EP79: Challenging Myths and Lies About Dads

Interview with Linda Nielsen / Professor and Expert on Fathers & Daughters

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

Do babies really bond better with moms? Do dads sacrifice less than moms? Are dads less empathetic, less compassionate, and less skilled at communicating than moms? These are all myths that hold fathers back, says Linda Nielsen, a professor at Wake Forest University. She's been researching the subject for 30 years. Listen to how to correct the record.

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Transcript

00;00;05;28 - 00;00;30;02
Paul Sullivan
Welcome to the Company of Dads podcast, where we explore the sweet, silly, sublime and strange aspects of being a dad in a world where men who are the go to parent aren't always accepted at work, among their friends, or in the community for what they're doing. I'm your host, Paul Sullivan. Our podcast is just one of many things we produce each week at the company that we have various features, including the lead at the week.

00;00;30;05 - 00;01;04;27
Paul Sullivan
We have our community both online and in person, and we have a new resource library for all fathers. The one stop shop for all of this is our newsletter, The dad. Sign up at the Company of dads.com backslash the dad. Today My guest is Linda Nielsen, a professor of education at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. She's an internationally recognized expert on father daughter relationships and most recently, she's the author of a book, “Myths and Lies About Dads”, with the subtitle “How They Hurt Us All”.

00;01;05;00 - 00;01;24;15
Paul Sullivan
She's also written two previous books on Father daughter relationships and how to improve them as a dad of three daughters from kindergarten to middle school. I'm quite excited for our conversation today. Professor Nielsen, welcome to the Company of Dads

00;01;25;25 - 00;01;27;13
Linda Nielsen
Thanks very much. Thanks for inviting.

00;01;27;15 - 00;01;38;17
Paul Sullivan
Great to have you. Let's start off with the easiest question. How did this become your area of of study and research? How did it all begin?

00;01;38;20 - 00;02;09;15
Linda Nielsen
Well, 30 years ago, actually, 35 years ago, I became very interested in the father daughter relationships because my own father had died recently, which always makes us reflective, I think, about our relationship with that parent. But I had also been, studying or writing for years about adolescence. And I realized that in the adolescent psychology books, there was a lot about fathers and sons, a lot about mothers and daughters, a lot about mothers and sons.

00;02;09;19 - 00;02;43;17
Linda Nielsen
But there was very little in those books that fathers and daughters. And I wondered why, when I looked, the googled went to Amazon books. There were no books at that time, 35 years ago on father daughter relationships. So I decided to fill the gap and I am writing and teaching about fathers and daughters and taught have taught. Still teaching the only course in the country college course that's exclusively devoted to father daughter relationships.

00;02;43;19 - 00;03;05;23
Linda Nielsen
Which again, was very surprising because on college campuses there are many courses on mother daughter relationships. But again, these sort of seem to hit the alt delete button when it came to fathers and daughters. So I yeah, that up is my I'm research passion and personal passion.

00;03;05;25 - 00;03;32;16
Paul Sullivan
It's fascinating because you know knowledge academia is usually an iterative process. You're building on things that have have come before you and you're asking different questions. But, you know, when you think about it 35 years ago, there's there's nothing out there and you really start this field. What were some of the first questions that you started to ask back then, and what were the first some of the first things that you learned back then?

00;03;32;18 - 00;04;20;05
Linda Nielsen
I think the first thing I learned was how important fathers were in terms of their impact on daughters. There was a lot there that surprised me. And also as I started to encounter this new book, there's so many negative stereotypes and myths about fathers that undermine that father daughter relationship that undermined men's relationships with their sons, too. But again, my focus was on the father daughter bond and realizing how those myths and stereotypes work against the kind of meaningful relationship that fathers and daughters could otherwise have together, and that I still see those myths and stereotypes.

00;04;20;07 - 00;04;39;12
Linda Nielsen
They're like zombies and vampires and think you've gotten rid of them, and you take a big sigh of relief, and then all of a sudden it's gotcha. You know, they're they're out there again. They keep, like, rising up and rising up, which I find not amusing, but really very, very disturbing.

00;04;39;14 - 00;05;08;16
Paul Sullivan
You know, a couple of, well, several ups a dozen episodes back, we had on, Stu Freedman, who's a professor at the Wharton School, and back in the 80s, fairly after he became a dad, he started researching, workplace dynamics and changing gender policies. And you know why? Allowing both men and women to be caregivers at work would be significant, both for them as people, for the families, but also for the company at large.

