Jay-Z music break for baby Blue reflects new daddy nurturer trend

We encounter our fair share of celebrity mom stories here at Modern Parenthood, so it was a nice shift this week when we heard about a celeb dad’s baby gushings.

Rapper Jay-Z, proud papa of four-month-old Blue Ivy Carter, told MTV news Monday that he will be taking a break from the recording studio to spend time with his baby daughter.

“I thought I would be more inspired with all the new feelings and everything that I’d have to write about, but it really happened the other way,” he said. “I just really want to hang out with her. I just want to enjoy those moments for a bit and I’m sure that feeling for music will come back soon.”

Hov seems to be onto a daddy trend here:

According to a recent report from Boston College’s center for Work and Family, a growing number of fathers see their role not just as breadwinner but as nurturer. 

In a survey of nearly 1,000 dads with white collar jobs at Fortune 500 companies, with nearly half earning more than $100,000 a year, Boston College researchers found that a significant majority picked “both caring for my child and earning money to meet his/her financial needs” as the best way to describe how they viewed their responsibility to their children.

Most fathers in this survey, however, didn’t take all that much time off when their children were born. Only one in 20 dads took more than two weeks off after their most recent child was born, and only one in 100 took more than four weeks off.  Sixteen percent did not take any paternity leave at all.

At the same time, researchers found that more than 75 percent of these dads would have liked to spend more time with their babies.

“Collectively, these findings highlight a noteworthy gap between what fathers desire, and what they seem able to do to adjust their work lives after their children are born, both in an immediate sense (e.g., through taking leave) and an ongoing sense (e.g., through using flexible work arrangements.)”

Jay-Z and wife Beyonce Knowles certainly have a lot more job flexibility than most new parents. (Forbes magazine ranked the pair as the country’s second richest celebrity couple, earning an estimated $72 million between May 2010 and May 2011.) And we’re quite sure that as Blue Ivy’s mom and dad go back to work – Jay-Z has announced that he will headline and curate a Philadelphia music festival; Beyonce is scheduled to perform three concerts in Atlantic City over Memorial Day weekend – childcare will not be an issue.

Still, we’re all for Jay-Z being part of this daddy trend, as well: The Boston College survey found that 82 percent of fathers agreed that family life made them feel happy and helped them be a better worker.

This was, perhaps, what was going on when  hit the recording studio days after Blue Ivy’s birth to record his song “Glory.”

“Most amazing feeling I feel, words can’t describe the feeling for real.
Baby I paint the sky blue, my greatest creation was you, you.”

Will we soon hear lyrics about changing diapers? We doubt it.