EP43: Lessons on Embracing The Role of Lead Dad

Interview with Mark Tamhane / International broadcast Journalist with Kids 4 to 24

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

Mark Tamhane is a father of six in Melbourne, Australia. His children are 24, 21, 18, 7, 5, and 4. Australia had one the world's strictest lockdown policies during Covid and that time taught him perspective. Trained as a journalist, Mark worked in radio, tv and print, in Australia and in London, for 33 years. He has written about his experiences Lead Dadding for the Australian Broadcasting Company. He’s also found a different perspective the second time around. Listen to his thoughts on "familying" as a way to improve family time.

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Transcript

00;00;05;05 - 00;00;24;28
Paul Sullivan
I'm Paul Sullivan, your host on the Company of Dads podcast, where we explore the sweet sibling, strange and silly aspects of being a dad in a world where men who are the go to parent often feel they have to hide, or at least not talk about their roles. One thing I know from personal experience is being a dad is not a traditional role for men.

00;00;25;03 - 00;00;43;10
Paul Sullivan
Whether you work full time, part time, it will all your time for your family. Parenting is so often left to mothers or paid caregivers, but here at the Company of Dads, our goal is to shake all that off and create a community for fathers or only dads, and to welcome other dads who want to learn more from them.

00;00;43;12 - 00;01;09;06
Paul Sullivan
Today my guest is Mark Tamhane father of six, in Melbourne, Australia. His children are 24, 21, eight, seven, five and four. He is the ultimate pandemic lead dad with Australia, having had one of the strictest lockdown policies in the world. Trained as a journalist, Mark was a radio, TV and print reporter in Australia and abroad in London for a total of 33 years.

00;01;09;08 - 00;01;20;14
Paul Sullivan
He's written about his experience as lead dating for the Australian Broadcasting Company. He's also found a different perspective the second time around. Mark, welcome to the Company Dads podcast.

00;01;20;16 - 00;01;23;01
Mark Tamhane
Thanks, Paul. It's a great to be here.

00;01;23;04 - 00;01;33;16
Paul Sullivan
Let's start off with the easy question. I mean, what when you look back, what's what's the biggest difference between, you know, parenting now and the parenting you did with your, your older children when when they were young?

00;01;33;18 - 00;02;03;00
Mark Tamhane
I guess the second thing is with my second tranche of kids, is that it's just that much harder when you're older. You don't seem to be able to bounce back after that. Bad. Not as quickly. So it's morning here now, and I'm feeling a little. I'm feeling a little whacked around the years because, my, second youngest daughter decided at 3:00 in the morning that, there were no lights on in the room.

00;02;03;03 - 00;02;25;20
Mark Tamhane
In her room, one of her night lights. I think the battery had run out. And possibly with my first. I went in and try and sorted things out, possibly with my first family. I wouldn't feel as bad as I possibly do here this morning. I did go back to sleep, but, it does seem to wake you around a lot more when you're when you're older.

00;02;25;20 - 00;02;29;22
Mark Tamhane
And I'm now 55 and I'm really starting to feel it.

00;02;29;24 - 00;02;54;02
Paul Sullivan
I'll tell you, it's funny. You know, I'm 40 9 a.m.. I have three daughters, and they're five, ten and 13. And, you know, in between them, my wife started a business and and so that's why there's, there's this gap of you know, five years between, you know, the third and the second, of course, eight years old. And with the first two, I was such a stickler on, you know, they would have to sleep in their own bed like they're not.

00;02;54;02 - 00;03;25;10
Paul Sullivan
I'm not going to be that dad as a kid, sleep in the bed and kept that up with that. With the second one, we'd come back and and now with the third one, if she crawls in bed, she either just, you know, gets in between my wife and me or like, whatever. Or, if my wife is really is trying to sleep and I literally pick her up, pick her pillows up, and we'll walk down and I'll just sleep in her bed and, you know, you just see, like, as you get older, you know, I think in one of your pieces, for the ABC, you talked about, as parents have more children.

00;03;25;16 - 00;03;37;22
Paul Sullivan
So I learned that was I think the line was they learn to care less. Is that it is hard to talk about that because it sounds, cavalier, but it's not at all. It's not cavalier at all. It's there's a different way of thinking about parenting and how you, you know, you just care a little bit. Let's talk.

