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Tuesday, February 26, 2008. John Badalament. "Dads and Daughters"

MR. HANLEY: Isn't technology great? I'm Matt Hanley, and I'm currently the head at Oregon Episcopal School. That's the first time I have had the chance to say that publicly after 15 years at another school. And at my introduction to the Oregon Episcopal School community, I referred to the school as ULS, University of Liggett School. You get these things engrained in your head and they just flow out all at the wrong time.

It's my pleasure to introduce John Badalament. John is the author of the newly released Modern Dad's Handbook, a practical guide with activities and skills to help men strengthen all their relationships. He's the director of the acclaimed PBS documentary film, "All Men Are Sons: Exploring the Legacy of Fatherhood," which aired on PBS stations across the US. His work has been featured on National Public Radio, Public Radio International, and Men's Health, Boston Globe, Rocky Mountain News, and Los Angeles Times.

John holds a master's degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and over the past 16 years he's worked as a dean, teacher, and coach, in clinical settings as a counselor for children and adolescents, and in private practice with couples. We're fortunate to have John with us, because he speaks internationally and consults with schools, parent groups, mental health professionals, prisons, and universities, and currently John is finishing his new documentary film entitled "Gender Traps: How Marriage Problems Start in Kindergarten."

John is a father and a husband. His talk today is entitled "Dads and Daughters: Learning How to Understand Women All Over Again." Once a man is married, he may think his lessons on women are behind him. Not quite. Right, dear? Raising a daughter means learning about girls and women all over again from a completely different perspective. John gives dads tips on how to grasp the little girl/teenage girl world, from "What do I play with my daughter" to "How do I talk to my 15-year-old daughter."

Before I introduce him, I want to issue a challenge to him. My wife and I were stuck in the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, we see a phone call from my daughter, who said, "I have just gone to my new gym, I was working out, and a 40-year-old man came up to me, and he prefaced his comments by saying, 'Don't worry. I'm married, and that's not what I want to talk to you about. But would you be willing to work in the adult entertainment business?'"

I want to know what John says I should say to my daughter. Thank you.

MR. BADALAMENT: What a start. I don't know. What should you say to your daughter?

VOICE FROM AUDIENCE: "No."

MR. BADALAMENT: That's the obvious answer. That's pretty shocking, and a true story.

Well, actually, I will be talking a little bit about that today. That is, the role that men play, the role that dads in particular play in raising healthy daughters. I want to just start by thanking Matthew for the introduction, including the improv at the end. Matthew is a dear friend, and I have worked with his former school, Liggett, a couple of times over the years, getting the dads more involved in the school there. So it's a pleasure to see him.

I also want to acknowledge Bruce, as well as Sue Groesbeck, for inviting me here to speak with you today. It's a real honor and a pleasure to be speaking on the subject of dads and daughters. And I'll be talking about dads of sons, as well.

As Matthew mentioned, my book is called The Modern Dad's Handbook, which is really aimed at giving men the skills, the knowledge, activities to better foster healthy relationships with their children, with their sons and daughters. But today we'll focus more on the father/daughter relationship, so I thought I would start with just a couple of brief stories that I think touch on the subject quite well.

Recently a colleague of mine finished a study. Her name is Lisa Niver, and she works at the Curtis School in California. She did a study looking at gender stereotypes in pre-K. They ran a series of questions and interviews and they talked to the parents. They gave the children some scenarios, trying to look at how what kind of impact gender stereotypes types have on children and how young does it start. So remember, this is pre-K.

One of the scenarios that I think was quite telling, in the children's responses, went like this. She said, "Two bunnies are hopping along in the woods. One bunny falls in a hole. The other bunny, being very smart, brought a stick along and hands the stick down to the bunny in the hole. Now, which bunny would you like to be? The bunny in the hole or the bunny with the stick?"

Does anyone really want to be the bunny in the hole? No, I can't really see why you would. But interestingly, how many of the boys, what percentage, in this study said they would like to be the bunny in the hole? Zero. The big double goose egg. No boys. How many of the girls said they would like to be the bunny in the hole? Thirty percent. One in three.

Why? I mean, I have some hunches, and I think what this tells us -- and this is, of course, a very small study, and there are other studies that look at gender stereotypes -- but what this says to me is that there's something about being rescued, being saved, being in that passive position where girls and women find some sort of power and there's some reason for wanting to be in the hole. But to me, I interpret that as being about being saved. Boys, conversely, I think, learn from a very young age that their job is to save, to be the savior, to rescue. These are very, very powerful stereotypes that can have very real implications later in life, which is the subject of my film. I'll show you a couple of clips from today, "Gender Traps: How Marriage Problems Start in Kindergarten," not how marriage problems are the fault of kindergarten teachers, which often gets misunderstood. The other one that comes up is, kindergarten marriage problems. Not what I'm going for.

