EP48: A Year of Fatherhood Experts

Highlights from Kirstin Shockley, Jamie Ladge, Kenneth Braswell, Dana Suskind, Jay Lauf & Jeff Forte

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

Welcome to The Company of Dads year-end review. The majority of our podcasts focused on Lead Dads and their stories. But we also sought out experts on all sorts of things that relate to men as fathers, husbands, earners, and people. There were academics who studied pandemic parenting and men at work. There were advocates for fathers and experts on the social forces that influence dads navigating The Next Normal. Listen to quick tips from a selection of them.

---

Get our free newsletter covering all things fatherhood delivered straight to your inbox: https://thecompanyofdads.com/thedad/

Transcript

00;00;05;02 - 00;00;30;09
Speaker 1
Welcome to the Company of Dad's Year in Review. The majority of our podcast focus on the dads and their stories, but we also set up an expert in all sorts of things that relate to men as fathers, husband earners and people. Their academic study, pandemic parenting and academics studied men at work or advocates for fathers and experts and the social forces that influence dads navigating the new normal.

00;00;30;11 - 00;00;52;06
Speaker 1
Listen a quick tips from a selection of them. Chris and Chocolate, a professor at the University of Georgia. At some of the earliest research on the effect of the pandemic on parenting, and one of our key findings that some of the people who did the worst at their work while being remote were the people who did the least at parenting.

00;00;52;08 - 00;01;08;08
Speaker 1
In other words, the people who left it all upon one spouse to do the parenting. That did not enable them to perform more highly at work. This is just one of her many insights from some really early, crucial research. Have a listen to how the findings came about.

00;01;08;11 - 00;01;31;02
Speaker 2
So we very quickly launched a study, and we surveyed dual earner couples of both people were working and had to keep working at this point. Who had at least one child under age six. And we wanted to focus on people with young kids who are just a little bit more demanding from a child care perspective. And, so we got the surveys out, like I said, I think it was like March 20th.

00;01;31;05 - 00;01;49;23
Speaker 2
Asked them, what are your plans for dealing with childcare? You know, this upcoming time, how are you going to have to adjust your, work schedule? How will your spouse? So we asked, and they were all heterosexual couples. We asked the wife and the husband. And then we content coded that to see sort of what people were saying.

00;01;50;00 - 00;02;15;16
Speaker 2
And then two months later, we had originally planned to follow up after the pandemic was over. We all know that's kind of a joke, right? We still still are in it. So we decided two months later things, you know, people probably were in a bit of a routine. And then we assessed some well-being. So in terms like psychological distress, sleep, family functioning in terms of relationship tension, family cohesion and then job performance.

00;02;15;18 - 00;02;26;22
Speaker 2
And going into a really interested in did people use gendered strategies. So was this following mostly on women or are we seeing kind of more egalitarian, type divisions of labor?

00;02;26;25 - 00;02;27;21
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00;02;27;23 - 00;02;47;24
Speaker 2
And the the part you talking about, the shocking or depressing part was the biggest. Then we did some kind of complex analyzes sort of context to that data and kind of came up with these groupings. And the biggest group we had, which was 22% of our data, was called The Wife Remote and doing it all. So these were couples where.

00;02;47;27 - 00;02;50;27
Speaker 1
And that's that's not something you want on a, on a coffee mug.

00;02;50;27 - 00;03;20;14
Speaker 2
And you know, you I don't think well, I could tell you it wasn't great in terms of outcomes for that group. So this, this these couples were just like the name implies, the the wife is remote. The husband sometimes was sometimes wasn't, but she was doing pretty much all of the childcare. And they, you saw, not surprisingly, those people had the highest relationship tension reported, the lowest family cohesion.

00;03;20;16 - 00;03;29;05
Speaker 2
There were surprisingly, they didn't have the lowest sleep, had low psychological or highest psychological distress and also were not performing very well.

00;03;29;09 - 00;03;33;22
Speaker 1
So it doesn't surprise me that they didn't have the lowest sleep because they're probably exhausted. And they would.

00;03;33;24 - 00;03;51;28
Speaker 2
Yeah, just passed right out and just passed on it. And what I thought was interesting, thinking about this from the dad's perspective, I would have thought if you were in that couple then, and you're the husband, your job performance would have been fine because you, you know, you weren't really changing anything, but actually, that was not the group that had the best job performance.

