Dads Making Time for Family
The Many Benefits of Dads’ Involvement at Home
When Dads share in the primary care of their children they strengthen their families in many crucial ways.
One - Many feel sharing both work and family responsibilities improves communication and brings parents closer together as a a couple.
Two - When sharing family care and paid work, both parents understand each other’s experiences better. Both learn, what’s enough work and what’s enough parenting so they have time to care for their relationship with each other.
Three - Each parent develops their own unique strengths around how to play with and care for their child. Together they develop a larger, more flexible set of tools to care for their family.
Four - Sharing care means sharing bread winning. By having both parents play a role in the family’s financial needs it can lead to creative decisions around how to manage earning, savings and spending as a way to have more family time or create more satisfying career paths.
Five - Having shared experiences around paid work means you become an excellent resource for each other around planning and strategizing next steps at work. It also means you have each others backs if some “next steps” take you by surprise.
Six - Creating a shared approach to work and family – especially when both parents have learned how to set boundaries at work – means both parents find more energy and creativity in both aspects of their lives. Work enriches life. Life enriches work.
In short, when Dads are supported and encouraged to play an active role at home – and both parents support each other to craft an integrated approach to work and life – the word “partner” takes on a whole new meaning.
Download our PDF “A Life Committed to Shared Care” to see how Shared Care Dads (and Moms) are creating solutions that are good for their families, good for their workplaces and good for Dads.
Would you like to create more time for your children? Your spouse? Yourself? Male or female, young or old, entry level or executive, there’s a win-win work redesign solution for every job – a flexible solution that is both good for you and good for your employer.
Adam successfully redesigned his work to help share in the care of his two school age children. Adam’s story once again shows us, work can be done differently…and men, women, children AND organizations benefit from these changes. Check out Adam’s win-win solution highlighted in ‘Creating More Flex’.
Take A Vacation
Take A Vacation: It’s Time To Recharge Your Batteries
For those who have been able to truly disengage from work while on vacation, you know the benefits can be quite significant – both for you and your workplace.
Yes – many of us might need to challenge some norms to make this happen: the fear of being perceived as an underperformer; the pressure to see it as a win-lose proposition – either we meet our client and customer needs or our own personal needs; or the worry that maybe there’s no point to take a week off given the demands to be available while away and the difficulty transitioning back upon return.
But there’s a lot to gain when we push back at these norms.
In fact, we’ve learned from the Shared Care parents and Integrated Leaders we’ve worked with, that taking vacations can increase the skills we need to approach work and life in an integrated way.
Here’s a list of things you can do before you leave, and when you return, that should help increase your chances of enjoying your time away from work and minimizing the challenges upon your return.
Vacation Check List:
- Plan vacations around the “seasonality” of your work. Try scheduling longer trips for less busy periods of work and “long weekend vacations” when work is busier.
- Minimize the unexpected. Coordinate vacations with your team. Talk to clients a few weeks before leaving. Ask delegates to complete work that needs reviewing a week before you leave.
- Block off pre and post “quiet” work days. Avoid scheduling meetings and phone calls the day before you leave and the day you return to allow for the “unexpected” and for catch up time when you return.
- Create a “what can wait” list. A week before you go, create a list of things that you can wait to get done after vacation, versus tasks that must be completed before you go.
- Decide how “connected” you want to be. If you need to check email or voice messages, plan ahead around what’s least disruptive.
- Carefully define emergencies. Think ahead about what challenges could arise. Clearly define emergencies to avoid everything becoming one.
- Plan ways to totally disengage from work. Avoid the “I’ll just get this one thing done” trap. If you can’t disengage for the whole vacation, set a firm goal to at least disengage for part of your vacation.
- Pre-schedule “check in” calls. Set up meetings or calls to review the work you have delegated to others the second or third day of your return.
- Plan different trips to meet different needs. Family and extended family vacations are fun, but couples may also benefit from having a long weekend away just as a couple.
- Keep track of what worked well. Create a list you can refer back to of helpful ideas for planning your next vacation.
And don’t forget, creating vacations that really recharge our batteries may also require us to change how we approach vacations as a family.
What tips have you learned to make the most of your time away from work? Send us your success stories. We will then gather them up and make them available to the entire ThirdPath community in a future email update.
The Benefits of Shared Care
What’s at stake? Why a shared approach to family is a goal worth reaching for
Although work life balance can be challenging at any stage, it becomes especially challenging with the birth of a new baby. Not only can this change be exhausting for families because of lack of sleep, too often it also unintentionally sets up couples into more traditional roles at home.