The film looks at these kinds of stereotypes that are learned very early on and how they can play out potentially in relationships. That's the focus of the film: How those stereotypes can affect girls' and boys' friendships, their dating relationships, and ultimately their marriages or their intimate relationships later in life. It's pretty fascinating.

One of the ways that I think this idea of girls in this passive or being-saved position can potentially play out has to do with asserting themselves and finding their voice, being willing in relationships to rock the boat, to stand up for what they want, to meet their own needs and not necessarily put others' needs before their own. This is a challenge I can imagine many women in this room can relate to. Some men, perhaps. These are not, you know, completely black and white. I'm generalizing here to a degree, but that's one of the central issues that I have seen with girls, both in my private practice, working with couples, and in my work with adolescents, is finding a voice to be assertive and to not be considered "loud" or "a bitch." All of this kind of gender stereotyping that we will see, I believe, writ large over the next year as the presidential campaigns get going. I mean, already we have seen some of this typing of Hillary Clinton as loud, angry, you know, and the idea that if a girl asserts herself or a woman asserts herself, takes her power, that somehow there's something wrong with that, and that it's angry instead of assertive.

So there are many interpretations we could go to with this one very small study, but I think it's also significant for dads. And why it's important is that I think dads need to realize, early on, that gender stereotypes affect all of us. We live in a society that very much fosters a lot of these stereotypes, and dads can play a critical role in challenging some of these stereotypes, stepping out of the norm. But a lot of the stuff in the field, like water to a fish, you're just in it.

I'll give you another example. I study this, I talk about it, I interview, I write, I make movies about it, and here's Mr. Gender Guy driving down the street -- and I have a son and a daughter -- and I caught myself, after the fact, saying, "Hey, Jake, look over there, look at those baseball fields."

And almost as soon as it came out of my mouth, I just thought to myself, well, okay. What about Stella? Would she not be interested in baseball? Of course she is. And, in fact, she's more interested than Jake is in baseball. So this is one of those moments where it's just a matter of catching ourselves and being aware. Here I was, giving her a message very early on that baseball is for boys. You know, it's a small example, and I don't think it's going to send her to therapy later in life, but I'm sure much of this stuff will.

Stella, my daughter, is five years old. Kind of along the baseball lines, in what I think was my way of working through this particular stereotype, recently on a Saturday afternoon, we were looking for something to do. The two of us were just kind of lazing around, and I started feeling guilty, like I'm not doing anything with my daughter, and let's go out and do something. I said, "Hey, there are new batting cages," a place that had batting cages, nearby where we live outside of Boston. "Do you want to go look at them?"

She said, "Yeah."

And what's funny is, the whole time it was more my stuff than hers. I kept thinking, oh, boy, what's this going to be like? You know, we're going to go into the batting cages, which I imagined would be a very male environment, she's five years old, how are they going to perceive this? Am I going to feel uncomfortable? Right? And so a lot of this was my own stuff.

We walked in the door, and much to my surprise and to my excitement, the first thing we saw when we walked in the door is a life-size cutout of a professional softball player, a woman. And so instantly, whoops, silly me. Not only that, but behind her, in one of the batting cages were three high school girls with their softball gear, doing the batting cages. Much to my surprise, this was not the "male environment" I had imagined.

And I think that's also one of the challenges for dads with daughters, both to be aware of our own fears, our own stereotypes, and also to take chances and to put yourself in environments and challenge your daughter in situations, but also open up to who she is and what she likes to do. This was an example of something that I thought she might like to do. Lo and behold, we spent a half-hour, and we kept going, actually. "How much is it to rent a batting cage?" You can just rent a cage, they give you a bucket of balls, and they gave her a pink helmet and a bat that was her size. They were all set up. They said, "Half-hour intervals. $20 for half an hour."

I thought, "Well, you know, we'll be there for probably ten minutes. You know, can you cut me a deal?"

And the guy said, "Sure. Don't worry about it."

We were there for the full half-hour. She did not want to stop. She wanted to hit, to hit, to hit. And so it was a real lesson for me as a dad to make sure I checked that, and to acknowledge that these stereotypes are very powerful, and they play out, and if you're not aware of them, they can really affect the direction that you steer your daughter.

So I share these stories with you because that we're in a time of great change in terms of fatherhood, what it means to be a dad today, and that dads today have a huge opportunity to reshape what it means to be a man, to reshape the images that girls get of men, and to really foster much healthier relationships with girls and with boys.

I think it's also a time of great change and upheaval. I go around the country speaking in many private schools, independent schools, international schools, some public schools, and primarily what I hear in all different environments, including jails -- I go to a fair number of jails. I work with dads' organizations, so I see a really wide spectrum of dads, and what I hear is very similar, no matter what the context is. The main challenges I think that dads face have to do with really understanding, what is the job description? What is expected of me? Because what is expected of men today is very, very different than what was expected of men a generation or two generations ago.