00;03;37;22 - 00;04;02;15
Mark Tamhane
About that. Cause this was some advice that was given to, my wife by a friend of hers from work, who already had three children, my boss and my second wife, and that she was pregnant for the third time and was quite alarmed. And her her concern was, oh, my God, you know, we've already got these three older kids.

00;04;02;18 - 00;04;23;00
Mark Tamhane
We've got the, the two kids that we have now. How are we going to make it all fit in? And I said to her, well, you know, you just do. But this advice that she got from, she'd actually put it, she put a call out, I think on, on social media. And some of the answers were quite hilarious.

00;04;23;00 - 00;04;55;03
Mark Tamhane
Somebody said more red wine and shouting and another one said, I've lowered my already low standards. But the one that really resonated with me was this, this woman that said, you just learn to care less. And she didn't mean that you don't care about your children. You don't care about the physical and mental well-being, what you care about less, possibly the things that don't matter.

00;04;55;04 - 00;05;16;26
Mark Tamhane
And, it was funny. I've been listening to some of the stuff by, the man who peddles the mantra of essentialism, Greg McKeown. And, really, it's it's it's it's going to what is essential. And you pick out those 5 or 6 things that are really essential. And I guess the essential things are really the family.

00;05;16;29 - 00;05;37;15
Mark Tamhane
And you, everything else kind of slips down the pole of it. You might not catch up with your friends as regularly as maybe you did before. You might not clean the house as regularly as you did before. You might pick up the toys as regularly as you did before. But of the children safe? Are they healthy? Are they eating the dinner?

00;05;37;15 - 00;06;02;24
Mark Tamhane
Are they sleeping through the night? Those are sort of the really the main key, 4 or 5 things that you really worry about. And everything else sort of slides down the pecking order of things that are important. And you get to them when you get to them and you will eventually. And it's funny, a lot of things just seem that less important.

00;06;02;26 - 00;06;31;23
Mark Tamhane
And you really notice this, that, sigh at the playground where, you'll see parents there with 1 or 2 children who will carefully hover over the child, make sure they're incredibly safe, and the child will actually be quite timid. And yeah, not really prepared to try some of the supposedly more dangerous things in the playground, whereas my three little kids will be because I can't keep an eye and all three of them at the same time.

00;06;31;25 - 00;06;55;29
Mark Tamhane
I can't physically be next to each of them at the same time. They'll all be hanging off the monkey bars upside down. They'll be doing. They'll be yelling and screaming and doing all sorts of seemingly dangerous things. And the other parents will just be looking on in horror. But I'm a bit like, well, you know, this is soft landing underneath it, so they'll learn the hard way.

00;06;55;29 - 00;06;57;18
Mark Tamhane
I don't.

00;06;57;21 - 00;06;58;18
Paul Sullivan
Come on market and.

00;06;58;18 - 00;07;00;27
Mark Tamhane
Land properly and properly.

00;07;01;02 - 00;07;16;12
Paul Sullivan
Add to the picture market you're sitting at the park and you're like mixing up a gin and tonic as well. Come on. Add to that, you know all the parenting I have to ask you. I said, you know, the I said the the gap between my kids, the young adults is eight years, but the gap years is, is 20.

00;07;16;12 - 00;07;38;13
Paul Sullivan
And one of the things that I know my oldest always says is it's not fair or you, you do this differently with them than you know, than you did with me, or you're all, it's all these, you know, you know, grand universal phrases. Do you find that between your older kids and your younger kids, or is that not the case with them?

00;07;38;15 - 00;08;11;19
Mark Tamhane
My second youngest will use the phrase, that's not saying a lot. And she hasn't really grown up her whole life around the older kids, the, the three older kids. So I, you know, she must have got that some school notes on that, which is quite interesting. Yeah, I do find myself a bit more of a sort of a disciplinarian and, a bit more, I guess, kind of, hard line about some things around the younger kids.

00;08;11;19 - 00;08;16;16
Mark Tamhane
But I think that's just because I'm a grumpy old man now. Also.

00;08;16;18 - 00;08;18;27
Paul Sullivan
You see, you've seen it all before. You seen it all time.

00;08;18;27 - 00;08;44;13
Mark Tamhane
Yeah. So she didn't really she didn't really get the. It's not fair from, from, from the older kids, but she might have got it from her, her elder immediate older brother who's, who's seven, but, a lot of it just doesn't actually make sense. She says that's not fair about something. I don't know. I'll be like, oh, actually, it that makes no sense.

