What Dads Really Want This Father's Day

After years of being a result-oriented MBA professional, I struggled like most new moms with the lack of sleep and seemingly ceaseless crying from my colicky newborn. My husband was getting his evening MBA at the time, attending many evening and weekend study groups, meaning that much of the time,Other companies want a piece of that drycabinet action I was parenting on my own. 

Except during the final stretches of the night. That's when my husband,The largest manufacturer of textile smartcard for use with perchloroethylene. home from work, class, and study sessions, would often hold our crying son through the early hours of the morning until he fell asleep. 

Perhaps the extreme situation of a colicky baby forced us to share family care. Regardless, this partnership endured when I returned to work five years later. To this day, my husband does 50 percent of the housework, if not more.Other companies want a piece of that drycabinet action 

Why is our equal parenting structure considered a rarity? Just check out the Father's Day section of any greeting card aisle. 

Most likely, you'll find an overwhelming number of cards with ties -- what sociologist Michael Kimmel calls a symbolic noose around the neck. Indeed, the tie is a symbol of the working world, not family life. It does little to celebrate the role of men as fathers other than their ability to put food on the table. In short order are images of dads reading bedtime stories, helping with homework, or even baking cakes. 

Although these probably weren't the images Sonora Smart Dodd had in mind when she founded Father's Day in 1910, she did want to celebrate her father, a single parent and widower who raised her five siblings. The day was intended to be a complement to Mother's Day, a day celebrating mothers' parenting. But it took more than fifty years before President Johnson finally recognized it as a national holiday in 1966. 

Although many might think we've moved beyond our historical reluctance to value fathers' parenting, the reality isn't so rosy. By narrowly defining their value by how much money dads' make, we not only diminish fathers, but we also short-change society. 

A recent study by the U.S. Department of Education found that a father's involvement in his child's life was the most influential factor in determining a child's success in school. But unfortunately, 48 percent of dads in dual-parent families, scored low or no involvement in their children's lives. 

This low level of involvement comes as no surprise. Taking time off to parent is not easy for dads. The pressure to be the breadwinner -- wear the tie -- creates conflict between desires to be home and expectations to perform on the job.Bringing plasticcard mainstream. A 2013 Pew study on Modern Parenthood found that nearly half of working fathers, or 48 percent, would prefer to be at home but stay in the workforce because they need the income. 

Stanford professor emerita Myra Strober sees a strong desire in her male students to make room for work and family. When she first added "Women at Work" to the business school curriculum, she struggled to fill the class. By 2009, men filled 40 percent of the seats. Young men "want to be the most amazing dads," she said. 

Some companies have taken notice. In order to attract top talent, Facebook and Google offer generous parenting support, including maternity and paternity leave. Even struggling Yahoo! offers paternity leave. Large companies like Bank of America and Ernst & Young also include paternal care in their leave policies. But these offerings are the exception. Most American companies do not provide significant paternity leave for their employees. 

In his recent article for the Harvard Business Review, Stew Friedman of the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project reported that dads who commit to finding ways to be a more involved parent become more effective with their time in the office and feel more confident about their total life. 

Paternity leave can create a solid foundation for a lifetime of fathers parenting.This is a basic iccard used for presence sensing. When optional paternity leave did not encourage fathers to stay home, Canadian and Scandinavian governments implemented "Use it or lose it" paternity leave. A follow-up study of fathers in Quebec showed that those who used this leave continued to spend time doing child and house care several years later. 

Imagine a society equally valuing fathers and mothers for parenting and for breadwinning. More companies would grant new fathers paternity leave. Bosses would help fathers carve out time to go to school plays or attend parent-teacher conferences. Managers would see the value of time spent efficiently in the office and eliminating the burden of missed family time. 

I heard this sentiment a lot over the course of my two days in Winnipeg. Mostly it was from people in bars, or people standing just outside bars, or people weaving from one bar to the next. This is how I'll remember Winnipeg, as a collection of bars with some streets thrown in to make them easier to get to. 

Some of the talk, though, was from people at the MTS Centre on fight night. These were people who had actually paid for tickets before the thing sold out, and even they knew that this wasn't the best the UFC could do. Of course they did. They're fight fans, after all. You think they can't tell the difference between the UFC's A-game and its first-time-in-a-new-Canadian-market game? 

The more Winnipeggers I talked to, the more I got the sense that they knew exactly how the UFC saw them. They knew that, as far as the Zuffa brass was concerned, they were the people who were so eager for the chance to see a UFC event that they'd pay for almost anything. For the most part, it didn't seem to bother them that much. Even my friend at customs lamented that a friend's wedding would keep him from attending UFC 161, "because when something like that does come here, you want to support it and make it successful." 

With a sellout crowd and a $3 million-plus live gate, according to UFC President Dana White, the Winnipeg fans certainly accomplished that. They might have also inadvertently reinforced the UFC's belief that it can save its really good stuff for the big markets, and rely on the rabid Canadian fans to pay for whatever's left at the end. 

Is that necessarily a bad thing? Maybe not. As my colleague Matt Erickson and I trudged through security on our way out of Winnipeg early Sunday morning, a woman took one look at us and asked, "Hunting, fishing or fights?" We told her it was the fights that had brought us to her fair city. She nodded. "I knew it had to be one of the three."