Frankly, I think we are really trying to sort out the definition of what it means to be a good dad today. On the one hand, it's very positive. I think many men are acknowledging a wider role and seeing that they have the opportunity to be a different kind of dad. For instance, you see today something that says a lot, you go to any sports stadium, any modern NFL stadium, go into the men's bathroom, you will see a diaper-changing station there, and you will see men changing children's diapers. It may seem small. That is a very significant cultural shift around parenting; right? Do any guys change diapers in an NFL bathroom? I'm not saying it's the greatest place to do it, but at least you have an opportunity. Nobody's done that? Nobody will admit that they have done that.

So just a little context, and the role that I think schools and educators can play, which is a very significant role. And what I want to get to in this talk is to have you look at what are you doing, and what could you be doing in terms of engaging fathers, giving fathers opportunities to allow us that education, give dads the opportunities to be both educated and educate ourselves.

So the larger context for this is what I call "the road home." The author and family historian, Stephanie Kuntz -- who, if you have not read any of her work, I highly recommend it -- debunks so many myths about American families, and she does the whole history of families, kind of like a Howard Zinn in The People's History of the US, where he includes voices of African-Americans, Native Americans, women, voices that are typically left out of history, or at least were when he wrote the book.

Stephanie Kuntz writes about the family, and she describes the Industrial Revolution in this country being a key turning point for parents and a key turning point for fathers in particular. And the way she describes it is that this was the point at which we became less of an agrarian society and really for the first time men began to travel outside of the home for work. This is the beginning of the commuter, the commuting age. So what you see from this point is the beginning of the gender stereotypes. The woman is the caretaker, in charge of the domestic realm. The man is the breadwinner, going outside of the home to earn a living, and really alienating or self-alienating from daily family life.

Significantly, as you travel through time -- and really only about 30, 40, 50 years ago, through the women's movement -- we began to see a breakdown in this model, the caretaker and the breadwinner, and we see women moving into the work force, women changing the rules of the game in terms of work, women changing the rules of the game in terms of motherhood, and that was the beginning of a long breakdown which I think we're really seeing today, where we see more and more men playing a larger role in family life -- not in all cases, but certainly when it comes to work, now we have 2 million single dads in this country. We have more and more men and women realizing economically that the load has got to be shared.

Now, the caveat to that is that women still do, by all studies, roughly 70 percent of the housework and the childcare. Anything related to the house and to childcare, still the majority of that is done by women. Are men making gains? Absolutely. There was a time/use study recently at the University of Maryland which looked at the time men are spending with children and the time men are spending doing chores, taking out the garbage, being responsible for appointments and child care, and we're seeing a pretty significant leap, albeit not bringing men onto par with women.

So as this model of the breadwinner and caretaker begins to break down, this presents many challenges for men and for families. I use this metaphor for the road home. As women have traveled over these years a long road from the home into the world of work -- and by all means, we're not there yet. We know that women still earn roughly 76 cents on the dollar. There's lots of controversy about that, but by and large, I think it's fairly well known and considered to be factual that women don't earn as much as men when you look at starting salaries, when you look at how they progress through a company.

And so again, women have not arrived, so to speak, but they have traveled a great distance down this road into the world of work. Today, in 2008, men are just beginning down the road that leads from work to home, home meaning literally home, taking responsibility for child care, doing more to be equal partners in taking care of the home, whether they're together with their child's mother or not, and men are just at the beginning of this road.

Frankly, to just take the analogy a little further, I think that some men are really eager and excited about this opportunity to travel on the road home. I think some men are lost in a ditch on the side of the road. I think some men are screaming, running back the other way, saying, "Ah, I want to go back to the way it was," and you know, I say that as sort of an image, but it's also a very political debate today, that we do see very organized movement on both sides of the spectrum, the one side wanting to go back to how it was, having this nostalgia for traditional gender roles, and it's a debate, to me, that's not really even worth having because as my friend and colleague says about this idea of women going back to the "kitchen," don't hold your breath. It's not going to happen. The genie is out of the bottle. Women are not suddenly going to move back into a domestic realm.

Interestingly, when I talk to dads, especially dads of daughters, they don't want that for their daughters. The same man that might be very frustrated at having to now "do it all," and really wanting to have these clear definitive gender roles, where he works and she takes care of the home, often will say, when I ask him what he wants for his daughter, that he wants his daughter to be a doctor, he wants his daughter to have all the opportunities that he has.

So you see, there's somewhat of a cognitive dissonance sometimes between what dads want and what we actually are doing. So the road home, where you all fit in, in terms of being educators, in terms of running schools, you're kind of like the bus drivers. You potentially could be the people on the road to gather men up and to move them forward down the road towards home. When I say "home," I don't mean just literally home. I mean metaphorically home, meaning connection, relationship, health. So I think schools play a critical role in keeping this movement going forward.

