EP29: Lessons from the Global Fatherhood Front

Interview with Gary Barker / Leader in the Global Men’s Movement / O.G. Lead Dad

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

Gary Barker is a leading global voice in engaging men and boys in advancing gender equality and creating a positive view of masculinity. He is the CEO and founder of Equimundo, which has worked for 20 years in more than 40 countries - starting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He’s also the founder of MenCare, a global campaign working in 50 countries to promote men’s involvement as caregivers. Gary co-created and leads the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES), the largest-ever survey of men’s attitudes and behaviors related to violence, fatherhood, and gender equality, and is a co-author of the State of the World’s Fathers reports. Listen to him speak about how mens’ roles have changed in the decades he’s been working in the field. 

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Transcript

00;00;05;10 - 00;00;23;15
Paul Sullivan
I'm Paul Sullivan, your host on the Company of Dads podcast, where we explore the sweet, sublime, strange and silly aspects of being a dad and where we're men or the primary parents often feel they have to hide, or at least not talk about the rules. One thing I know from personal experience is being a dad is not a traditional role for men.

00;00;23;20 - 00;00;39;12
Paul Sullivan
Whether you work full time, part time, or all your time to your family, parenting is so often left to mothers are paid caregivers. But here at the Company of Dads, our goal is to take all that off and create a community for fathers who are the dad, and to welcome other dads who want to learn more from them.

00;00;39;15 - 00;01;03;09
Paul Sullivan
Today my guest is Gary Barker. Gary is a leading global voice, engaging men and boys in advancing gender equality and creating a positive view of masculinity. He is the CEO and founder of Commando, which has worked for 20 years in more than 40 countries. Starting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He's also the founder of Men Care, a global campaign working in 50 countries to promote men's involvement as caregivers.

00;01;03;11 - 00;01;25;02
Paul Sullivan
Gary co-created and leads the International Men in Gender Equality survey. The acronym Images, the largest ever survey of men attitudes and behaviors related to violence, fatherhood, and gender equality. He's also the coauthor of the 2015 and 2017 state of the World's Father report. Gary, welcome to the Company of Dads podcast.

00;01;25;04 - 00;01;28;07
Gary Barker
Thanks for having me. Love to talk about this stuff.

00;01;28;09 - 00;01;48;09
Paul Sullivan
I know there's that. In addition to being a leading voice in the men care and men care space. You are also an LG lead dad. Tell us about this. Tell us about your time in Chicago, what you're doing there, and how you took on this role as the dad. Pretty wife and daughter when you were in Chicago?

00;01;48;12 - 00;02;14;02
Gary Barker
Yeah. So my important detail that my wife's Brazilian, she graciously agreed to, you know, move her to that cold weather. When I worked on my PhD in child development, which is a great, space to talk about fatherhood in terms of, well, often our invisibility as fathers in the child development field and literature and all that, but also a great space.

00;02;14;02 - 00;02;41;11
Gary Barker
Just like, how am I stepping into this role of being a father? In those, you know, long, cold winters in Chicago and not traveling too much and, you know, living in our small graduate student apartment said, yes, let's become parents. This, you know, like a good idea. And it was it was, you know, it was desired and planned and, what we didn't really think as much about is, you know, and all the excitement of making a child the,

00;02;41;13 - 00;03;01;27
Gary Barker
Okay, now, there's a lot of caregiving that comes, and, and I had been learning, you know, all this, the theory of how, small humans come into the world and interact with their caregivers and what good caregivers should do. And then there's that cold winter day when, the child comes your way and you're like, oh, my God, I'm not prepared for this.

00;03;01;27 - 00;03;02;16
Gary Barker
And,

00;03;02;18 - 00;03;06;19
Paul Sullivan
I love this. This is classic graduate school. This is theory versus practice.

00;03;06;22 - 00;03;28;21
Gary Barker
Practice. Oh my God, it's you know, who knew how to change? You know, a baby girl. You went what? That's not in any of the textbooks or the studies and, and the panic in the pit of your stomach of. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. And you're, you know, my dear mom needing to, kind of leave us behind and going, oh, my God, we barely have any, you know, social network here.

00;03;28;21 - 00;03;49;06
Gary Barker
What, now? Yeah. Combined with that, my wife had taken. She's a she's a, both a therapist and, been a, expert in public health. She was working, at one of Chicago's community health centers as the lead therapist. And she had a full time job, and I had a part time job, and she was the main breadwinner.

00;03;49;08 - 00;04;14;06
Gary Barker
And she reminded me that Brazil has five months paid maternity leave and that she had started a job that gave her it was something like 14 weeks, partially paid as disability leave. And she said, well, you know, this backward country that calls pregnancy a disability and has kind of, you know, very little leave. So what are what are we you, my dear husband, going to do?

00;04;14;08 - 00;04;32;24
Gary Barker
So a couple of days a week, I was the full hands on caregiver. We had a nanny who gradually took over, you know, kind of stepped in a few, you know, after after kind of 4 or 5 months and was there for three days a week. And I was the hands on caregiver and often the, the coordinator of the nanny care as well.

00;04;32;24 - 00;04;35;08
Paul Sullivan
So that's that role right there.

00;04;35;11 - 00;04;44;07
Gary Barker
All the, all those roles for, you know, the good the year before we moved back to Brazil, where it's much easier to have lots of other care around, I was the main caregiver.

00;04;44;14 - 00;04;47;15
Paul Sullivan
What what what month, what month was your daughter born?

00;04;47;17 - 00;04;49;02
Gary Barker
She was born in December.

