A Father’s Day assessment of recession-era dads.

By now, pretty much everyone, their brother, and their mother have weighed in on how the recession is—and isn't—shaking up gender relations here at home. Journalists and researchers alike have questioned whether the downturn might change the balance of power and responsibility for good. They've offered bold pronouncements: Yes. And, well, no. They've dug up real-life tales of men and women for whom layoffs have hit hard, trotting out sagas of lost men and bitter wives one day and forecasts of a revolution in parenthood the next. I've followed the research and soaked up the reporting. I've got just one more story to add to the pile: my own.

It will be months, years even, before we have enough solid data across sectors, race, and class to offer any bulletproof generalizations about the cultural shifts in play. But since when has that stopped us from speculating? In spite of my best efforts to live an unexamined life, my relationship has become a kind of Love Lab for the recession ever since my husband Marco got laid off in January. How do the preliminary findings about downsized men, domesticity, and child care reckon against my personal account? Let's see.

"Finding" No. 1: Laid-off men do neither more child care nor more housework than they did before they lost their jobs. I don't know from child care, but I do know from housework. And I haven't unloaded the dishwasher or done a load of laundry since Marco got canned.

Granted, our shift in chore division has more to do with the fact that Marco's layoff coincided with the onset of my morning (rather, all-day-long) sickness. Just the smell of the refrigerator these days makes me want to puke. Caveat aside, however, I like to tell myself we're "practicing" for when the kids arrive. If Marco doesn't soon find a job, I may continue to be our primary breadwinner, and it's a darn good thing my man knows his way around the kitchen. Thank you, layoff, for teaching my dude to cook. And by the way, my colleagues at the Council on Contemporary Families tell me that this so-called "finding" has already been debunked: It applies only to a bunch of outliers—those men who haven't held jobs in years.

"Finding" No. 2: Traditional men who find themselves in their new, domestic role unexpectedly are resentful and depressed about it, but men—and couples, really—who have fully embraced the "daddy shift" are better-equipped to survive sudden male unemployment. I can't say my man is depressed, but then neither is he traditional. As we prepare for parenthood, we've been mulling over the various configurations that might make our impending family work. Much depends on the timing of when Marco finds employment. In the meantime, my dear husband, who is Puerto Rican, has spent some of his newfound "downtime" reading Jewish texts; he's in the process, actually, of becoming a Jew. Something tells me his idea of nirvana would be staying home with the kids and reading them Maimonides into the night. I'm fine with this, as long as my own income doubles—OK, triples—and I'm still able to breastfeed. Has anyone yet studied the conflicted desires of breadwinning wives?

"Finding" No. 3: Men who lose their jobs feel unmanned by their breadwinning wives. Yesterday, when I held a work-related meeting in our apartment while Marco was massively cleaning house in preparation for the showing we were having that night (we're trying to sell), he later confessed that he felt "sheepishly domestic." It felt viscerally weird, he said, and made him want to crack open those new software manuals he had purchased shortly after the layoff in order to gain new skills between jobs. Great! I thought. Motivation. Nothing wrong in that.