Part of that is giving men a place. That is the reason I work in schools a lot. Men need a place, a location, somewhere they identify with to get together and do the work of educating, to do the work of connecting with their children, and the school presents a perfect opportunity because there's buy-in. They trust you, for the most part. They have an identification. I do a lot of father/daughter and father/son workshops where we talk about relationships, and we do this work of skill building with dads and children. And I do them mostly with schools, so I'll go to a school and we'll do a day-long or an evening workshop. In some cases we'll do a retreat. And by and large, men show up. Men show up in large numbers. There's a hunger out there for dads to have a place to look at parenting, to connect with other dads.

Interestingly, I have tried a few pilots. For instance, on Father's Day or the day before Father's Day, in my town, which is Newburyport, north of Boston, I did what I thought were all the right things, got great media, newspaper, flyers, talked to organizations, and I was going to do a Saturday afternoon connect-with-your-daughter, connect-with-your-son, workshop. How many dads showed up? One. Needless to say, I was a little disappointed.

But what I have learned in doing this is, there has to be an affiliation. Guys, it won't come as a shock to you. Generally speaking, it's a very small, specific niche of guys that will go to self-help or what they perceive as education. Guys tend not to sign up for those kinds of workshops. Am I wrong, guys? Right? Who buys the majority of the books? Well, you know you're educators and I would put you in a different category, generally speaking. But women buy most parenting books. Women buy most self-help books, most relationship books.

So you have this opportunity, as schools, to be that place where dads can connect. Does it serve your mission? Absolutely. I'll show you some more of the statistics around this, getting dads involved in meaningful and manageable ways. I'm not suggesting you want to open the door to herds of dads coming into your school, and I know dads can also present problems in being over involved. But I don't think right now that is the challenge for most of us. Most of us getting dads in and really specifically getting them in, in concrete ways to connect with their children, to learn, can make a huge difference in your bottom line in terms of the academic life of girls, the social and emotional development, and dads are a great untapped resource for a lot of schools. A lot of dads are not connected with a school. They may write the check or they may show up when there's a discipline problem, but by and large, I think a lot of dads have difficulty connecting with the school, which gets into the role of moms.

And there's a dynamic there, as well. I talk to groups of moms and I talk to parent associations about why this is so important, and by and large, the challenge for a lot of moms or for parent associations, typically dominated in numbers by women, is for them to see that backing off or even inviting and getting dads involved makes their lives easier, and it makes a big difference in the children's lives, and in the fabric of the community.

I have worked with many schools to do this in a way that fits their school, and what I have found, by and large, is that schools that do a good job of engaging dads in a host of different ways have found it to be a tremendous asset. So I'll give a few of those suggestions as we go along here for how you get dads more involved.

So that's the larger picture. What I want to do is share with you a few of the challenges that I see for dads of daughters, in particular, because as I said, a lot of this has to do with education. Dads, by and large, are oftentimes isolated, don't necessarily read the parenting books, don't have or make use of the access they have to understanding their role. So these are some of the challenges that dads face, one being to understand girls' lives. What are girls all about? What are they doing? What are they dealing with? What are their challenges day-to-day?

And then second is dads really seeing themselves as agents of change. And what I mean by that is, helping dads understand the impact. What does the research say? A lot of the research in the recent past has been geared towards how dads negatively affect their children. What we're seeing today, over the last five, ten years, is an explosion in the research that shows that dads make a huge positive difference in their children's lives by being present in particular ways, which I'll go over.

Another challenge is to acknowledge that there's a need for education. I think that's hard for a lot of guys. The "I don't need help," "I don't need a book to teach me how to be a dad," really getting over that idea. I see this all the time when I get a group of dads together. I do a lot of dads' dinners at schools. Holding a dads-only event, as many of you probably know, is a great way to get dads in, to get them involved, doing a dads' dinner because simply, they can't send anybody else to it. That's the most obvious. And for better or for worse, it appeals to "This is about me," right? "And this is about dads, so I'm interested." And it gives men permission to come and to talk.

I remember when I was at Charlotte Prep School a few months ago, and we had 100 dads in the room. The energy of 100 men, as you can imagine, is so, so different than the energy of a parent night where there are men and women. Typically, the energy is that there's a lot of silence. And I'm sitting up here getting ready, and I say, "Here's a topic. Talk amongst yourselves." They're sitting there in silence.

And to break that silence, I usually begin, literally pretty much the first thing out of my mouth, "I'd like to start by having everybody stand up and we're going to begin with a group hug to get everybody" -- and there's a moment that's like, "Is he serious? He might be for real."

And very quickly, they see that -- I try to downplay it and use that sort of stereotype for men's work, the men have to go into the woods and we're going to bang drums, all those sort of clichés. I use that to just take away some of the anxiety that's in the room. And the anxiety, very simply put, is a fear of vulnerability that I'm going to have to put myself out here. The hug thing is about putting myself out there physically, and it's also about, "What am I going to have to say?"

So I try to defuse that right away, and reframe the idea of dads coming together as, this is one of the best resources we have, is each other, as parents, not only dads, but of course, moms getting together, and also that the work of connection, of being a good dad and being connected to your child is actually prevention. We're all, as parents, worried about what roads our kids are going to go down in terms of drugs and alcohol, early sexual activity, depression, all of these fears, these risk factors.

And the research bears this out, that one of the best ways to prevent these things is by having a close, connected relationship with your child. A close relationship with a child is prevention. So then we get into, okay, what does that mean and how do you do it? Which is why I wrote a book called The Handbook. It's loaded with practical activities, practical skills, because, again, playing with one of the stereotypes, guys want to do. They want to know what I can do. So I tried to balance the book with ideas and a little bit of theory, but primarily it's geared towards, okay, what can I do? How do I connect emotionally with my child? What does that mean? Give me some idea of what to do.

I found that the response is generally overwhelmingly positive. Again, it goes back to the context of where we are. Dads are hungry for a place to connect and hungry for skills. Many of us want to be better than our own dads, and that's one of the great benefits that we have today. We now have the opportunity to do that. It's no longer strange to see men more active in their children's lives. That's part of the movement that we have, acknowledging the need for education.

Fourth is finding opportunities to connect with their daughters. This, again, is where a school comes in; a critical way a school can foster this relationship which, as we know, has tremendous impact on daughters' school life, academic achievement, and how she handles friendships. So the benefits are great, and dads don't often have ways to connect naturally, to learn skills, to connect with their daughters. I'm going to show you some concrete examples of dads and daughters doing this kind of work.

So if these are the challenges, let me just put out a few ideas of understanding girls' lives. Some examples of this. Academic achievement, for example. And I say this because a lot of us dads don't know this, and I think the school can play a role in disseminating some of this information. You make a big difference. A recent study out of University of Michigan found basically is that for girls, whether their dads set up an environment that fosters their interest and love of math and science makes a huge difference. So the father's gender stereotypes either support or undermine a daughter's choices to pursue math and science.

An interesting correlate study was called the MIT study, years ago, which looked at the first graduating class of women from MIT, trying to figure out what makes these women so extraordinary. One of the similarities that all of these women had was a close nurturing relationship with her father. I think that says a lot about a father's influence in getting girls excited about math. They cited here that a girl's interest in math decreases as her father's stereotypes increase.

Another colleague of mine did a survey. She went in for some action research, went into toy stores, went into Toys R Us, and she looked at all of the math and science toys. How many images of girls on the box did she find? How many pictures of girls on math-and-science-related toys? How many images of girls did she find on those toys? Zero. The big zero.

These are significant factors, and dads I think don't often realize -- again, some of these things you just do out of instinct, out of what you learn. So there's a big difference that dads can make in terms of math and science, being aware of the environment you're creating for your daughter.

Another one is strong emotional connections. Again, the research on this -- I'll show you another study -- but this is John Gottman, the Gottman Institute. They do the Love Lab, I think you have probably heard of this, where they have couples come and live in an apartment and they study them. It's fascinating. Yeah, how would you like to do that on videotape? They also have a whole parenting section in their research. His work is phenomenal. Children with a close relationship, an emotional connection, with their father have better peer relationships, they are less likely to be a bully, and more attentive in school, better relationships with teachers. So again, it's the idea that your relationship and how you foster that connection will have a big difference on your child's academic life, as well as their entire school life.

A few other things that I found: Men don't often get this information. We look at eating disorders and of course, we could spend a whole session on that. But girls as young as seven are now treated for anorexia. More than 40 percent of girls in first through third grades wish they were thinner, and this is from the National Association of Eating Disorders. This is disturbing. A colleague of mine, Jean Kilbourne, just published a book called So Sexy So Soon. And it's all about the hyper-sexualization of young girls. We see it all around. Abercrombie & Fitch making thongs for ten-year olds. Whose brilliant idea was that? You see them sitting around the idea table. "You know, what about making thongs for seven-year-olds?" It's like, does anybody in there have a head on their shoulders? No, they're thinking about money, thinking about the money these 'tweens have.

Another example. Juicy, the brand Juicy. Look around. Start to look around at the ages of girls wearing shorts with something, whether it's Juicy or the name of a school, right across their behinds. Do you see those on boys? I haven't seen them yet. Again, these are made for six-, seven-, eight-year-old girls. That to me is cognitive dissonance. When a parent would purchase something like that for their daughter, there is a cognitive dissonance between what is in front of their face and the other realities that are out there in terms of violence against women, in terms of objectification of girls and women.

