Questions 66-71 are based on the following passage.
Today men are facing new expectations and new choices about their commitments to society, family and work. No longer certain what goals they should pursue, much less how they should pursue them, many men have found themselves in a no-man's land, searching for new meanings and definitions of maturity. In interviews I conducted with 138 men from diverse social and economic background, 36 percent defined their family and work commitments in terms of primary breadwinning, and 30 percent chose to eschew parenthood or to avoid involvement with children they had brought into the world.
However, about 33 percent had moved toward more rather than less family involvement over the course of their lives. These men develop an outlook on parenthood that included caretaking as well as economic support. They represent a growing group of fathers, most of whom are married to work-committed women and have an egalitarian approach toward marriage and family commitments, who are changing diapers, pushing strollers, cuddling their children, and generally sharing in the pleasures and burdens of child rearing. Such men, whom I call "involved fathers", are demonstrating a capacity, a willingness, and an enthusiasm for parenting not seen in their fathers' and grandfathers' generations.
An involved father, however, is not necessarily an equal father. Though men's domestic participation has increased in recent years, his involvement has not kept in pace with women's rapidly rising commitment to paid employment. A persistent "housework gap" has left most women with more work and less leisure time than their male counterparts. According to some estimates, when the time spent performing paid work, housework, and child care is added together, men work an average of 88 fewer hours a year than do women.
It may be tempting to focus on the fact that, even among men who support equality, their involvement as fathers remains a far distance from what most women want and most children need. Yet it is also important to acknowledge how far and how fast many men have moved toward a pattern that not long ago virtually all men considered anathema. One recent survey found that 73 percent of a groups of randomly selected fathers agreed strongly that "their families are the most important facet of their lives"; 87 percent agreed that "dad is as vital as morn in raising kids". The challenge is to create the social and cultural arrangements that would enable men to uphold these beliefs more easily.