00;03;52;03 - 00;04;19;27
Speaker 2
And I think that speaks to the issue of if one person is taking all this labor, it's creating this tension in the relationship, and that's spilling over into the husband's work life, too, even if he isn't actually doing the childcare. So if we take like a step back and think about it from a organizational standpoint, like it's not great to just not offer flexibility for people because, you know, it may ultimately result in them performing worse because you're having them, then they have to put it on someone else in their household.

00;04;19;29 - 00;04;41;29
Speaker 1
Jamie Loge, a professor at Northeastern University and an expert on the trade offs parents have to make, talked about her research on fathers at work and how company policies and expectations often kept those fathers from being involved parents. And that hurt both men and women. Have a listen to how things might be changing.

00;04;42;02 - 00;05;04;00
Speaker 3
We particularly were focused on fathers who wanted to be involved. Fathers, who had that, who had set that expectation for themselves and their wives as well. And so we we wanted to know what's it like to be an involved dad? What are the pressures and experiences that you have in reentry? Do they take the kind of breaks, and parental leave that, that mothers take?

00;05;04;00 - 00;05;05;24
Speaker 3
I mean, they often don't because they're.

00;05;05;24 - 00;05;08;14
Speaker 2
They tend to be more stigmatized for. Yeah.

00;05;08;17 - 00;05;23;21
Speaker 3
You know what I would say? Taking it too far. Right. It's okay to take a couple of weeks off, but four months paternity leave. Well, now you've now you've, you know, defying expectations of what it means to be, you know, masculine and what it means to be a man. But those were the things that we were really interested in.

00;05;23;21 - 00;05;24;24
Speaker 3
And so, I mean.

00;05;24;27 - 00;05;26;04
Speaker 2
Parenting, I would say, is.

00;05;26;04 - 00;05;42;05
Speaker 3
Hard work when fathers enter the conversation that actually only helps mothers. It doesn't hurt them. It helps them because now everybody's part of that conversation. We used to just have affinity groups that were just for working mothers, and now it's about working parents. And I know I've been very cognizant of, opening.

00;05;42;05 - 00;05;44;19
Speaker 2
Up that that line of communication and just.

00;05;44;19 - 00;05;47;00
Speaker 3
Talking more about it. And I think it's become more.

00;05;47;06 - 00;05;48;22
Speaker 2
Commonplace for fathers to be.

00;05;48;22 - 00;05;59;03
Speaker 3
Able to talk about their role. You know, that it's not so much a it's just as much a badge of masculinity to be a good dad as it is, you know, to be a good worker as well.

00;05;59;05 - 00;06;21;14
Speaker 1
Kenneth Braswell, as a leader in the responsible fatherhood movement and the chief executive of Fathers Incorporated, a widely recognized nonprofit that supports fathers, researchers and policy makers. I met Kenneth at an ecumenical conference in Los Angeles over the spring. We had a great discussion on the demands of being a father today. What's his number one tip for all fathers?

00;06;21;16 - 00;06;55;14
Speaker 1
He shares it here. One of the biggest things I've learned is patience. Not trying to parent too fast, not trying to force my children, to be independent too fast. Not to take myself too seriously, too quickly. Right. And having patience, even with my business of doing fatherhood, having patience in the understanding, Paul, that I can't do it all.

00;06;55;17 - 00;07;29;02
Speaker 1
However, at the same time, there was a great need out there. And it is a growing need and they there are not enough fingers, to put, in all of the holes in the dike, that are bleeding with the pain of children not having fathers in their lives, of fathers struggling to be in their children's lives, of families dealing with some levels of father absence, even, with the parents or in their own individual situation.

00;07;29;04 - 00;08;09;14
Speaker 1
And so I've had to temper my, my need to want to save the world, and to be able to position myself to speak to the voices that hear me right, and work with those fathers and support and love on, others such as yourself, for being a soldier in this field with me so that I don't have to feel like I have to do it all, that I have peers, other men out there who share my passion about fathers in particular, that are doing their, thing in their space based on their calling, to help in this effort.

