Balancing life and work for the modern parent is not so easy

Dads love spending time with their children, but sometimes work gets in the way. Balancing life and work can be especially difficult for today's fathers.

Jennifer Senior, contributing editor at New York magazine and author of "All Joy and No Fun," joined "CBS This Morning: Saturday" to discuss the pressures of work and other priorities on active parenting dads.

Senior said a lot has changed about modern parenthood including when people are having children. The average age now for a woman to have her first child is 33 and for a man 32 years old.

And more women are in the workforce, with women briefly overtaking men in 2012 and changing the dynamics at home.

"We still have no rules and scripts how to divide the chores at home and so we fight. It's a big recipe for domestic tension," Senior said.

Also parents today have the goal of "happy children."'

"The 20th century was the first century that this was deemed a reasonable expectation. We were living well," said Senior.

But Senior said there's no "no curriculum for making a happy kid."

"It's not like teaching somebody to ride a bike," she said.

As for childcare, women are still doing twice as much as men -- women more likely multitasking whereas men would likely be "monotasking," Senior said.

But fathers are doing three times as much childcare now as they did in the 1960s and men are reporting more work conflict now than moms, she said.