I just came across Gen-Y expert Erica Dhawan’s great report “Busting Gen-Y and Gender Myths." What leapt out at me was when she challenged the myth that "gender progressive” Gen-Y men and women expect to create families with dual careers and to tackle work family balance jointly.

Dhawan successfully shatters that myth with her findings.

KA-BOOM!

If you aren’t waking up to the reality that “gender neutral” policy isn’t working for your working fathers, check out this bomb dropped by a study out of the UK.

I ran into an old college friend at a barbecue the other day.  He has done well for himself in life: a great job in the financial sector, an amazing wife who works for a high end law firm, and three beautiful young children.  Naturally, our conversation gravitated toward fatherhood.  I asked him if he’d taken any time off for the birth of his kids.

“I took three months of parental leave for the first one,” he said.*

Another indicative essay over at FORBES by Dr. Taniv Gautam from Global People Tree.  She talks of speaking at a conference on worklife balance when a man got up and shouted:

“To all you women you think you don’t have a choice, it is really us men who don’t have a choice. I have to go out and make sure I earn a living and provide the security for my family. There is no flexibility!!”

The proof just keeps coming.

Over at the Wall Street Journal last Friday, there was another article about the profound shift that men are undertaking as parents, and the struggles that go along with those changes. The studies and media attention are reflecting a new reality for working dads:  Ward Cleaver is dead and the hands-on, emotionally and physically present dad is becoming the new norm.