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Adam Fishman (author of a top business newsletter on Substack with 11K+ subscribers) interviews executives, entrepreneurs, and company leaders in technology companies who are also fathers. They discuss the tough aspects of work, parenting, family, the mistakes made and lessons learned along the way. All episodes at www.startupdadpod.com.
[00:00:00] Brad Harrington: My little two-year-old daughter, those days you could go to the airport and drop somebody right at the gate. My little two-year-old daughter would be waving goodbye on a Sunday night.
[00:00:07] Brad Harrington: And I'm sitting there thinking to myself, if my father were alive, he would say, "Get a grip on things, stay where your priorities are, and that's with your family." And so, I talked it over with my wife. My wife agreed. She said, "this is just not a long-term solution." So, I stopped that, I was glad I did.
[00:00:22] Adam Fishman: Welcome to "Startup Dad," the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of dads who are also leaders in the world of startups and business. I'm your host, Adam Fishman. What happens when the guy who lived the ultimate work-family conflict decides to spend the next quarter-century studying why other men can't escape it?
[00:00:45] Adam Fishman: Today, I'm joined by Brad Harrington, founder and executive director of the Boston College Center for Work and Family. Brad spent nearly two decades at Hewlett Packard, earned his PhD along the way, and then walked away from corporate America and a 75% pay cut to become one of the leading researchers on fatherhood, caregiving, and the tension between the lives men say they want and the lives they actually lived.
[00:01:12] Adam Fishman: He's retired now, but is also a happily married dad of three. In our conversation, we spoke about the three archetypes of fatherhood: traditional, egalitarian, and conflicted, and the striking gap between what fathers say they believe about caregiving and what they actually do. The financial pressures that keep men locked into the breadwinner role even when they desperately want out, why the paternity leave decision in those first few weeks of a child's life can shape a father's caregiving identity for decades to come, the push and pull that dual career couples cycle through as they negotiate and renegotiate who carries what at home, and why overscheduled kids with no room to breathe may be paying the price for parents who can't let go of control.
[00:01:56] Adam Fishman: If you like what you hear, please subscribe to "Startup Dad" on YouTube or Spotify so you never miss an episode. You'll find it everywhere you get your podcasts. I hope you enjoy today's conversation with Brad Harrington.
[00:02:09] Adam Fishman: Welcome Brad Harrington to Startup Dad. Brad, thanks so much for joining me today. It's a pleasure having you here
[00:02:16] Brad Harrington: Yeah. Thank you for having me, Adam
[00:02:18] Adam Fishman: So your story is fascinating. You spent almost two decades at Hewlett-Packard, which is a company that a lot of people who listen to this show will know as HP. Toward the end of that time, you had two kids at home, you had a third one on your way.
[00:02:32] Adam Fishman: You were commuting 3,000 miles every other week. Can you set that scene for me? You were sort of like the ultimate startup dad in that regard.
[00:02:41] Brad Harrington: Yeah, that was back at a time when, people working remotely or working flexibly was-- It, it was relatively common at HP because HP had sort of, been one of the real pioneers in terms of flex time and things like that way back in the late '70s and early '80s. But not too many people were doing it, quite like I was doing it, the 3,000-mile thing.
[00:03:00] Brad Harrington: I had peaked out. We had, Massachusetts operations, and I had worked in Europe for a few years, and I had peaked out in that region of the world. In those days, it was also more important where were you, you know, living and working,
[00:03:11] Brad Harrington: So, they offered me this job as head of management and organizational development for the corporation, and I took that on somewhat reluctantly because of the commute.
[00:03:20] Brad Harrington: And they said, "Well, if you are willing to come out here a week or two weeks a month, we'd be happy to equip yourself so you can work at home whenever." And that was, as I said, pretty uncommon at the time. But HP was starting to get into a more virtual global sort of mindset. And so that felt like it could work.
[00:03:37] Brad Harrington: We had afour-year-old and a two-year-old at that time, and pretty soon thereafter, my wife was expecting. And at that point, I remember, I had an opportunity to go work in Europe, and we had worked there, and my wife and I had met in Europe years before. We had both loved Europe. And I remember going home, and she was probably a couple months pregnant, and I said, "Honey, we can, you know, stop this 3,000-mile commute. All we have to do is move to Geneva." And she looked at me and said, "If you think I'm dragging three kids under the age of five to Geneva, you're out of your mind."
[00:04:11] Adam Fishman: Ah
[00:04:12] Brad Harrington: Um, and I was like, " You're right. That's not a good suggestion." And she said, "You know, it's just, this is not really workable." Two weeks a month, I was, like, completely disengaged from the family, and I was living out there, and it was kind of lonely.
[00:04:25] Brad Harrington: And they got me an apartment at one point. My wife's like, "Well, that's nice." And I'm like, "Not really. I hate being in that apartment," right? You know, and my little two-year-old daughter, I-- Th-those days you could go to the airport and drop somebody right at the gate. And my little two-year-old daughter would be waving goodbye on a Sunday night.
[00:04:40] Brad Harrington: And I'm sitting there thinking to myself, if my father were alive, he would say, "Get a grip on things, stay where your priorities are, and that's with your family." And so, I talked it over with my wife. My wife agreed. She said, "this is just not a long-term solution." So, I stopped that, I was glad I did.
[00:04:55] Brad Harrington: I never felt completely engaged in the workplace because I was only there sporadically in terms of the West Coast. I was working from home, which wasn't, was not very customary in those days. And then when I was home, my wife had the joy of me being there 24/7, offering my critiques about how she was raising children.
[00:05:13] Adam Fishman: So, you know, if you thought this episode was going to be about, let's listen to the guy who knows how to raise children, that's not me I will caveat that almost every episode there's some admittance that most of the guests don't have it figured out,
[00:05:24] Brad Harrington: So how long did you do that back and forth across
[00:05:27] Adam Fishman: Two years. Part of it was across the country, and part of it was I was actually commuting back and forth to Europe as well for a while. So between the two of them, it was close to two years. Wow. Wow. And so of course, you hit a wall at some point or somebody threw you into that wall, maybe your family.
[00:05:42] Adam Fishman: Um,you took a step back and you went and took a job at Boston College. You wrote about this, that you took a deep breath about the salary and the perks you'd lose.
[00:05:53] Adam Fishman: Obviously, going from corporate America to academia, very different, but then you took the Boston College job anyway.
[00:06:00] Adam Fishman: And I guess one of the things that you mentioned when you talked about your salary and perks is like, you don't wanna knowwhat I gave up to do that. How bad was it?
[00:06:07] Adam Fishman: Like are we talking like, like a, you know, 50% change here or even more than that? Like
[00:06:12] Brad Harrington: more. It was 75% from a salary and bonuses and stocks and so forth. My wife said, "You know, there's no profit sharing, there's no stock options." And I had to give up a company car. That one killed me because I'm not a car guy. And so it used to be you'd have these, company cars, and they'd refresh them every year.
[00:06:29] Brad Harrington: And if something was wrong, you'd go to the front desk and drop off the keys, and they'd say, "Well, here's a loaner car," you know, "while we fix..." I'm not a car guy, and I loved the thought that I would have a new one every year and somebody else would be worrying about the maintenance. Those were tough hits, to be honest with you.
[00:06:42] Brad Harrington: And, you know, my wife at that point, we were expecting our third child, so she had been worked in higher education. We decided mutually it's best for her to stay at home with the kids because, as you know, and nothing has changed since that way back then, working in higher education and paying for daycare for three children, you'd be on a losing mission there, right? So she stayed home and that made total sense. But then all of a sudden there was just me earning 75% less than I did before. My wife was stayed home, and we had now three mouths or five if you count my wife and I, mouths to feed and a mortgage. So from a financial standpoint, I had prepped for this 'cause I had thought, even over my years at HP, I thought at some point I really wanna do something else.
[00:07:24] Brad Harrington: 'Cause I'd been there since I was a young, like 24 years old, and I thought I didn't think that was going to be my lifetime, vocation. So I had kinda planned ahead, but you never can quite plan ahead for how different it feels when your pay cut gets cut by a factor of four, you know?
[00:07:38] Adam Fishman: The thing that I find most remarkable about this is, a lot of men in your situation that would quit and find a more sane job, right? But you quit, and then you spent the next quarter of a century studying work and family, and eventually you worked down a path where you were studying why other men in the seat that you used to be in couldn't get out of it, didn't opt to leave.
[00:08:02] Adam Fishman: Was it something about that personal decision? You know, I've had a couple of other professors who say research is me search. Was it something about this personal decision that you made that motivated you to turn it into a research question or, like, a path of study for you?
[00:08:16] Brad Harrington: Well, it's funny. I had experienced obviously the work-family conflict about as profoundly as anybody could, you know. and at the same time, I also, uh... In the mid-'90s, my dad had Alzheimer's disease, and he died relatively young. When I first got the diagnosis, he was probably not even 70.
[00:08:33] Brad Harrington: And at that point, I'm thinking to myself as a 30-something-year-old, I'm like, "Well, Dad, at least you've had a full life." Well, now I'm 70, and I'm thinking to myself, "What was I saying?" Right? I kinda had the feeling that, going through that with my dad and understanding, the way he lived his life and the way he tried to, live very much in accordance with his values, you kinda think to yourself, if you thought being in business wasn't your long-term vocation, it wasn't your lifetime dream to do that or, calling, and you know, you've got one life to live and, you wanna do it, you know, doing something that really is meaningful.
[00:09:04] Brad Harrington: More than anything, where I thought I could make a contribution to the world was going into academia and having one foot in academia and one foot in the corporate world. So it was the idea of being a boundary spanner between those two things that was the initial thing that intrigued me. I don't know if it's buried in my resume or somewhere, but I also managed to get a PhD during my latter years with HP, the last seven years.
[00:09:29] Brad Harrington: Yeah, HP had been very generous to me, and they sponsored me to go back full-time for a year to get my residency requirement for a doctorate. And during that, I realized, okay, I'd like to do more research. Even a thoughtful company like HP made a lot of decisions, you know, off the cuff.
[00:09:45] Brad Harrington: I always thought to myself, you know, we make these decisions. We wanna use data, and we wanna be informed, but at the end of the day, so many decisions are made this way. But I'd like to really dig into the way you people think, the way they make decisions, the way they operate, their policies, their culture, and so forth.
[00:10:00] Brad Harrington: And so with that, being armed with a doctorate and thinking about being a boundary spanner, the job at Boston College really offered me an opportunity to have a foot in both camps. I guess that more than anything was probably my calling card to be in a position like that
[00:10:13] Adam Fishman: Oh, that's great. Well, I'm excited to dig into the, a lot of your research with you. Before that, I just wanted to plant a seed. We're going to come back to this later, but, you wrote a piece, I think on Valentine's Day, that compared married couples to circus acrobats. And so let's just like hold onto that one.