00;04;49;04 - 00;05;13;28
Paul Sullivan
Oh, wow. Because I went to graduate school as well in Chicago. And I remember saying, there are two seasons, in Chicago, there's winter and construction. So it's just as you said, this was winter born in December. And so you've got a good like five months of frigid weather, but the small human can't move the small room. And, he doesn't need to go like this, but you're trying to, be a graduate student.

00;05;13;28 - 00;05;28;12
Paul Sullivan
You're trying to do your your your work. Your wife is out of the house. She's, you know, at the hospital. What was it like? What do you what do you know when you look back and you were going to go into your work in the fatherhood space, in the men's space, but what what lessons did you take from that?

00;05;28;12 - 00;05;29;05
Paul Sullivan
That you didn't mean that?

00;05;29;06 - 00;05;50;05
Gary Barker
Yeah. That's that I thank you for asking. You know, I think the first part was like this, this amazing giving up of my own expectations and giving up that illusion that you sort of control your destiny, that you started a day off thinking this day I have these three articles to read, and I need to be working on this piece of a paper.

00;05;50;05 - 00;06;07;25
Gary Barker
And I also was a part time researcher on a project that I was going to get this one interview done for that study I was involved in, and the day came with, you know, with my daughter needing X or Y, and I went, oh, suddenly there was 15 minutes for me to do what I thought was going to be three hours of work when she was napping.

00;06;07;27 - 00;06;27;12
Gary Barker
And then you realize, well, no, because when she's napping, you're preparing for the next meal. You're cleaning all the stuff that is, you know, happened to you and to the floor and to the things she's been wearing and to be minimally ready, I might even need to sleep because she slept, you know, and very unevenly, until she was, you know, 5 or 6.

00;06;27;16 - 00;06;46;07
Gary Barker
Yeah. So there was also the desire of going, oh, my God, I do have an hour now to myself, but if I don't sleep, I can't function when she wakes up in an hour. So it was just this moment of like how to let go and realize, oh, I didn't, you know, I kind of thought she was this lovely little package that she'd wake up in those prescribed.

00;06;46;07 - 00;07;06;29
Gary Barker
Yeah. And you'd feed her in those prescribed moments. The amount of stuff that would come out to the diaper would be prescribed amounts. Right? That everything was set up. And at the end there was this lesson of just going, I'm going to see what happens this week, you know, and today I don't know what's going to happen, but I might get this reading them, but it might happen at 11 at night.

00;07;07;01 - 00;07;21;20
Gary Barker
And I you know, I do think there's a like a humility and then a certain moment of just, you know, when you try to fight back on that and get her to fit a schedule that you thought you could make and then there's a moment of just letting go with that and going, this is kind of cool. I'm just it's a different wavelength.

00;07;21;20 - 00;07;55;06
Gary Barker
It's a different language. It's I'm used to being a scientist, and now I'm being a, you know, an ad hoc artist trying to make it up on the fly. And it was fun. And also, you know, I mean, I had this deep, deep empathy for what moms go through all the time. And remembering my mother, who was mostly a stay at home mom for three of us of just with she maybe didn't say these words, but just like the boredom and isolation of it as well, it can get, you know, I mean, I had not experienced many eight hour days where I didn't speak with another adult.

00;07;55;08 - 00;07;56;15
Gary Barker
Right. That's it's weird.

00;07;56;15 - 00;08;00;07
Paul Sullivan
There weren't there weren't, like, other graduate students who had kids.

00;08;00;10 - 00;08;04;12
Gary Barker
I them you know, you don't have to finish that sentence.

00;08;04;14 - 00;08;19;04
Paul Sullivan
Right. Fair enough. I don't know so well because, you know, when I wrote my first book, my wife was pregnant with our first child, and I think this is, you know, this is fine. This is easy because, like, my wife would go to bed early because she was tired, because she's pregnant and I get a lot of work done.

00;08;19;07 - 00;08;34;11
Paul Sullivan
And then, I saw the second book when she was, pregnant with our second daughter, and I said, oh, this is going to be easy. And of course, it wasn't, because now I had I already had a daughter. And the second one didn't sleep the way the first one did. And I have this distinct memory of probably my favorite chapter in the second book.

00;08;34;11 - 00;08;52;15
Paul Sullivan
I essentially wrote it in my mind, doing laps in my kitchen like two in the morning. I was like, oh my goodness, what am I going to do here? And then like trying to remember it all and as if it's manic State. So after a year, you hightail it out of Chicago, you go back to Brazil.

00;08;52;15 - 00;09;12;14
Paul Sullivan
But I mean, talk to me about, you know, how equipment does start. I used to be known as Prem. Yeah, but. But how it started. But also how, you know, you develop this this interest in working in the men care space and working with, you know, masculinity and and positive images of men and fatherhood. How did that come about as an interest to you?

00;09;12;16 - 00;09;32;29
Gary Barker
Yeah. You know, so the I mean, I would say if you had those vocational tests that they gave us back in sixth and seventh grade, where you think about your profession, right? There was not a there was not a box on that on that test. That was, you know, be a gender equality advocate and work on healthy masculinity.

00;09;33;01 - 00;09;35;11
Gary Barker
It was just it was not a job category.

00;09;35;13 - 00;09;37;16
Paul Sullivan
You had to scroll. You had to flip to the next page, which.

00;09;37;16 - 00;09;56;23
Gary Barker
Was a lot of pages before you got to that one. You know, it was it was down there past a lot of other noble professions that not many people got there to that last page. I mean, it was just it was what, you know, I saw growing up and then, inspired by a lot of women who were have been leading this field for so long.