00;05;08;16 - 00;05;27;01
Paul Sullivan
And at the time, he was an untenable professor. And his colleagues at Wharton said, you know, Stu, what in the world are you doing? You're going to screw up your career, focus on something else. And he persisted. And now, you know, 35 years later, he's one of the leading experts, in this, this space. And he's advised all kinds of big companies.

00;05;27;06 - 00;05;40;04
Paul Sullivan
What did your colleagues, at Wake Forest say? You know, in the education department. When? 35 years ago, 30, 35 years ago, you start to delve into this area and started to do, you know, research on it.

00;05;40;06 - 00;06;01;23
Linda Nielsen
I would say it was sort of a shrug like, ooh, okay. But that sort of little niche. Well, I don't consider that a little niche of research when you're talking about, you know, half of the children or daughters, half of the parents are fathers. I'd say that's a pretty big darn niche. Yeah. So it was sort of a shrug.

00;06;01;24 - 00;06;16;09
Linda Nielsen
Oh, well, okay. That's nice. Instead of taking it as seriously as we should because of the ramifications it has for daughters.

00;06;16;12 - 00;06;34;07
Paul Sullivan
And talk about that. Wouldn't you know, we'll get to your, your, your new book in, in a couple of minutes. But talk about what you've learned and how the field and how the study of this has changed over over the past three decades, both for the positive and the areas where there's still a lot of work to do.

00;06;34;09 - 00;07;14;09
Linda Nielsen
Well, the positive is as we're seeing in the media and in podcasts like this one, and in your company of dads, we are seeing more attention being paid to the role of fathers. The progress, yes, but how much progress? And that's what concerns me. For example, paternity leaves. There has not been much progress made there in terms of offering those leaves to fathers, treating them seriously, making fathers feel very comfortable and welcome to take those leaves.

00;07;14;12 - 00;07;48;14
Linda Nielsen
There's still a lot of prejudice there in terms of the roles that we expect fathers to play. Or we look at the media and say, one of the most popular myths is that you guys are slouches on couches. You're just not doing your share of the work to raise children. I see that myth every week in the media, in jokes, in t shirts, in Fathers Day cards, in Fathers Day cards.

00;07;48;17 - 00;08;23;24
Linda Nielsen
The myth of the lousy Father that mere damages fathers relationships with their children. It damages fathers relationships with their spouses because everyone believes the myth. Why don't we look at what the US Census Department tells us, and the US Census Department does surveys national surveys to look at how mothers and fathers spend their time every week. And they look at these surveys all year long.

00;08;23;27 - 00;08;38;26
Linda Nielsen
This is data all year long. Yeah. The bottom line is moms and dads do equal numbers of work hours on behalf of their children, about 62 hours a week. It's a lot of work.

00;08;38;28 - 00;08;39;09
Paul Sullivan
It's a lot.

00;08;39;09 - 00;09;20;11
Linda Nielsen
And they do different kinds of work to contribute to their children. Two thirds of the families have. The fathers do most of the financial childcare. Okay. Two thirds of the fathers are caring most or all of that burden of childcare. The mothers are caring. Two thirds of the work of the more direct childcare. But the myth says that the dads are just lying around leisure, loafing, lollygagging, whatever you guys do while the mothers are raising your children.

00;09;20;14 - 00;09;26;27
Linda Nielsen
That is a very, very damaging and very serious and very popular myth.

00;09;27;00 - 00;09;55;09
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. Last year I was out in Los Angeles. But at that by this group, Aqua mundo, you may know the met, the found a guy named Gary Parker, and he had teamed up with the Gina Davis Institute to do a study of, popular perceptions of caregivers and fathers in in TV and movies. And, of course, it was the father was, angry, absent, abusive, bumbling.

00;09;55;11 - 00;10;19;00
Paul Sullivan
And it was powerful because you know, these they're being played for laughs sometimes. Are play being played for paper sometimes. But they're, they're sticky and you see them, you know, often enough. And it becomes a sort of, as you say, it's a myth, but it's it's self-reinforcing. How do we work to, you know, break the myths, obviously, is something very important to us at the company of dads.

00;10;19;00 - 00;10;29;24
Paul Sullivan
But when you think of, you know, ways that this, this myth here and all of the 62 hour stat, how do we we begin to break that myth and present more, more reality?