[00:10:29] Adam Fishman: I'm going to remind people of that later. We're going to come back 'cause I've, got some questions about that one, so.
[00:10:34] Adam Fishman: I ask a lot of founders who come on this show about frameworks. I love frameworks, so I'd love to start there with you. You have a bunch of frameworks about fatherhood.
[00:10:41] Adam Fishman: You kind of bucket fathers into three types, right? Or archetypes. So traditional, egalitarian, and conflicted. Can you tell me about what each one of those buckets means?
[00:10:53] Brad Harrington: Sure. The traditional father is just what you would expect. You know, it's the classic stereotype of the 1960s dad who goes off to the office, and he's completely focused on work. He has a stay-at-home spouse who's There, who really picks up the pieces as far as the family goes in terms of being the nurturer, the caregiver, the person who schedules the appointments and goes to the teacher appointments and all that kind of thing.
[00:11:16] Brad Harrington: And although that stereotype is more extreme than the way I would depict our traditional fathers. They fit more in a mold that you would consider, "Oh yeah, that's what dads do." You know? Dads bring home the bacon, so to speak, and mothers take care of the rest. So there was a bunch of guys who fell into that category, I could explain in just a second how we determine who go into what each category.
[00:11:36] Brad Harrington: The second is what you would think of as the more enlightened male, who's an egalitarian father, who says, "You know, I really strive to be and am succeeding at being a shared caregiver with my spouse. And she and I, you know, if you were to ask the question, we roughly share responsibilities for domestic tasks and more importantly, for child-rearing."
[00:11:55] Brad Harrington: And those are the egalitarian fathers. And then the third group were the people who espoused that they wanted to be egalitarian, but they were quick to admit they were not. We labeled those guys the conflicted fathers because th-there was the basic conflict, which is, "I wanna be this, but I'm really that."
[00:12:11] Brad Harrington: You know, I acknowledge and appreciate the fact that they were willing to fess up to that, because a lot of people kind of, you know, throw a smokescreen out there, "Oh yeah, you know, I'm doing half the load," and all that. Deep down it's not true. But the simplest way we could categorize those people were, we asked two questions: "How do you think caregiving should be divided between you and your spouse or partner?"
[00:12:32] Brad Harrington: And then the second question was, "How is caregiving divided between you and your spouse or partner?" And, you know, rough numbers, in every survey we did, 65% to 70% of fathers said it should be 50/50, and 30 to 35% said it is 50/50. And when there was that fall off between 70% and 35%, the answer was, "She does more than I do,
[00:12:54] Brad Harrington: always."And then there were other questions in our surveys that further inquired into those dimensions, but they reinforced the fact that on those two simple questions, there were guys that said, "She does more than I do, and I think she should." There were guys that said, "We do it equally, and we think we should."
[00:13:10] Brad Harrington: And then there were guys who said, "I wanna do more, and I wanna be a care giver "But I'm not." "That's how we got to that model.
[00:13:15] Adam Fishman: And it turns out that that conflicted group, I think, was the biggest group of the research or the respondents essentially plus or minus like 38%. And I bet not much has changed actually. Maybe that's moved a few points or depending on where you live or something, but I bet it hasn't changed.
[00:13:32] Adam Fishman: These are generational patterns. So there's this enormous gap between what people say they want and then what they live. Was that surprising to you when you, first, uh, saw it?
[00:13:45] Brad Harrington: Having been a conflicted father, no. While people are giving me credit for, "Oh, you're doing unbelievable that you're going back and forth," and all this stuff, and, you know, I think to myself,going back to what we were talking about earlier, if I had been a mom and I was spending two weeks a month in Palo Alto, people would've said, "You're a terrible mom," right?
[00:14:05] Brad Harrington: I mean, they would've said, what are you doing? You've got little children," right? And so even though I aspired to be, a shared caregiver and very much even more than that, just aspired to be a very engaged father, I had to face the fact that, being away from your home 3,000 miles two weeks a month is not carrying your load.
[00:14:23] Brad Harrington: Now, in that instance, I would've fallen into being really a traditional caregiver because my wife was at home full-time with the kids, and there was kind of a division of labor, especially given the distance, where my wife said, "If you're going to be 3,000 miles away, there's no way I can really work, with a four-year-old and a two-year-old and being pregnant."
[00:14:40] Brad Harrington: We need to kind of go into what is more of a traditional route. But, that didn't mean for a minute that I didn't feel, as I said earlier, conflicted. certainly when I was out in the Bay Area, I was very conflicted about what was I doing here and why wasn't I back home. So it didn't surprise me that much.
[00:14:57] Brad Harrington: I guess the persistence of that number, you know, it was roughly a third, a third, and a third, but the conflicted fathers were also slightly larger percentage. And I guess it did surprise me how many fathers felt that dilemma, of trying to be one thing and not living up to it.
[00:15:12] Adam Fishman: And then of course, I had made the assumption that not much has changed there. Have you done follow-up research or obviously you've been retired now for a few years, but has much changed there, in your opinion?
[00:15:23] Brad Harrington: I think the first time we did that, from the first time we did a study, a quantitative study like that, to the last time we did it was about eight years. And there were changes, but it was more modest than you would like to have hoped. We're working with a selective model of corporate guys, mostly very well-heeled, good pay, some managerial responsibilities and so forth.
[00:15:44] Brad Harrington: So I mean, the population we worked with was a select group. But within that group, it moved a little more toward egalitarian, but it wasn't quite as significant as you might have expected.
[00:15:54] Adam Fishman: The other thing that came out, I think, in your research on this was that conflicted fathers are also the least satisfied men in your dataset. I mean, obviously, if you're conflicted by nature, that's not a very satisfying place to be. But they had, like, the lowest, job satisfaction, lowest career satisfaction, lowest sense of belonging at work because they were feeling pulled somewhere else,
[00:16:16] Adam Fishman: Most likely to be looking for another job, maybe one that provided them with more flexibility. Why does that work home-life gap show up on a workplace survey? That's really interesting to me.
[00:16:28] Brad Harrington: Well, I mean, obviously we were trying to explore that. It wasn't like a corporate satisfaction survey. There was companies that allowed us to come in, and they knew that our agenda was going to be to study that piece of it, you know, the family work dimension.
[00:16:40] Brad Harrington: if you looked at the results, the traditional fathers were the happiest in two areas. One was they were the happiest in terms of their career advancement, and the second is they were happiest, in terms of their salary progression. And that makes complete sense. You know, these are the guys who basically, like my wife was back in those days, who were saying, "You go for the gold ring.
[00:16:59] Brad Harrington: you bring home the money and then take care of that, and I'll take care of the rest." So it's not surprising that these guys were the ones that probably progressed the most professionally had the best earnings. The egalitarian fathers, these were people who at least espoused, and sometimes we could validate that they said, "You know, I'm doing close to 50% of the caregiving."
[00:17:18] Brad Harrington: In spite of the fact that they were doing more caregiving than either of the other two groups, they said, like, work-life balance was easier for them, and they were more satisfied at home and at work than the guys who were in this conflicted situation. The conflicted guys, there were a whole bunch of things working at odds, and I don't know if I'm getting ahead of you, Adam, at all, but why are these people conflicted and why don't they extricate themselves from the situation?
[00:17:40] Brad Harrington: There are some very good reasons for it, okay? I got into kind of a debate with a feminist scholar, it was a written debate. And she said, "Yeah, there's a good reason for it. Fathers shirk their responsibilities." You know? It was like, "That's it." and I went, "Okay, I'm not going to sit here and pretend they never do that."
[00:17:55] Brad Harrington: You know, I remember many times when, I could hear a kid crying in the other room, but it was the fourth quarter of the Patriots game,
[00:18:00] Adam Fishman: Just turn the volume up a little bit more
[00:18:02] Brad Harrington: I had the door shut, you know? There was some shirking going on, But, uh, the other thing is, you know, one is obviously men have been socialized to be the financial provider.
[00:18:12] Brad Harrington: That weighs heavy on men who, think that that's my role in life, you know? And you can see that in studies where men earn less than women, that there is some consternation on the men's part to say, "Yeah, she does, and it's great for the family, but I don't feel 100% great about the fact that, you know, she's earning more than I am."
[00:18:27] Brad Harrington: So there's that. The second thing is they earn more than their spouse does. So in most circumstances, you'll find that women don't earn as much as their husbands. They don't work as many hours as their husbands. They don't travel as much as their husbands. So there's a lot of energy built up around, he's the guy who brings home the majority of the income.
[00:18:46] Brad Harrington: And that obviously puts pressure on men to say, "I need to focus more on work, and my work is not at all something that's discretionary. My work is very much needed." The third thing I think is, you know, organizations, e-even enlightened ones, I think, play to stereotypes about, What do you mean you have to leave at five o'clock?"
[00:19:03] Brad Harrington: If you're a woman and you say, "I need to leave at 4:30 or 5:00 to pick up my children at daycare," nobody would blink, you know? Or if they do blink, then they're dinosaurs. But when men say, "I gotta leave every day at 4:30," you know, they don't get quite the same response. And so there's a bunch of things that are going on there beyond just shirking responsibility that really have to do with the fact that men, have positioned themselves as the primary breadwinner and also are positioned that way by
[00:19:29] Adam Fishman: organizations.
[00:19:30] Adam Fishman: Yeah, so you kind of alluded to this, a few questions ago. A skeptical person might hear this term conflicted and think, "Oh, well this is all self-reported data, and so it's just a dad that's trying to say, 'Oh, I really wish I was more involved, but I just can't be,' and stuff like that."
[00:19:49] Adam Fishman: So obviously you thought about that.What is your response to that kind of like skepticism or basically people saying, "Oh, he's just lying on the form"?
[00:19:58] Brad Harrington: Well, the first time we published our results and we said that, as many men as women said they would welcome being a stay-at-home parent or that there was this high percentage of conflicted fathers, this woman, who's a fairly famous author, wrote a piece in The Washington Post that was referencing our study and the fact that men wanted to be much more engaged.
[00:20:16] Brad Harrington: The title of her article was, "Why Do Men Lie in Work-Life Studies?" So she was taking none of this, you
[00:20:24] Adam Fishman: Yeah, she wasn't, she was going right at it there,
[00:20:26] Brad Harrington: She was not buying what we were selling. I've talked to people like, who study women and they say, you know, women just as likely to be biased as men are.
[00:20:34] Brad Harrington: if you're going to say, "Oh, the men are giving these responses because they're biased and they're trying to make themselves look good," they said, you know, women do the same thing, you know? "Oh, he does nothing. He never shows up, I have to do everything," kind of thing. So they said, just because it's just men doesn't mean it doesn't have credence or credibility.
