Don't cheat yourself. The children are permanently connected to both parents even if the parents divorce. Children change marriages dramatically. In chapter 9, we saw that, on average, children reduce marital satisfaction, but increase overall satisfaction with the family situation, i.e. we love our kids. However, mothers still assumed more responsibility for organizing the work and child care, did more of the daily cooking and cleaning, and did more of the dirty work.
Fathers spend more time attending the kids than doing unpleasant chores.
But, in general, we have a new kind of involved dad for the 1990's. Gender roles were discussed at length in chapter 9.