00;08;44;15 - 00;09;03;25
Mark Tamhane
So it's a bit of a mystery to me. But, you know, that's not fair. But she seems to be the one that uses that that line the most. I think it's more that she thinks that her younger sister gets a freer ride than her, which is a bit strange. But, you know, the younger sister is the baby in the family, so I guess you've got to make a bit of an exception to her.

00;09;03;27 - 00;09;36;10
Paul Sullivan
So to talk to me a bit about, you know, the early days and how it was almost a year more, of the lockdown in Australia. I know it was incredibly, you know, strict. I had a friend who's also living in Melbourne and, you know, not just going in and out of the country, but but actually, like, you know, being at home scribe for the listeners, you know, what the the at home order was like in Australia and then talk to us about, you know, what it was like being, the dad with, you know, limited ability to, to sort of move around.

00;09;36;13 - 00;10;00;12
Mark Tamhane
So Melbourne, where I live, at the it's, it's in the state of Victoria and Melbourne had you know, had one of the longest lock periods in lockdown in the world, but it was sort of several periods at the end it kept getting extended. So at first you thought, well, that lock they've locked, they've locked us down for, you know, ten days or whatever.

00;10;00;14 - 00;10;28;00
Mark Tamhane
And then it would get longer and at first it was, I guess, a bit of a curiosity that the streets were being quiet. The people were only sort of going out to do shopping. I was originally allowed to go to work because I was working for a television broadcasting, company, and then they, did a bit of an audit at work, and they realized that with a bit of technology, I could actually pretty much work from home.

00;10;28;03 - 00;10;52;08
Mark Tamhane
And so for me, that was actually a bit of a spin out because I was actually working, as the chief subeditor on a live morning breakfast television show that went for three hours. And here I was writing all the copy at home, and moments later, out at it would spit on, on, on. It was really quite incredible.

00;10;52;08 - 00;11;27;07
Mark Tamhane
So my job I could do at home and I worked early mornings and I would then, be around, I guess, in the afternoons anyway, to look after the younger children. Anyway. And after a while I actually found that I didn't mind working at home. I quite enjoyed it, and I did made a kindergarten teacher some time later and she was a real live wire who loved planning events for the children.

00;11;27;09 - 00;11;47;15
Mark Tamhane
You know, she'd play a concert at the end of every year, those kinds of things. And she said to me, I hate this, I hate this, I can't stand it. And I said to her, you know what? There's actually very little difference for me. From being, dead with three small young children to being a lockdown dad with three small children.

00;11;47;17 - 00;12;10;24
Mark Tamhane
You know, the children are in my face all the time anyway, right? You know, here I am here. And what I found was the biggest challenge was really the home schooling, because my, son started school in those years, elementary school. And of course, he couldn't read, so I really had to be there all the time to hand him the right piece of paper.

00;12;10;26 - 00;12;39;16
Mark Tamhane
It's not that you could sort of set him up, but, whenever school starts online and he could kind of meander through for 20 minutes until he said on dad, what does this word say? Or something like that. And so I pretty much had to be there and sit in the room with him and the school. He ended up going to, in the second year of the pandemic, actually ran a full time online timetable.

00;12;39;19 - 00;13;07;18
Mark Tamhane
So they started their day at eight, 840 in the morning, and they went right through to 315. I took breaks, obviously for lunch and, for recess. But it was, you know, full periods with the teachers. And I found the most challenging ones were actually the, art classes because it has 50 minutes to come up with some kind of amazing artwork.

00;13;07;25 - 00;13;30;22
Mark Tamhane
So luckily there was a lot of boxes and junk and, juice cartons and things like that that my wife had hoarded in the garage that we were able to sort of throw together in 50 minutes into some kind of amazing construction, because I guess when you haven't got a teacher there to supervise you while you're doing those sorts of things, you do really need a parent.

00;13;30;24 - 00;13;37;06
Mark Tamhane
And so we ended up coming up with some pretty, incredible little constructions.

00;13;37;12 - 00;13;40;25
Paul Sullivan
What were some of the more what are some of the more memorable ones?

