Acknowledgments
This book wouldn’t exist without my dad. Obviously it literally wouldn’t exist because without him I would never have been born and wouldn’t be sitting in a coffee shop writing the book you are now reading. But he did more than decide to have son. He raised me, taught me about faith, loved me, and provided for me. He let me stumble into my own mistakes and then helped me find the courage to try again as I carved out a path for myself. I would be horrified if any of my kids ever decided to write a book about parenting, yet somehow Dad always just smiled and told me he was proud of me.
I want to say a heartfelt thank you to my agent, Chip McGregor, who believed I was a good enough dad to write this book. Thanks to the Harvest House team, especially Kathleen Kerr for her early developments and Gene Skinner for refining this book into something I’m proud to have written.
And to every dad, mentor, and friend who took the time to talk with me and teach me and help me parent better, I can’t thank you enough. Not only for how your advice shaped this book, but also for how your advice shaped the trajectory of our family.
I need to thank my beautiful wife and my loving kids for letting me pull up the blinds of our lives and proudly share our story with others. We’re far from perfect, but we’re proud of our story and how far we’ve come. And if we (and by we I mostly mean me) mess up too badly, we know that tomorrow holds the promise to be better.
The Perfect Dad?
You’re doing it wrong.
I have battled these four words every day as I’ve written this book. I was lucky enough to meet with some of the most successful parents I know. I was given a reason to read books and articles written by the most renowned childrearing experts in the world. I drank from the fire hose of parenting knowledge and attempted to let that wisdom spill into the way I approached fatherhood. As I made decisions for my family, I imagined my mentors looking over my shoulder. I’ve wondered if those experts would somehow stumble onto my book someday and see what I’d done with their advice. All these people would no doubt have the same thought about how I approached parenting.
You. Are. Doing. It. Wrong.
This is the most crippling thought for modern parents. First-world people have more time on their hands and more blogs, books, chat rooms, and support groups at their disposal than any other group in human history. We have access to a constant, evolving dialogue about how to approach the craft of parenting, and I am adding to this noise. The drive to be perfect parents can be so overwhelming that we don’t do anything at all.
I said at the beginning of this book that trying isn’t enough. And I still believe that, but trying is a great place to start. And when the trying is accompanied by the resolve to keep pushing forward and keep getting better at this job every single day, profound change is possible. My life has been changed by writing this book and trying to become a better father. I don’t know what your impression would be if you saw me trying to cart my four girls around SuperTarget, but I know I’m doing much better than I was a year ago. Like potty training, becoming a better dad is a slow, frustrating, and often embarrassing process.
I started this book with a story about Sarah getting on a plane, and I will end it with a story about Sarah taking another trip eight years later. I’m following the advice of Dr. Weiss, who told me to give my wife time away. More than just a Tuesday night at a restaurant, this was a chance to see some of her best friends and bond with our daughter. A chance to escape the bitter Colorado winter and bask in the golden California sunshine. This was a chance for her to get away with Julianna while I stayed home with Claire and Abby (Emma-Jane wasn’t born yet).
I wasn’t their babysitter. I was their father.
The morning after Sarah and Julianna left, the other two kids and I woke up and sat around the kitchen table planning an adventure for the day. We ate the pancakes I made. I helped them get dressed, and when one of them got in trouble, she knew exactly what her punishment was and corrected her behavior. I took Claire to an indoor trampoline park, where she twisted her knee—but now I knew how to examine the injury and determine whether she needed medical attention or just a hug from Dad and a bag of ice. I got my daughters dressed in nice outfits Sunday morning, and we were at church by eight a.m. so they could help me prep a brunch for a small group I lead. On Monday morning I got them ready for the day, and I helped Claire with a homework project that night.
I’m finally feeling like a father who is up to the challenge of parenting. I think of myself as a father in the same way I think of myself as a writer. I take the craft of fathering seriously. It’s something I work at every day, something I want to spend my lifetime getting better at. I hope that, like me, you’re getting better at these 12 fathering roles.
Let me give a golf analogy. If parenting is a golf bag, I now have a much clearer understanding of when to take out the 5 iron of teaching, the sand wedge of doctoring, or the driver of protecting. I’m learning when and where to use these clubs. At first, the tee box of parenting felt daunting, and every shot landed in rough. Now it’s becoming second nature. I still shank a shot sometimes, but I’m learning from my mistakes and getting better.
I hope you’re going on a similar journey, because as dads we can do better. We are not merely the other parent when Mom is not around. We are not self-centered narcissists who will leave a generation of broken children in our wake. Rather, we are creating a culture where fathering matters again. It’s not about doing this better than our dads did; it’s just about doing this better. I pray my kids are better parents than I am. I pray my kids succeed because of the way I parented and not in spite of it.
I pray this for you too. I know you’re trying, that you want to fight for them. And if you fight for your kids, they’ll love you forever. Your fathering won’t go perfectly, but you’ll be there for them. You’ll have the tough conversations and step up to protect them. You’ll take those family vacations. One moment you’ll want to scream, and the next you’ll be making memories to last a lifetime. You’ll teach your kids reading, writing, and arithmetic, and you’ll watch as they accomplish more than you ever thought possible. Your kids will have no idea how much you sacrificed until they become parents themselves. That’s because fatherhood is a thankless job. But that doesn’t mean it’s not the best job in the world.