[00:20:50] Brad Harrington: But I mean, there is some question there about, has the case for saying, "I really wanna be fully committed and 50/50 shared caregiving," has that been overstated a little bit? Probably. But I think we do that as people. You know, whether we're men or women, we tend to overstate, you know, the role we play and, maybe there's a little part of that.
[00:21:07] Brad Harrington: But I think, the idea of the conflicted father stood up over 10 or more years of research. It was like every study we did with different populations, all of them in that same sort of socioeconomic strata, but different populations at different companies, that conflicted father thing came out again and again
[00:21:24] Adam Fishman: Yeah, and I want to ask you about that too, because I tended to think, uneducated on this, that, oh, there would be massive generational gaps here. But you surveyed boomers and Gen X and millennials, which that's the bucket I fall into, the elder millennial bucket.
[00:21:40] Adam Fishman: I don't know what they call us.
[00:21:41] Adam Fishman: But across those different generations,the aspiration gap barely moves at all. Why is that? Why does it move so little? Because the discourse would say, "Oh, we're so much more enlightened, the new generations," you know?
[00:21:53] Brad Harrington: It was, you know, moving in the direction of more egalitarian dads and a higher percentage, but, didn't move as much as we thought. Again, it might be the job categories these people fell into, and the fact that, if you look at our parental leave study, which all of these things are available if you go to the BC Archives, all these studies are available there.
[00:22:11] Brad Harrington: These people were in good jobs, high-pressure jobs, oftentimes working in very well-known companies, you know, whether it was Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, UPS, Unilever, PricewaterhouseCoopers. These were, guys that were in more traditionally male environments, and more often than not, in jobs that were very demanding.
[00:22:28] Brad Harrington: And again, you gotta also understand that these are national surveys, we didn't do global for a bunch of reasons. We did do studies outside the US, but we never did one global study. And the main reason being, I'm sure, Adam, you've heard this 100 times, is outside of the US, diff-different countries have very different policies for working people, more flexibility, more parental leave, you know, just more generous work family.
[00:22:52] Brad Harrington: So we felt once you start comparing, the obvious extremes would be the US and Norway or something, you're going to have so many confounding elements in there, you can't really make, too many assertions. But, you know, there were people from different parts of the United States in our study, many people from, the Midwest, the South, and so forth.
[00:23:08] Brad Harrington: I don't think as much as, you know, me being in Boston area, you being in, the Bay Area, you, know, we think the whole world moves just like we do in lockstep with, you know? And it's like, no. I mean, you just have to look at the elections, to say, " No, I guess not everybody does think the way we do in our Boston bubble," you know?
[00:23:25] Brad Harrington: And that's true around family and family traditions, family values as well. So these were national samples and so, that has to be taken into account too.
[00:23:33] Adam Fishman: yeah. But also kind of what you're saying there is that the companies, the people you're interviewing because of the company or the environment that they were in, it's almost like a lot of those people kind of self-select into that way. And so culturally they kind of feel and act and so the consistency makes a lot of sense.
[00:23:50] Brad Harrington: Yeah, there's a certain profile of people who go into corporate jobs and high-tech jobs and all that kind of thing, and that's not necessarily consistent with the pattern of people who go into other kinds of careers. I know we want to talk about the at-home dad study later, and we'll do that.
[00:24:04] Brad Harrington: I will say that a lot of the at-home dads there, they were not high-tech executives. a lot of them were in, you know, much more what you'd call helping professions. And so, those were the kind of people who were drawn more into being an at-home dad, as opposed to these high-tech types who, were much more kind of career-focused.
[00:24:21] Adam Fishman: Yeah, we will get to that. I'm fascinated by that research. I wanna do a segment I hope will help many couples out there, and I'm going to call this segment, "Don't Argue About Who Does More."
[00:24:32] Adam Fishman: You once wrote a piece or one of the points in one of your pieces was you shouldn't argue about who does more at home.
[00:24:38] Adam Fishman: The problem is more likely who does what. Can you tell me what you meant by that? What does
[00:24:43] Brad Harrington: Yeah. I'd always felt that as a result of doing the studies. But at the time, um, You gotta think way back when, like, Time Magazine and Newsweek were very popular. It's like an anachronism to talk about them now.
[00:24:54] Brad Harrington: But at the time, Time Magazine, I think, was a very popular publication that came out weekly, and one of the cover stories they wanted to do was on, you know, the mom-dad thing, And the stereotypes, and this was true about, when we got involved in, uh, doing this kind of study, was there were two stereotypes of men, okay?
[00:25:10] Brad Harrington: Either they were the macho males who wouldn't know how to change a diaper if their life depended on it, and couldn't care less about family responsibilities. They were just, you know, off doing that. And when they weren't doing their, 60-hour workweek, they were on the golf course. That was one stereotype.
[00:25:24] Brad Harrington: And then the other stereotype was every year or two, some magazine, usually one of the big business magazines, would, like or Fortune or something, would have a picture of a guy in an apron and say, "Oh, Mr. Mom is the new dad." And these were pretty extreme views, right? And, I thought to myself, this is a crazy dichotomous sort of, stereotype we've placed men into."
[00:25:43] Brad Harrington: And that's part of what incented us to do those studies. But, we thought it was going to be something much more subtle than that, and it wouldn't be these really gross, differences. That's one of the reasons why we embarked on the study. And am I addressing the point you had asked,
[00:25:57] Adam Fishman: Yeah, You did, address that. I think the other piece of it is you base some of that writing on the time use,
[00:26:04] Brad Harrington: your studies, yeah
[00:26:05] Adam Fishman: when you add up all the components of the
[00:26:08] Brad Harrington: Yeah.
[00:26:08] Adam Fishman: you're doing,
[00:26:09] Adam Fishman: it's maybe roughly the same, but the makeup of those components could be
[00:26:13] Brad Harrington: Yeah. Correct. Correct. and yeah, there was the, what do you do for pay? What do you do for the family? What do you do in non-paid activities and so forth? And if you stack those bar charts, it was clear that men and women contributed just about the same amount to their family, okay? But they did it in a very different, kind of mixture, a mix.
[00:26:32] Brad Harrington: The average father, more likely to work 42 hours a week or whatever. The average mother, more likely to work about 22 hours a week. Again, there were many women working 60 hours a week, but there were also a lot of part-time w-workers amongst the women and women who stayed at home.
[00:26:46] Brad Harrington: What happened was, they were putting in twice as much or three times as much into domestic tasks and caregiving as the fathers were. But when you stack the bar charts, you know, it was like both of them were g-doing something like 60 to 65 hours a week of work that was toward the well-being of the family, right?
[00:27:03] Brad Harrington: And so the argument that I was trying to make is unless you've got a father who's clearly just, shirking all his responsibilities and takes no responsibility other than just bringing home the paycheck. The argument I was making is, you know, it's not a question of who does more, ' cause you could see from the time use studies that there wasn't that big a difference between moms and dads.
[00:27:22] Brad Harrington: But it was a question of who does what and notably, who does what for pay, right? So the fathers were spending, I think, two-thirds of their 60-plus hours a week in paid positions, and the women were spending a third of their week, and two-thirds of their time was spent in unpaid labor, household labor and caregiving.
[00:27:38] Brad Harrington: And so it a question of the conversation should really be about have we got the mix right of paid versus unpaid, and not so much as I do everything, you don't do anything kind of a thing, which is, automatically putting people on opposite sides of the fence. so you start off in a position where it's, kind of antagonistic almost, rather than starting in a position and saying, how do we recraft our hours spent in a way that satisfies both our professional needs and our personal and family needs?"
[00:28:04] Adam Fishman: Yeah. And of course, you know, in this podcast, the most listened to episode I've ever recorded is one of my more recent episodes. It's with a woman named Alison Daminger, and she wrote a book on cognitive labor and mental load, which of course, you know, is a very popular discussion and is related to this.
[00:28:25] Adam Fishman: Her whole argument there is that the invisible thinking work, which there is a lot of when you have kids and a household and things like that, it's not captured in time studies because people don't think to write down, "Remember the permission slip," you know, or, "The milk is out in the fridge," and I made a note of that.
[00:28:45] Adam Fishman: if you were giving... And I know we're not trying to dispense advice here, but if there's a couple who's having this debate and discussion and argument and they're listening to this show, 'cause as you know, very popular couples listening is Startup Dad. If they could have like one conversation this week, what is the question that they should be asking each other if they're having this kind of, who does more
[00:29:08] Brad Harrington: Sure.
[00:29:08] Adam Fishman: of debate dis- d- discussion?
[00:29:10] Brad Harrington: Well, I think the first is do we have the mix right, In terms of personal, versus professional endeavors. Uh, and if we don't have the mix right, who does that bother? Like in the case of our traditional dads, it was like, the women in, in that we didn't get any indication that the women were dissatisfied being in a traditional role.
[00:29:27] Brad Harrington: It's just what they had decided to do, and hopefully it was done in concert with their partner. that's one thing is to realize that, you know, not everybody who is a stay-at-home mom or doing more on the home front is necessarily unhappy about that. It could be that if,it was agreed upon, that might have been the best solution for everybody.
[00:29:45] Adam Fishman: I think one thing that you said there was, and this is supported by Alison's research as well. She said it's not necessarily the egalitarian household that is the happiest. It's the one that is most aligned on who does what. And that can be very imbalanced, but if you're in alignment on that, it's fine
[00:30:03] Brad Harrington: Absolutely. And if they are in balance, that is what matters more You know, and sometimes I think especially with the women's movement and stuff, people get a little like, "Oh, if women ha- have to work, and if they don't work, they're somehow failing," or men have to do this or that.
[00:30:16] Brad Harrington: These days it's much more of a negotiation, and it's a question of saying everybody has to formulate what's best for them But when it comes to the issue of the mental load, I would just say, there's a difference between saying, "My spouse and I are partners," it's a mindset, versus, my spouse is my employee," right?
[00:30:33] Brad Harrington: And I think a lot of men say, "Oh, I do everything. Anytime my wife asks me, I do what she asks me to do." But when they're not asked, they're sitting on their hands thinking, "I think I'm good," right? Where women don't think like that. I mean, you know, mothers don't think like that.
[00:30:47] Brad Harrington: I think they think, there's always something running around in their head, something that needs to be done. You know, a lot of wives and mothers will say, "Why do you wait to be asked?" Okay? If you wait to be asked, you're your wife's employee, right? She's the manager, you're the employee.
[00:31:01] Brad Harrington: If you don't wait to be asked, you could make a strong dividing line. You can say, "You do all the school-related stuff, I do all the medical-related stuff. You do the dusting and, mopping, and I do the cooking," whatever. It doesn't matter how you divide it.
