriage is best for women.
Marriage is best for men.
Marriage is best for children.
Marriage is best for all of us.

And despite what the propagandists want you to believe—staying in yours might just be the happiest decision you ever make.

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