Gone are the days when fathers would sit on the sofa with a beer in their hand instead of playing with their kids. Today, dads are communicating with their kids beyond replying with that thumbs-up emoji only. Many want to be better fathers than the ones they had or didn't have at all.
In 2023, 83% percent of American dads told Pew that being a father is either the most important or one of the most important aspects of their identity. In that same survey, the dads said they prioritize honesty, ethics, and hard work as the most important traits to pass on to their children.
We reached out to a parent coach for dads, Bryce Mathern, LPC, who helps men become more present and connected in their parenting efforts. According to him, there aren't many resources for dads who want to become better fathers. "I think that much of the parenting information out there is directed towards women and comes from women," he observes. "This often leaves out a clear understanding of how it is different for men in raising children."
"For many moms, they are with their kids after having nurtured them in their bodies for nine months and have a much deeper cellular connection," Mathern notes. "This is a good thing because moms are often protective of their children. Dads offer more challenges and less safety for their kids' development," the parent coach explains.
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Mathern clarifies that children need both protection and to be challenged, but says that there's this common misconception that dads are often not protective enough. "I get a sense that dads get represented as irresponsible or inattentive when in reality we often trust the capacity of our children to be safe and make good decisions," he explains.
Indeed, that same Pew survey found that most fathers are more likely to feel judged for their parenting decisions than their spouses or partners.
Like in everything, there needs to be balance in our culture: both in parenting strategies, but in whose opinion, mom's or dad's, matters more, too. "I think this pull by moms and dads is healthy, but if the culture overemphasizes what moms feel it leads to a coddled child that is not able to spread their wings and take risks," Mathern explains.
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Mathern thinks that the role of a good father is to challenge his children and help them gain independence. "I think we see this in children, adolescents and young adults today. I believe kids need more challenges to feel their ability to land on their feet so to speak and build the confidence [so] that they can do things well. This is what good fathers do for their children."
Although cultural attitudes about what a good father is have shifted dramatically in the past decades, there's still a long way to go. Mathern says that the engaged father 'movement' is currently 'under the radar.' "There is still a lot of intolerance against men who want to be better dads," he observes. "The societal pushback says men who nurture and care for their children are effeminate or lacking in real masculinity."
But Mathern sees more and more dads who want to push back against these societal constraints. They do it because they want to do right by their children. "There is a lot of information out there about parenting but the main gist of it is that being kind, nurturing and empathetic towards our kids actually makes them turn out to be the kind of adults most parents want to foster," the parent coach tells Bored Panda. Those who want to be 'good' dads, then, have to learn these skills themselves.
When clients come to Mathern, for many of them, parenting itself isn't really the challenge. It's more often their own limitations in how they show up in relationships. "Our culture often limits boys and men in their relational development," he explains.
"This is the real problem for most of the men I work with. The exciting shift towards being an engaged father is that men are forced to develop the skills they didn't know before they became fathers. This is a cultural revolution because it is these cultural constraints that have maintained many of the challenges for women and children being marginalized in our society."
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