A recent article from the Guardian newspaper starts with a statement that captures the very essence of what Father Lessons is about:
Like many men of my generation, I wanted to be a more present father than my own had been.
Jeremy Davies
The writer talks about how, as a journalist, he was able to be a stay-at-home dad when his son was born some 20 years ago, but points out that he was very much the exception at the time in the UK. As a self-employed online business owner in Tokyo, I had that same opportunity and was pretty much the only father dropping off and picking up from daycare.
Times have changed and these days it’s far more common to see dads at the pre-school gates. Covid, lockdowns and the normalisation of working from home have just accelerated the trend. The result is that, as the article says, fathers “are much more around.” But it goes on to say that government leadership is needed in order to bring about more “father-friendly policies, public services and workplaces.”
More men want to be stay-at-home dads and better fathers. Why won’t politicians help them?