The latest episode, chock full of goodness

How to Be an Awesome Dad

6/28/2021

A Conversation about Engaged Fatherhood and Social Change

This week on the HERE.together Podcast - in belated recognition of Father’s Day - we are releasing, in full, another of the episodes of the Remaking Manhood Podcast which I co-host and co-produce with Mark Greene. In this episode, we interview Kevin Shafer, an associate professor of Sociology at Brigham Young University, who is conducting ongoing research around the surprising impact of engaged fathers and how that engagement later shows up in the adult lives of their sons. Hint: It's really good news for gender equity.

In this episode, Kevin explains his research and connects it to both his own fathering and fatherhood. Despite how complex the parent child relationship is, Kevin is able to provide some really basic and actionable tips for how to raise kids who can grow up authentically, and resist the boxes that domination culture wants to shove them into.
At the end of this episode, Mark and I tell some stories about our own connections to our dad’s and what kind of “protective factors” they gave us.
I hope you get a lot out of this conversation. We’d love to hear from you about your understanding of engaged fatherhood. Who helped you become who you are? What hopes do you have for fathers and children today? What can we do as a culture and a nation to support engaged parenting?

Guest Bio:
Kevin studies father involvement and mental health in Canada and the United States.
He is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Brigham Young University and an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Health, Aging, & Society at McMaster University.
His work focuses on the facilitators of and barriers to father involvement with children–with a strong emphasis on the effects of paternal mental health and masculine norm adherence. He is currently working on a book about similarities and differences between Canadian and US fathers (forthcoming at University of Toronto Press).
Currently, his research is being integrated into federally-funded intervention programs addressing fathering among low-income and minority fathers in the Western United States. He is the past chair of the Men in Families Focus Group for the National Council on Family Relations, currently serving as an Associate Editor for the journal Social Work Research, and he is the co-coordinator of the Sociology of Families, Work, & Care cluster in the Canadian Sociological Association.
At BYU, he serves as a research mentor to over 40 students, producing more than 35 student authored presentations, and more than 30 presentations at national conferences. He currently teaches introductory sociology courses and advanced courses on family and research.
On a personal level, Kevin lives with his wife and four children in Utah County. He is an avid sports fan.

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SHOW NOTES
Key Takeaways:

Engaged Fathers make a difference in how able their boys are to avoid being trapped in the Manbox.
Dads whose masculinity is less rigid or extreme raise kids who are more open to equity and social justice.
Being an engaged father is as simple as being present for a child.
Engaged fathering can be performed by moms, stepdads, mentors, etc.

Background References: