If there’s one thing Marc Johnson has learned from being a single father, it’s to trust his own decision making and ability to figure out what his son needs without a lot of external support.
“I don’t have a lot of family here,” said Marc, our Lead Dad of the week who lives in Brooklyn but was born outside of Boston. “I don’t have a village here.”
To figure things out, he leaned on past management experience and applied it to parenting. “I was managing a team of 40 people and they were super smart, precocious, a bit moody,” he said. “It was about figuring things out by synthesizing information quickly and calmly under pressure. The ability to maintain calm with them was the same calm I needed as a parent.”
His son is 9 now, and it’s been six years since he got divorced and began co-parenting. Like any Lead Dad, single or married, the big tradeoff is around dividing his focus between what needs to be done at work and what needs to be done as a parent. That experience has driven him to push for different polices in places where he has worked.
“You can’t avoid having to multitask in some situations,” he said. “But I’ve been fortunate enough in my management roles to advocate for senior leadership to make a parenting friendly work environment. There’s been an understanding that if there’s a family emergency you have the permission to figure out how to make up for the work after you’ve dealt with the parenting.”
We couldn’t agree more. Welcome, Marc, to The Company of Dads.