00;09;56;23 - 00;10;19;27
Gary Barker
So among those things I saw were, a shooting in my high school, in Houston, Texas, a young man with his stepfather's gun. And I won't go into details of that, but, it is, you know, a this was the late 70s, you know, I mean, we started counting mass shootings and school shootings in the early 80s.

00;10;19;27 - 00;10;48;00
Gary Barker
This was part of it. We've had this forever in the US. And very kind of keenly aware of the versions of manhood that played out in, in the midst of all that, a couple of years later, freshman year, big public university in Texas, five young men take a trunk and one went back to their dorm room, in my dorm and had, you know, non-consensual sex with her in my dorm did close to nothing about it.

00;10;48;03 - 00;11;08;05
Gary Barker
I ended up writing about this stuff, including abortion activism and gun control in my in in same said big state University in Texas. Got some threats when I stepped out of I was doing journalism as my undergrad, getting some threats of, you know, this this is what we're going to do to you, managing editor Barker.

00;11;08;07 - 00;11;35;06
Gary Barker
When we see you drive out from the newspaper in the evening, and, you know, kind of finding a conversation about manhood in women's rights activists, in women, women's rights activists, ended up working in Latin America on issues related to violence and violence prevention. And with a lot of amazing women who were creating a space of this work needs men, this that mean the prevention of violence is men's violence.

00;11;35;06 - 00;11;54;29
Gary Barker
And we need men to be part of that. And we need men to be part of the overall gender equality equation. And then my doctorate came in the middle of that of you know, there's the theory of what do men have to do with raising children? And then there's the lived experience of, you know, human male. Here's a human child right here.

00;11;55;01 - 00;12;01;09
Gary Barker
You the adult care for this one? Do it well, because it's everything that matters to you right now.

00;12;01;09 - 00;12;08;25
Paul Sullivan
Or not even do it. Well, just just do it, do it, do it. You know, with paying attention, you know, and actually, nobody comes out as an expert, you know, just.

00;12;08;28 - 00;12;36;20
Gary Barker
Well, you know, that's the masculinity part of it, right? That we have to not only do it but do it well. Right. So and so all those things combine to say, my, my doctoral dissertation was looking at young men both in Chicago and in Rio de Janeiro, who found who lived in highly violent and where, where violent versions of manhood, whether gang related or police for them, you know, kind of the two leading ones just captured.

00;12;36;20 - 00;13;05;07
Gary Barker
So many hearts and minds of young men. And I looked at young men who found ways to stay out of this, to find healthy versions of masculinity. Many of them were young, involve fathers, not all, but, found fatherhood is one way out. Connections to others, a female partner, a grandmother, an identity that was different from carrying weapons and threatening others to to being artistic or musical, or being good at school or being, involved in a religion that kind of pulled you out of it.

00;13;05;07 - 00;13;21;21
Gary Barker
Multiple stuff. But I that was the framing of creating the organization to say, let's flip the equation around and say, not kind of why do men become violent or unequal, but to say, what are the factors that we know allow men to be nonviolent and caring that, and that.

00;13;21;23 - 00;13;29;28
Paul Sullivan
What were some of those when you think of this, those factors, sort of, you know, that really stick out over 20 years and 40? I mean, what are those? What are the main factors.

00;13;30;00 - 00;13;51;05
Gary Barker
Men who are allowed to be their caring selves? Sometimes that was in the context of being a young father without wanting to. So a lot of teen dads, who didn't plan for it, but who can find a way to be connected, find that it shifts, you know, the same thing that we do as dads when kind of your life view, you know, you're your your worldview is flipped when you take that on.

00;13;51;05 - 00;14;11;13
Gary Barker
Involve that fatherhood is one of those, somebody in their caregiving environment. Often it was not a dad because many of the dads were away or imprisoned or, died early, often a female family member who said, you're not going that way. We're keeping you. You may have seen your father use violence. You may have seen other men around you.

00;14;11;16 - 00;14;37;10
Gary Barker
We're keeping you here. That's not what manhood is about. Peer groups made a huge amount. Did you end up in a peer group that were mostly gang connected or involved in violence, or did you gravitate, find, you know, a peer group that said, no, we're into being a good, you know, being good for our neighborhoods and we do sports or we do music, or we do something that says we don't want to go down that pathway.

00;14;37;12 - 00;14;57;29
Gary Barker
Guys who had lost brothers or cousins and had seen somebody else go to prison before the age of 20 or had lost them because they'd been killed in gang violence, or police violence, saying, oh my God, I'm panicked about this, and I'm okay to say that and I want to do something else. All those were the factors that allowed.

00;14;58;02 - 00;15;09;12
Gary Barker
And I looked at, you know, young men whose brothers or cousins had been gang involved. So it was kind of, you know, asking the question why some and others not? So, yeah, those were the factors.

00;15;09;16 - 00;15;27;00
Paul Sullivan
Is I mean, when I listen to is, is that through line something along the lines of they had, a sense beyond themselves that there something, you know, more than just them, that they weren't alone in the world, be it fatherhood, be it, you know, be it ever be. So talk about feed or the arts. You talked about a grandma or mom who cared.

00;15;27;00 - 00;15;38;25
Paul Sullivan
You talked about, you know, you know, sort of not towards your mouth, but, you know, you lost a brother. Well, you don't want to do that to your your mom or dad and have them lose another one. Is that that sense of, you know, not being alone in the world. And there.

00;15;38;27 - 00;15;47;18
Gary Barker
Yeah, I think that was a huge win of kind of stepping back from the. Yeah, that that life doesn't just happen to me, but also feeling a sense of agency.