00;13;40;27 - 00;14;09;26
Mark Tamhane
There was, one that we did over a period of time, which was like a, which was like a bus. That was quite a good one. That was a bit over a longer period of time. But we had to plan out that in the execution of that was quite, was quite demanding. Yeah. Anyway, so that, that that worked out quite well, but, you know, we, the teacher would suddenly say without without much notice, oh, we're going to do a collage and I'm going, oh my God.

00;14;09;28 - 00;14;28;21
Mark Tamhane
And she's now telling off one of the students to be quiet. So it's ticking down. And we've now got 45 minutes to come up with this. Oh my goodness. So that was that was tough. That was really tough. But it was I guess it was like being being back at school again for me. And I actually found it quite interesting and I found it quite refreshing.

00;14;28;23 - 00;14;53;29
Mark Tamhane
Comparing it to sort of how I had been in elementary school and I guess how much things have moved on since those days and how much more, I guess, support even encouraging the of the kids and possibly my teachers were. Yeah. So I actually found it quite. I actually found it quite interesting and quite bonding with him that I was there while he was actually being schooled.

00;14;54;01 - 00;14;57;14
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. And what is your what is your wife do for a career.

00;14;57;14 - 00;15;18;29
Mark Tamhane
What what is her job? So she is she was for many years quite a senior journalist at, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Like me. Yeah, but she would be filing, every day for a program towards the end of the day, which is, I think, a bit like, I guess, I guess you would compare it to something, like, All Things Considered.

00;15;19;02 - 00;15;48;19
Mark Tamhane
So she would be doing a piece or a package on anything. They'd have their editorial meeting. She'd look around in the morning to, like, morning for ideas that have an editorial meaning around 1:00, and she would be looking around for a story on anything to do from, say, Ukraine to the lockdown in Melbourne. Right. And she would have to file that, and put it together, which she was able to do at home as a little home studio that was set up by 5 p.m..

00;15;48;22 - 00;15;56;17
Mark Tamhane
And so she would be working flat out to the clappers. So we would basically just have to have to leave her alone and press on with it.

00;15;56;17 - 00;16;04;13
Paul Sullivan
But this is interesting. I think it sounds to me that it worked out because you were working much earlier in the morning.

00;16;04;16 - 00;16;29;19
Mark Tamhane
And I was only working two days, two days a week as well. I'd drop down to sort of pile time out, largely to facilitate, you know, our family life at that stage. Anyway. So, so, you know, the first two days were tough, were really tough. But after that, you know, I pretty much had the rest of the week dedicated to the to the other kids.

00;16;29;22 - 00;16;52;25
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. I talk to me about that because we always talk about in the company. Dad's like that, that moment when somebody, you know, puts up his hand to be a dad or gets designated as a lead, that. How was that? How did that conversation happen with your wife, that you would be the one to sort of take on more of the parenting responsibilities while she continued on, you know, with her career at the ABC?

00;16;52;28 - 00;17;26;18
Mark Tamhane
This was actually a process that actually started a lot of it started actually in about, early 1998, when I was actually, an overseas correspondent in London working to the ABC and working really long hours. And, my wife at the time had just had our first child and, I had, been sent away on assignment to Dublin for a, a session of the Northern Ireland peace talks.

00;17;26;25 - 00;17;46;24
Mark Tamhane
And I don't know if you follow that, but two years, they went absolutely no way before the Good Friday peace Agreement. So I was there was a whole lot of other international journalists camped out at Dublin Castle. And these talks that were meant to go for like two days started dragging on and dragging on and dragging on.

00;17;46;26 - 00;18;03;07
Mark Tamhane
And I finally got home a week later and nothing had really been resolved with these peace talks. I just a great to talk some more right? And I kept ringing up my editors at the time saying, I'm so sorry, I know you've sent me here, but actually nothing's happening. There's nothing I can really fall for you that's going to make anything interesting.

00;18;03;07 - 00;18;25;27
Mark Tamhane
Yeah, that I can't understand. They said, oh, yeah. Anyway, so I finally got back to London. I walked into the kitchen. It was around lunchtime and, my first wife, was fading. Jaime, my oldest son, and he would have been all of about four months old. And I stood in the doorway of the kitchen and I looked at them, and he looked up at me, and he looked up at me blankly, and he could.

00;18;26;04 - 00;18;45;20
Mark Tamhane
It was like he couldn't register who I was. And Catherine, my first wife, to her credit, said, you remember daddy, don't you? And then you sort of saw the does not compute wheels kind of spinning his head. Yeah. I was like, oh him because he hadn't seen me for a week. And it was almost like he had forgotten me.