[00:31:13] Brad Harrington: But if you're in a partnership, you've got to say, "Okay, are we both carrying the same amount of the emotional load?" And when there's, a break in the action, do we anticipate what be coming next, or do we say, "Oh, there's a break in the action. I'll be on the links for the next six hours"?
[00:31:27] Brad Harrington: That's a very different mindset and that's the uh, mindset of, "I guess I'm done with my responsibilities, so here I
[00:31:33] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Yeah, 'cause if you're out on the golf course, you can't really do the noticing that
[00:31:36] Brad Harrington: Exactly.
[00:31:37] Brad Harrington: Yes. Yeah. I, I gotta say, I've been intrigued my whole parenting life. I'm not a big golfer at all, but I just think who in the hell says, with two or three or young kids or whatever, "I think I'll be out on Saturday. I'll be back at 2:30 or 3:00." I mean,
[00:31:52] Adam Fishman: Well,
[00:31:53] Adam Fishman: I once knew a guy who, uh, had a very demanding job in a law firm and loved to golf, but in order to do golf on the weekends, he had to get the first tee time. So he was out on the golf course at 5:00 in the morning so that he could be home by like 9:00 or 9:30 when the kids started waking up to be there and jump into action.
[00:32:12] Adam Fishman: That was the only way he could make it work.
[00:32:13] Adam Fishman: but yeah, theanything that takes me away for multiple hours in the middle of
[00:32:16] Adam Fishman: the day is kind of a non-starter,
[00:32:18] Adam Fishman: so. all right. I wanna talk a little bit about some of the reasons that, fathers can't or won't or didn't close the gap.
[00:32:26] Adam Fishman: There's four that you talked about, and you've mentioned some of these already. One is the stereotype of the father as the breadwinner, which is particularly sticky, I think. one is that fathers' financial contributions, for better or for worse, are typically larger, so the salary's needed more.
[00:32:41] Adam Fishman: One is organizations are still pretty slow to accept men's expanded role at home. And then the other one is, and it's still true today in a lot of places, men aren't offered as much leave or in many cases, any leave, or if they are, they don't take it 'cause they feel pressure not to. there's a lot wrapped up in theirs, but the one that hit me the most is sort of the financial one, which we've kind of discussed.
[00:33:07] Adam Fishman: and I think you mentioned that in every one of the surveys that your center had conducted, like that weighed really heavily in
[00:33:16] Adam Fishman: those surveys. And so I wanted to ask you, is money the biggest reason or is it just the one that's sort of the easiest to fall back on for people or the easiest to understand?
[00:33:28] Brad Harrington: I think it is probably the biggest reason because, you know, again, I'll, talk like a an East Coast, West Coast guy here. You can imagine between Boston, Washington, New York, you know, Palo Alto, San Francisco, LA, the cost of living is unbelievable. I have three, three 20-somethings, One's now just turned 30.
[00:33:49] Brad Harrington: I look at these young people trying to start out their careers in Boston, and I think unless they're going into some kind of financial investment kind of opportunity, it's astronomical, you know, what they're facing in terms of h-house prices and cost of living and all that kind of thing.
[00:34:04] Brad Harrington: It's gotten worse recently in terms of inflation, especially on things like gas and food and so forth. But the cost of housing is so exorbitant that I think We're just in a position on these two coasts where, there isn't really an option, for people to just say, you know, I can take a big pay cut," or, "I, could do, with a job that demands less of me," or whatever it might be.
[00:34:27] Brad Harrington: And so I think a lot of families these days are dual career couples or, are saying, you know, "We're, kinda living, up to our means, and there's not a lot left over." And so the thought of somebody being as crazy as I was and saying, "Oh, let me just, stop off the rat race and take 75% cut," there aren't many people that crazy, these days.
[00:34:47] Brad Harrington: and honestly, it's, probably like a lot of people say, like, "We can't afford a 10% or 20% pay cut." And so who's earning the most really does have a big bearing on that. also m- maybe gives men a little bit more permission to sort of say, "Oh, honey, I'm working," you know? maybe there's a little bit in women that probably say, "Ooh, he is bringing home an awful lot of our family income," and so therefore, you know, he should be given a little more license, a little more allowance, to spend more time focusing on work because of the earnings.
[00:35:18] Brad Harrington: But I, think they were all big, but I think that was probably the one that was the most... Like, when you say, well, when does it get to a point where women, start demanding egalitarian partnerships from their perspective? And you know what the answer is? When they earn more money than their husbands and when they work more hours than their husband.
[00:35:36] Brad Harrington: 'Cause we've looked at this whole issue of, is it just the men who are conflicted, or the women play a part in that? And the answer is, if you want to be a woman and you want to have a man who takes greater responsibility on the home front, obviously I'm making a sweeping generalization here, but based on our research, it would say it's not what the man needs to do, it's what the woman needs to do.
[00:35:57] Brad Harrington: She needs to work more hours. She needs to, you know, make more money. And once that happens, then the father says, "Okay, this, you know, totally, I need to redirect my thinking a little bit, because, look who's earning the majority of the income for the family."
[00:36:09] Adam Fishman: Like I mentioned, I had Alison Daminger on the show. I had Darby Saxbe, who wrote about dad brain and the changes the male brain go through. and I think one of the things that you've talked about in your, research and your writing is that there's something that happens when mom spends the first few months at home as the primary caregiver and the dad doesn't.
[00:36:30] Adam Fishman: And you kind of describe it as like the train leaving the station. and so I'm curious to hear what was your observation there? What gets like locked in in those first few months that becomes so hard to change later for dads?
[00:36:43] Brad Harrington: a lot. And I mean, maybe almost everything gets locked in. But, you know, this was one of the reasons why we studied paternity leave early on, and then we studied it again uh, when companies started to offer that because we thought, I wasn't afforded paternity leave, I wasn't as cued in to how important that was.
[00:37:02] Brad Harrington: And I remember a colleague of mine, who did all her research in Sweden. She had a good gig. She w- taught in Indiana, but she spent every year, like she spent a couple months in Sweden doing her research, and it was on working dads. And she said, "When you dig into paternity leave, you're going to find out how profound and how important that is for both members of the, couple, in terms of formulating who's going to do what and what roles are each of them going to play."
[00:37:27] Brad Harrington: And part of it is like babies are hard to understand. And if you don't spend time with newborns or babies and they start screaming and crying and you're just kind of floating in here and there, my tendency and maybe many men's tendency would be to go, "Honey, the baby's crying.
[00:37:41] Brad Harrington: W- what is it? What,
[00:37:42] Brad Harrington: what
[00:37:43] Brad Harrington: what do I do?" You know, kind of a thing. And that, again, you're in the employee situation, not the partner situation when you're doing that. But the truth of the matter was that the men we did when we studied our first round, I think the men were getting three days of paternity leave.
[00:37:58] Brad Harrington: I think three to four was the average they were getting, and that was it. And the women on average were spending about three to four months at home, not always paid. Unfortunately, maternity policies in the United States are unbelievably weak as well. but women, whether paid or unpaid, if theycould afford to, would be spending three or four months at home.
[00:38:16] Brad Harrington: Well, three or four months compared to three or four days is huge. And usually, when the dad took his three to four days, it was right after the birth. The birth mother was home, and usually the mother or mother-in-law was there. And so the father basically was run out and get diapers, but he really didn't do a lot of hands-on caregiving.
[00:38:33] Brad Harrington: And, you know, the woman I talked about from Sweden, Professor Linda Haas, she said, you know, "It's when men fly solo," meaning I'm alone and I'm with the child, that they learn what it means to be a parent. And what we found when we kind of tried to echo that in our surveys was that the less time you spent, the less competent you were and the less confident you were.
[00:38:58] Brad Harrington: And those two things will kind of go hand in hand, especially in the early stages. If I have no confidence and I question my competence, then I'm always going to defer to somebody else. She said, you give men three to four months at home flying solo with the children, all of a sudden their confidence and competence about caregiving for young kids goes way up.
[00:39:17] Brad Harrington: and the studies that have been done would suggest that that has a, longer-term effect as well. So even after the baby is in school, that men have already, positioned themself as somebody who is truly a shared caregiver. And so it's not just those three or four months, it's the knockout from that.
[00:39:33] Brad Harrington: But once those patterns are established that the woman's going to do everything, you know, because they're home full-time for a few months, then all of a sudden that pattern gets, you know, solidified
[00:39:43] Adam Fishman: tough to break. Yeah. there's another piece of this too that I wanted to ask you about, which is this idea that men and fathers tend to have a greater, or you at least found, I think, that they have a greater awareness and sensitivity to the demands of their employers
[00:39:59] Adam Fishman: the vision of what it means to be an ideal worker, right? Versus their female counterparts are more willing to just kind of meet the terms of what it means to be, successful in the pursuit of their career.Was this also even when given the chance to take paternity leave, men opt, men feel more pressure or maybe opt to more satisfy the needs of their work than
[00:40:24] Brad Harrington: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think women know that, if I'm ambitious, I'm ambitious, and I know there are certain things that are going to hurt me. but they didn't seem to be quite as vulnerable to the subtle messages or the not so subtle messages they were getting, not because they were thick-headed.
[00:40:40] Brad Harrington: Because they were like, "I understand reality." And maybe that's why there's so many conflicted fathers. They operated on this myth that you can really do it all. Women have, you know, shaken that notion years ago. But men, you know, for many reasons thought, "Yeah, I can just do it all.
[00:40:54] Brad Harrington: and whether I have kids or not it's an issue, but it's not a huge issue. It's not going to change my career trajectory or the amount of time I work." So men, I think, were more sensitive to those cues, than women were. and as a result of that, I think that's why, men are a little bit more reluctant.
[00:41:10] Brad Harrington: That said, when we did the parental leave study, I was amazed at what percentage of guys said, you give me three months? I'll take three months." I mean, that surprised the heck out of me. And the problem with the study, there's always a potential flaw in any study, was that if the men didn't take leave, even though they did the survey and they said, you know, "But I didn't take leave," a lot of them, I think, then said, "Well, I don't need to answer the rest of this."
[00:41:33] Brad Harrington: So the men who answered the whole thing were the people who did take leave. and so there might have been a percentage of men in there who said, "I didn't take as much leave as I was offered," or, "I barely took any leave at all, so I'm not going to necessarily answer,some of these questions." where the men who took the full leave, did.
[00:41:50] Brad Harrington: But those men were in the majority. The overwhelming majority of them who said, "You give me, eight weeks, I'll take eight weeks. You give me 16 weeks..." I think the average was if they were offered 16 weeks, I believe they w- they took 13. that's a pretty high percentage.
[00:42:05] Brad Harrington: talking about a phenomenon that was so recent at the time we did that study. It had only been, like, couple of years where the companies that we studied had even offered that. And so that phenomenon caught off pretty quickly. And one of the companies I remember that we studied,
[00:42:18] Brad Harrington: we, you know, had done the parental leave stuff, and it really did influence their thinking about, you know, dads. and they wereone of the first companies, they got 10 weeks off for the fathers. And we were, like, stunned that they could get 10 weeks.
[00:42:29] Brad Harrington: You know, we were thinking if we get three or four, that would be a lot. So I said, "Wow,that's amazing. How did you get 10 weeks for men?" And she said, "Honestly?" And I said, "Yeah." And she said, "The senior leader said they'll never take it." they were, wrong. They did take it. I'm sure you made note of when you're, did the reading is fathers are more likely to say, "I'll take it if you pay me.
[00:42:47] Brad Harrington: And if you pay me 100%, I'll definitely take
[00:42:50] Brad Harrington: it." But, but, you know, I think women had realized over the years it may be paid, it may not be paid, right? and so when they got this paid parental leave as moms, 99.9% of them took all of it, right? Because they were taking it unpaid before. But fathers, some people say, "Well, why do dads have to get paid?"
[00:43:07] Brad Harrington: Well, because oftentimes their wife isn't getting paid, when they're on leave. And so the father's saying, I'll take leave too, and I won't get paid?" going back to the economics question, that just doesn't work out. You know, men may be a little bit thick-headed, but you know, when you say, "Hey, you can take three months off and you get 100% pay," it's amazing how bright these guys are
[00:43:26] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Um, all right. I said we would come back to this part, from a little bit earlier, which is the household like a circus. And this is based on, a book, that one of your co-collaborators wrote, Tim Hall and Francine Hall, who's I think his wife.
[00:43:41] Adam Fishman: so you, you read this book or this study, and then you turned it into four stages. they all start with A. so I'll read them off to you. there's, these are four stages that couples go through: allies, acrobats, that's where the circus comes in, adversaries, and accommodators. So can you tell me about,
[00:43:58] Brad Harrington: Yeah, sure.
[00:43:59] Adam Fishman: different stages
[00:43:59] Brad Harrington: Yeah. And it was Tim Hall and his ex-wife, Francine.
[00:44:04] Adam Fishman: He said, "You want a piece of marital advice? Don't ever co-write a book with your spouse on, on, on, uh, on, you know, work-life planning stuff." So anyway, but he's been happily remarried for many years. so it starts out, he said allies were like if you think of the stereotype of the, high-tech co-couple that are, you know, high-powered and they're coming out of business school, whatever it might be, and they're like, "Look, we both work our tails off.
[00:44:27] Brad Harrington: who cares about the house? You know, let's just go out and get pizza and everything's going to be fine. We're on this trajectory going up and we're both going up fast and we don't need to worry too much. we've made a, shared decision that, our home life is going to be sacrificed, but it's not a big deal," right?
[00:44:43] Brad Harrington: and then what happens is, it's acrobats next, right?
[00:44:46] Brad Harrington: Usually where the acrobat part comes in is when kids enter the picture, right? And all of a sudden it's like, okay, we thought we could both do it all, but now we're juggling too much and it's not always going that well.
[00:44:58] Brad Harrington: And we're going to try to continue to plow ahead with our careers. just...
[00:45:02] Brad Harrington: And I think what happens is there is an initial stage for the, you know, the first year or something where you think, "We can, we can keep doing this," right? we got this nailed. And so we'll both continue with that upward trajectory in our career.
[00:45:13] Brad Harrington: But, it's going to work because we're just going to be jugglers. we're going to do this, and it's going to make sense, and we don't have to sacrifice too much in order to, make both the home and the work life, work out effectively. Then you get into the mode, and this is where people get into the who does what, who does more kind of a thing, where you say, "Okay, this isn't working."
[00:45:33] Brad Harrington: And so you get a little bit into the, blame game, right? And you start to say, "Okay, we're at odds with one another." And that's the third stage, right? we're now in an adversary relationship, and we're seeing each other rather than being partners, we're seeing each other as not holding up their share of the bargain, and that's where they become adversaries.
[00:45:50] Brad Harrington: at a certain point, somebody might say, "You know, it's time that we make an accommodation, and we figure out how we can make this work," because trying to do it all on the work front and the home front is just not viable. historically, the accommodators were almost always the women, right? that was the MO, that women would be the one to step back, women would be the one to compromise their careers, so that men can continue to do what they do best.
[00:46:15] Brad Harrington: that's proving to be less and less so as you see more and more women being primary breadwinners. it's not necessarily a foregone conclusion that the person is going to be chosen to be the accommodator is based on gender. it may in part be based on gender, it may be based on earnings, it may be about the personality of the individuals.
[00:46:33] Brad Harrington: maybe some dads are more nurturers than moms, and maybe they think, I'm the one that would be happier taking on a lion's share of the home life." And so either one of them compromises, the man or the woman, or they both say, "We need to both find ourselves jobs that are more flexible, and we need to both be working, you know, fewer hours."
[00:46:53] Brad Harrington: That's harder to do because the world, for whatever reason, is just not set up for part-time workers. I've never understood this. It's like, you know, if somebody says, "I'll put in 50% of the hours and I'll take 50% salary and 50% benefits," and you know they're a good worker, why wouldn't you say, "Okay, we don't wanna lose you.
[00:47:12] Brad Harrington: Sure." But for some reason, corporations and many employers, not just corporations, find that part-time work is antithetical to this, you know, all on, hands-on, full steam ahead kind of mindset. And so I know back when I was a manager at HP, you know, I would have women who would have children, and they would say, "Can I go to part-time?"
[00:47:32] Brad Harrington: and if they were good people, which I was blessed with a lot of good people people who work for me, I'd be like, "Absolutely," 'cause I don't want you to say, "I can't do this, so I'm quitting." but unfortunately, not everybody seems to agree with that or support that notion. So it's harder to say we're both going to accommodate and we're both going to find part-time positions because part-time good-paying positions are not always easy to find
[00:47:54] Adam Fishman: Yeah, yeah. so I want to ask you a little bit more about leave, and then I'd love to talk about the stay-at-home dad study that
[00:48:01] Adam Fishman: you did. so the leave piece is really important for people listening to this episode, 'cause I have a lot of founders who are building companies, and I have a lot of early employees people who are working at earlier stage companies who need to advocate for certain leave policies.
[00:48:19] Adam Fishman: This is an afterthought to a lot of people, I think.
[00:48:21] Adam Fishman: If you were talking to somebody who's a startup founder who's building a company, and they're starting to think about the relevant policies around company building, what would you advise them around leave policies for their workplace?
[00:48:39] Brad Harrington: I mean, the first thing would be sit up and really understand how poor our national policies are around parental, around parental leave. I mean, they're terrible. the FMLA, which people tout all the time, Family Medical Leave Act, allows people to take three months of unpaid leave with a
[00:48:56] Adam Fishman: Yeah.
[00:48:57] Brad Harrington: so
[00:48:57] Adam Fishman: about the bare minimum
[00:48:59] Brad Harrington: That is, yeah.
[00:49:00] Adam Fishman: your job back.
[00:49:01] Brad Harrington: Yes, that is the bare minimum. And some people are afraid they won't even get that. the way the policy is written, but some people are afraid, "Hey, if I take a leave, I may find out that I don't have a job or not the same job when I back."
[00:49:12] Brad Harrington: So the first thing is really just get your arms around the fact that, you know, if you ask the average Joe, "Where do you think the US is on policies around parental leave?" They'd probably say, "Oh, I guess we're probably somewhat a leader, or are we somewhere in the middle?" And it's like, no, we are terrible, okay?
[00:49:26] Brad Harrington: We are so far out of the norm that you need to, first of all, embrace and understand that. The second thing is, especially if they're in an area where, you know, the vast majority of their employees are two-career, and if they're young people in their 20s and 30s, guess what? they're going to wanna have children.
[00:49:41] Brad Harrington: And when they have children, somebody is going to have to take up the responsibility. And it's not like, you know, "I've got a two-week-old, so let me put her in daycare." I mean, no, that's not what people want to do, and it isn't always easy to even find that. And so you, get a situation where anybody is going to wanna stay home between two months and maybe up to six months, if they can, to be able to really be around during that pivotal and critical time, and especially where women are breastfeeding and so forth.
[00:50:07] Brad Harrington: A necessity. And so somebody is going to have to take leave. and the third thing is, I think that, men are changing in terms of their mindset around what does it mean to live a fulfilled life. all the stuff about policies and rules and organizational culture aside, a lot of men would say, you know, "I know that, being some hero in the work front and, a non-entity at home is not the answer to a fulfilling life."
[00:50:31] Brad Harrington: I think any study will tell you that. And so I think men are realizing that, if I wanna really live a fulfilled life, it isn't just about being a success in the workplace, right? it's really about much more than just that. those are sort of the underlying arguments.
[00:50:46] Brad Harrington: And the last thing is, and this, I think holds true, is if you say, "Oh, we're going to offer it, but we assume women are going to take it, so we're going to offer women much more leave than men." I think there's a case to be made that men can say, and they have said on occasions, I haven't kept up to the latest, literature on this, where they say, "I'll challenge that.
[00:51:06] Brad Harrington: That's gender discrimination." Okay? Now, the, you know, leave is usually broken up into two parts. It's called, birth and recovery and then, nurturing leave or parental leave or whatever it might be. And obviously, men can't argue about the birth and recovery too much, okay?
[00:51:21] Brad Harrington: 'Cause they're bystanders at best. But when it comes to the bonding period, which companies offer, if you offer your female employees three months of bonding and you offer your men three days, that doesn't fly. And men have taken companies to court and say, "That's gender discrimination."
[00:51:38] Brad Harrington: 'Cause that, the first piece, the birth and recovery only women can do. But the second piece, you're forcing us into making a decision which may not at all be consistent with the way we wanna, kind of manage our family responsibility.
[00:51:51] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Um, well, that's really good advice for founders. I'm going to clip this segment so they can put it on repeat, and listen to it before they go to bed at night. Um, all right, let's talk about the stay-at-home study. this was really kind of revolutionary at the time because it was about 15-ish years ago, I
[00:52:07] Adam Fishman: think 14 and a half, 15 years.
[00:52:08] Adam Fishman: and nobody else was really doing this at the time. But you interviewed a whole bunch, over 30, stay-at-home dads. I guess maybe people had thought to do that but didn't know how to find them, or who knows. I'm going to ask you obviously about the study, but before that, there was a dad that you talked to who got the police called on him because he was carrying his own baby through the neighborhood.
[00:52:29] Adam Fishman: what's the story there?