00;15;47;20 - 00;15;47;27
Paul Sullivan
Yeah.

00;15;47;27 - 00;16;11;22
Gary Barker
So I think one is that agency part, but the other is yeah. Relationships. Right. To acknowledge that we're related, you know, that I'm a relational being. That's a word and that's an expression I'm using that they didn't use. But yeah, somebody around me would suffer if I went down that path. Yeah. And somebody who I knew cared deeply about me and who I cared deeply about them, and some of the guys would even say that right.

00;16;11;22 - 00;16;31;15
Gary Barker
Of. And sometimes it was a father. It was it was more often women just because women in low income, settings, both in Brazil, in the US, are often the ones holding households together. But it was. Yeah, it was often, you know, if this happens to me, this is what it will mean to my grandmother, my mother, the aunt who has raised me.

00;16;31;17 - 00;16;51;24
Gary Barker
So I think, you know, kind of helping boys have our sense of self as we're connected to others who have cared for us and who continue to care about us and who we care about, is kind of a muscle that we need to help boys flex. And, you know, often we spend a lot of energy, literally beating that out of boys.

00;16;51;26 - 00;17;27;11
Paul Sullivan
When you think about, you know, so I said the topic that starts in Brazil, spreads to 39 other countries where it does work. When you think of the different perceptions of, of men as fathers and providers and caregivers, conversation, what countries stick out to you as either having, particularly, a positive view of men as fathers, providers and caregivers or are the opposite, having a view that really needs, a lot of challenging, hopefully a lot of, updating for it to be more positive.

00;17;27;17 - 00;17;28;27
Paul Sullivan
Yeah.

00;17;28;29 - 00;17;52;01
Gary Barker
Yeah. Good quote. I mean, there's, you know, there's probably more variation like within a given country than there is across countries, right? Just, you know, I mean, one, one commonality, you know, one of the projects we did in Brazil, for example, you know, folks might look at a favela, low income areas in urban areas in Brazil and say, wow, this is, you know, it's full of violent men and there's lots of absent men, which is partly true.

00;17;52;04 - 00;18;13;01
Gary Barker
But at the same time, we did some projects where we put phones or cameras in children's hands and said, take pictures of men doing care as however you define care. And we had no shortage of photos. Children could see men all the time doing stuff that the middle class world and particularly, you know, a white majority world might look and say, you know, no, those men don't do it.

00;18;13;01 - 00;18;30;29
Gary Barker
They must be lots of absent fathers and say there might be absent biological fathers, but there's no shortage of men doing hands on care of children all the time, from playing to bathing to feeding. You know, so, so one would be to say there's a lot the, the kind of reboot that needs to be done in some parts of the world.

00;18;30;29 - 00;18;50;21
Gary Barker
And I would say we've got a similar bias toward low income families of color in the US. We tend to think of them as farther absent places where, you know, men just aren't doing their part. But if we flip it around and look closely, there's men doing a huge amount of hands on care of children in very positive ways.

00;18;50;23 - 00;19;12;16
Gary Barker
So I just, you know, give to contrast or similarities between the, the US and elsewhere. I mean, there's a very just about everywhere we've looked. So, you mentioned are images study that's been in nearly 50 countries, just about everywhere we look, there is a sense that fatherhood is a positive thing. It is good for men to exert some role in their children's lives.

00;19;12;23 - 00;19;46;24
Gary Barker
Some of that's more just the moral. He sees the children for, you know, an hour in the evening and he's the disciplinary force. But in many settings it is valued for the, the affection part of it as well. That seems pretty universal. The big differences, you know, and where there's big cultural gaps is whether is it seen that the hands on care of children, the cleaning, the bathing, the, you know, the diaper changing, the being emotionally responsive to your child, there's lots of parts of the world that's not seen as something men should do.

00;19;46;27 - 00;20;12;14
Gary Barker
That might be some parts of sub-Saharan Africa. There's parts of southern Europe. I would say that that can be common as well. There's and then there's, you know, some parts of Asia where men's physical connection and their affection is quite high, but they don't think that or the no norms, it's not them as individuals. The norms don't propose that they do the hands on cleaning and bathing and such that that's women's work.

00;20;12;16 - 00;20;41;07
Gary Barker
But close physical affection and emotional affection is considered part of, you know, the average fathers repertoire. So, you know, and then and then there's a few countries who kind of take, yes, men should do their hand, their, their share of it. And we believe in the close, affectionate relationships. And I think that's what, you know, a lot of men in the US or after, I think that's what the Scandinavians and Canada and some other parts of the world have tried to promote.

00;20;41;07 - 00;20;57;07
Gary Barker
Right? Have had to say it's all the above. And in fact, when we finish that phrase, it means that a parent is a parent and it matters far less, you know, are they male or female? I guess that's what I would go with as a taxonomy of kind of how we share how we see this across the world.

00;20;57;14 - 00;21;28;06
Paul Sullivan
Now, I had a man that, reached out to me, last week from India and started a father. Other group calls them like, cool Dad. Yeah, but what he was trying to do, it just get, you know, sort of upper middle class, Indian dads to sort of go to the park with their kids, play with the kids, go to the sports with their kids, as opposed to, you know, leaving that to to caregivers or demands when, when the men were fully capable of going and, you know, you know, playing soccer with the kids.

00;21;28;08 - 00;21;41;26
Paul Sullivan
You know, when you think about the 20 years you've been at 20 years plus that you've been at this, where is the trend line? Is it moving in a positive direction, or is it is it much more complicated than that?