A friend of mine called me. He said he went for the first time to a Hooters, and he used the term "cognitive dissonance" to describe what he saw. Hooters, by the way, is a family restaurant, in case you didn't know that. That's how they're billed. They're a family restaurant, and they will stand by that. He looked around and saw dads, families, eating at Hooters. To me, that's another form of cognitive dissonance, which is: I can bring my eight-year-old, ten-year old, 12-year-old daughter to this place, where women are encouraged to be objectified, and the dissonance is out there looking at the reality of the statistics against violence against girls and women. There's something missing. And I think one of the biggest challenges for dads is closing that gap, and that requires self-reflection. What do we do to promote a culture that makes it okay for Hooters to be a family restaurant?

Tied to that is violence against girls and women. It's a subject that I'm in the development stages of doing a film on. That is to look at what are dads' roles in changing the culture that tolerates levels of violence against women that are, to me, intolerable. And here we are, supposedly the greatest nation on earth, and girls are at the greatest risk of rape or sexual assault at age 14. One in five high school girls is physically or sexually abused by a dating partner. Dating violence is becoming a very big issue. Girls and women who are raped or sexually assaulted almost always know the perpetrator. Strangers account for 15 percent.

I talked to a group of dads about this and asked how many of these acts take place from the "stranger" in the bushes? And the numbers they gave were much higher. It's only 15 percent. Really, it's about looking inward. According to the Bureau of Justice statistics, fewer than half of all rapes and sexual assaults are reported to legal authorities. And these are just some of the stats. And I show these to dads and say, "Do you know this? Are you aware? Because guess what? It's our daughters, it's our sisters, it's our mothers, our aunts." These are not just some women out there. This happens in every community in America. This happens in the wealthy communities, this happens in the projects.

So it's a wakeup call, and I have found men and dads who will motivate based on this, and they will motivate by getting together with other dads, they will motivate about speaking out. There are very simple, concrete things dads can do. For instance, dads speaking up about sexism, not tolerating jokes, you know, "jokes." Teaching boys what respect is for girls, women. Respect is not about opening a door, though that's nice. Respect is about fair treatment, equal treatment. It's about standing up, not being a bystander when the guys are all joking.

I was with a group of 400 guys recently, boys, seventh through twelfth grade, and I presented them with a very simple scenario. You're in a car with your buddies. You're in the backseat. Your friend in the front seat sees a girl jogging towards you, begins to roll down his window, and shout things to her or at her. What do you do in the backseat?

And we had a fascinating 45-minute discussion in a large group where you had all sorts of different opinions about, well, depends if you know her. Okay. Well, if you don't know her, does that matter? Isn't she somebody's sister? Isn't she somebody's daughter? And it really was an eye-opener for these guys to think about their role as bystanders. This is the kind of conversation I think that needs to happen both in single-sex schools and also across genders. And interestingly, after that big assembly, one of the female teachers, who was very outspoken, came up, a woman the boys thought of as a very strong woman. The boys asked her, "Has that ever happened to you?"

And she said, "Yeah, it has," and they said, "How did that feel?"

And she said, "To be honest, it felt terrifying. It felt awful."

And that was a huge, huge learning for these boys, to realize the effect that they might have. So I share these with you because I think these are important lessons and important statistics that dads really need to know about, because if they did, I feel like they would be more motivated to make changes across the board.

So this has to do with men helping men to educate, and educate themselves. Again, the school has the great opportunity to do this, whether it's in a newsletter or by doing parent nights geared towards dads' issues, doing a survey, what are the concerns dads have. I'm sure many of you have dads' clubs, dads' groups. I do a whole consultation with those groups to make sure they're doing a range of activities and that they're not just doing the usual daddy/daughter dance, the fund-raiser; all good things, you know. It's really important. But to balance it out with meaningful activities where they're learning skills, where they're connecting with their daughters. And if those dads groups are already set up, you have a leg up, in a sense. You have got an opportunity to work with these dads.

I found that recently dads' groups are increasing in pretty great numbers. There has been a big shift. And I encourage dads' groups to be formed under the guise of the parent association, to keep it connected with the school. One school told me about a rogue dads' group. These guys were going out and drinking and causing all sorts of havoc in the name of the blank school. And so that created a problem. Actually, studies have shown that most dads' groups that form as independent entities without a connection to the school don't last. So there's a whole piece on that.

What I want to do now is show you a clip from my upcoming film, "Gender Traps," just because, as I said, I think one of the things dads need is a sense of what's happening in dads' lives, what are the issues that they're facing. I think you'll find this pretty entertaining, and I'm not sure how the audio is going to play, but we'll give it a go. And this is from "Gender Traps," just a short clip, five minutes or so. (Video clip played.)

Hopefully some of that was familiar. And I'd like to comment about matching. I have made my wife watch that clip, because my wife insists one of these dynamics of "I want to be the involved dad so I'm getting my daughter dressed," and then I go and go off to make breakfast and I come back and, what do you know, she's wearing new clothes. How did that happen? Well, she got redressed, because clearly, apparently, plaid and stripes don't go together.

So I share that with you and that's the beginning part of the film. And what you see then is the high school and a couple of high school groups that I talk to, to see how these kinds of stereotypes play out. Then I follow three couples in therapy, which is very interesting. In couples' marriage therapy you see very clearly the connections between the stoic -- you know, boys are afraid of things. What are some examples of what you're afraid of? Hmmm, can't really think about that right now, but let me get back to you, as the one boy seemed to indicate.

So this is to get you thinking about what are the stereotypes that are being learned early on. Clearly with the girls, you saw very early that there was this focus, and it sort of went on for a little while longer, about looks. I don't mind getting mud on my jacket, but I want to be a girly girl. And there's attention there that I think plays out, which is, "I want to be feminine and a girly girl," and as girls become women, "I want to have a family," and at the same time, they want to be "tomboys," and that plays out as, "I want to have a career, I want to be actively involved in that."

So we see very clearly where some of this starts very early. And the boys group I thought was very significant in term of -- both groups are very knowledgeable and, I thought, quite savvy about this. I mean, the one girl who said, "Not to offend the two men in the room," in some ways, I saw it as taking care of us, you know, and at the same time she didn't want to get us upset, but just that she had that frame to think of it that way, that we might be upset, attuned to our needs.

And the boys also I thought were quite articulate about what they see. They know the score. They know what is acceptable and what gets respect and what doesn't. So schools can play a big role in this. I grabbed this from Girls, Inc., and this is very recent, just a survey they did in terms of what girls feel pressure about, the stereotypes. People think girls care a lot about shopping, 89 percent. Girls are under a lot of pressure to dress the right way, 84 percent. Girls are supposed to be kind and caring, 84 percent. All the way down to girls are expected to speak softly and not cause trouble, 55 percent. In my school, boys think they have a right to discuss girls' bodies in public, 55 percent.

Well, gee, where did they get that idea? And so these are some of the pressures, and the way I see this happening in schools is an activity I do called Act Like a Lady, is what I did with a lot of students in the movie. First you say, how does a girl -- you can do this with boys, act like a man -- how does a girl or woman have to be to get respect? Describe for me girls that get respect. And you get a whole range of answers: Is skinny, is a good listener, looks pretty, stays clean, keeps up with style; is a bad girl, sexy.

And you see some themes, and this will be fairly typical no matter where you are. Is emotional, is athletic. And there is some conflict. You know, some of these, what's in the middle in the boxes, aren't bad qualities, necessarily, they can be very good qualities, be athletic, a good listener. But what's problematic is then I ask them, "What about girls who don't get respect? How do they behave? What do they wear? What do they like?"

They don't care about their looks, they're dirty or messy, too bookish, they act slutty. And then I say, "What happens to these girls who don't get respect, verbally and physically?" And some of the costs? And so they might be called a dyke. They might be called ugly, fat. You know, that list will go on forever and ever. And physically they might be isolated or bullied, assault, harassed.

And what you see here, this box is just a greater framework, even for young children, who again, already know -- don't think kindergarteners and first graders don't have a sense of how boys are supposed to be and how girls are supposed to be. And what we talk about is, "All right, what's good about being in that box, about living your life in that box?" And they will say you get popularity. Oftentimes you have privileges and power. And is there any cost to being in that box? Of course. There are many costs, not being yourself. And then what are the costs of being outside of the box?

What this presents is the pressure girls feel to be a certain way, and it's a way to say, do we need this box? Is there a way that we can open it up? And how do we challenge the pressure? Because this is the system of power and privilege, in a setting, in a school setting.

And so just to wrap up, because I want to give you some time for questions, I just want to show you in my book the practices that I encourage dads to do. This is created around four practices. Creating your legacy, which is getting dads to think about what they have come from, what they have learned growing up, about being a dad, and showing up physically, connecting emotionally, and fourthly is modeling healthy relationships at home. These are the four themes of the book, and I just want to show you one part of this, creating a legacy, showing up physically.

So for example, I have them look at the division of housework and childcare in your family. It says, child-related tasks. Who purchases your child's clothes? Who schedules doctors' appointments? And then you have to circle mostly dad, shared, mostly mom. Makes child care arrangements, you know, monitors curfews, et cetera. House-related tasks. Does the laundry, takes out the garbage. And then all the way down to things like who schedules doctors' appointments? Who writes thank you notes? Who buys gifts? This just gives dads a sense and to discuss this, whether they're with their child's mother or not, to discuss who's doing what. Because again, so much of this is about modeling, and I say, if you're not doing most of this, just be aware that you're modeling for your daughter the idea that this is what she's going to be doing when she gets older, and that she can expect this. And by the same token, modeling for boys that, well, you know, participation in family life is optional. You can help out, you know, but you don't have to do it; right? Because that's how it breaks down. So I have them look at things like that.

I talk about setting up rituals with their daughter, which is critical. We do daddy/daughter breakfasts. Although my wife pointed out recently, do I want to be focused on food so early? That's a fair question, and now we're doing daddy/daughter adventure. So it might be batting cages, it might be something she wants to do one week, what I want to do the next time. But I found that working with dads, this simple concept of creating a ritual dad time with each of your children once a month, something that they know they're going to have time with you, is just a really important -- the response is generally very positive.

One dad and daughter I know -- she was 16, and each month they would rotate so it was her choice one month, his choice the next. She brought him to a Marilyn Manson concert, and to his credit, he went, he listened. And when I first saw them, I thought, oh, boy. I just imagined there was a lot more conflict. This daughter spoke so highly of her dad. It was because he respected her, he listened. He also had rules. She couldn't listen to it in the house. But he went to the concert. So another great way of connecting with his daughter.

This is something for dads to think about, getting involved in at school, and I asked them to talk with other dads, meet or talk with your child's teacher or administrator about ways they have seen dads get more involved, what needs they have at the school. Go to a PTA or parent association meeting. And finally, talk to a mother or a couple of mothers about involvement.

And lastly, I think most importantly is connecting emotionally. This is, no pun intended, the heart of the matter and the biggest challenge for dads today. How do I connect with my child emotionally? The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health is a very, very important ongoing study. Connectedness is the single most protective factor in reducing, again, all of the fears that we have as parents. Dads need this information.

So how do you connect? My short version is: Know and be known. Give dads a quiz about their child. I say you need to know who your child is, and the quiz asks things like, what recent accomplishment is your child most proud of? What is one of their biggest disappointments this year? Who are their teachers? I have run into dads who don't know the names of their child's teachers. That's one extreme. Name two things your child did at school in the past week. And the questions go on, and they're pretty hard. The idea is to get you thinking, as a dad, how tuned in am I to who my child is and what my child's life is like?

I think this is the centerpiece of the work I do with dads and daughters and sons, and this is done in schools as a workshop, and it's called the Relationship Inventory. In short, it is a series of questions that dads answer alone, daughters answer alone, and then they come together and they share their answers. Things about their life. Recently something my friends talk a lot about is. Something that happening in the world today I think a lot about is. And then questions about their relationship. And this is where the rubber hits the road. This simple activity has transformed the relationships that I have seen, the people that have participated in this, pretty dramatically. A subject I find difficult to talk about with you is. A subject I think you find difficult to talk about with me is. I think one of your greatest fears, something I need more from you. Something that I think you need more from me. Really, it's the guts of a relationship, and this teaches children that their dad -- if they can model this, a dad sits down and says, "Our relationship and talking about it is important," then they're teaching their children, they're teaching their daughters, to have a voice. They're teaching them the language of relationships. They're setting a standard for the boys and men that will be in her life, and they're staying accountable to their children. They're staying accountable for their mistakes, but also for how much love they're giving them.

I ask this question at the beginning of the workshop. How many dads had a chance to share with your own dad feedback about how well he was doing? That's typically what I get. And so the relationship inventory is a great way to stay accountable to a child.

And lastly, the role of schools is to really find a way to educate dads. You've got to have forums for dads. Parent nights will not be all mothers if you do parent nights that are geared towards dads. I'm a big proponent of dads' clubs, dads' groups, and providing forums like this. We do this relationship inventory in a two-hour workshop. That's a meaningful connection that they can make. The school can provide the forum.

And finally, making sure to increase dads' involvement in school. The research shows that when dads are involved, their children get better grades, their children typically have a higher opinion of the school, dads feel more informed and more a part of the fabric and they're a great resource for the school. It's about giving them ways to connect that are manageable and meaningful.

So the road home, I think that you all play a great role in helping to further this new definition of fatherhood and really, in the process, you're doing the best thing that you could be doing for daughters, which is helping them to connect.

I want to thank you all for coming. I have a newsletter that I put out for schools and for dads called the Modern Dads Newsletter. If you sign up we'll have a sheet for your name and e-mail. I don't sell it or rent it or whatever people do with e-mails. I send you this newsletter, and you can print it and you can hand it out and you can take articles and put it in your own newsletter. Also, if you want information about my work with schools and consulting and working with dads, please let me know. I have copies of my book, as well, if you're interested in looking at that. So thank you all very much. I wish you the best, and have a good conference.

MR. HANLEY: We're obviously running a little bit behind, and I don't serve as John's booking agent, but I will tell you that when we had him come to University of Liggett School, it was the first time we really had visible fathers' presence, and we marketed to moms to get the dads there. So I encourage you to think about John and his work. John is going to stick around. He'll be right outside for a little bit after our next presentation. And I have a list that I'll have out in the lobby, too, if you want to sign up with your name, your e-mail, your school, and put you on his list.

So thank you, John, for being here with us today.: return to NAPSG home page