How to be a Great Dad

What does it mean to be a father in this day and age? What does it mean to have a modern family?

60 years ago our roles were clear. We were supposed to be cold and strict and distant. Fortunately, women stepped up and changed the whole family dynamic. Now families are much better off and the kids are getting a lot more of their needs, but it’s left us in limbo.

What’s our role? How are we to be empowered? So often we end up disempowered. So often, we end up as second-class parent standing back and letting the mom run the show. But that doesn’t work for anybody.

The problem really happens at the moment of birth. It’s scary. Can you or your partner really take care of a life? Then the baby comes and the moms usually find their ways within 30 or 40 minutes. Women realize they can provide for their babies and it’s an amazing experience for them.

But we stand back. We stand back, unsure of our role, supporting the relationship that’s happening between the baby and mom, but not really inhabiting our relationship to either of them.

This leaves too much burden on the mom’s shoulders and within weeks she’s often pulling on us and nagging us for more help. She needs a lot more in the intensity of what she’s doing. That nagging causes us to back away even further, because none of us like to be told what to do. And pretty soon we’re off at work where we feel confident in order to feel better about ourselves, leaving our family when they need us most.

Science has shown that if we are engaged and present fathers our children are happier!

They get better grades
They’re less likely to get diagnosed with some mental illness
They’re more likely to find a successful life
Our wives are happier
And we even get more sex!

All because we are present and engaged in that experience of fatherhood.

Full Frontal Fatherhood is an attempt to give you the clear path that I lacked when my child was born, a path to empowerment and engagement where you can really provide what your family needs, and your partner can learn to support you to be that father that they want.

Thank you for joining me. I really do believe that together we can change the experience of parenting and fatherhood, and that the ramifications of that are far reaching and quite profound.

Take care,
Julian