00;08;09;16 - 00;08;32;22
Speaker 1
Denis Suskind, a renowned pediatric surgeon in Chicago, wrote an insightful book this year, Parent Nation. It laid out research and roadmap to change how early child care is handled in America. We talked about parental leave and what else is needed to help parents, but we also talked about how doing this will allow companies to move the bottom line, as at this event recently.

00;08;32;22 - 00;09;01;10
Speaker 1
And one of the panelists is a woman who's a economist working, running a think tank. And she flat out she said, you know, if I could find, a company or an employee or nonprofit that had high quality childcare onsite, I would never leave that job. And here she is. You know, in representing, I'm not gonna say who she is representing her employer out there and saying, you know, essentially by saying they're not really doing, you know, their role and it's it's issues like that.

00;09;01;10 - 00;09;17;08
Speaker 1
I'd love for you to delve into a bit because, you know, earlier this year, we had a lot of conversations about, paid parental leave. I'm all for it. I'm all for to to get men to take more leave. I'm all for it to have lower income people, to have the chance to to bond more with their children.

00;09;17;08 - 00;09;45;21
Speaker 1
But, you know, if Covid taught us anything, it's that, you know, parenting challenges don't stop after the first, you know, six months. You know, children aren't less, you know, time consuming. They're different needs as they get older. What, you know, what can companies do if not, you know, a big you know, national what can companies do to sort of recognize this need and recognize that caregiving is essential not just for families, but for the functioning, of our economy?

00;09;45;23 - 00;09;57;04
Speaker 3
Yeah. No, I actually I love this question because I actually think I'm quite bullish. That's a term, I guess, from your your world, on the role of business because.

00;09;57;11 - 00;10;00;19
Speaker 1
You are married to an economist. So you know that, you know.

00;10;00;21 - 00;10;20;20
Speaker 3
Bullish that that, that they can play you know, it. You know, they're the economic engines of our of our country. And I always say if they can bring their innovation and economic might to this issue, you know, showing that what's good for parents and caregivers is good for the bottom line. I think it'll really help move the rest of society field forward.

00;10;20;20 - 00;10;45;06
Speaker 3
And especially in this moment in time with such low unemployment and people, employees really, you know, talking with their feet. Right. So many, you know, I can't remember the stat, but a number of, you know, a huge portion of millennials said, just as that female economist said, that, look, if another company had better family friendly policies, they would, you know, switch jobs.

00;10;45;08 - 00;11;13;25
Speaker 3
And, you know, if, you know, if employers start sort of acting in, in that way, both, you know, instituting more family friendly policies, which, you know, we can talk about all of them. But I think the the basic sort of buckets are, you know, flexibility, reliability, you know, a living wage, you know, chat, you know, help with childcare that, it'll start sort of pushing the rest of society along.

00;11;13;28 - 00;11;29;02
Speaker 3
The truth is, is that employers are hurting. Parents are hurting the most, right, with the lack of infrastructure. But employers are hurting too. Employers are hurting as well. So I think they can play a large role in shifting what's going on in this country.

00;11;29;02 - 00;11;48;26
Speaker 1
So J life is at the forefront of chronicling the workplace of the future as a co-founder and president of charter. He's had a great career in magazines and media. But for 20 years, a constant was his daily commute. He was a veteran of Metro-North, the train that took him from Fairfield, Connecticut to New York City. It was two plus hours commute, just one way.

00;11;48;29 - 00;12;07;29
Speaker 1
It got so bad that he preferred flying far away to sitting on that train to go into his New York City office. Covid changed all that. At home with his wife and two daughters, he found the joys of being a dad, getting time back after years of commuting. It changed his view on work and parenting, and he's never going back to that daily commute.

00;12;08;06 - 00;12;30;18
Speaker 1
But more broadly, he's using that experience to influence a conversation on what work will look like going forward. Listen to his thoughts. I'm being honest. As a parent and a worker in my dreams, you know, if you have really good workers, I would love somebody to say, you know what? I need to take the next hour, and just go take a walk with my daughter.

00;12;30;21 - 00;12;47;29
Speaker 1
She had a hard day at school. It's going to take a walk. I make it some ice cream, but, I'll log back on an hour. Hour and a half and, you know, don't worry, I don't have any plan tonight. I'll finish everything up at ten. Do you think we're at that moment where, you know, the worker parent can be that level of honesty?