00;18;45;20 - 00;19;09;06
Mark Tamhane
And that was kind of like a real wake up moment for me. And I realized that it didn't really matter what I did. I had to be around more. So over the next couple of years, I guess I moved away. More from frontline reporting, to more production roles where I was actually able to spend more time with the family.

00;19;09;06 - 00;19;32;07
Mark Tamhane
And that often meant working shift work. So even with my first tranche of kids, I was pretty much there picking them up after school every day and running them around to a lot of their, activities. Because when we came back to Australia, their mum, Catherine, would often work and then work in the afternoon evening anyway.

00;19;32;10 - 00;19;49;05
Mark Tamhane
So I was really the late dad then, I guess. Wow. She would get them off to school. I would, and then I would, we'd pretty much split the parenting duties and I would get them off to school. I'd pick them up, I'll give them afternoon tea. I would take them to their various sports, and I will actually did different sports.

00;19;49;05 - 00;19;51;18
Mark Tamhane
That was actually quite hard, juggling all the drop offs and pick ups.

00;19;51;18 - 00;19;53;03
Paul Sullivan
So that's the worst part. Yeah.

00;19;53;05 - 00;20;25;07
Mark Tamhane
And get a start on dinner. So I would so I was really doing a lot of that stuff I guess a lot easier. And I guess the interesting thing was I thought that was normal from a much kind of earlier point in my life. Then possibly a lot of other dads do. And it's interesting because one of my, one of my childhood buddies, who I, went to high school with, he started out as a teacher, but after a couple of years, he sort of got into more past work at schools.

00;20;25;09 - 00;20;52;27
Mark Tamhane
And he's he has a whole company set up now which has been running for about, 15, 20 years. And the whole point of the company is to reconnect, mothers with their sons, with their teenage sons, and to reconnect dads with their teenage daughters. Because there's been a lot of research and books written in Australia about this kind of gap in teenage girls lives.

00;20;52;29 - 00;21;15;18
Mark Tamhane
And they all say, we want to spend more time with dad, but we don't know him. He's this kind of absent figure. He's he doesn't come home till 7:00 at night, you know, might have a bit of a joke or something. And then I go to bed. I don't really seem. I've got to do my homework. He's kind of around a bit on the weekends, and I do see him when we go on holidays every year.

00;21;15;21 - 00;21;33;09
Mark Tamhane
And also, gee, I don't I don't want to be like that. Yeah. He'd like to sort of not have to have call my friend billing, you know, in 15 years would be great to hit that off at the past now. So while I was around and I was working a lot of shift work, I'd often work early mornings.

00;21;33;09 - 00;21;50;02
Mark Tamhane
I was there in the afternoon. I wasn't necessarily the most present dad because I was often absolutely exhausted and sort of sitting on the couch, but at least I was in the room, at least all around. And I think that's actually quite important. So even if I was boring old dad, who?

00;21;50;04 - 00;22;25;11
Paul Sullivan
You're a peasant. You you're a peasant. You were there. And. Yeah. Talk to me then. This is fascinating. Like you've had this, you know, over six kids, this, this 20 plus year span as a dad. And of course, the world has changed tremendously in 20 years. And when you look at what you were doing, with your older children, you're picking them up at school, in the right versus what you're doing now as it relates to not the actual, you know, details of your day, but as it relates to the reception that you received, in the, in the wider world, you know, where you were in Sydney and Melbourne, where you were

00;22;25;11 - 00;22;32;14
Paul Sullivan
living. What are some of the similarities? What are some of the differences over that 20 plus year year span?

00;22;32;16 - 00;22;53;11
Mark Tamhane
Well, I think the, the, the thing that I notice most is that when I, originally started picking up my eldest son from school, I'd stand in the playground and no one would really talk to me. None of the none of the mothers there would really kind of talk to me, except with the with the notable exception of one.

00;22;53;11 - 00;23;16;10
Mark Tamhane
Absolutely. Lovely person who had talked to anyone. But the mothers would largely kind of ignore me because they were there were really no other dads often there to do school pick up. Now, when I go pick up my son and my daughter, particularly at my son's school, there are a lot of dads who do pick up.

00;23;16;13 - 00;23;49;23
Mark Tamhane
I don't know whether that's sort of a function of the pandemic that a lot of them, working from home. And I'll be there to pick up their sons sometimes, both parents are there to pick up the kids, which is really interesting. And I think, I think the world of work has also changed. And at my son's school, a lot of the dads, I think, project managers in building companies, they're not the guys doing, say, the building or whatever at the coalface.

00;23;49;25 - 00;24;16;09
Mark Tamhane
They're the one that who's on the like, the conduit between the builders and the suppliers, and they can pretty much do that work for me anyway. So often they're picking up their kids, but they're on the phone at the same time shouting about where that, you know, delivery of bricks has gone astray or something like that, but that's really noticeable that there's just that many more dads doing things like school pick ups, and no one really gets an eyelid these days.

00;24;16;09 - 00;24;23;10
Mark Tamhane
At a at dad's in the playground because it's, it just seems the most sort of natural thing. Whereas 20 years ago, it certainly wasn't.

00;24;23;13 - 00;24;46;24
Paul Sullivan
All right. That's some progress because, you know, we we sort of joke darkly at the combative dads that there's there's no lonelier place for a dad than, than the playground because, you know, maybe some of the moms that you've made up that they you're seeing some progress here. One of the things I want you to unpack is you there's this Michael Keaton movie, in the United States, Mr..

00;24;46;24 - 00;25;10;03
Paul Sullivan
Mom. And it's, you know, is a pejorative term, for men who are taking on that role. You talk about in some of the stuff you write about, using the term professional dad. We obviously use the term the dad, but one of the things you wrote about is, you know, how you know, men who are the go to parent, are actually contributing to economic growth.

00;25;10;05 - 00;25;15;23
Paul Sullivan
And I love you. We love you. Just to to unpack that idea for us.

00;25;15;25 - 00;25;44;24
Mark Tamhane
Well, in many ways, Australia is like the United States, an immigrant nation. And, until really the big shutdowns with Covid, the population was growing. So what drives a lot of economic activity in Australia? Well, there's really two things. One is iron ore, and selling raw iron ore to China Steel Mills. That's the main one.

00;25;44;26 - 00;26;19;02
Mark Tamhane
And the other thing is population growth. And if you have population growth, that means you need housing. So housing and building new houses is an enormous, industry in Australia. And also servicing that population. And I guess my argument I was trying to make, when I was being, I was going around Melbourne with my, with, with a toddler and I think, a three year old.

00;26;19;02 - 00;27;03;12
Mark Tamhane
This was before Jack started school, while my wife looked after, new baby. And I'd had some time off work, and so I was taking them out everywhere and getting them out of the house, basically to give her a bit of space and give her a bit of rest. And, I guess it was a comment on how badly I was treated that, if I had been a mother with these two little children, people would have got out of my way and they would have made some allowance, for them, you know, they wouldn't be taking up all the, seats reserved for, people with, mobility issues on trains and

00;27;03;12 - 00;27;32;10
Mark Tamhane
trams or where you could actually park you pocket you little stroller. So my point was, hey. Hey, people. I'm over here creating the future Economic wealth of Australia for you with these little with these little future taxpayers. And, you know, I can I can assure you they're going to be well educated and everything. So they're going to be earning, they going to be earning reasonable salaries, and they're going to be they're going to be paying their ones, paying for your health care.

00;27;32;10 - 00;27;51;24
Mark Tamhane
They're going to be the ones paying for your pension. They're going to be the ones, looking after you because the population in Australia is actually aging. So what they need is they need people to care for all people. Yeah. So and my other point was that at that time on my survey, all the children were all in part time work.

00;27;51;26 - 00;28;18;19
Mark Tamhane
And my son is, my son now, my eldest son now is working full time. So I'm saying we've already produced three taxpayers who are already contributing to Australia's economic wealth. So, you know, I'm not some sort of unemployed bum around here, just pushing a pram with the kids to try and fill in time. I'm out there creating wealth for you and I'm creating your future idyllic Australia, your utopia.

00;28;18;19 - 00;28;20;10
Mark Tamhane
So, get out of my way.

00;28;20;13 - 00;28;29;14
Paul Sullivan
I love the idea of you printing out t shirts for your children that say, have future taxpayer emblazoned, across the front.

00;28;29;17 - 00;28;47;26
Mark Tamhane
Yeah. Look, I really should have, I should really should have got got onto that one at the time, I think. But, it was quite funny when I, started writing, you know, some of the public comments that, that came up on the ABC website saying, oh my God, six children. You know, he's contributing to climate change.