Kristin Maschka’s describes this challenge in her book, This is Not How I Thought it Would Be – Redesigning Motherhood. Kristin is one of the many authors who have written about Shared Care.
Below is what Kristin said that she and her husband gained by switching to a shared approach to parenting. We hope you find it as inspiring as we did. If you’d like to learn more about Shared Care, contact us, or check out the many resources on our website. We’ve got twelve years of experience you can benefit from.
“I knew what I would lose. I’d lose my marriage - Maybe not literally, but something vital at its core. David and I got married as equals, as best friends, as partners. When we were married, we vowed to “be true to the pursuit of the dreams and goals we both share.” The dream we shared now was of a family life with everyone home for dinner, with time for our relationship with each other. We wanted a family life that would allow us to share the family responsibilities so that we both had time to pursue our own dreams and both had a relationship with Kate. How could we hope to have our marriage stand the test of time if we gave up on that vow to be true to the dreams we both share? I would always carry some level of resentment, and he would always feel some defensiveness. If we gave up on the idea that we could share responsibility for our family, effectively we would be giving up on a core value in our marriage.
“What would David lose? - I didn’t want David to miss out on the richness of the relationship I had with Kate. A richness that came from putting a cold washcloth on her feverish forehead, from reading and giggling about stories in her bed at night, and, yes, from the times she drove me crazy and I yelled and then said I was sorry and she hugged me anyway. I didn’t want David to find many years later that he didn’t know his own child, had missed her childhood and couldn’t have a meaningful conversation with her. I wanted more for him. So badly it brought me to tears. And I was pretty sure he wanted it too.”
Change the reality don’t change the vision - As Kristin explains, “Whenever people feel the pain of a big gap between current reality and the way we want things to be, there are two options. Change the reality or change the vision. Reality is tougher to change, so the easiest and fastest way to relive pain is to ratchet down our expectations. For example, we tell ourselves mothers are just naturally better at family so it will never change. For a time, we feel better. The painful gap between what we have and what we want is a little less because we’ve decided to want less.” But then she asks, “What have we lost in the process?”
Want to Read More?
The Libra Solution, Shedding Excess and Redefining Success at Work and at Home, Lisa D’Annolfo Levey (2012)
Equally Shared Parenting, Rewriting the Rules for a New Generation of Parents, Marc and Amy Vachon (2011)
This is Not How I Thought It Would Be, Remodeling Motherhood To Get The Lives We Want Today, Kristin Maschka (2009)
Getting to 50-50, How Working Couples Can Have it All by Sharing it All, Sharon Lerner (2009)
Daddy On Board, Parenting Roles for the 21st Century, Dottie Lamm (2007)
How to Avoid The Mommy Trap, A Road Map for Sharing Parenting and Making it Work, Julie Shields (2003)
The Four-Thirds Solution, Solving the Childcare Crisis in America Today, Stanley Greenspan (2002)
Halving it All, How Equally Shared Parenting Works, Francine Deutsch (2000)
Love Between Equals, How Peer Marriage Really Works, Pepper Schwartz (1995)
21st Century Workplace
A 21st Century Workplace – Lessons from small business
Our most recent Thursday with ThirdPath call was an inspiring examples of what’s possible when leaders courageously hold on to their goals of living integrated lives.
Jennifer Johnson is Co-founder Current Designs – a small research instrument manufacturing firm. Ken Stern is Founding Partner, Stern & Curray – an immigration law firm. Jennifer and Ken are also both great examples of Whole Life Leaders – leaders who have been successful at work while also creating time and energy to be an involved father, mother, grandfather, husband, wife and community member.
Whole Life Leaders model and support progressive conversations at work – Whole Life Leaders help their team develop 21st century skills and an integrated mind set so that everyone increases their capacity to develop win-win solutions – solutions that foster a thriving workplace and multi-dimensional lives.
Whole Life Leaders create more sustainable workplaces - Whole Life Leaders who are small business owners, like Jennifer and Ken, are also leaders who are helping us create a blue print for 21st century workplaces. Workplaces that truly support everyone – from entry level to executive level – to follow integrated career paths.
Whole Life Leaders support progressive conversations at home - In addition, Whole Life Leaders are changing what’s happening at home. Together, they are working as a team to step out of traditional gender roles and address the changing needs of work and family. Sometimes this means one parent – the father or mother – temporarily steps out of work or reduces work to create a workable solution for the family. But they see this as one part of an on-going story where both parents are partners in caring for their children and meeting the financial needs of their family.
Download our Whole Life Leaders PDF and see how these pioneers are changing how we do things both at work and at home.