00;10;29;27 - 00;11;00;04
Linda Nielsen
Okay. Let's look at what women did or what any other marginalized group has done to try to change the stereotypes that were hurting them, hurting their children, hurting their families. Look at what women have done in the last 30 years. It started with children's toys. Okay. There was a Barbie doll years ago. That little talking Barbie doll, and it said, I hate math class.

00;11;00;06 - 00;11;24;23
Linda Nielsen
That was one of the things a Barbie. I hate math class. Math class is hard. Well the the feminists went crazy about that. You it they said you're feeding a myth. It's a dangerous myth. It's a myth that cost women money because you're keeping them out of Stem jobs. You're discouraging little girls. That Barbie doll was yanked from the shelves faster than you can say jackrabbit.

00;11;25;00 - 00;11;51;07
Linda Nielsen
It was gone. Yeah. So we start with toys. We start with children's books. Where you don't you don't portray women and girls as being too stupid to do science and math. So if we use those same strategies, toys, children's books, sitcoms, would you make the same kind of sitcoms about mothers that you do about fathers? I don't think so.

00;11;51;13 - 00;12;08;15
Linda Nielsen
Right. Would you make the same kind of Father's Day cards that are supposed to be funny? I don't see those cards at Mother's Day. I don't see any Mother's Day card. Yeah. Making fun of mothers with their feet propped up, drinking beer.

00;12;08;17 - 00;12;09;12
Paul Sullivan
You're right.

00;12;09;14 - 00;12;37;13
Linda Nielsen
For Chardonnay. I guess in the case of the mom, if you want to say so. If you start with those small steps for young children. Okay. And then build our movies. Our sitcoms are at parties and our commercials. Would you make fun of mothers the same way you make fun of fathers in commercials? No. You would not. But we still do this.

00;12;37;16 - 00;13;29;01
Linda Nielsen
Yeah. And in fact, in many countries, including South Africa, India and the UK, they have banned making commercials that stereotype men or women in negative ways. But we still apparently find it funny. I don't find it funny. As a father, I would be very offended by those commercials and those sitcoms and those Father's Day cards. So if we follow these same patterns that women followed from yanking those Barbie dolls off those shelves to repackaging toys, how about toys for little boys?

00;13;29;03 - 00;13;52;14
Linda Nielsen
Toys where they are nurturing their babies, where they are taking care of babies, where they are not being made fun of for taking care of their baby dolls. We did it when it came to changing the roles and creating more freedom for women and girls. We're not doing that so well for boys and men when it comes to creating future fathers.

00;13;52;16 - 00;14;17;03
Linda Nielsen
What are we setting out there for future fathers? The male students in my fathers and daughters class, when they come in, they're they honest to goodness believe that there's such a thing as maternal instinct that women have and men don't have, and that make women superior to men in taking care of babies. That's a myth.

00;14;17;06 - 00;14;21;19
Paul Sullivan
And it's a hurt, it's a hurtful myth for for women as well as as babies. Yeah.

00;14;21;21 - 00;14;45;06
Linda Nielsen
Yes. Because if we believe just that myth, then you're going to expect the mother to be the one to take more of the time off work, to do the maternity leave, to make the concession, and to take care of that baby because you believe she's superior. If we could dismantle that vampire zombie in the attic, we could kill that off.

00;14;45;09 - 00;15;20;25
Linda Nielsen
Think of the wider choices, the greater freedom that the moms and dads would have to make choices that they feel better suited their particular family, their particular personality. Those young men in my class or future fathers. They believe. They believe that women are more empathic, more compassionate, better at communicating than men. That is a myth. These young men have bought the myth.

00;15;20;27 - 00;15;48;05
Linda Nielsen
If they believe that real, then that is how they will behave. Because if we buy the stereotype, then we act in accord with that stereotype and we reinforce the stereotype. So now we're in a really bad circle in the way that if little girls believe they can't do math and science, complete the path over the next 15 years, they won't go into those areas.

00;15;48;07 - 00;16;09;09
Linda Nielsen
So the myths that I'm addressing in the book are myths that hold fathers back from being the kind of fathers they could be. And it holds the mothers back from making choices that they could make if they didn't believe the myth.

00;16;09;12 - 00;16;30;18
Paul Sullivan
You know? I agree, I mean, I had this conversation a couple of weeks back with the major insurance company about coming in and giving a talk, to one of their parenting groups. And they liked, you know, what we're proposing? We went back and forth, and then they came back a couple of days later with an email saying, you know, we really would like to bring the company dads in.

00;16;30;19 - 00;17;03;17
Paul Sullivan
However, we feel right now we haven't been doing enough for women. At our, at work. And so therefore we want to keep our parenting group focused on moms. And I wrote back to them, I said, you know what you're doing that you think is positive is actually negative. If you don't have the dads in these parenting groups, then it's going to persist at your very large insurance company that all caregiving roles, while parenting roles are going to fall to those working moms and those working moms, whether consciously or not, are going to be stigmatized at work.

00;17;03;17 - 00;17;23;15
Paul Sullivan
They're going to be seen as, less committed or unable to put in the hours when there could very well be, a father who, you know, short of, giving birth and breastfeeding. We have to believe that many dads did that a father can do everything. Could do everything else. You. These are so many. The task they get assigned as gender to get assigned to moms.

00;17;23;17 - 00;17;49;14
Paul Sullivan
Really? You know, logistics, planning, operations, things that you would do, in any workplace. But when big companies, you know, believe that and they're setting in, they're speaking with their policies and their leave plans and their dollars in their promotions. How do we start to, you know, combat those those myths that, you know, do this? I'm not going to name the insurance company, but everybody listening would know it.

00;17;49;16 - 00;18;00;15
Paul Sullivan
How do we start, you know, combating those those myths in in corporate America that are, you know, persisting, you know, holding back both, both fathers and mothers.

00;18;00;17 - 00;18;40;08
Linda Nielsen
We have to find a way to get the research through to them for example, for example, if companies understood the bottom line, cold, hard cash, you will make more money if your fathers get paternity leave, paid paternity leave, full pay, paid paternity leave. Not for a week or two, but maybe up to 5 or 6 weeks, or even extending the number of days that they could use later to take off time to care for their children.

00;18;40;10 - 00;19;15;11
Linda Nielsen
What we've seen is that the economists who have looked at this is the company saves money when they do that, because those men are more productive, less depressed, less missing time off because they are drinking too much or too stressed. Or you will make more money by investing upfront in these fathering programs. If we could say that this helps not only the bottom line for the company, it helps the mothers because it takes the pressure off this.

00;19;15;17 - 00;19;47;17
Linda Nielsen
If we can get rid of the stereotype, it takes the pressure off the mother to have to be the caregiver. It gives her more freedom. It gives the father more freedom. But the ultimate person who wins here is the kids. Yeah, it's the kids who win because we know that, contrary to the myth, fathers have as great or greater impact than mothers do on children.

00;19;47;19 - 00;20;25;22
Linda Nielsen
Give you a quick example. A baby is born premature. Okay. We know that preemies have future problems, physical health and catching up with cognitive, development. Kangaroo care. Have you ever heard of kangaroo care? No. No. Okay. Kangaroo care came along. Was a concept developed years ago. About ten years ago, where the premature baby is in the intensive care unit.

00;20;25;22 - 00;21;06;00
Linda Nielsen
Of course, what they started doing was have the mothers come into the intensive care unit and hold the baby up against her bare chest? Yep. And hold. And what they found was when that happened, the premature baby and the mother, their stress hormones went down. Blood pressure lowered. Calm. The stress reduced. But what was interesting wasn't that it was that years later, those premature babies who got the kangaroo care where they came up with kangaroo care, I guess because it was like holding it like a pouch.

00;21;06;02 - 00;21;29;06
Linda Nielsen
I don't know, kangaroo research that those babies years later had better physical health and cognitive development, had better cognitive skills than the premature babies who hadn't been held like that. But nobody ever thought to include the papa Kangaroos.

00;21;29;11 - 00;21;30;08
Paul Sullivan
Right.

00;21;30;11 - 00;22;01;10
Linda Nielsen
Now, we've done research. There's 13 studies. Now that the fathers who hold those premature babies against his bare chest, it's skin to skin contact, the warmth, the hearing, the heart, the the holding that baby against his chest. Well, Papa Kangaroo had the same impact that Mama Kangaroo had. So now we can have two kangaroos in the infant care taking care of that premature baby.

00;22;01;12 - 00;22;06;04
Linda Nielsen
That's huge. Yeah. Who's a part of it?