00;28;47;28 - 00;29;02;07
Mark Tamhane
So, he should really have a vasectomy. And, you know, and then he sort of didn't actually read the articles carefully and sort of in my argument about how sort of my various children had come about.

00;29;02;10 - 00;29;09;24
Paul Sullivan
You could have responded like, hey, my oldest son is a climate scientist. Perhaps it is because his father has had so many children, I don't know.

00;29;09;24 - 00;29;33;20
Mark Tamhane
Yeah, well, unfortunately, unfortunately, it wasn't it. That's, But he but he did, he he did go down that path and, and I, you know, it's like climate scientist is actually a growth industry. Now, the and the second eldest one is starting to be a nurse. Now Australia's got a shortage of nurses. So yeah you know she's going to provide important health care for someone.

00;29;33;23 - 00;29;54;12
Mark Tamhane
I think the third one is sort of moving kind of into the business and economics area. Well they go she's, you know, going to help manage the future economy. And I don't know what the youngest three are going to do yet, but I'm sure they will make some pretty, indelible contribution to the future of, to the future of this country.

00;29;54;12 - 00;30;02;15
Mark Tamhane
So, you know, don't write me off as some bum who, he can't keep it in his pants.

00;30;02;18 - 00;30;07;17
Paul Sullivan
I goodness, you know, you were telling me before that your dad is 91. Is that correct?

00;30;07;18 - 00;30;08;29
Mark Tamhane
91? Yeah.

00;30;09;01 - 00;30;28;15
Paul Sullivan
And so now, you know, when you got when you and your dad talk about this and you have this span of, you know, of, of fatherhood, you know, remembering your own experiences, growing up. And, you know, your experience now is, you know, the dad for 20 plus years. What do you think about that? You know, what? What are we doing?

00;30;28;15 - 00;30;33;15
Paul Sullivan
Right? And what are we doing wrong as as fathers today?

00;30;33;17 - 00;31;03;12
Mark Tamhane
Well, the interesting thing about him was that, he was born in a very traditional family in India, and he was the youngest of five children. So in many ways, he was actually brought up by his elder sister, who was 16 years older than him, not so much by his mother and his mother, a kind of had a very important role in terms of running a traditional kind of Indian household.

00;31;03;12 - 00;31;54;13
Mark Tamhane
So she would be in charge of all the cooking, in charge of all the food, in charge of that had a few, I think they had a few servants as well. So domestic help and so he remembers largely being brought up by his sister. And to me, this kind of rang true. I guess, of what I called family thing rather than parenting, which I think you get in big families where kids so much, directly, I guess parenting, but they're more like family and my eldest son has this unbelievable bond with my father and my mother.

00;31;54;15 - 00;32;26;16
Mark Tamhane
My father did a science degree, so he's obviously very interested in the kind of work that my eldest son is doing. So my son will spend a lot of time when he's in Melbourne with my father. And in fact, my father, my mother and my son all went off to India together and went around and looked at, various various parts of the country.

00;32;26;16 - 00;33;25;28
Mark Tamhane
And he almost acted as their kind of lookout. And they chaperon this was when he was about 21. And so he actually has this sort of amazing relationship with his grandparents, and I think they have probably had just as much influence on him as a young man as his own father would have. So I think when you're sort of talking about this kind of multi-generational, family that can come together, it's worth maybe taking the heat off parents some time and understand that the children learn just as much from the grandparents if they're around or their elder brothers and sisters.

00;33;25;28 - 00;33;37;04
Mark Tamhane
So in many ways, they're not so much being parented enormous. Like, you will be parented by me because I am your father. I'm your.

00;33;37;04 - 00;33;38;06
Paul Sullivan
Father, Luke.

00;33;38;08 - 00;33;56;00
Mark Tamhane
Yes. And and not that sort of, that direct way, but they're almost like being family by their older brothers and sisters. By their grandparents, and by their aunts and uncles also up there around as well.

00;33;56;02 - 00;34;04;17
Paul Sullivan
That's so nice. A lovely story to end on. Mark, thank you for being my guest on the Comfort of Dad's podcast. I've thoroughly enjoyed speaking with you today.

00;34;04;20 - 00;34;05;29
Mark Tamhane
It's been a pleasure. Thank you Paul.