One Father’s Journey
One Father’s Journey Creating an Integrated Career Path
We really do understand that it can feel challenging to imagine yourself adopting an integrated approach to work and life, but this goal is within your reach. Key to this journey is (1) becoming clear about what you want time for outside of work and then (2) getting support to move towards these goals.
To illustrate the importance of these two simple truths, read Brad’s story.
Brad is a father who learned many important life lessons on his road to becoming a Whole Life Leader. Brad started his career in a large law firm, but over time made many changes to create a more satisfying approach to work and family. Click on each of his “life lessons” to follow his journey.
Lesson 1. Taking parental leave makes a big difference.
After having their first child, Brad decided to take advantage of his law firm’s gender-neutral parental leave policy. This was a policy that was rarely used by his male colleagues. Using this policy, Brad was able to take a three-month paid leave to be with his newborn son after his wife returned to work.
“The leave was a real epiphany,” Brad explains. “It became clear to me how important my role as a father was. My wife loved my paternity leave, because it was easier for her to go back to work knowing I was at home. She appreciated the help, and that gave me room to co-parent. ”
“Usually the early issues are left to the woman,” he continued. “Suddenly, I had to do these things, like being in charge all day, or, when I was thinking about going back to work, selecting what childcare to use. Since I was home then, it became my job to make these decisions. It made me a more responsible parent.”
Lesson 2. Make sure each parent has alone time with the children.
Eight years after taking the paternity leave, Brad could also begin to talk about how deeply discouraging the intense demands of his work situation had become. “I think I was depressed at work, but that was what everyone was doing. When I was at home on leave, I realized not everyone was working killer hours. The job had made me myopic and the paternity leave took off the blinders. I felt the depression lift.”
Lesson 3. Get support to leave an unsupportive workplace.
Lesson 4. If you expect to encounter resistance, develop a good track record and then ask to try something as a pilot first.
Lesson 5. Don’t let go off your goals, even when the going gets tough.
Brad’s new boss had old-fashioned ideas about men’s and women’s roles. “My boss supported the reduced work schedules of female colleagues of mine who were doing similar jobs, but told me I should be working 100%.” Brad was shocked. “This gender stereotyping was a big deal for me.”
Instead of leaving the organization, Brad decided to ride out each new challenge with a growing and clearer sense of what he was up against. “This was the first time that as a white male I could recall experiencing being faced with bigotry or an unfair bias,” he explains. “I had this theory that the only obstacle to getting the schedule I wanted was in my head, but that clearly wasn’t true. I was struck by how long it took to negotiate for what I wanted, and how each subsequent boss was reluctant to stick his or her neck out for me. And this was in a group that had women who were doing this. The pressure was not even coming from human resources,” he concludes, “It was other peoples’ own gender stereotypes of what I was supposed to be doing.”
Lesson 6. Look for other role models.
In addition, Brad had long been inspired by a close male friend who had worked a four-day schedule since becoming a parent. This friend had always been upfront about these issues with his employer. “I was impressed that Sam had always told his employers that he was only willing to work four days a week. Brad explains. “He had fought for what he wanted. I had internalized an understanding from my parents’ generation that being a good father meant holding down a well paying job. Sam was an important role model of something else.” Sam also encouraged Brad to get in touch with ThirdPath, and Brad credits the support he got from Jessica with giving him the little extra courage he needed to go after his goals.
Lesson 7. It’s a process, not a solution – things will keep on changing at work and at home.
Brad notes, “I am very present at home on this schedule. I don’t think about work or check-in on my day off. After a while, Alicia was able to shift to a 90% schedule as well, so one of us is always home at least one day a week. The experience has been really positive; the kids call our days off, ‘Mama Day’ and ‘Dada Day.’ They love the day they get to have with us.”
Lesson 8. Take a long-term approach to your collective goals and step by step you’ll get there.
Brad emphasizes that maintaining work-life balance is a constant work in progress. “You have to be vigilant and creative because there will always be change and there will always be outside influences that have the potential to take over if you let them.”
“I am finally at a place where I ask for things quickly, I give myself permission to ask for the things I want, and if I don’t get it the first time around, I try it all over again.” Brad can also see that he and Alicia gain confidence from each other’s decisions.
Lesson 9. Whole Life Leaders are modeling a new approach that others can follow.
Would you like to join one of the calls we have just for fathers? Check out our events calendar to find out more about our calls for fathers and fathers-to-be. These calls address: (call 1) The new definition of fatherhood, (call 2) Career success and family success, (call 3) Making it work financially. Contact us and let us know if you’d like to learn more about this unique opportunity.