[00:52:31] Brad Harrington: So he said there was a footpath through the woods near his neighborhood, and he used to like to go, you know, walk through the woods in this footpath. And one day It was a cold day, and I think he had his daughter or son in a snuggly. And so he had wrapped his coat around, his child to keep the child warm.
[00:52:51] Brad Harrington: But, a woman saw that and she said, "There's a man going into the woods with a child inside his coat wrapped up, and I think he's a kidnapper."
[00:53:01] Brad Harrington: and it wasn't as common back then, you know, not that it was that many years ago really, to be honest with you. It was in the 21st century. but there was this assumption that, why would a man be going into the woods with a baby, right?
[00:53:15] Brad Harrington: that was obviously it was an outlier, but it did say something about the way society views fathers and the way society views men. And when fathers are much more engaged at home, they're taking children to the park, they're taking them to, you know, play dates, whatever it might be, that's still seen as outside the norm.
[00:53:33] Brad Harrington: A less dramatic example of that, but one that's probably more common, is that we interviewed a few men, and one in particular told us about going to the, I guess it might have been called the mommy daughter play group, more mommy daughter group, or it might have been called a parental group, I don't know.
[00:53:51] Brad Harrington: But Usually they were called like mommy and me kind of
[00:53:54] Brad Harrington: mommy and me kind
[00:53:55] Brad Harrington: of thing.
[00:53:55] Brad Harrington: So he saw this and he's like, "Okay, I got a little toddler and I'd like to do that." And he said, "So I show up at the thing," and, one guy said, "I was shown the bylaws and it said, 'This is for mothers and young children. You're not welcome.'"
[00:54:09] Brad Harrington: the guy was asked to leave.
[00:54:11] Brad Harrington: But more commonly, other men said, "I'd go to those things and I would hear the moms, talking with one another saying, 'Oh, why don't we go have, you know, Come over for lunch at our house, and then we'll have a play date after,' blah, blah, blah." he said, "I never got invited." there was still this, you don't invite a man home with a small child, I guess, 'cause of, you know, gender issues and I don't know, whatever else.
[00:54:33] Brad Harrington: But, he said, "You know, I was excluded, but I could show up at the group, the formal group. But once there was continuance of the parent and child get-togethers, I was never included in those things."
[00:54:45] Adam Fishman: Wow. Yeah. There was another dad, or actually a couple, talked about, you know, loving earning money for his family. that it's sort of like old school, "I'm the man, I bring home the bacon." We've talked about that. And then he described being home, not making money anymore, and having to ask his wife for gas money, and he said it felt, emasculating.
[00:55:08] Adam Fishman: then you sort of juxtapose that with another dad in this study who said that he has a connection with his son that most men are never going to have. Like, what do you think is different about these... Is there something that's different about these two men, or is this, like, the same man just sort of articulating different aspects of his, you know, stay-at-home life?
[00:55:28] Brad Harrington: Yeah. I think all of the men in the study had this little fear in the back of their heads about how are people going to view me, when I say I'm an at-home dad. You know, at-home moms, you know, there's definitely some, people who are dismissive of at-home moms, as well still.
[00:55:45] Brad Harrington: it's seen as, well, real women work kind of thing, but that's even more extreme when it comes to men. And so a lot of the fathers in, in our study had this notion that, there's something that's inherent in what a man's supposed to do, and I'm not fulfilling that role. Now, the flip side of that with the at-home dad study was the mothers who said...
[00:56:05] Brad Harrington: We didn't interview all the mothers, but we surveyed and interviewed some. And a couple of them said, " My husband is at home with the kids. He's the one who's doing all the nurturing and the diaper changing and the caregiving. And when that child falls and scrapes their knee and they run to my husband instead of running to me," like on a weekend, they're all home, right?
[00:56:25] Brad Harrington: And all of a sudden the baby or the toddler turns to the father, right? And they're looking to the dad and the women said, "I don't feel comfortable with that." Men felt emasculated by asking for money, but the women felt, I don't know what the term is, uh, for, for emasculating contrary for women.
[00:56:43] Brad Harrington: I'm not sure what that term is. But they felt a little bit like, "That child shouldn't be running to him. She should be running to me." and so they felt a little bit of that same pang of, "I know what my, traditional role was expected to be, and it shouldn't be that my husband is the one that they find to be the nurturing one."
[00:57:01] Brad Harrington: So I think on both sides, those things that are, are sort of socialized into us have an effect on both genders.
[00:57:07] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Wow. That's really interesting. I never thought about both sides of that, coin, so. all right. There's two more things that I wanna cover before we, we wrap up. and they're things that are less about your research and more about you and some of your observations just as a dad, over, you know, three decades of having kids.
[00:57:24] Adam Fishman: So the first one is, you know, I ask for people, to give me kinda contrarian topics or, things that they're passionate about, and you talked to me about the idea of the overscheduled, child, which, um, as a parent of a, you know, 13 and 11-year-old, I can appreciate that. but I don't think you've written anything about this publicly 'cause this sort of doesn't really fit with your research.
[00:57:47] Adam Fishman: like many times, we're breaking new ground here on "Startup Dad."
[00:57:50] Adam Fishman: Tell me, what's your take on the overscheduled child?
[00:57:53] Brad Harrington: I mean, I think mothers, fathers alike would look at some of the ways in which people, and again, I hate to stereotype the East Coast and the West Coast, but I mean, people are wound up too tight.
[00:58:03] Brad Harrington: And yes, a little bit too, too much so, and a little too work-centric a lot of times. And I think that There is a tendency to say if so much is good, then so much more is better, and so much more than that is better still.
[00:58:19] Brad Harrington: And you saw that, like in terms of my own evolution as a parent, I remember when my oldest daughter, who was not an athlete at all, played youth soccer. And the way it worked in our town, there was a tremendous amount of engagement in youth soccer. I think there were something like 125 kids in the first and second grades and so forth across the whole town.
[00:58:41] Brad Harrington: It's not a big town. And of the 125, like 105 of them played soccer, of the girls, right? And so we would go down to the field, and I, I was the coach, you know, not that I was such a great soccer star, but I was coaching the girls, and it was good fun. And you carry your bag with the balls in it, and the girls would come, and, the girls were so excited to see each other, right?
[00:59:03] Brad Harrington: The teams were mixed. They weren't like this school against that school. They were like two from this school, two from that school. And they were so excited. And I used to think, this is what youth sports and community is all about," right? And they would go, "Oh, look, she's on their team," blah, blah, blah.
[00:59:18] Brad Harrington: It was like a, a celebration of what it means to be a community. And the kids were at varying skill levels, you know, from terrible, you know, standing out there staring at the, the flowers growing to, you know, kids that were very talented. But they were, you know, they were all on the team together.
[00:59:34] Brad Harrington: And all of a sudden, the decision was made that by third grade, second half of spring season, we really need to go to travel. Okay, why do we need to do that? We'll get better competition. that's how the high schools end up with good teams. all the other towns, are doing this.
[00:59:52] Brad Harrington: So why don't we go to travel? I'm just talking one sport now. Travel consists of a bunch of towns up to an hour away from you, okay? And your 100 girls who used to be so that we could walk to the field, they were so excited to see their buddies playing on different teams and all this stuff.
[01:00:10] Brad Harrington: And that turned into my daughter, who was never going to be a soccer player, and she was not Mia Hamm by a long shot or whoever the latest, andinstead of doing that, you're going to sit in the car with me for two hours by yourself or maybe hopefully with a friend. and then you're going to go play a game, and as soon as the game's over, we're all going to go in our own directions.
[01:00:32] Brad Harrington: And you sit there going, maybe this is building the greatest high school girls soccer team that ever happened, but who cares, right? And it didn't. I mean, we had good soccer teams since it happened, but it wasn't for that reason, I don't think. And then what happens is parents start to say well, there's two sports this season.
[01:00:50] Brad Harrington: There's lacrosse and there's, soccer or there's the, you know, softball and tennis or whatever. And well, we, we really don't know which sport, so we'll, we'll get them involved in, more than one. And what happened in soccer, which is the sport I got to know the best, was you would then say, "Okay, third, fourth grade," you're like, "They don't need to be traveling a half an hour or an hour away to play the game.
[01:01:11] Brad Harrington: So I'm going to hold my child out." you know, it will be the parents who are the revolutionaries, right? We'll be the ones who say, "No, family time is more important than my daughter becoming Mia Hamm." You do that, and then what happens? You say to your daughter, "Oh, why don't you arrange a play date?" And she'd look at you and say, "'Cause all my friends are traveling out of town to play soccer.
[01:01:31] Brad Harrington: No one's here." So you get caught up in this, and then the coaches who, you know, youth coaches are maligned sometimes for all the right reasons, but the one thing that I would say is they have a tendency to think, let's escalate things. Let's get more training. Let's get more practices.
[01:01:45] Brad Harrington: Let's get more travel. Let's get more..." it's well-intentioned, but it's nuts. And when my little son went to travel ice hockey, he went to travel and somebody said, "Uh, just so you know, there's 65 games in a travel hockey season." And I went, "What?" I said, "The Bruins don't play 65, do they?" I don't know.
[01:02:05] Brad Harrington: I'm not a hockey fan. But it's like they probably play 70, you know? And I'm like, you can't be serious." And they go, "No, there's 65 games. It starts at the end of August and ends in mid-April." You know? And you're like, "Oh my God." And then one to two practices a week. And you're sitting there going... "Oh yeah, we also like to sign up for tournaments that are in Waterville Valley or in, you know, Western Mass,"
[01:02:27] Brad Harrington: whatever. imaginable holiday,
[01:02:30] Brad Harrington: Correct. Correct. Yes. I, I remember spending Easter Sunday, Well, the two younger kids were better athletes. My one daughter was a very good volleyball player, and so she then joined club volleyball. And she went from playing at her high school, and next thing I knew, I was sitting in the Baltimore Inner Harbor Conference Center on Easter Sunday playing a volleyball tournament.
[01:02:52] Brad Harrington: these kids came in from these teams in Texas, Like, these kids were 14, 15 years old, and the kids from Texas walked in and they were, like, six foot eight, you know,
[01:03:00] Adam Fishman: Yeah.
[01:03:01] Brad Harrington: And you're like, "I don't think we needed to come to Baltimore to find out we're not..."
[01:03:05] Adam Fishman: We're
[01:03:06] Brad Harrington: But anyway, I think it's not badly intentioned. The other thing people say sometimes is that mothers especially feel guilty that they're not with their children as much as they would like to be. So there's this idea of intensifying childhood, intensifying parenthood, and my kid is going to be in the best of everything.
