The good news is that paternity leave is getting more attention. The not-so-good news is that men aren't really taking care of the baby when they take time off. In fact, many are using the time to do more work.

That's the finding in a recently released study by University of Virginia professor Steven Rhoads and his son Christopher Rhoads, who teaches at the University of Connecticut. The study, which appears in Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, surveyed 181 married, heterosexual, tenure-track professors with small children.

Here's the real stunner in the report, reports UVa Today:

Only three of 109 male faculty members surveyed reported that they did half or more of the care, while 70 of 73 women reported doing at least half. On average, both men and women professors reported that the mother did more than half the work for all 25 of the child care tasks. This result holds even when the male professor's wife works full-time.

The female professors also reported higher average enjoyment scores than males on 24 of the 25 child care tasks. (The sole exception was managing the division of labor for parenting tasks, which men disliked less than women.)

So men favor "managing" the work—not the actual messy job of parenting. That's nice.

Interestingly, the report suggests that paternity leave be eliminated, because men are using it to further their careers, thereby creating greater inequity for women who actually take time off. Here's how UVa Today describes this thinking:

"In this area, refusal to take sex differences seriously, rather than helping women, leads to a policy that could injure females seeking tenure by giving their male counterparts an unfair advantage," the study concludes. While only about 12 percent of men currently utilize their postbirth leave option, the study finds that "if men should begin to take leave in much larger numbers, far from leveling the playing field, gender-neutral, postbirth leaves are likely to tilt the field further in favor of men."

Sounds fine, except that the authors seem to be making a regressive point—equating biology with destiny. The report cites studies about how male versus female hormones affect child rearing, and how kids just naturally want to cling to mommies. As UVa Today notes, Rhoads senior had argued in a 2004 book, Taking Sex Differences Seriously, "that sex differences in nurturing, aggression, and sex itself are not socially constructed but are instead deeply rooted in biology."

What I find plausible, unfortunately, is that men probably do less child care than women even when they're at home. But eliminating paternity leave as a way to "help" women? You really expect me to fall for that ruse?

Hat tip: Wall Street Journal's The Juggle

Related post: Does Dad Care About Work/Life Balance?

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