Fighting for fatherhood: The other glass ceiling

What are the invisible challenges facing fathers?

Our book, The Other Glass Ceiling is available, right here, right now. The e-book is available through Google Play.

Meanwhile, just to remind all of us about the currency of the ideas that we share in our book, Aaron Dickson's daddy-daughter-date video (which he created for Father's Day in the US) went viral on the same day we launched the book.

Here's that story and my response at The Conversation:

Flying High: sexism, paternalism and sheer idiocracy

What are the dangers to a kid flying alone ?

Airline policies and parents concerned about allowing unaccompanied minors to be seated next to men make a travesty of both reason and justice.

That this fear feeds paternalistic policy and parental concerns is ludicrous.

If you send your child unaccompanied on a plane, your child has more chance of dying in a plane crash than being molested!

Tracey Spicer, journalist and Sky News anchor has recently affirmed her support of this controversial airline policy saying “I don’t want my kids sitting next to a man on a plane.”

Her statement is, as she admits, sexist. It most certainly is, but my major issue is that it is patently wrong and misleading.

It is said that we use only 10% of our brain, that 20% of statistics are made up, and the remaining 90% of the population aren’t any good at proportions.

Confessions of an alleged child abuser

Discouraging child abuse or encouraging father abuse?

August 21 was a horrible evening. Blustery winds and driving rain buffeted the windows and the door.  

A knock at the front door that no-one was expecting heralded the arrival of a different kind of storm.

I had three boys spreading toys around my home - my four and a half year old son and the two boys from next door.  To help me oversee this  chaos was the father from next door as well.

I left them to answer the unexpected knock at the door. I wondered if it might be my neighbour’s wife arrived home early come over to join the party. Or perhaps my partner.

Nothing prepared me for what was there.

There, huddled in the wintry, wet porch were five people. Five people who were quite willing to stir up a storm.

At front was a shortish man with a rather striking white shirt with odd black decorations on it. Beside him, a very tall man (well over six foot) in dark blue shirt and jeans. And alongside, a youngish woman, dressed in a unmemorable way, but normal-enough looking. This core of three was backed by a further two men for whom I have no description whatsoever. I guess I never got to processing who they were, or if I did, it was masked and lost by the events that followed. It was astounding enough, in such intemperate conditions, to come to my door to be confronted by five people. Five people as I was to find out, who were exceedingly keen to talk to me.  

Seemed a little like overkill for Mormons. At any rate, salespeople generally call by the telephone at this hour – yes, almost exactly this hour, 5.30pm the buggers. Trying to sell me some new telephone service from the middle of India. No, they didn’t look like salespeople.

However, they started like most of the salespeople do. A shortish man asked asked me to confirm my name.  I did so and I asked them their business – as I do when they contact me by phone.

The shortish man stepped forward and said they were from the Child Protection Agency and they wished to come inside. What the ... ?! My guts wrenched sideways. The Child Protection Agency? What did they want? Isn’t that the service that comes and takes children away from families that they deem are unfit to care for the child. My mind screamed. What was this about?

Despite my fears, my nerves, I realized that no accusation was being made. I was merely ‘catastrophising’ as one of my friends would put it. I needed to establish what they were here for. Later I would realize that five people showing up at your front door either from or supporting the Child Support Agency is not ‘catastrophising’ – it is a catastrophe.

Dad shopping for daughter's undies is deemed a security risk

Men in general are assumed to be depraved until proven otherwise. When it comes to gender discrimination, nobody mentions the rather disconcerting stereotype that men are especially likely to be foul in some way or another, and being a good father, demonstrating the ability to love and nurture children, doesn't allow an escape from this sinister suspicion.

More generally there is the persistent notion that fathers have their place in this world – the office – but when it comes to matters of how their children will be raised, dads are not to intervene. They are incompetent parents at best and potentially dangerous at worst. Mums call the shots, and any deviation from these rules of engagement is punishable in a variety of ways, something I was confronted with one Monday afternoon.

I was shopping in a department store. Given the time and day of the week, the store was relatively lacking in shoppers, and almost all of the ones there, except me, were women. I hadn't really planned to shop. Indeed, single parents rarely have the luxury of planning anything. Rather, what happens is that some unexpected circumstance affords a sudden opportunity to go shopping. In this case it was the cancelation of a 1.30 meeting that gave me a 2 hour window after lunch.

Two glass ceilings

The over-representation of men vs. women in the top echelons of the workplace was raised in the case of the first scenario featuring Kim. This over-representation is frequently advanced as evidence of unfair discrimination against women. It is mediated by a club of senior male executives that limit the opportunities made available to women. Women confront a 'glass ceiling', an invisible barrier that impedes their progress up the career ladder.
However, if over-representation proves unfair discrimination in this domain, then it is clearly reasonable to apply the same reasoning to another domain. Women are clearly over-represented relative to men in the domain of child-care – also mentioned in the case of the first scenario. Does this not prove then that women unfairly discriminate against men participating more fully in parenting?