[01:03:24] Brad Harrington: You know, most of our kids, we didn't care if they were on the A team or the C team. they were participating. and I always, you know, use the example that Michael Jordan got cut from his varsity team when he was a junior in high school. But, there are a lot of people, especially in affluent towns with ambitious people who go into business school and all that stuff, who say, "My child has to be excelling.
[01:03:43] Brad Harrington: It's not enough to participate." So I think that stuff, I guess, to go back to the reason I critique this or comment on it, is I think what children have lost is the notion of play, unstructured play. And you know, when we played, when we learned to play basketball as kids, it was if you got in an argument, it was three on three in a half court playing, you know.
[01:04:04] Brad Harrington: And if you got in an argument about who the ball was off, it was, "Okay, once, twice, three, shoot." And now it's like they look for the ref, they look for the coach. You know, it's like kids aren't learning to be, you know, sort of, uh, de- self-- yeah, and self-dependent. They're looking to adults to, uh, intervene,
[01:04:20] Adam Fishman: Yeah.
[01:04:21] Adam Fishman: well, you started to get into your own, kids, and so I wanted to end, with something that you told me, which is parenting never ends. so your kids are now 31, 28, and 25, if I recall. and I think the exact thing you, you said was parenting doesn't end when your kids reach adolescence or even adulthood.
[01:04:40] Adam Fishman: what does your parenting job look like now that your kids are all in their mid-20s and older?
[01:04:46] Brad Harrington: Yeah. Well, I, I would say that I used to teach a careers course in the MBA program, and my wife would come in sometimes for the work family piece of that careers course. And there was a real notion that my kids are in preschool right now, but when they're in school full-time, then we're going to have all kinds of, you know, opportunity.
[01:05:04] Brad Harrington: Like they thought that like that sort of ended when they got to be first graders, you know? And it was like, oh my God. So you go through that whole arc of afterschool programs and music lessons and plays and sports and all that stuff, and you realize somebody's got to get the kids there, somebody's got to sign the kids up, you know, so it doesn't end there.
[01:05:24] Brad Harrington: And then you think, well, once they're 18 and they go off to college or whatever, then obviously it's over. Just quickly, one of my children had a very difficult time in high school. She was the most popular of our three kids. She was the most athletic, she was the most talented, and she was the one who had the most difficult time with mental health in high school.
[01:05:42] Brad Harrington: And boy, if you think that's something you go, "Well, let's just get that fixed and get back on, on track here," it lasted for years. we thought, oh, by that stage of the game, it's going to be like we're pretty much done with this, and that wasn't the case. And, all of our kids in one way or another have had struggles.
[01:06:00] Brad Harrington: Our oldest daughter has Marfan syndrome, which is quite a serious condition. she is 31 years old and was very, very healthy, but she has this condition and now she has to walk with the aid of a cane or a roller. And so, like, her challenges are very different. She's a very self-sufficient person.
[01:06:17] Brad Harrington: She never complains about her condition, but it's something we need to be thinking about and seeing are there ways we could help you with this? Are there supports we could provide? And so I guess what changes now, we're right at the stage now where our 31-year-old and our 28-year-old are very self-sufficient.
[01:06:33] Brad Harrington: we continue to help them with some things like, my 28-year-old has gone back to school, so we're helping her with that. All the kids are on our insurance policy. I sometimes question if my car's on the fritz. I pay insurance policies for five cars, but I'm the one that doesn't have one.
[01:06:49] Brad Harrington: It's like, "Look at this me." But I shouldn't say I, my wife and I. My wife and I. so we keep them on that and we keep them on the family phone plan, otherwise they've pretty much flown. and so the challenges are different.
[01:07:01] Brad Harrington: the nice thing is for the two oldest ones that are both girls, we hear from them a lot more we're more engaged in their life as friends and maybe advisors because they do ask us advice. there were times when they were even in their early 20s where they would like... You know, I wrote a book on careers.
[01:07:17] Brad Harrington: you think they wanted my advice on careers? They're like,
[01:07:20] Adam Fishman: No.
[01:07:21] Brad Harrington: " but they've turned a corner and I think they've really come to appreciate the role we can play. Even with the daughter who had mental health and other issues that were extremely challenging, our kids have always loved and respected us, and that is awesome.
[01:07:34] Brad Harrington: but our 25-year-old, who's a boy, and this, there's something about age and there's something about gender there, He's more likely to wait for us to call him and is still in the mode of saying, "Yeah, well, I think I'll figure that out for myself." So it does change. I mean, we're really at the point now where we're almost at the point where they've all kind of, you know, flown and they're all self-reliant and, they all like us, which is a, a blessing, 'cause if you can get through those first 20 or 25 years with all your kids liking and respecting you,
[01:08:02] Brad Harrington: that's good.
[01:08:03] Brad Harrington: If they're
[01:08:03] Brad Harrington: in good...
[01:08:03] Adam Fishman: not everybody's batting 1,000 on that,
[01:08:06] Brad Harrington: Oh, it's,
[01:08:06] Brad Harrington: it's, it's easy to have fallouts along the way, you hang in there with the kids and when our daughter did struggle, people would say, "You guys are so great the way you just hang in there with her." And it's like, A, yes, we are great, and B, we don't have a choice.
[01:08:20] Brad Harrington: what are we going to do? Say, "No, we're not going to do that." And so, " you hang in there with your kids. You have to continue to love and support them, and hopefully they're coming to you to ask for advice or asking if they can come visit us, rather than, the other way around,
[01:08:32] Adam Fishman: Yeah. So I wanted to end with something that your older daughter, , left with you, which is when you retired from, academia, from BC, you wrote a goodbye letter. that's after 24 years of work, so almost a quarter century of, work. and your oldest daughter gave you this line, which is, "Don't forget to be awesome."
[01:08:51] Adam Fishman: That was how you ended that letter. When I read that, I was like, "Where do I know that from?" But anyways, that's a Hank and John Green reference,
[01:08:59] Adam Fishman: from Nerdfighteria. and of course, I know Hank and John Green 'cause, I worked at a company that acquired a company that they had built that did a very similar thing, and I'm a big fan of their content.
[01:09:10] Adam Fishman: and so I guess, my question around that is why did that come into your, the
[01:09:16] Brad Harrington: I don't know.
[01:09:16] Adam Fishman: you to, to sign off your letter with that?
[01:09:18] Brad Harrington: I just, I love that. she's a reader, like, always was. She was, uh, probably the most studious, I would say, of our three kids. she got like an 800 English SAT going into college. I give myself all the credit for that because If you throw yourself back in time when Harry Potter was just coming out, the series, she and I decided we would read those together, because at the time she started, I don't know, I'm going to say she was in second grade, and those books were like 400 pages or something like that.
[01:09:45] Brad Harrington: And I knew that that was, you know, beyond what her capacity would be. So I said, "Why don't we read it together?" And at first I'd read a page and she'd read two sentences and so forth, and it evolved. And by the fourth book she was like, "I'm gone," okay? "You know, Dad, I can't wait for you. I gotta keep going." So she read all those things cover to cover, I think twice.
[01:10:04] Brad Harrington: And I, I give her the credit for getting such a great SAT score was the fact that she started to read those things so early on. But she got involved in this, the community, which was, I think it was called LeakyCon or something, and it was people who loved Harry Potter. And I can't remember exactly the connection to John Green, but John Green became like really one of the focal points of that community, he and his brother.
[01:10:29] Brad Harrington: and they, you know, did just tremendous amount to support this community. The great thing I-- the internet, I have so many problems with social media and the internet, but I will say, this daughter who was so studious and loved to read, found great community through the internet of people who were Harry Potter buffs.
[01:10:48] Brad Harrington: And that community I think she went to Comic-Con and LeakyCon and these things, and that's where she got exposed to John Green and to his brother. It's Hank, I think, right? And, they built this mindset of like, yes, you may not be like the most you know, like in the popular group,
[01:11:04] Brad Harrington: But you're awesome. these kids are all great, and let's love and support one another. And my daughter, who was kind of a shy kid, got so much out of being a member of that community. And of course then, you know, she read, you know, "Looking for Alaska" and, the other books that he published that I've read most of them myself 'cause they were very, very good reads.
[01:11:23] Brad Harrington: But this whole attitude of don't forget to be awesome, just, you know, remind people that we're so self-critical or we're critical of others, and sometimes, especially in this day and age, just don't forget to celebrate yourself and don't forget to be awesome and to see the world for its awesomeness as opposed to what, whatit isn't, so.
[01:11:40] Adam Fishman: Oh. I, I love that. I hadn't thought about Hank and John Green in a long time, but it reminded me of just how great they are, and that is a great message, and a great, thing for us to end the, the main part of our conversation on. Do you have a few extra minutes to do the lightning round adult, kids edition?
[01:11:56] Adam Fishman: I've modified it so that it's more for y-your kids and your age, kids. I'm going to start. This is very, very easy. I say a thing, and you say the first thing that comes to mind. so we'll start with the thing that I usually end with. Uh, we're going to go to, like, the '90s and early 2000s era for you.
[01:12:13] Adam Fishman: So, minivan, yes or no? Are you a minivan
[01:12:17] Brad Harrington: We did have one, yeah. We had a Honda Pilot, which was a pretty big car for a long time, and that was, that was the cooler version. Okay. But we did, we did do a minivan for a while and, uh, yeah. And they weren't, they weren't, as equipped as they are now with all the,
[01:12:31] Adam Fishman: no. Okay, now the, now the thing that probably everyone who is of my generation wants to know, which is what did you do on road trips or flights before the invention of the iPad?
[01:12:43] Brad Harrington: We were right at the cusp of that. It wasn't iPads, it was, um, portable CD players. So
[01:12:49] Adam Fishman: Ah, okay
[01:12:50] Brad Harrington: we did get on that bandwagon pretty early on, and that was really helpful. Road trips were complicated 'cause our oldest daughter, at age five or four and a half, she learned what a vegetarian was and what, and what a meat eater was.
[01:13:04] Brad Harrington: And so our road trips were always a little more complicated and lasted a little longer than they should have, because we always had to find a restaurant that, that could accommodate her. You know, it wasn't like, we'll go to the drive-through at McDonald's. That didn't work.
[01:13:17] Brad Harrington:
[01:13:17] Adam Fishman: much more rare back then too than it is now,
[01:13:19] Brad Harrington: and absolutely. And my wife grew up 600 miles from us, so we did that trip a number of times, and it was, uh, it was long.
[01:13:26] Brad Harrington: But my wife is also somebody who's great at p- kids, keeping the kids entertained. She's a very entertaining person, you know. Uh, she sings and she plays games
[01:13:33] Brad Harrington: and stuff.
[01:13:34] Adam Fishman: so she was basically an iPad, a non-digital iPad.
[01:13:37] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Um,
[01:13:39] Adam Fishman: all right. If you can remember, was there a nostalgic movie that you forced your kids to watch as soon as they were old enough to watch it?
