"We try to look at child care as more of a form of work support."—Lynda Laughlin of the US Census Bureau's Fertility and Family Statistics Branch, explaining why is it that the Census Bureau assumes mothers to be the "designated parent" in a two-parent household, and why further it considers a father providing childcare while mother is at work/school to be a "child care arrangement" but a mother providing childcare while father is at work/school to be designated parenting.
That is to say that the US government is engaging in that most infuriating of parenting tropes: Moms parent and dads babysit.
(Not to mention that they evidently do not consider childcare "work," no matter who is doing it.)
I don't even know what the Census Bureau does with two-parent households in which the parents are the same sex. Curl up in the fetal position, cover its ears, and pitiably whine "No no no no I can't hear you!", presumably.
[H/T to Shaker Rachel.]
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