I met Brian Anderson, Executive Director of Fathering Together, last year on the Mother’s Monday team as he was supporting the initiative and creating the complementary initiative Father’s Friday. When I wanted the working dad’s perspective for the Great Realignment, Brian is who I thought of. I’m thrilled to share Brian’s thoughts on the need for new narratives for working dads during the Great Realignment as they look to shift to roles that support their need for work-life balance.
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A year ago, I was putting my daughter to bed. She looked frustrated and I asked why.
She said, “Dad, you run a group to help dads be better dads right?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Well, you aren’t being a good dad to me.” She turned away from me, and I left the words hanging there. Though they were a dagger in my chest, her words weren’t wrong. I’d been working myself too hard as a way to escape the pandemic. But her words were my clarion call. If I was to save my relationship with her, I had to take action and make changes.
Career shifts and new opportunities
A few weeks later, I gave notice to my full-time employer, and I took the leap into running Fathering Together full-time. Fathering Together is a non-profit organization I co-founded in the fall of 2019. The mission is to turn fathers into agents for positive change through communities of support, accountability, and vulnerability.
While I’d never served as an Executive Director and I definitely never founded an organization that was global in scale, I knew that if I didn’t reimagine my life and realign myself to the values I held true, I’d lose the most important people in my life, my wife and daughters.
So, this past year has been one of building new systems in our home, like using FairPlay, a system designed by bestselling author Eve Rodsky to help align household chores and tasks, reinvesting in myself, and being more emotionally available to my family.
Along the way, I’ve spoken with dozens of HR directors, working dads, and business leaders to realize that I’m not the only one who desires some realignment. Unfortunately, this hasn’t equated to dads leaving the jobs or even taking personal time or paid parental leave, even when it is offered. That is changing, though. Dads’ needs related to this realignment are taking hold and we have started to see the impact in this moment of Great Realignment.
Working dad thoughts and perspectives
In a recent conversation I had with a group of dads in our network, I asked them what they thought of being called a working dad. Everyone paused. Some chuckled, and one dad spoke up saying the term was redundant.
“As a dad, the default is that I’m working. As a young man, society drilled into me that my primary duty for my family was to be a financial provider. So if I’m not working, I’m not fulfilling my duty to my family.”
Others agreed and added that being home during the pandemic, while stressful, also created opportunities to build closer ties with their children they hadn’t expected. Lunches were spent on the back porch with their kids rather than a sterile break room with coworkers. Some even shared they would go on bike rides in the middle of the day to break up the routine.
The benefits of new narratives
Part of creating new narratives for working dads is understanding some of the underlying benefits. Research already highlights the impact the presence of a dad has on his children. Daughters form healthy friendships, strong self-esteem, and more resilience. Sons are more emotionally expressive and communicative. Partners express deeper connection too.
Despite dads taking on caring roles, Thekla Morgenroth, a research fellow in Social and Organisational Psychology at the University of Exeter, UK has found, “Women are no longer seen as less competent than men, but women continue to be seen as more communal – warm, nurturing and caring – than men and, in turn, as more suitable for roles that require these attributes such as childcare. Men, on the other hand, continue to be seen as more decisive, assertive, competitive.”
Finding new roles models for working fathers
So, where can dads go to find examples to get ideas? Sure, there are great examples of fathers in media like Uncle Phil from the Fresh Prince, Phil Dunphy on Modern Family, and Jack Pearson from This is Us. Some working dads might have great examples in their own lives with their own fathers, brothers, or colleagues. Maybe even a mentor is that role model of an engaged working dad. But until dads have communities to hold one another accountable to making systemic change, the simplistic and negative images of fathers like Homer Simpson (The Simpsons), Dan Draper (Mad Men), or John Dutton (Yellowstone) will persist because they seem the norm.
Creating community for working dads
One way to create these communities is to establish parenting employee resource groups (ERGs). While it makes sense to create ERGs for traditionally marginalized voices to help with professional development, mentoring, and networking opportunities, the same is critical to provide employees who are dads a space to integrate their personal lives without judgment. ERGs are great places within an organization to share new narratives for working dads.
Equally as important is having senior leadership either leading these conversations or taking time off and setting an example. That means more companies offering leave, not only maternity leave, and senior leaders actually taking time off for the full period, not only a week or two. And it also means that men take on more active parenting roles. Eve Rodsky longs for men to realize that time with your children in a doctor’s office is just as critical as time in the board room making strategic decisions. But, until senior leadership models that behavior and shifts the culture, company-wide change will be difficult to achieve.
At Fathering Together, our newest community, the Fatherhood Insider, is designed to empower dads to make these changes while tracking the experience of working dads. Conversations and workshops within the community provide strategies and new narratives for working dads who are working to make changes in their own lives and organizations.
On March 29th, we’re launching the This Working Dad Cares campaign to bring attention to the importance of taking paid parental leave so that dads have time to build emotional bonds with our children.
We welcome all of you to join us. For working dads who read this, post a photo and show your support! For working moms reading this, share this with your partners and open a conversation with them about changes you both can make to create a more supportive and equitable home.
Brian Anderson is a husband to an amazing wife and father to two spirited daughters that keep him inspired and exhausted every day. He started Fathering Together as a way to better connect and learn from his fellow dads. Prior to Fathering Together, Brian has worked as a social worker, university chaplain, and interfaith leadership consultant. When not working on the future of Fathering Together, you can find Brian writing letters to his daughters, creating “cooking” lessons with his daughters, and learning dance moves too!
