A few nights ago I was reading a post from my buddy at DIYDaddy about some work he was doing with something called the Dad Index, an independent survey of over 1,200 young fathers in the UK. Not surprising, the survey revealed that millennial dads are very heavily involved in the raising of their children and called for marketers to recognize their influence as consumers of parenting related products.
It’s important work, a subject that I champion often in these pages. There were lots of numbers, some nice looking graphics, and a fair amount of back patting that I’m not going to say that I didn’t appreciate. It was all presented in a way that suggested that none of this data was shocking, that most people by now have come to acknowledge fathers as equal partners in parenting and that it was time for advertisers and employers to get with the times.
Like I said, important work.
It also made me slightly uncomfortable and it took me a while to figure out why.
It’s the language that we use when calling for our paid paternity leave, changing tables in men’s rooms, respect and recognition. I think that a lot of the time we are inadvertently marginalizing the efforts and contributions of our own fathers. We’re so proud of this concept of the “modern father, more involved than ever”, but the truth is that my dad was pretty damn involved himself.
I don’t know how many diapers he changed or bottles that he heated up, don’t know how many school lunches he packed or how much blame he should share for some of the hideous outfits that I was sent out into the public wearing. I doubt that he was the one that I ran to when I skinned a knee or called for when I had a bad dream at night. I do have photographic evidence of him in a tub with me but decided to stick with this picture instead.
I know that he busted his ass working construction all week but was there every weekend watching me drop fly balls in right field or trip over tent stakes into poison ivy patches with the Boy Scouts. I know that he was tough but fair and not nearly as tough as he pretended to be, that I could talk to him about anything and that I never doubted that there was absolutely nothing in the world that he wouldn’t do for me and my brother. I was a geeky kid that he probably didn’t understand half of the time and always knew that he was proud.
I also know that none of that has changed, that either my brother or myself can call him at any time, for any reason, and that he will be there. He’d do it for us, for our wives and for our children.
A lot has changed in the thirty six years since I was our youngest’s age. Today I did laundry and went grocery shopping. Yesterday my wife fixed a toilet. There are a lot of great dads out there doing great things and studies like this are an important step towards recognizing that. Its also important to remember that dads have always been doing great things.
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This post was previously published on Thirsty Daddy and is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock