Practical advice for modern dads
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This message comes from the podcast 5 Miles From Home. When a high school student disappears from a small Nevada town, a story of betrayal and shocking confessions emerges. Hosted by Dateline's Keith Morrison. Search 5 Miles From Home to follow now.
This is NPR's Life Kit. I'm Marianne Segarra. LifeKit reporter Andy Tegel, hi. Hi, Marielle. Good morning. One of your favorite topics, I feel like, on LifeKit is the mental load. What does it mean? The mental load. The mental load is so many things. It's sometimes called invisible labor. It's all that behind the scenes thinking, planning, organizing, executing. It's everything it takes to keep a household running. And oftentimes it falls on one person more than the other. Yeah, I feel like when we talk about the mental load, we're often talking about women and moms. Why is that? Because, you know, in aggregate... That's what the data shows. You know, in most heterosexual relationships, it's the female that takes on the lion's share of the work because, you know, socialization.
Even when both partners are working, even when both partners make the same amount of money, that's not the truth of every individual relationship or every individual family. I know lots of super involved dads. My dad is one of them. My husband is one of them. I know dads who are the primary parent.
What does the mental load of parenting mean for dads?
But in aggregate, overall, that's what the data shows. Yeah. The data doesn't tell the whole picture. And I guess that is something that you heard after you did your last episode on the mental load. You heard from a bunch of dads, right? Yeah. Yeah, so a big inspiration for today's episode is a recent story we did that wasn't exclusively for women and moms, but because it was about the mental load, a lot of the language was directed toward only them and some of the examples were gendered. So I heard from a lot of men and husbands and fathers being like, hey, you know, we want to be a part of this conversation. They felt, you know, excluded. They said, you know, like we are really involved too. You know, we are here, we contribute, what gives?
And I was like, fair. And you know, the research backs these guys up. The winds are changing. One recent study found that American dads are spending more time on household and child-rearing activities than in the previous two decades. So this is a mailbag episode, a Father's Day mailbag. Who are your experts? One of them is Kevin McGuire. So he's a consultant and author of the new book, The New Fatherhood, which is also the name of his very popular newsletter and community about all things fatherhood. There is just this huge scope for really kind of like the dads who embrace fatherhood. It's almost dad maxing, right? Like to really seek to get the very most that they can get out of their relationships with their children.
And then our other expert is David Defoe. He's a clinical psychologist and also a friend of the pod. I think that it's important for us to sort of give men credit because men are showing up more. And I think a part of that is because while we have so much longer to go, we are beginning to develop the emotional strength to express ourselves better so that we know how to show up better. there is no shortage of things to talk about. So that's what we have for you for this episode. Lots of practical advice for modern dads. Things like anger and how to express it in a healthy way, friendship and where to find it, and how to navigate high stress parenting situations with your partner, and lots more.
This message comes from the podcast Five Miles from Home. When a high school student disappears from a small Nevada town, a story of betrayal and shocking confessions emerges. Hosted by Dateline's Keith Morrison. Search Five Miles from Home to follow now.
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