00;12;47;29 - 00;12;53;23
Speaker 1
Or should we just be happy that we can say, hey, I got to go to a baseball game and you get a free pass for that?

00;12;53;26 - 00;13;20;02
Speaker 3
Yeah. No, I hope so. I think I think we're getting closer and closer to that. And I think the reason is if you look at the data around that, you know, there's a lot of talk about the great resignation, the numbers are true. I think it's something like, you know, 4 million people have a month for, you know, the last since February or something have, you know, have left their jobs and the number of people who are considering leaving their jobs remains incredibly, historically very high.

00;13;20;04 - 00;13;46;15
Speaker 3
And if you look at the number one and two reasons, which are neck and neck for doing that, one is pay no, no surprise, but the other is flexibility. With flexibility, often leading people want flexibility for the very reason that you're saying. And part of that flexibility is the ability to work from anywhere or at least that's the other point, I guess, Paul, about, you know, going back to the office, people are not actually a lot of people are not resistant to going back to the office, per se.

00;13;46;16 - 00;14;11;19
Speaker 3
It's going back to the office, you know, 9 to 5 or 9 to 6 or whatever the hours are. It's without having the flexibility to do exactly what you were just talking about. Now, with a commute like mine, you know, sure, the walk is going to be delayed by two hour. I mean, I can regale you with stories of, you know, having to rush to to take care of my dad, who was, you know, in his 90s and ended up in the emergency room and take me 3.5 hours to actually get to the emergency room from the minute I got the call.

00;14;11;22 - 00;14;35;23
Speaker 3
But I think having that flexibility is becoming a more important thing if if not, because it is the right thing to do, it is necessary thing to do because you're going to lose people. People are going to leave. They're going to go to greener pastures that allow that flexibility. And so the competition for quality talent who, you know, when their number one expectations, that flexibility, I think is going to remain acute and probably change what the dynamic is here.

00;14;35;26 - 00;14;50;13
Speaker 3
And I think I think it's a great thing, you know, to to tell another story from my own life in, in with charter, the current thing that we're doing. And as you said, the teams are all remote. We're all on slack all day. And you know what people are doing on slack. You or you're in a meeting, you're you're available or whatever it is.

00;14;50;15 - 00;15;07;19
Speaker 3
I very intentionally because I could not do this for 20 years. I have dinner with my wife, who luckily still likes me. The loving was. It was a given because we've been together a long time. But it turns out we still like each other. I have dinner with her every night from about 6 to 715.

00;15;07;19 - 00;15;24;20
Speaker 3
We like to eat early, and I could never do that before. And I put on slack, like dinner with Dawn. And it's. And it means don't try to ping me between 6 and 730, because I'll be doing dinner and doing the dishes and playing some music and engaging with my wife. And then, yeah, sure, I go back to the office a lot of nights because there's a lot to do on a startup.

00;15;24;26 - 00;15;25;05
Speaker 1
Right?

00;15;25;05 - 00;15;30;26
Speaker 3
But I, I'm really clear about what that hour and a half is and the fact that I'm going to take it, I don't care what everybody else is doing at that point.

00;15;31;02 - 00;15;51;07
Speaker 1
But unlike, you know, with you, when you're a publisher, various magazines, and you would go to the library, which you didn't go to, here, you're really setting the right tone because you're being very open about it. Like, oh, that's right. If Jay is taking this, you know, hour and a half, to have dinner and to talk, but you're not eating for an hour.

00;15;51;08 - 00;16;11;12
Speaker 1
You're talking with your wife. You're spending time with there. You're discussing your days, or you're talking about your children or where you want to be, and all kinds of things that are essential to being a human. I think, you know, and you putting it down like that, I think what you're really doing is giving your employees, you know, license to do the same.

00;16;11;12 - 00;16;18;13
Speaker 1
And like, okay, precisely. Jay can do it. I can do it. He's not going to yell at me. He did it. You know, this is how we're wired.

00;16;18;15 - 00;16;36;08
Speaker 3
That's right. Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's exactly right. I think what we do really well that companies need to adopt as well as, like, have clear stretches of the day that are designed for meetings, so that you've got chunks of hours that where people can be flexible.