00;22;06;06 - 00;22;26;02
Paul Sullivan
You. Right. Tell me this. So, you know, you said something before that about how, you know, there is research that the importance of having a father involved is as important. And you also said, you know, if not more important than the mom. And I've seen this research and it's, it's it's often labeled as is controversial. It's controversial.

00;22;26;02 - 00;22;48;18
Paul Sullivan
And and I don't maybe. Are we not allowed to say that there can be equal parenting and what makes it, you know, confrontation become controversial and what makes it something that is often, you know, caveated to say that, a father is just as important. And, you know, in a child's life as a mother.

00;22;48;20 - 00;23;25;27
Linda Nielsen
Let's forget mothers and fathers for a minute. Let's go back 50 years in terms of race, racial differences. 50 years ago, when we started coming out with research showing that some of these beliefs that we had about racial differences were not true. People got threatened. Let's just say it. White people got threatened. White people, many white people were initially threatened by that research, made them uncomfortable.

00;23;26;00 - 00;23;57;08
Linda Nielsen
Went against our our expectations. Okay. Made us maybe not feel quite so special because we saw that other groups were more like us than we imagined moving forward. As we get more of that research into the general public, or as we get more of that research into the general public of women can do math and science. Men don't have to feel threatened by that.

00;23;57;10 - 00;24;37;21
Linda Nielsen
So if we use that as a parallel right now, it's possible that certain groups may feel threatened, may feel uncomfortable with the idea that men can do parenting as well as women. Certain groups may find that news that research very threatening. The scary. You're going to take my role away. You're you're going to take you're going to do something that will make me feel less good about myself.

00;24;37;23 - 00;25;07;06
Linda Nielsen
So I think that's just typical. That's usual. That's normal. When one group has to confront research that threatens in some way the position that they have traditionally held. To turn that around, we might say men might 15 years ago have felt threatened or uncomfortable with the idea of their wives making as much money as the man makes.

00;25;07;08 - 00;25;44;09
Linda Nielsen
Yeah. That's less threatening now because the stereotype is changing. And we now have the research. You know, 50 years ago there was research saying. Or people thought that if mothers left their children in childcare that terrible things were going to happen to your baby mommy, you cannot go to work. You must stay home with baby. You cannot put that baby into a daycare center 20 hours a week.

00;25;44;11 - 00;25;52;05
Linda Nielsen
We went terrified women with that idea. They believed it. You know what? It wasn't true.

00;25;52;12 - 00;25;53;12
Paul Sullivan
Right.

00;25;53;15 - 00;26;19;28
Linda Nielsen
The research came along and looked at. There are hundreds of studies, hundreds of studies showing that you can put those babies in daycare. It's not going to interfere with the attachment or the bond that those babies have to their mothers, to their mothers, and it's not going to affect those kids five years from now or six years from now or ten years from now.

00;26;20;00 - 00;26;35;16
Linda Nielsen
Yeah, but until the research got out there, many mothers would never have come to work or felt guilty when they had to go to work and leave those young babies at home. It's hard to change people's minds.

00;26;35;19 - 00;26;41;20
Paul Sullivan
But those were sort of, you know, both of those were sort of fear based.

00;26;41;22 - 00;26;42;00
Linda Nielsen


00;26;42;01 - 00;27;08;12
Paul Sullivan
Is there a fear based reasoning in your view, to keep some of these myths that keeps these myths around fathers and their capabilities alive? Is there a fear based component to that. Like, like if we let dad do this then you know X will happen? Or is that is that the myth of the incompetent dad? And so many of these things seem fear based?

00;27;08;14 - 00;27;40;00
Linda Nielsen
I think the fear that mothers might have is that fathers can't do it as well. Okay. And if you have that fear then my goodness you, you, you fear for your children that they won't do as well or won't be as happy or won't be as comfortable. If dad does more of the parenting. So maybe the mother's fear is not so much she fears for herself, but she fears that this is going to have a negative impact on her, her kids.

00;27;40;02 - 00;28;03;15
Linda Nielsen
Even though the research says that is not true. Okay. The father may fear that if he tries to do more of that parenting, that maybe his coworkers, his boss, the men that he is, where he may fear that they will think less of him. You know, stay at home brothers, take a lot of flak.

00;28;03;17 - 00;28;04;17
Paul Sullivan
Yeah.

00;28;04;20 - 00;28;08;12
Linda Nielsen
They take a lot of flak for being a stay at home fathers.

