Zac Seidler, Global Director of Research at Movember, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Something happened on ABC Life Matters last week that I wasn’t expecting.
I went on to talk about the ‘father wound‘, the idea that so many of us grew up with fathers who had little opportunity, language, or permission to show up emotionally. And then the talkback opened up.
Fathers young and old, calling in for the full hour. Many of them considering, perhaps for the first time, how their own experience of being fathered had shaped them. Not with bitterness but instead with this quiet, careful reckoning.
One man was on his way to the funeral of his best friend’s dad. He was sitting with the question of his own father wound, in real time, on the way there.
That kind of delicateness. That thoughtfulness. It was the antidote to everything ugly and performative online right now. Real men, real stories, real grief, and real hope.
Because what our Movember More Than a Provider report showed is that this generation of dads wants to do it differently:
- 72% are more involved in daily care than their own fathers were
- 74% say “I love you” to their kids more than it was ever said to them
- Yet 3 in 5 fathers weren’t asked how they were coping in the perinatal period.
The will is there but the infrastructure for long lasting progress isn’t.
The father wound doesn’t have to be passed on. For a lot of men, becoming a dad is exactly the moment it begins to heal. But healing it requires language and support. What I saw last week was the hunger for men to grapple with this question, they just need the space to reflect on how they got here, and where they’re going.
Take a listen here.”
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