00;21;41;28 - 00;21;56;16
Gary Barker
Yeah, I wish I you know, that Martin Luther King phrase of, you know, the the moral arc bends in the right direction, but it's it's not I'm, I'm butchering that quote, but it, yeah, it's not a straight line, but it bends in the right direction, I believe if that's the.

00;21;56;18 - 00;21;56;25
Paul Sullivan
Yeah.

00;21;56;28 - 00;22;23;15
Gary Barker
Close, close version of it. You know, I do think, I mean the, the weight of the women's equality movement and changing laws and policies and workplaces so that we that, you know, women, we haven't achieved equality there. But we believe in that equality. We've made something like it happen in schools. And it you know, all the world's governments have some laws in place saying that men and women should be equal.

00;22;23;18 - 00;22;39;18
Gary Barker
And the devil's in the details, obviously. So I think, you know, one trend is that's there. And then what's up with men? You know, where according to our analysis of the data for middle income countries where 90 plus years away from hands on care equality, that is who does what at home.

00;22;39;18 - 00;22;40;28
Paul Sullivan
What?

00;22;41;01 - 00;23;01;12
Gary Barker
So there's change happening, but it's just far too slow. That was data before Covid. Covid was clearly, you know, a, huge, you know, as they call those in legal contracts act of God. Right. The force majeure. Force majeure. Yeah. Yeah. That, you know, just made men around the world be present. At least they were at home.

00;23;01;19 - 00;23;25;12
Gary Barker
Whether we did more hands on care work is another question. But some you know, most data says we do. We did. We have and some of us will probably keep doing more of that because of this force majeure. Now women continue to do more as we asked them because everybody was doing more. And it we started off in unequal, but we've never had a kick or a nudge or a push as big as Covid to get more men to do more care work.

00;23;25;14 - 00;23;45;01
Paul Sullivan
But it also, I mean, as you know, the companies had the idea for the company of dads, came out of, Covid of all being together and being being together, but also being apart. But it also, I think for and I was always very involved with that. But I think about you know, this time where people couldn't really, they couldn't really fib about what they were doing anymore.

00;23;45;01 - 00;24;03;28
Paul Sullivan
If you were, you know, obviously plenty of frontline workers were out there. But if you if you were, you know, if the world 70 pauses and you're at home, you can't really, tell your partner or your wife, hey, I'm really busy. I'm doing this. You. Well, so so am I. And, you know, and I don't I, I am by disposition and optimistic, guys.

00;24;03;28 - 00;24;23;08
Paul Sullivan
I'm hoping it it continues forward. But what do you think helps, you know, you know, the headlines go contain that trend where it doesn't take 90 years for us ways to get there. What is it? Is it support from government? Is it support from, the workplace? Is it you know, we also have, you know, short, short memories.

00;24;23;13 - 00;24;28;05
Paul Sullivan
We can pretty quickly, if we're not careful, get back into our old routine.

00;24;28;07 - 00;24;48;09
Gary Barker
Yeah. Good point. I mean, I think it's all the above. I mean, it certainly matters that there's a cultural shift, and I think, you know, what you're doing with Company of Dads is both trying to drive the cultural shift. And you're part of the cultural shift, right? Of you represented right, that kind of life. And as I've heard you talk about it, you know, sort of life led you to this path of this made sense for your household.

00;24;48;10 - 00;25;09;07
Gary Barker
That was what led me to be, you know, the stay at home dad for my daughters or for for at least part time, stay at home dad for her first year of life. And so, you know, I think one of we do need the cultural shift that involves lots of us speaking out about it, making it normal, trying to get, you know, TV and media and cultural, you know, icons to say this is a normal thing, do it.

00;25;09;07 - 00;25;30;08
Gary Barker
It's good. We all benefit when it happens. So I think it's the cultural part that's got to keep, you know, keep turning up that volume. And then we definitely need the policies that support we've seen again and again how memes, good intentions to take say, let's say take parental leave. Right. Or, you know, they, they hit a wall when men look at, you know.

00;25;30;08 - 00;25;50;07
Gary Barker
Well, I don't think other men in my workplace do this because, you know, they don't consider serious workers. You know, we're not considered serious hustlers if we if we take all those full days of leave. Yeah. So we've asked men, why don't you know if your company offers or if your state offers or if you live in a country that offers, why don't you take the same full number of days that women take?

00;25;50;09 - 00;26;09;03
Gary Barker
The reasons are always about I didn't think it was, you know, it would look good on my career. I was worried of what my career would do. So clearly workplaces need to be in there full on saying everybody's a caregiver or a part time caregiver and a part time worker. That's normal. We don't care if male, female, non-binary, that's, you know, the same for all of us.

00;26;09;05 - 00;26;30;29
Gary Barker
Policies that say, you know, you, you shouldn't have to make trade offs of whose work ends up being curtailed. We should be able to decide that as a household. We want that to be just. We need, you know, subsidized childcare that goes with it. So it's, you know, we don't have to make those hard calculations of, oh, should one of us not be working because it's so expensive to have childcare.

00;26;31;01 - 00;26;56;09
Gary Barker
So clearly, you know, getting the workplace and our governments as taxpayers, to cover, you know, a cost of a public good, which is children being well cared for. And then I, you know, I think starting early at, you know, what we will call the gender divide or the gender binary, which is we keep making this idea that cares feminine and conquering and achieving and producing is masculine.

00;26;56;11 - 00;27;20;24
Gary Barker
We've done a little bit of shifting on the achieving. Conquering. It can be feminine too, but the care work is still considered feminine. Look at 90 plus percent of of, of kindergarten teachers and care workers, whether that's childcare or adult care workers. It is still, you know, considered feminine. So I think we've got that big shift to, to get to get over as well, to say, care is human.