[01:13:49] Brad Harrington: you know, I would go to the Harry Potter movies again, but I know my wife, you know, The Wizard of Oz and The Sound of Music are two real favorites. And, you know, again, you- you're too young for this, Adam, but when I was a kid, it would be like The Wizard of Oz is coming on Sunday night, November 30th, and for two hours, and if you miss it, it's over, right?
[01:14:09] Brad Harrington: And so the hype when you're a young kid thinking this is the weekend that that's going to be on television was just remarkable. Uh, of course, th- in this day and age, you could watch anything at any time, anywhere. We had, uh, I have some nostalgic moments of videotapes about teaching your ch- you know, they're comical...
[01:14:26] Brad Harrington: Well, not comical, but they're videotapes about teaching your child to be potty trained. And we watched those 100 times, and those are the ones that stick in my head, but not because they were nostalgic or good. They were, ugh, they were terrible movies, but they got a message across, you
[01:14:40] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Uh, okay. Now let's move to the adult years. So kids, kids as adults. Um, do you have a family group chat text messaging, and are you a primary contributor or more of a lurker in that chat?
[01:14:55] Brad Harrington: No, I'm a, I'm a contributor. I, um, I'm not great on the telephone. my father, I don't think he ever picked up a telephone in the 40 years that, I was around, that he was around. He just wasn't a guy who picked up the phone and talked to people. And so I'm more of a, "How's the job?
[01:15:10] Brad Harrington: Uh, h-how was the temperature today? Um, anything else? Any news?" And then I run out of things to say. So I compensate for that by, uh, trying to be a good, um, texter. So I text the kids very regularly, both in the family chat and also obviously individually, and I, I'm always checking in with them, texting, and, uh, sometimes that prompts a good conversation and, uh, somebody will call or, or I will, whatever.
[01:15:34] Brad Harrington: But generally speaking, I'm just not as adept on the phone as, uh, my wife is, who's great at it. Um, and so I try to compensate for that by being, uh, very
[01:15:42] Adam Fishman: All right. Okay.
[01:15:44] Adam Fishman: what is the biggest thing that your kids have had to teach you about technology?
[01:15:50] Brad Harrington: Everything. Uh, I, I'm terrible. the fear I have though, or what, what, what went wrong a lot of times was they would say, "Well, get on your phone," which I would do, and they'd say, "Okay, now fix this." And then 10 seconds into it, they would go, "Give me that phone." And they would do it. And I'm like, "You ever heard of the expression teach a man to fish?"
[01:16:11] Brad Harrington: And they're like, "No, give me that phone." And so they- they've taught me about everything, you know, in terms of all the applications and stuff like that. Most of the applications I'm on now, and I'm very proud that I know how to do them, like Instagram. They don't pay any attention to Instagram. So it's like, you know, they've gone into other worlds, I guess.
[01:16:27] Brad Harrington: But, um, but no, they had to teach me an awful lot 'cause I, I worked... I was, uh, always confused 'cause people thought, "You worked for Hewlett-Packard, you must be a real technology buff," and I wasn't. I was always in the sort of the people side of business. And so, um, I never immersed myself in the technology anywhere near as much as most tech- techies do,
[01:16:46] Adam Fishman: O-O-Okay. maybe this is related to that book that you flashed up there, but what is the, the advice that you gave your kids that they routinely ignore?
[01:16:55] Brad Harrington: I would say my son is the one who ignores it the most, and he ignores me the most too, probably. But, it's the idea that, you gotta have a plan. You know, your life isn't going to follow that plan. If you think it is, I got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
[01:17:09] Brad Harrington: But, but you, you gotta have a plan, and that plan has to be premised on, knowing yourself. And so when I talk to him and say, "Dylan, you know, let's sit down and talk about what are your values? You know, what are, what's, what are the skills, what are the things that intrigue you the most and interest you the most?
[01:17:26] Brad Harrington: You know, what are the things that seem like, um, noble goals to you?" that's something that my oldest daughter, I think, took that on pretty early. Middle daughter more recently. Son still isn't quite there. And so he's sort of in the mode of the other two are kind of on a career trajectory, and he's sort of in the mode of experimentation.
[01:17:46] Brad Harrington: You know, try this, try that. But it's like you need to... That's great because tr- there's nothing like trial and error to tell you what you like and more importantly, what you don't. But What you like or don't like and what motivates you or doesn't motivate you is really going to be premised on something that's inside of you, not something out there.
[01:18:04] Brad Harrington: And you know, I think you and I, in exchange of our emails talked about the fact that I taught a course for seniors at Boston College, and these are kids that are-- You know, BC is a very good school. These kids are very motivated students. they want to be professionally successful. But I would teach a course their senior year for them, and it was, you know, all, all the courses you've taken are teaching you everything you need to know about that, the world out there.
[01:18:29] Brad Harrington: But there's none that are teaching you enough about the world in here. And if you explore that world, you know, and if you really think about the things that matter to you and what's going to get you up in the morning and what's going to make you feel that you've had a fulfilling life, you need to start with a deep, deep self-exploration process.
[01:18:45] Brad Harrington: And so in that class, the first half of the semester, that's what we did. We just explored their values, their interests, their goals, what, what others t- thought about them, feedback from others and so forth, so that they could kind of put together a picture of, "This is who I am." Okay? Once they had that, then it wasn't very hard to then say, "Okay, how does that translate into not only what's the work you want to do, but what's the life you want to have?"
[01:19:11] Brad Harrington: You know? And life is a lot more than work. And if you look at people in our studies and you ask them, "What was the most salient things in terms of your life? What are the things that matter most?" They'll say, "My personal life, my family." You know? and if you look at satisfaction studies of people, the most satisfied people are the people who have enga- you know, engaged to long-term committed relationships.
[01:19:32] Brad Harrington: That's the key indicator. Not, "Oh, I got to be the executive vice president, and I thought I would never get to that level." People forget that pretty readily, you know? Um, but if you've got long-term, committed, you know, mutually beneficial relationships with loved ones, that's what matters. And so that's-- When I talk to my stu- my seniors, I really try to preach the message that, you know, a lot of your four years has been preparing you to go out into the world of work, but you also got to think about life well beyond work, because that's, that's where you're going to find the deepest meaning and the deepest satisfaction.
[01:20:06] Adam Fishman: All right. Well, I have two more questions for you to, before we wrap up. Um, these are kind of fun ones,
[01:20:11] Brad Harrington: Yeah. Okay.
[01:20:14] Adam Fishman: although I probably should have just ended on that 'cause that was an incredible piece of advice. True or false, there is only one correct way to load a dishwasher
[01:20:25] Brad Harrington: True for me, false for my wife.
[01:20:27] Adam Fishman: Okay. Okay.
[01:20:29] Brad Harrington: Just this morning, just this morning, maybe I was prompted by something that you, you put in your email. But I said to my wife, "For..." You know, we've been married very happily. You know, if you ever met her, you'd go, "God, why is she married to this, you know, this old curmudgeon?" You know, 'cause she's youthful and lively and fun and loving.
[01:20:47] Brad Harrington: And I said to her this morning, "Do you wanna just know how to... I think you should," 'cause I do the-- She does the cooking and I do the housework, okay? That's the way we've divided things 'cause I'm a terrible cook and she's great at it. And I, and I love cleaning the house, okay?
[01:21:00] Brad Harrington: Um, but I said, "Could I just show you the right way to..."
[01:21:03] Brad Harrington: And she said, "No." 36 years invested and you won't say yes? No. Um,
[01:21:10] Brad Harrington: so yeah,
[01:21:11] Adam Fishman: it.
[01:21:11] Brad Harrington: I, I do think there's a right way and,
[01:21:13] Adam Fishman: All right.
[01:21:14] Brad Harrington: yeah, half of my family gets it.
[01:21:15] Adam Fishman: Okay. All right, now the last question. Um, back in my day stories, would you say the rate has gone up or down now that your kids are all adults?
[01:21:28] Brad Harrington: Oh, down. Down.
[01:21:30] Adam Fishman: Down.
[01:21:30] Brad Harrington: Yes.
[01:21:31] Adam Fishman: fewer back in my day stories. Yeah.
[01:21:32] Brad Harrington: Yes. And they weren't-- I wasn't too big on that. You know, I would say, oftentimes I would try and draw more from my negative experiences. 'cause my kids looked at my wife and I, and we both have doctorates, and we both had jobs at very prestigious institutions, and we did very, you know, well financially, especially when I was with HP.
[01:21:50] Brad Harrington: I call HP the gift that keeps giving, you know, because we-- that was so, uh, important to us in terms of establishing a great foundation financially. But our kids look at us sometimes and they just think, "You know, look at you two. You know, you've got it all figured out. You've, you know, you've got a happy marriage.
[01:22:04] Brad Harrington: you've got great jobs at interesting institutions," and all this kind of thing. And I think sometimes they look at us, as much as it's teenagers, they probably thought we knew nothing. The older they get, the more they think, "Geez, these guys do know some things." But I think they look at us and, uh, too often think we had it all figured out.
[01:22:21] Brad Harrington: And much more so in my case, but in my wife's case as well, we didn't have it figured out. When I got out of college, I didn't have a clue, uh, what I was going to do. I hadn't been a great student. You know, when I went back to grad school and then for my doctorate, I was a very, very disciplined student, but that was not the case.
[01:22:37] Brad Harrington: And so I tend to talk about the thing that, the trips up, trip-ups I made and the, and the mistakes I made. And not to say, you know, "I made that mistake, so you can't," but just to say in a sense of more establishing empathy, just to say, "Believe me, I, I, I didn't have this stuff figured out, and believe me, I made my share of mistakes," and that kind of thing.
[01:22:59] Brad Harrington: But it's not to say, "Don't make the mistakes I made." It's more to say, you know, "We're not as far o-off the same page as you may think we are."
[01:23:07] Adam Fishman: Awesome. Well, that now is a wonderful thing to end on. So Brad, thank you so much for joining me today on "Startup Dad." This is quite possibly one of the most enjoyable conversations I've ever had on this show. I learned a ton. Your research is incredible,you sound like you are also a great dad.
[01:23:27] Brad Harrington: No, thank
[01:23:27] Adam Fishman: you. Thank you for joining me, and I wish you and your family all the best,
[01:23:31] Brad Harrington: Thanks.
[01:23:32] Adam Fishman: the rest of this year
[01:23:33] Brad Harrington: Thank you very much, Adam
[01:23:34] Adam Fishman: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Brad Harrington. You can subscribe and watch the show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:23:43] Adam Fishman: Visit www.startupdadpod.com to learn more and browse past episodes. Thanks for listening and see you next week.