I want to clear up a misunderstanding.
Very few Lead Dads are stay-at-home dads – or what we call Lead Dads who devote all their time to their families. There are only about 2 million of those dads in America – out of 25 million Lead Dads and 75 million fathers overall.
We’ve profiled some remarkable ones like Terry Brenan, who spent a half-dozen years caring for his twins while his wife continued her journalism career and now works with us at The Company of Dads, and more recently guys like Dan Jones (LD to Lisa Jones) and Kevan Gibson (LD to Linda Gibson), who stepped up so their wives could take big steps in their careers.
But most Lead Dads are in the office and around their communities, if sometimes in a more undercover role. We know they’re a third of all fathers in the United States, with more and more dads in their 30s stepping into this role.
Yes, Lead Dads are the go-to parent at home – and often carrying the bulk of the “mental load,” to use Eve Rodsky’s apt phrase.
But they’re also supporting – quietly, sometimes vocally but always steadily – their wife or partner’s career. They’re thinking about their marriage or partnership as a team or band. They have a mentality that isn’t zero sum but one of a shared mission. Scott Vanderwall, a college soccer coach, is one recent Lead Dad who had rallied his family to Team Jen, named for his wife.
Most Lead Dads are in the workplace trying to do their job at a high level and be involved as fathers and husbands. What they earn in relation to their wife’s salary – some more, some less – isn’t relevant. It’s more how they think about their role and how they’re able to own their time.
Robert Hemsen works at PepsiCo, his wife at Diageo. Two big careers, but he’s the go-to parent. Why? Because he knows he only needs 26 minutes to drive from his kids’ school to his office – and make a 9am meeting.
Or a Lead Dad like Adam Harr who works at Capital One and is the founder of 50/50, a line of diaper bags for dads. His wife is a clinical psychotherapist whose patients count on her not shifting her schedule if something comes up last minute.
What do people around town and in the office get wrong about Lead Dads? Lead Dads are parents, so stop shunning them on the playground and cutting them out of group texts. They just want their kids to have playdates. Ask before you default to mom.
At the office, they want to be called in. Give them equal parental leave – it benefits female employees as much as them. Invite them to parenting ERGs. Acknowledge they’re helping to dispel a pernicious myth that parenting and care is done by moms and that women are the ones who need to leave work if there’s an emergency.
We created a new section at The Company of Dads called “What’s a Lead Dad?” Check it out to learn what Lead Dads really are – and how they’re assets to Working Moms and instrumental to families fulfilling their full potential.