00;27;20;24 - 00;27;41;10
Gary Barker
We all have to do it. It's not only we have to do it, it brings us life and well-being. I love to interview occasionally or hear from male care workers who talk about men. You know, I could have been I could have been a security guard at store X. Nothing against security guards. We need them some places. But he said, man, I get to hang out with young kids.

00;27;41;13 - 00;27;51;11
Gary Barker
I get the immediate joy and affection. You know, it's just like, what a job that or or eldercare as well. Yeah, right. Hearing like I'm connected in their lives.

00;27;51;13 - 00;27;58;29
Paul Sullivan
I'm a and you're really helping. You're really making it. Really not not yeah. Not that security guards don't help make sure. But you're really like, you know, you are that that person. Yeah.

00;27;59;05 - 00;28;07;22
Gary Barker
I mean job satisfaction of just going, you know, look at this. So anyway, I think all those cultural workplace policy, all the above.

00;28;07;24 - 00;28;36;16
Paul Sullivan
You know, one of the things you worked on, recently was a study with the Gina Davis Institute that looked at how men as caregivers were portrayed in film and TV. And, some parts are that study are positive and good. Some parts show that we still have a lot of work. Talk a bit about that study and you know, what it showed and how, you know, perhaps you, you know, changing the views of caregivers of men as caregivers might, might help us more broadly.

00;28;36;20 - 00;29;00;23
Gary Barker
Yeah. You know, yeah, we've been inspired by Gina Davis and the institute's work for, whatever, eight, ten years. And I had the chance to be on a panel when they were presenting some of their data about women and how women were portrayed and kind of the most watched TV and film in the US. And, you know, struck by Gina Davis's comment, kind of obvious that our lives are produced by what we see in media, among many other things.

00;29;00;23 - 00;29;29;10
Gary Barker
And her message that if she can see it, she can be it, you know, and having a career, what she wanted to live empowered women because other women told her just how important that was. And I kept thinking, oh my God, we need an equivalent kind of, you know, a different but equivalent version of men saying that we can be different given social permission to be different, better people, taking the good things we already do and getting better at other ones.

00;29;29;12 - 00;29;46;21
Gary Barker
And so we've now done, three studies with them on kind of how manhood is presented. And this most recent one was about fatherhood. The good news part of the of the story is looking at the most watched TV over the last ten years. There's just about equal presentations of men as caregivers, as there are women as caregivers.

00;29;46;23 - 00;29;56;13
Gary Barker
So the good thing is that men are seeing their their on the screen doing care work, nearly as often as women, do. Now, this is not a surprise that there's not a lot of.

00;29;56;18 - 00;29;59;06
Paul Sullivan
The the bumbling dad, the bungling, you.

00;29;59;06 - 00;30;22;02
Gary Barker
Know, the how. You know, there's the there's the kicker or the, you know, the punch line, which is how our dads presented. Right? I mean, first off, the fitness, the first headline, caregiving as a thing presented in Hollywood is really not the central story that, you know, I think we miss a lot of opportunities to tell deeper stories about care and and make care and caregiving like more of Hollywood stories.

00;30;22;05 - 00;30;40;08
Gary Barker
So one is just among main leading characters. Caregiving is just not usual. You know, it's not that big of a thing in storytelling in Hollywood. Now, the other part is that, you know, so great men are shown on screen doing what? And you just, you know, you just hinted at what is it? We're either we're bumbling or incompetent.

00;30;40;08 - 00;30;58;26
Gary Barker
We called it The Apprentice. Dad always learning, always needs a female partner to teach him, which, you know, hey, granted, that's true for a lot of guys because we haven't learned it, but it's not presented and kind of just as many of us, you know, are or, you know, as my partner would have said, she didn't know how to do the caregiving either until she did it.

00;30;58;26 - 00;31;24;27
Gary Barker
Right. We're all learning. So like, do not you know that that trope was maybe funny like it a couple, you know, ten years ago now it's kind of time to update it. And the other is just the emotional absence, right, of just how much dads were not shown being the emotional support, having deeper conversations with their kids, able to talk about, you know, what is emotionally concerning their children so that, you know, we're we actually know that we're more than just Uber dads.

00;31;25;00 - 00;31;47;22
Gary Barker
I mean, Uber like Uber driver dads, we're more than just like picking up, not like Uber like great like Uber, as in just, you know, we can get the task done, you know, and just keep our our straight you know non emotional face. So I think the emotional one is the one that concerns me the most. Because I think that's where dads find men, find their, you know their their stake in caregiving.

00;31;47;25 - 00;32;10;21
Gary Barker
It's the you know, as particularly as we look at a world in, you know, coming out of the well, we're not even out of it. Right. If we look at the economic instability, we're in a moment, you know, of, of a quite big conflict happening in the center of Europe, all the stuff that's happening, our political upheaval in this country, you know, it is a moment where it's all hands on deck to support each other around anxiety and being our better selves.

00;32;10;24 - 00;32;29;23
Gary Barker
And I just want to, you know, I want to see men seeing versions of themselves being deeply caring, connected, emotional, you know, oh, I mean, heart opened guys, connecting, connecting and caregiving. And that seems to be missing with some amazing, you know, exceptions of shows out there who do it. Well.

00;32;29;25 - 00;32;52;18
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. I mean, when I this is obviously one of my passions is to sort of to change the narrative here at, you know, a couple podcasts that talk to a woman named Dana Suskind, a great surgeon, actually, at the University of Chicago, who just wrote a book called Parent Nation. And in it, she tells the story of, her first husband died tragically trying to save the lives, saving the lives of two kids who are drowning.