00;16;36;10 - 00;16;48;05
Speaker 1
Jeff Forte is a leading special education attorney when it comes to child educational needs. He has one piece of advice for fathers, whether they're lead dad or not. Listen to it here.

00;16;48;07 - 00;17;17;08
Speaker 3
I actually did a little bit of research in advance of the show, and there's a, there's a survey that was commissioned in the late 1990s and then again in the early 2000 by the National Center for fathering. And essentially what it showed was that dads really, statistically don't get that deeply involved in their child's, education and schooling.

00;17;17;11 - 00;17;18;20
Speaker 3
Most dads.

00;17;18;23 - 00;17;23;26
Speaker 1
Why is that? Why they just is is. Yeah. Very clear. Why aren't they that involved.

00;17;23;28 - 00;17;57;12
Speaker 3
Work wise, they, they think school is where the school team handles their child's education, and they just they don't necessarily get that involved. It's more like the dad role is typically where they're going to sporting events to help their kid. But they're not, you know, they're not, visiting their child's classroom. They may not even know what their child's teacher's name is or let alone their, their, their child's pediatrician's name is.

00;17;57;12 - 00;18;23;03
Speaker 3
Yeah. You know, helping with homework or a or big school project, you typically will see, you know, you know, dads go to, you know, plays and recitals and sports, but the, the, the parent teacher conference, reviewing report cards, helping with homework, going on to, you know, Google Classroom every week to make sure assignments may begin.

00;18;23;05 - 00;18;48;19
Speaker 3
These are things that even just without qualifying for special education, the more parents moms two of course, are involved, the more informed you're going to be about your child within the educational community. And I think it's something that gets lost a lot is, you know, what is an educational community? And it involves parents. I mean, it's not just the school team.

00;18;48;24 - 00;18;53;15
Speaker 3
Parents should realize that they are part of their child's school team.

00;18;53;18 - 00;19;15;15
Speaker 1
Too often, men resist being lead dads, or at least being honest about their role, because the link between money and masculinity that Brad Klotz, a financial psychologist, talks about the detrimental link between the two and how breaking that link will allow men to fulfill their full potential while also allowing women to sort at work.

00;19;15;17 - 00;19;41;10
Speaker 3
I think a lot of it has to do with how oriented we are to the traditional roles that have been around for, you know, decades and centuries and generations. I think your attachment to that in terms of your self-esteem, I think that's probably the biggest predictor in terms of how comfortable you are taking, you know, a primary breadwinner status or a shared one, or being the one who's not bringing in as much money into the relationships.

00;19;41;10 - 00;19;52;23
Speaker 3
I think a lot of it has to do with your attachment to that traditional role, versus your flexibility around how you perceive yourself and your value and your relationship, and with your kids and your family.

00;19;52;29 - 00;20;04;12
Speaker 1
Are some people just going to be wired to be more, open to being, a dad, or is there a way we can do some sort of, you know, lead that boot camp and bring some of those other guys up to speed?

00;20;04;14 - 00;20;20;04
Speaker 3
Yeah, I think probably some of it is, is just how flexible are you? And you're thinking how, willing are you to go against the grain? Because, again, there's not a lot of role models. And so a lot of this has to be constructed on our own or with another group of dads. So I think it's flexibility and thinking.

00;20;20;04 - 00;20;43;20
Speaker 3
Open mindedness is probably a huge component of it, because there's no doubt that, the studies we've done related to this have been mostly around women who are, earning more than their male husbands and partners. And some of the pressure they get and stress they get from family and friends and people around them that, you know, you're stepping out of the traditional role and he's stepping out of the traditional role.

00;20;43;26 - 00;20;58;27
Speaker 3
And so you have to be willing to surround yourself with people who are more open minded or living, you know, more of a, egalitarian approach to parenting, if you will, or you're going to be succumbing to some of that pressure. And a lot of that gets internalized and you start to wonder, am I doing the right thing?

00;20;58;27 - 00;21;03;04
Speaker 3
Am I living up to the standards that I'm supposed to be living up to?

00;21;03;06 - 00;21;09;19
Speaker 1
Thanks to all of our experts this year, and thanks to you for listening. We're off to a great start and I'm eager to see what 2023 will bring.