The Montreal’s product manager was found handling daycare and, in rare cases where childcare was not available, caring for his 18-month-old daughter while working from home, as his wife worked as a hospital nurse.
“I would tell my colleagues that I might not be 100 percent available,” Corbett said.
“I was trying my best, but (the baby) would not let me work.  He would like to come to me and do things with me while I was working in Excel.  When he slept, I worked.  “Most of the time I worked late at night when he was in bed.”
Research has shown that some fathers reported receiving more housework during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many spent more time at home and many said they were more involved in their children’s lives.  But as once-closed workplaces call for employees to come back, many dads are asking a question that has been asked in the past, mostly by working moms: How can I do it all?
Casey Scheibling, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto, participated in this study, which looked at 1,250 mothers and fathers in heterosexual relationships just over a month after the pandemic began.
He said the division of labor seemed to remain largely the same for most Canadian families when COVID-19 broke out in 2020, with heterosexual women appearing to do most of the housework.  But for about a third of the families surveyed, there has been a shift.
“A significant minority of fathers were more involved in a myriad of different household chores and childcare.  “Playing with children, something that fathers have done a lot historically, but also monitoring their physical care, enforcing rules,” said Scheibling.
“And when it comes to housework, things like cleaning up after a meal, shopping, washing clothes and preparing meals.”
By undertaking this task, Scheibling said, men are fighting “the traditional notions of masculinity with which they grew up”, which value professional achievement over personal and see upbringing as a more feminine role.
Among respondents, the study found that women’s workload also increased and women continued to do most of the work, but the gap narrowed as men took on additional tasks.
Scheibling hoped that dads who stayed home longer during the pandemic learned how much work it takes to support a household and support a family.
“Maybe some of them will remain in the future and this will start to reduce the gender gap in housework,” he said, adding that it would take time for the necessary research to be done to see if this was the case.
Closing the gap will not be easy, said Drew Soleyn, director of Dad Central Ontario, an organization that creates online resources for fathers, some of which run family-run organizations and others that can be accessed by anyone.
“There will be more tension, there will be more stress,” Soleyn said.
“You feel really divided, you say: Well, this is a real priority for me now … How can I navigate?  How can I handle this?  And how can I relate it to both home and work life? “
Soleyn, who is the father of three children under the age of 10, suggested it was too early and people still understand it, but said clarifying priorities on both the personal and professional fronts would be crucial to maintaining a healthy balance between professional and personal life.
“What are one or two key areas you can focus on to ensure that you take care of yourself, but you can also meet the needs of your partner, your children and the whole family in general?” fathers should ask themselves.
From there, he said, they can talk to their partner, if they have one, and their workplace to make sure everyone is on the same page.
“I think you will see a lot of interesting things, a lot of good things, but I think it can also create a lot of challenges depending on the employer’s positions, as well as the approach of dads to navigate the pressures they feel are pulling them.  many directions again, “Soleyn said.
“I feel there will be a lot more discussion in the workplace about managing the demands that parents feel between work and home.”
As for Corbet, he has another baby on the way and a hybrid work schedule that sees him in the office a few days a week, so his life has changed again.
His wife is not working at the moment, as her work was too hard for her body during the pregnancy, so she has taken on some of the parenting duties at the moment.
But he is still preparing for another change when the baby arrives in a few months, and some compromises to make it all work.
“I worked like all day and I worked until late, I finished the day at 6:30 or 7:30.  Now, you need to be in the child’s routine.  “I have to go and get her at the kindergarten at 5:30,” he said.  “So I have to stop and then go back to work later.”
This Canadian Press report was first published on June 17, 2022.