00;28;08;15 - 00;28;23;00
Paul Sullivan
It's, you know, there are many reasons why we use the term. You know, the dad, you know, we define the dad as the go to parent, whether he works full time, part time or devote all the time to his family. And that that last category is, of course, what we say formally known as a stay at home dad.

00;28;23;00 - 00;28;55;10
Paul Sullivan
And we've we've really been deliberate in banging on and on and on about the term the dad, just for that reason, to take some of the the stigma and shame away from it, to normalize it, but also to show that you can be a dad and be, you know, fully engaged in what you're you're doing. Yet I wonder, you know, I think, you know, when I left the New York Times at the end of 21 and the final column ran, you know, I'd known in my community for, for years and years came up and said, you know, I'd like to be part of what you're doing.

00;28;55;10 - 00;29;09;26
Paul Sullivan
And I said, yeah, come on board. And he said, but just make sure. Can I, can I do it anonymously? And I and I thought I said, you know, I said, maybe you saw an early draft, but we got rid of the part where we're going to take little puppies and throw them in the river. We thought that was off brand.

00;29;09;26 - 00;29;23;13
Paul Sullivan
And he just kind of stared blankly at me. I was like, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. We're never going to throw puppies in the river. And he said, can you just do it anonymously? And he worked in real estate, and his wife had a very senior job at a law firm, and she certainly made more money, that than he did.

00;29;23;15 - 00;29;47;01
Paul Sullivan
And he was great that he was there involves working, you know, still working, but it and I'll never forget it but it but it broke my heart because here there's I believe there's so many more men out there who are only dads. And you talked about the U.S. census early on that that's how I sort of decided to to leave the time to start the company that we did between the U.S. census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

00;29;47;04 - 00;30;11;18
Paul Sullivan
We very, confidently can say there are somewhere around 20 to 25 million men in America who are dads or could be the dads now, the 125 million men overall, there's 75 million. You know, dads. That's not everyone, but that's a substantial number. But so many of them, are in the shadows now. Every week, you know, more people are reaching out to me.

00;30;11;22 - 00;30;42;03
Paul Sullivan
So that's positive. But, you know, from your view and all the other examples you've given, you know, sort of American history, sociological examples, is it just the accretion of more and more research showing that these myths are just that they're myths, that they're incorrect? Is that what what it's going to take to allow fathers to confidently, positively, proactively step up and take this role and moms to be able to have more freedom?

00;30;42;04 - 00;30;48;18
Paul Sullivan
Is it just that? Is that how it how it happens, this accretion of data that finally topples the myth?

00;30;48;21 - 00;31;17;10
Linda Nielsen
Well, again, let's look at what happened with, women and girls. How did we topple the myth that the woman couldn't be the lead economically in a family? How did we topple the myth that the woman couldn't be the lead in been more educated than her husband? You know, nowadays, more women are graduating from high school and college than men.

00;31;17;12 - 00;31;52;10
Linda Nielsen
Women are at least the younger generation of women that are taking the lead in terms of education and their future jobs. How did that happen again? To topple the myth? Look, there's not 1 or 2 approaches. It took a multitude of approaches to convince those little girls that this was possible for them, that they didn't have to worry about out earning their future husband and the parent of their children.

00;31;52;17 - 00;32;27;02
Linda Nielsen
They didn't have to worry about being more educated than him. So there's not a single approach to changing that. But I think, if we look at Sweden, for example, they're doing it. You see those fathers out there with with their babies. They have the paid paternity leaves. It's become more normal for men and women there to share the income earning and share the direct hands on childcare.

00;32;27;05 - 00;32;45;01
Linda Nielsen
Yep. That took time. But they also changed their policies to make it possible for those mothers and fathers to do what they would want to do. The policies are there. We don't have that.

00;32;45;03 - 00;33;17;28
Paul Sullivan
You know, I was very optimistic. Success rate. I was very optimistic during Covid. I was very optimistic. Remote work. Parenting perspective that, you know, all the horrible things that that Covid did to the world, it allowed many of us to work fully remotely and it showed companies and managers that people could do this. And the benefit of that was, you know, moms and dads became engaged with their children in a different way, something that was frustrating.

00;33;17;29 - 00;33;36;29
Paul Sullivan
You know, nobody wants to go back to zoom school while you're trying to work. But some of it was incredibly positive. And now, you know, three years, a little over three years after, you know, that lockdown began, certain companies in America are beginning to sort of, you know, demand that people return to office and demand that return to office.

