Time to launch ‘Dads Demand Action’
How can we in good conscience celebrate Father’s Day in the middle of an epidemic of gun violence almost exclusively perpetuated by men? We can’t.
There’ll be time enough for backyard barbeques once fathers take the lead in establishing “Dads Demand Action to Raise Healthy Boys,” following in the footsteps—a decade late—after “Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense,” launched the day following the mass murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
In recent years, a growing number of men have been questioning conventional definitions of manhood and masculinity, so it’s an apt moment — with the scourge of male mass shootings fresh in our minds — for fathers and other men to reinvent Father’s Day. A day more about raising healthy boys and girls than about flipping ‘ burgers and ‘dogs on the grill, as fun as that may be.
What a powerful message it would send for fathers and other men to demonstrate the urgency of this moment by establishing a group to raise healthy boys, especially just weeks after two 18-year- old males murdered 31 people in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas, among so many other mass shootings.
Think about what it could mean to transform Father’s Day from a commercial holiday to a call to action centered on raising boys. To date, fathers and mentors, uncles and coaches have rarely been organized as a group; we’re an untapped force for good that could also become a new voting bloc. Call us say, “soccer dads.”
While not all men are fathers; all men are sons—and all of us have a stake in how we raise boys. Clearly, the two 18-year- olds who murdered in Buffalo and Uvalde, were literally dying to be raised as healthy boys and peaceful men. Since virtually all mass shootings are perpetrated by males, isn’t a reshaped Father’s Day an apt holiday to begin asking soul-search
can lead to earlier death, as research from the Harvard School of Public Health has found.
These expectations were amplified further in a survey I conducted among 47 college students, which gauged the ideal qualities they believed fathers should possess. The students are part of a generation pushing to make gender identity more fluid, yet these were the most common responses: Fathers should be “protectors,” “strong,” “selfless,” “in control” of difficult situations, and, of course, they should tell “stupid dad jokes.”
We also are still working from a narrow script when it comes to expectations about work and home lives for men. Half of all respondents to one Pew Re
search Study said they valued the “contributions men make at work,” while “5% say society values the contributions men make at home.” Yet 56% of Americans observed that society values the contributions women “make at work and at home equally.”
Sure, many fathers are content, even happy, to stay insulated in this status quo. Increasingly, though, many fathers aren’t. They are the ones staying at home with the children, while their wives or partners work. They are the ones pushing for equal-parenting laws around custody and child support. They are the ones who accept, as research shows, that men consistently experience deeper emotional states that are far more similar to those of women than they are different. They are the ones that a 2019 Pew study revealed see parenting as central to their identity and are closing the gap between the degrees to which fathers and mothers are involved in their children’s lives and are contributing to domestic duties.
So, what do those of us who are part of this new breed of fathers want for Father’s Day? We don’t need grocery stores to run out of roses, but we also don’t want a tie or mug (or power tool) as yet another reminder that our parenting identities are tethered to work. We want the freedom to experience parenthood sans unproductive gendered expectations.
If given permission, this is a conversation many men would like to have. Let’s start by making stupid dad jokes optional.