00;32;52;18 - 00;33;21;02
Paul Sullivan
But, with his own three kids, he was a very involved, father, and as well as being a famous surgeon, like the head of surgery at the University of Iowa. But he would put in his his, his diary back then he put a line that said, you know, you know, this was a bit of essentially like, you know, super important, not to be moved, triple top secret meeting with, an equally, stupendous, doctor at the escargot and a nobody.

00;33;21;07 - 00;33;39;21
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. Everyone was afraid of him, so they didn't do anything. And then one day, one of his, you know, residencies, learning from them, sees him, on the field watching one of his children play a sport. Any guy cheekily comes up to me and says, is this the super top secret? Not to be moved. And he said of shock, this famous surgeon is shocked.

00;33;39;23 - 00;34;06;04
Paul Sullivan
But then they have an inside joke, and I think we have come to a point where in our work calendar we put, going to, child's graduation, whatever grade it is kindergarten, seventh grade, 12, whatever. Go into this child's sporting event or, artistic performance, that would be fine. But in my heart of hearts, I would love it for a moment where we could say, you know, an hour block here or 90 minute block here.

00;34;06;06 - 00;34;29;28
Paul Sullivan
Need to take a walk with daughter, have conversation, getting ice cream. And people would say, oh, okay. He's a human. He's not just a worker. He is human. And knowing that we'd have these, you know, you hire people, you you trust people that they're going to get the job done. And, you know, parenting doesn't just happen, you know, before 9:00 and and after 6:00 at night.

00;34;29;28 - 00;34;44;19
Paul Sullivan
Nor does it just happen if we even if we had paid parental leave, that would be a wonderful place to start. But, what happens after those first couple of months? Like, it doesn't, you know, it's not like it's suddenly get super easy, like, okay, we're we hit the six month mark. It shouldn't be a problem.

00;34;44;21 - 00;35;09;07
Gary Barker
On your own small human and conquer the world. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, there's a couple of examples. Again, we we look at, you know, usually Western European nations that have good social welfare systems because they've typically tried some of this. Right. The Swedish, parental leave allows you to take of those days. That's that's almost two years for a couple in total up until you try those 12.

00;35;09;09 - 00;35;27;06
Gary Barker
So essentially, you take the equivalent of your Social Security number. And when you take those days leave, you simply push them in there and you can take those, you know, X amount when your child's at you know, at an infant you can take and, you know, keep track of how many of those days you have and you can use them up until the child is 12.

00;35;27;09 - 00;35;44;28
Gary Barker
And, you know, it's taken them a couple of decades to get this built into their the way that one operates. But you know, you know, you have these days and clearly there's similar pressures on Swedish men and women to, you know, fill in the job and employers will complain about it because, you know, they have stuff to get done that's important.

00;35;44;28 - 00;36;02;11
Gary Barker
And it can involve running planes and trains and carrying out surgery and, you know, fixing your TV and all that stuff that we need done every day. But you build it in, you just bake it into. We all need this time the Dutch. I don't remember the exact details of it, but they've got if you've got children and I remember what the the cutoff is.

00;36;02;11 - 00;36;21;06
Gary Barker
If it's 12, they have Wednesday afternoons and I believe Friday afternoons that are kind of family time. And so again, I kind of institutionalize that. I if I'm a parent, I get to leave work and it's considered that I'm off. So you've sort of a built in part time and I think it makes their workweek, whatever. 35 hours or something.

00;36;21;08 - 00;36;44;01
Gary Barker
And again, ways that make it more formal. Yeah. And so you will know that, you know, that Wednesday afternoon and the Friday afternoons are when parents may be out shopping with kids or doing sports or doing outings or simply just like a breather in the middle of the week. Yeah. To do care work. And then you, you know, again, it doesn't have to be I have to be, you know, the brave, clever surgeon to find the time.

00;36;44;01 - 00;36;53;06
Gary Barker
And but I love that. It's like surgically finding time in my skin. Yeah. This is we all just make it, you know, make it normal. So. Yeah. I agree with you.

00;36;53;08 - 00;37;12;07
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. What do you think about in the last time you did a state of the father survey in 2017? And if you were to redo that survey today, you know, in 2020, do you do it for next year? What are some of the questions that you would really want to ask? Some of the answers that you'd really want to get now what you learned.

00;37;12;07 - 00;37;38;00
Gary Barker
Back then we what we actually my my, my, my bios are out of date there. We did a 19. When in 19 and 1 in 21 as well. The 19 win involved surveys in 13 countries. And there we were looking a lot about, men's take up of time. That is how much time they spent and their take up of leave and comparing countries that had generous leave policies in countries like the US that have no national level leave.

00;37;38;00 - 00;38;08;26
Gary Barker
But we've got lots of individual companies and state level stuff, and looked really about kind of men's care of children and particularly their biological children or children. They had adopted one thing we're going to do the next round is to look at, you know, multiple kinds of care. I mean, one is just the wake up call in the US and globally of how much where you know, where either if you want to call us the sandwich generation or I liked it how I didn't pu put it where the panini generation because the sandwich sounds fluffy and nice, right?

00;38;08;29 - 00;38;09;28
Gary Barker
It actually.

00;38;10;01 - 00;38;13;02
Paul Sullivan
Is melted and squish a lot of pressure and.

00;38;13;04 - 00;38;18;19
Gary Barker
Guts and guts and spilling out, you know, trying to do it all. So one is.

