We all hold an idea of what it means to be a man in our heads, but we haven’t chosen this idea. It’s been forced on us. Here’s how to hack that idea so you can be a better man and of course, dad.

Time to kill off work-life balance

Work-life balance should be killed. The way it’s phrased sets you up to fail right from the start. Here’s a better idea.

31 Questions to help you be a better dad

Download 31 questions to make you a better dad.

Being a dad. What this gig is really about.

If being a dad could be condensed down into a few hundred words.

Practical things to be a more patient dad

Some of the best things I’ve learnt to apply to be a more patient dad.

A short guide to being a bad dad

Never tell those closest to you the depths of your love. Being a real man is about the suppression of emotional expression.
A man’s home is his castle. Exercise your divine right to control the things and people close to you. Be a king who expects respect.
Provide the money for the roof over their heads, food on the table and tablets in little hands. Leave the social, emotional, mental, academic, artistic, physical and nutritional provision to your partner. Money matters more.
Dutifully sacrifice your fleeting time with them for money to buy the trappings of modern life. Conform to that company culture that values your time In the chair more than the difference you make.
Don’t say sorry.
Keep quiet about your youth, your mistakes, your wins, your loves, passions and friendships. They have to learn for themselves.
Hold high standards. Regardless of the child’s temperament, age and stage of development, the specific situation. You set the standards. Absolutely. Woe betide those who don’t meet them.
When they don’t behave, discipline is demanded. The advances in the social sciences can’t contradict the wisdom of what’s ‘worked’ for decades. Stern discipline and harsh consequences drive behaviour. That’s the man’s job.
Games are for children. Real grown-ups don’t spend time with their children playing them.
Early years childcare, like changing nappies is not a man’s work. Start investing the time to build a relationship with your child when they’re old enough to hold a good conversation.
Parenting isn’t something to spend time learning about. It’s largely her job, and when you do have to get involved, you’ll just do what your parents did because you turned out just fine.

Equality isn’t fairness. We’ve got it wrong at work, can we get it right at home so our children have fairer workplaces?

If ‘but it’s not fair’ winds you up, read this because a little bit of understanding can make things a lot better.

MRI - a great technique to learn and teach your children

A simple technique that will make your life, and your children’s better.

The pace of your life is different to theirs. Not recognising this makes your and their lives harder

We need to think about the different speeds our lives move at.

Mourning your past self

Mourning your past self, the man you no longer are, or no longer can be because now you’re a dad is a very healthy thing to do. If you don’t do it, you’ll be carrying around the frustration, sense of longing and loss that will creep out into your interactions with the people you love most. The people who you chose to bring into this world and who love you unconditionally.

For me, this poem talks to that transition far better than I ever could.

Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.

At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it
Moving beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.

And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practices trying
His father’s tie there in secret

And the face of that father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something

That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.

Donald Justice 1967

Helping your child 'get ahead' may actually put them way behind

Insight’s from David Epstein’s latest book applied to parenting, how the very idea of ‘getting ahead’ is unhealthy and insidious and therefore what you should actually do to help your child be the best they can be.

It’s time to take creativity seriously, for the sake of our children.

They will try and crush the creativity out of your child. They can’t hide, you can’t protect them, so what should you do?

Psychological safety for childhood.

The implications of psychological safety for raising your child through the school years.