S4 E62: Preventing burnout through stories and community
with community organizer and Dad branding expert Dan Flanagan
Key Takeways
I suppose it, it goes right back to my childhood. When I was around six or seven my parents split up and due to my mum's ill health, my dad was awarded custody of me and my three sisters. And this was in the sort of late seventies, early eighties. So it was wholly unusual shall we say, still is. But I saw sort of firsthand the abject lack of support that he had and the struggles that we as a family encountered.
I was burning out and unfortunately, my dad was very ill and he passed away and I did what a typical man would do and ignore the grief. And then six months down the road, it came back and bit me very hard and I became very ill. What that did is it confined me to barracks for two or three weeks. When I got ill I was around a lot more, I played with my son, he got to know me rather than just seeing me on a Saturday and being a bit confused who I was.
That became a PR agency because that was my traditional background and we were approached by lots of different brands that suddenly saw that it was money in dad's. And they would approach us to get involved in different campaigns. But what I realized was the creative briefs that they were sending us were appalling and they continuously used really negative stereotypes like the kids cartoon Peppa Pig. Daddy Pig is ridiculed. He's a failure. But he's actually an architect. So he is obviously a bright man and I just got fed up with these stereotypes. So I wrote something called the Dad Manifesto which challenged these brands and about these sort of stereotypes that blossomed.
I'd volunteered at my son's nursery and we took them down to the beach and I convinced them we were going dinosaur hunting, and it was just joyous. And I think in my previous life, I would've been in a status meeting for a large client looking at spreadsheets. This is so much fun. But outside of all that joy, it was still weekends where you couldn't really organize play dates. As dads we'd be down the park on our own because we are socially restricted. Mums go to the park or soft play, they can strike a conversation and exchange numbers. But as men, we just, we don't do that for whatever stupid reason it is. And I just got a little bit fed up and quite lonely, if I'm honest. I'd had friends. But there was nobody that I could really emotionally open up to about some of the challenges that I was facing.
There was nothing out there. You'd go to mother and baby groups and had questions, what are you doing here on a Monday? Haven't you got a proper job? Or are you happy to live off your wife? Or, we had some really nice ones where, he's probably a pedophile cause he's here to play with kids. I just wanna be a dad. I'm not a babysitter. I'm an equal parent. So can we have less of those negative stereotypes. And after feeling not particularly welcomed, I thought if you don't want us, I'm gonna create something that does. Cause I can't be the only one.
The dads were really communicating, so I thought, there's something here. I didn't know what it was . I think we just celebrated our fifth anniversary and we've done about a hundred events in seven or eight different locations. We've got a membership of two and a half thousand going over eight different countries.
In the UK there's still a huge lack of change of facilities in male toilets. I was quite lucky cuz I'm sometimes quite brash. It was like, I need to change that nappy. I'm going in the women's toilet. Just happening. But if you're not that confident, where'd you go?
There's always been the thing from females perspective, the challenge to have it all, to have the family and the career, but if we readdress that, then it is obtainable for all sexes. We just need the support to be there and to challenge these negative stereotypes. If you go into the supermarket, you know it'll be made for mums. Recommended by mums. I'm also quite keen to feed my children. They're missing out greatly, but things are changing.
So I also think that maybe some of the people you've spoken to maybe see caregiving as, how do I put this politely as feminine. So it's an attack on their masculinity, especially if they're CEOs. They're very driven, powerful people. But actually giving care to somebody is the most powerful thing you can do. We are here to make better human beings than we are. So they need to be loving, they need to be supportive. It's not just about being the fellow that's there with the bank card to buy all the cool presents and the trips to McDonald's. It's the men that can get down on their hands and knees, and have the eye contact at the early stages.
So it starts starting. Don't assume that people are just gonna laugh at you cause you know, you say you'd want to make some new friends. Cause that is our general go to from a social constraint point of view. If you are brave enough to step up you'd be surprised the amount of me going, Christ, I wish I had the balls to do that. Yes. Can I do something? Cause I'd love to just have a chat with somebody or I feel like a failure cuz I take my child to the park. But actually my child wants friends. Just like mums would do very normally. But for dad's, it's very difficult to arrange play dates with somebody else's wife. My advice was start starting or look for groups in your local area or reach out to organizations like Dad La soul.
I think immediately take a leaf out of your book and just disappear for a day or two, because it is, if you're there and you're sharing the time, you're gonna go back to those same old fail safes where you are in control. Actually don't realize the kids are perfectly safe that the house won't burn down. There's actually a really good friend of mine I share a studio with, they've got three boys and one of the boys has really severe additional needs and she's used to doing quite a lot of it because her husband travels, but they were burning out and she said, you know what? I'm booking a weekend. I'm going to Ibiza with the girls. Deal with it. They said when we came back there was just, there was change. There was really, cuz he appreciated the amount of work that she had to do. She really enjoyed the respite.
Another relationship got a beautiful testimonial from the mum too saying a lot of their struggles with co-parenting have gone because they're able to communicate better. She's got time off to go and do stuff, to respite or do what she needs to do. He's really hands on as a Dad but now he's got a group of mates to actually have a play date with. So his confidence has gone through the roof. And so it's not just the benefit for the dads or the benefit for the mums, it's a benefit for the family unit as well.
There's some really forward thinking organizations that have internal dad support groups, which I think is amazing, which is something we are working on developing as well, so we can support them. So don't have to start from scratch. I've had it from the sharp end of how it's not very nice and I just think, God, how many other millions of blokes in that exact situation or this team, not a performer or not giving it a hundred percent, but actually if you give those men the space and the opportunity to go and spend time with their kids, they'll come back happier. They'll come back refreshed. They'll be happy that it got an employer that does support that. So in, in ending the company's bottom line is going to benefit.
I took a week off. But I just started a business around that time. So even when I was doing the night feeds I was still answering emails. Or I didn't feel I had the time because I was still locked in this mindset. If I do not do this, there's not gonna be a roof over our heads. In retrospect, I wish I'd had, and I probably did have the opportunity, to take a bit more time off, but that was just not how I was built. I was built to graft. My dad ran his own business and he had four kids. Look, Christ, if he can do it, obviously I can do it, but I've since learned that everybody operates on a very different frequency.
So the future, he's to be balanced, to understand there's no right and wrong. There's just difference. I want him to understand what I see as a man as a role model. So it is to be loving, caring, open-minded, accepting, hands on, not afraid for the hard work. It gets stuck in, there as a protector, as well as a provider. Maybe by the time, if he chooses to have children there will be a world where things like paternity leave are very common place. So when he has his kids, he doesn't have the struggle that I had of feeling really guilty about taking a week off work and he can actually enjoy some really magical times.
Bio
Dan Flanagan: Father | Founder | Part-time Revolutionary. - Dan is the founder of Dad La Soul, is a multi-award winning social enterprise that exists to orchestrate a revolution in the way that the stories and struggles of the 6 million dads in the UK are seen, heard, and supported. - One dad-friendly playdate at a time.
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