00;38;18;21 - 00;38;28;05
Paul Sullivan
But what do you think about that 21 survey? Obviously, you know, Covid and world and disruption, go from there to what you're about to say.

00;38;28;10 - 00;38;29;07
Gary Barker
Yeah. So think what did you.

00;38;29;07 - 00;38;30;02
Paul Sullivan
Get there that.

00;38;30;07 - 00;38;46;26
Gary Barker
You want to bring that disruption? I mean, another piece and you were talking about this earlier as well. What we found in the in the 20 or so that was 2019, 2021, we did care caregiving during Covid. And what did we find? One. You know that other surveys finding as well women were already doing more. They began to do more.

00;38;46;26 - 00;39;05;18
Gary Barker
But men did stepped up. We did a lot more hours. So one is we're curious, did that continue and what did that mean to us? What did we how do we reorganize our lives and how did care go beyond simply the care for young children? Because being at home to care was not necessarily the same as caring for a young child.

00;39;05;18 - 00;39;23;29
Gary Barker
When you're the full time, you know there's a lot of hands on stay at home dad stuff or part time dad stay at home dad stuff. But also lots of other care that we did at home because our grandparents might have also been living with us or our parents, or etc., etc. so we want to look at that and then the meaning of that care to men.

00;39;24;02 - 00;39;45;28
Gary Barker
Did we as men change as we do more of that care work? Our first glance of that in the midst of Covid, like the first, I think we carried out that survey kind of nine months into it. Men reported in the countries that we did six countries that time, men reported, that they were happier with that additional time, and sound kind of life.

00;39;46;01 - 00;40;05;05
Gary Barker
Life felt somewhat better in the midst of all that was going on. Lots of men also said that it was a respite for them in this moment of insecurity, you know, upset about how your government was dealing with it. Depending on where you lived, that caring for their kids was like, you know, was a was a cool, you know, drug in the positive sense of the world.

00;40;05;05 - 00;40;40;09
Gary Barker
The world is helping them do better. So we want to know, did that continue? Women, when we asked the same question, said, oh my God, I have no time to myself now I'm stressed and I'm more depressed. So again, these are averages people, you know, but but those, those overall trends held up in multiple countries. So those are something we want to look at kind of what's happened since, what various kinds of care and post-Covid, how have we and I liked your your comment around, you know, have we sort of step back into the old bad normal, or have we stepped into something?

00;40;40;09 - 00;40;48;07
Gary Barker
Or if some of us figured out ways to step in to oh yeah, that was a I don't want to go back to that. And I'm this is the new way. I'm in it.

00;40;48;10 - 00;41;11;16
Paul Sullivan
Gary, this been wonderful. Having you on today, I always like to end on a positive note. So, you know, low hanging fruit, you know, are there things that either we as individual men could do to be better fathers, partners and friends or, you know, turn it on the other way? Or are there things that that companies and managers can do to help men be better?

00;41;11;16 - 00;41;16;17
Paul Sullivan
You know, fathers, partners and friends? The low hanging fruit category here just, you know, quick fixes.

00;41;16;24 - 00;41;32;16
Gary Barker
Yeah. What are the quick fixes? I mean, you know, one is I mean employers look at your policies, make it and make it not just the policy but encourage it. I hear a lot of workers say, you know, if I see the CEO do it, I see my manager do it. You know, the kind of leading by example.

00;41;32;16 - 00;41;33;13
Paul Sullivan
Setting that example.

00;41;33;13 - 00;42;10;09
Gary Barker
Yeah. Yeah. More of that I think is definitely there. You know, and the narrative shift part as well. I mean it's it's what you do. And then it's also, you know, let's, let's send our messages to Hollywood and the rest of like show more competent, emotionally connected dads, you know, like hold up the this is us and, you know, just like can can we as men affirm we loved seeing, you know, Randall Pearson and Jack Pearson and we loved having a moment of crying about, you know, just the joys and the and the challenges of being fathers and caregivers and caregivers for an adult parent who has Alzheimer's and all that that means.

00;42;10;16 - 00;42;34;05
Gary Barker
So kind of yeah, creating the emotional safe space. I think we can do that on TV and such. But I think the kind of storytelling you do, I think sharing that as men, because we all have those stories, but just being willing to, you know, kind of at the bar, maybe we are watching the finals of, you know, the Wimbledon about to come up, but can we also when there's the 14th commercial, can we say, how's it going for you?

00;42;34;08 - 00;42;53;28
Gary Barker
Yeah. So like talk to other men. Right? I think just talking to other men about this is an amazing piece as well. And then just, you know, I think it goes a huge way when we as men kind of figure out, like the emotional language on this. Maybe that's not the low hanging fruit, but how to speak with our partners on doing this better.

00;42;54;00 - 00;43;14;05
Gary Barker
You know, kind of an acknowledgment, a bit of a bit of humility in it and kind of finding a language of dialog with our partner. And again, I say that with all humility of like, probably be better at saying that than in doing it, but it but feeling like it's like the one thing in my relationship that will work if I go, how have I been doing on that?

00;43;14;07 - 00;43;26;01
Gary Barker
Yeah. What could I do better? As much as those words may be kind of, you know, drawn out of my mouth with with my own forceps and forceps and hand, you know, just how urgent those are for me to say that in my my own relationship.

00;43;26;08 - 00;43;34;10
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. Gary Barker, CEO and founder, Aquaman, dir. And founder of Men Care. Thank you very much.

00;43;34;12 - 00;43;36;19
Gary Barker
Thanks for having me. And thanks for what you're doing with this.