00;33;36;29 - 00;34;06;09
Paul Sullivan
Not for any good reason. I'm not a proponent of, you know, everybody work willy nilly. You have to come together. You have to have meetings. It's content, context, important. But yeah, I'm more of a proponent of it being a deliberate and intentional. But big companies, you know, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, you know, I'd get off the phone with this, this sort of very upset father, yesterday who works at a health care company, and he's really being squeezed for being the primary caregiver for for their children.

00;34;06;11 - 00;34;28;12
Paul Sullivan
And they're starting to sort of, you know, reflexively fall back on. Well, you have to be in the office and, you know, you while you're caregiving is is it my responsibility? Is that the arc of history? You know, when you look at your past, examine, is it there usually a backlash and then we keep moving forward, or is this, a sort of graver threat, in your view, to, you know, what people showed worked?

00;34;28;15 - 00;34;43;05
Paul Sullivan
Not perfectly, but but but pretty well during during Covid and people are still productive. People still made money and kids were cared for. And kids who hadn't seen their fathers were. We're seeing a lot more of their fathers because they weren't, you know, relentlessly committed to work.

00;34;43;07 - 00;35;14;11
Linda Nielsen
And I think Covid and there was some interesting research that came out of that employed mothers and employed fathers during Covid. It was the fathers who said they most enjoyed the time with the children, and it was the fathers who were much more likely to say, I don't want to go back and to the number of hours and the kind of work that I was doing.

00;35;14;13 - 00;35;31;23
Linda Nielsen
I don't like it. I don't want to go back to that. The dads were more likely to say that than the moms were. But you're right. After Covid, we sort of slid back again because of what our employers expected.

00;35;31;25 - 00;36;12;28
Linda Nielsen
Back into dad makes the money. Mom can have the more flexible job. So unfortunately, Covid sort of was a window into what it could look like if companies allowed or promoted or encouraged this versus what happened once Covid disappeared. Moving forward. Then steps back. Steps forward, then steps back. I would like to see more steps forward and let Covid show us what could be and let a country like Sweden show us what could be.

00;36;13;00 - 00;36;43;08
Linda Nielsen
Which again, who's the beneficiary of this? It's not the father, it's not the mother. But let's keep the focus on where it should be. It's the kids who are going to benefit from this. More ordering time benefits kids focus on the kids. Need say the f word. Fathers, mothers, fathers, fathers, fathers. More of the f word. Fathers, fathers.

00;36;43;11 - 00;37;06;06
Linda Nielsen
If we could get more fathering in there. We know from the research that the kids are the ones who benefit. Yeah. Okay. We have 50% of the children in this country. 50% spend part of their childhood living away from their fathers.

00;37;06;09 - 00;37;41;06
Linda Nielsen
50%. Those children are being father deprived instead of father enriched. The research shows us that father enriched is better than father deprived. Father deprived is also the father who's working 50 and 60 hours a week. Those children are father deprived. So that's where our focus needs to be in terms of getting rid of the myths and the lies.

00;37;41;08 - 00;37;54;29
Linda Nielsen
We owe it to the kids to zap the vampires and the zombies, which are the myths and the lies that are so hard to get rid of.

00;37;55;02 - 00;38;06;26
Paul Sullivan
Professor Nielsen, thank you for being my guest in the Company Dads podcast today. I'll never think of the F-word the same, again. So, it's a great place. Thank you very much.

00;38;06;28 - 00;38;10;22
Linda Nielsen
You're so welcome. Thank you for having me.

00;38;10;24 - 00;38;39;13
Paul Sullivan
Thank you for listening to the company of that podcast. I also want to thank the people who make this podcast and everything else that we do, the company that possible. Helder Mira, who is our audio producer Lindsey Decker, handles all of our social media. Terry Brennan, who's helping us with the newsletter and audience acquisition. Emily Servin, who is our web maestro, and of course, Evan Roosevelt, who is working side by side with me on many of the things that we do here at the Company of Dads.

00;38;39;13 - 00;38;53;22
Paul Sullivan
It's a great team. And we're we're just trying to bring you the best in fatherhood. Remember, the one stop shop for everything is our newsletter, the dad sign up at the Company of dads.com backslash. The dad. Thank you again for listening.