Hogan Hilling - Dads Behaving Dadly 2

Cover Photo Credits

A special thanks to these dads for sharing their photos for the cover of this book:

Jameson Mercier

Michael Cruse

Christopher Sansone

In memory of our dear friend, Oren Miller

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

W e met Oren Miller, to whom this book is dedicated, in the fall of 2012 at the 17th Annual At-Home Dads Convention in Washington, D.C. We remember him as being a bit shy and having an accent we could not quite place. We remember little else about him from that first meeting.

A few months later, we ran into Oren again at the Houston Airport. We were all attending the Dad 2.0 Summit, a conference for Dad Bloggers, and fate had it that we all arrived from three parts of the country at the same time. We chatted for a while as we waited for our ride to the hotel and then hung out often during the weekend which began a deeper friendship. In the time between the two conferences, Oren, founder of www.BloggerFather.com, had started a Facebook group for dad bloggers, which he quipped was so crazy, it just might work. We were among the first fifty or so dads he invited to the group.

The Dad Bloggers Facebook Group has since grown to over 1,000 members. It is a great resource for dads to share parenting strategies, advice about blogging, and network with each other. Oren masterfully cultivated the group into a very large brotherhood of fatherhood.

Orens greatest gift, however, was his writing. We were humbled to have been able to include one of his original stories in our first book, Dads Behaving DADLY: 67 Truths, Tears and Triumphs of Modern Fatherhood. We would have liked to include one of his stories in this book but he ran out of time.

On February 28, 2015, Oren passed away after a nine-month battle with cancer. He left behind two children, a loving wife and a list of friends longer than Santas Nice List.

We wanted to give this long explanation about our friend because he is one of the most important people in making our two books possible. Most of the contributors to this and our previous book are members of the Dad Bloggers group Oren started. Without this group of brilliant dad writers, and Orens tremendous support, we would not have been able to assemble such amazing books.

After Oren was diagnosed with cancer, he wrote, I believe in Heaven on Earth, and I believe its found anywhere you seek it. It was his way of describing the joys of parenting even when sometimes it doesnt feel like joy at all. We agree.

Many others also deserve recognition in bringing this book to you. Over 130 dads submitted stories to us for this book. They made us laugh and cry. By bravely sharing their vulnerability, we remained committed to bringing this book to life and using their stories to improve the image of fatherhood.

We are grateful to Justin Sachs, CEO of Motivational Press, for continuing to provide unwavering support for this project. We appreciate the outreach by our friend Darren Mattock of Australia, who connected us with our overseas contributors. We are thankful for Brent Almond and John Kinnear, who have taken over the bulk of the administrative duties for the Dad Bloggers Facebook Group. We are also grateful to Brent Almond for designing the cover and Scott Behson, Ph.D. for writing the Foreword.

Hogan would like to further acknowledge Gary Harber and Carrie Taylor for their words of encouragement and support in the publication of the first two books of this series.

Al would like to acknowledge Chad Welch for always being there to listen, his four kids who make him smile everyday, the bitter cold Chicago winter for keeping him inside writing instead of outside redoing the landscaping, God for finally finding a way into his heart and his wife Shirley, who makes each breath he takes sweeter.

FOREWORD

Scott Behson, PhD, Nyack, NY

I recently presented at the Dad 2.0 Summit in San Francisco and was amazed by what I saw. The Summit was attended by writers, bloggers, brands and policy experts, all focused on encouraging involved fatherhood and ensuring the media portrayal of modern fatherhood focuses on it, not as a novelty or a punchline, but rather as an exercise in strength and tenderness, endurance and vulnerability, courage and compassion. All who attended proved it was healthy and normal for a man to be a loving, involved dad while also climbing the corporate ladder, punching the clock to provide for his family, or even removing himself completely from the workforce to be a stay-at-home dad. It was about time we celebrated this.

To me, the Summit represented something of a seismic shift. I mean, can you imagine a conference on this topic a decade ago? Two decades ago? Most dads today live lives that are incongruent with those of their grandfathers. When it comes to masculinity, change has come very quickly, but there has been one persistent barrier: the machismo stereotype.

One of the keynote speakers at the Summit was Dr. Michael Kimmel, perhaps the leading sociologist in the study of masculinity. During his presentation, he showed a New Yorker cartoon on the big screen. It showed two rough and tough-looking cowboys in a saloon, gun belts on their hips and babies in carriers strapped to their chests. One cowboy says to the other At high noon, I m taking her to the zoo. How s one thirty?

Funny, right? But also insightful. Cleverly, the cartoon clarified exactly what made these cowboys manly. It was not their willingness to duel for the sake of honor or pride. Rather, it was that they adjusted their lives to take care of their children.

In a way, we are these cowboys. We have an idea in our heads about what makes someone manly projecting strength and machismo; John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, the Rock. But this imagined ideal is out-of-step with what really makes us manly. Taking time out from work to care for our kids now that is manly. Eschewing destructive macho behavior to ensure we are there for those we love - manly. Working hard at an unfulfilling job to provide for our families - manly. Sharing the load at work and at home equally with our partners - manly. Relating to small children on their level instead of as an unapproachable tower of strength - manly.

In my work, I counsel dads on what they can do to achieve success at work and at home. I also work with employers on how they can be more supportive of working parents in ways where both employers and employees benefit. One of the major obstacles we face is the monolithic, old-school, high-noon, cowboy view of masculinity. But once our society gets past this illusion and sees the world, and manhood, as it really is, that is when progress truly happens.

The ideal man, ideal worker is stuck in too many minds and completely out of step with todays society and the modern workplace. Both parents work in 85 percent of two-parent households. Men are no longer the sole breadwinners with at-home wives taking care of the rest. Modern men juggle careers, childcare and housework. Some stay home while their wives take on the role of the breadwinner. Our lives are less gender-role specific than ever. Similarly, the modern workplace no longer emphasizes command and control. Rather, creativity, teamwork, adaptability, judgment and flexibility are the ways to success for modern companies.

One size no longer fits all, either at home or at work. Modern workplaces and, frankly, a whole lot of dads, need to see the reality of manliness in all its variety. That is why I love the work of Hogan and Al, and the whole idea behind Dads Behaving DADLY.

Much like their original book, this volume contains dozens of stories demonstrating masculinity, what it means to be manly and, more importantly, what it means to behave DADLY. These are stories from dads showing compassion and vulnerability, demonstrating true strength and courage. And the best part is that the dads telling their stories throughout the book are us. These arent fancy-schmantzy professors or consultants like me (although I am a modern dad, too). No pre-eminent sociologists or New Yorker cartoons for that matter. No Brad Pitts or Kobe Bryants. The authors of this book are a cross-section of dads examining their lives and their experiences as fathers, in all its messy reality.