Not too long ago my wife and I went to the Richmond Forum with friends. That evening’s speaker was Dr. Richard Reeves, and his talk – along with his research and writing – centered on a provocative question: Are we leaving men and boys behind?
I found the question irritating and frustrating, because my reflexive answer was, No! Men and boys are already ahead, I thought. How can we be leaving them behind? Why are we having this conversation, I wondered, when clearly, we still live in a society where women and girls do not experience equality in many aspects of life?
We discussed this with our friends during our pre-event dinner, and we all arrived at the conclusion that we would go in with an open mind. Both of our families have young girls and boys in them, and in addition, I’m a father to two young adult men.
We headed over to the theater, took our seats, and prepared to listen and learn with objections at the ready, should the speaker’s comments warrant such a response.
Instead, Dr. Reeves painted a compelling vision not of needing to slow down the progress of girls and women; rather, of speeding up progress for boys and men. He articulated a human-centered standard for thriving across several dimensions: health, education, social connection, emotional development, and job/earnings potential. He showed how bad things were for girls and women just a couple of generations ago and how much progress had been made – although more was still necessary in some areas.
And, he showed quite convincingly that for boys and men, progress had flattened out, which in some cases was introducing new gaps between girls and women and boys and men.
He made the case that the most powerful thing we as a society could do to increase opportunities to thrive for everyone was to embrace “and” and get ourselves out of the zero-sum mindset and realize that we can work to help everyone make progress. Instantly, I shed my intellectual resistance and connected to his message, because this was exactly what I believed when it came to other groups, other “us” and “them” frameworks, other ways of slicing the population pie to figure out who stays ahead, who gets ahead, and who gets left behind.
And one of the reasons this resonated so immediately, and so deeply, was because it occurred to me that I had this very responsibility in our own family with our kids. I had already been experiencing the power of “and” by seeing the uniqueness of each of my children and the commonalities across them. I had also witnessed the power of “and” in coming to terms with what had changed in my approach to fatherhood, from the time when I was one of the younger dads, to now, one of the older ones.
We’ve been a blended family for a long time. When my wife and I married, the older boys were little (7 and almost 10). She inherited a family and has been an amazing stepmom and wonderful partner-parent both with me and the older boys’ mom.
The third child in the family was our first together – another son. And while I always strove to be a good father, it was clear to me that I was a different father to my youngest son than I’d been to my older ones. Some of this was because I was a lot older. Some of it was because family life was different when the boys were much younger, compared to now. And some of it was because I simply wasn’t always the father I needed to be, when they and I were younger.
I had to learn how to be a better father to all of them, not just my youngest. I had to learn that all my kids needed different things from me, and it was my job to figure out how to meet them where they were.
This was proven even more true when the fourth child came along two years later – a daughter. Instantly, I realized that parenting a girl was very different from parenting a boy, and, on some levels, it was exactly the same. As she grew, I could see both the differences and the similarities deepening. And it required yet another change in my parenting style. I needed to further accept and embrace “and,” rather than “either/or” – or worse, “all or nothing” – when it came to the very different personality styles of each of my kids and what they might experience differently simply because of their gender.
I’m still working on it, and these kids, from the youngest to the oldest, teach me every day how to be better. Embracing “and” as a father has allowed me to recognize, accept, and often celebrate in my kids’ lives. For example, two of my children may be launched, and they still need me (which I love) as much as my younger kids do. It’s just different. And I had times where I was a good father when I was younger, and times when I wasn’t. And I am lucky enough to get new chances every day to be a better dad to the four wonderful humans I am a father to today.
“And” means I don’t have to choose between my kids. I also don’t have to choose between my younger fatherhood experience and my older fatherhood experience. I can embrace it all. And that might be the most important thing I can share with all of my kids after all.