1
Provider
Fatherhood begins with a paradox. We are supposed to spend more time at home—raising, playing with, and loving on our kids—and we need to make enough money so our families can have a roof over their heads, food on the table, and sufficient gas in the minivan to get to soccer practice and back.
Americans think a family of four needs to earn about $58,000 a year just to get by.1 These days, expecting parents can anticipate a new baby comes with the price tag of as much as $369,360 by the time she is 18 and out of the house.2 This means you need to be a millionaire to raise three kids. It’s important to note the job of breadwinner is evolving—dual-income homes are up to nearly 65 percent. And the number of stay-at-home dads is on the rise.3 Breadwinner and caregiver is now the job description for fathers and mothers.
But for many fathers, provision is the first thing they think about once they know they are having a baby. Women are (obviously) always the first to find out they’re pregnant. Even before it’s official, they have a good idea. Like Sherlock Holmes, they decipher each clue of what is happening in their bodies. This intuition lets them process the meaning and emotions of the pregnancy before they tell the dad-to-be. Sometimes moms know seconds before; other times they know the truth for weeks. When they finally spill the news, most dads have two reactions:
1. I have to provide for this baby for the rest of my life.
2. This is the most amazing thing that has ever happened.
These reactions happen at the same moment. There is joy and there is fear. The first test you’ll face as a dad is to show only the joy. Your wife is about to deal with nine months of sleepless nights. The least you can do is seem happy. And we dads-to-be are happy—but we’re also scared. Babies scare men.
The amount of money we need to make robs us of the joys of parenting. It’s hard to enjoy building a fort with your kids when your thoughts constantly drift back to that scathing email from your boss. As providers, we are driven to constantly think about our careers because they keep our families safe. Parents have lots of big and horrifying fears, but none more ever-present than worrying that we won’t be able to provide for our kids.
I don’t want to provide only mac and cheese and secondhand clothes. I love my kids. I think they’re the best people in the world. I want them to enjoy piano lessons and soccer clubs. I want to help them pay for college. I don’t want to spoil them and teach them they won’t have to work and take care of themselves, but I want to provide a wonderful life and set them up as best as I can for a promising future.
Recently my fear of being unable to provide for my kids has grown from a nagging, dripping faucet to an all-encompassing tsunami. Shortly after I signed the contract to write this book, my wife walked into our bedroom with IV written across her stomach in Sharpie. It was an inside joke from back when we were dating, because I always told her I would name my firstborn son Robert Donald Stennett IV. But a funny thing happened on the way to having my first son—we had three daughters. We always knew we would have no more than four kids, so the IV written on Sarah’s skin took a double meaning—a fourth child and maybe a firstborn son to call the fourth.
I was trying to drink in the moment for all it was worth, but I knew there was another complication. A few years before, we’d decided that if we ever had a fourth child, we’d go from a dual income to a single income. Sarah is a teacher, and lately it’s been hard for her to be giving so much at school. One rainy night (or at least it felt like the type of night that should have been rainy) we had this tear-stained conversation as Sarah told me, “It breaks my heart to think that I pour everything I have into other people’s kids while someone else is taking care of my baby.” I promised if we ever had another baby she could be at home with him. Or her.
Mathematically it didn’t make sense. The best way to be on the fast track to bankruptcy is to add more expenses and bring in less income. But we are not a business. We are a family, and sometimes the goal is more complicated than simply achieving the best bottom line. My anxiety isn’t unique. Before a baby is even born, providing for it is many fathers’ first fear. A baby means another mouth to feed, body to clothe, and person to house. Part of the reason providing for a child is so frightening for men is we have no idea what the actual cost will be. A car payment, mortgage, utility bill…we can wrap our heads around those expenses. But how much baby food does a baby eat in a year? How much will we spend on diapers every month? How much do we need to budget for boppy pillows, swings, slings, BabyBjörns, strollers, and bottles?
I talked to Robert Blaha, a father I very much respect, about all this. I respect him because he’s an entrepreneur and businessman, he’s run for the United States Congress—and he’s the father of seven kids. I wanted to know how he could accomplish so much with seven kids. I expected him to say parenting is easy, that there’s no reason it should stop you from living your dreams, that you just keep doing what you want to do and your family will follow along. But the first thing he mentioned was a list of everything he couldn’t do.
“First of all, when you start having kids you have to change your entire mindset,” Robert said. “No more golfing on the weekend with your buddies or beers after work with the guys. There is no time for balance. Your sense of adventure and fun has to come from raising your kids.”
I nodded. This made sense. But I didn’t want someone telling me how hard providing for my child was going to be. I sipped my coffee and tried to look strong. He was just getting started.
Balance Work and Family
Robert explained that just as with any job or career, fatherhood isn’t always going to go great. You’re going to fail. You’re going to make mistakes. “But what’s important is to look at things in trends. Is your family trending up, or is it trending down?”
We live in an age when parents are more stretched than ever to manage these trends. It feels almost inevitable that either work or family will suffer. A study by the Center for American Progress stated that families work 11 hours more per week than they did 30 years ago, and many executives now see a 40-hour workweek as part-time.4 Fifty-three percent of parents say it’s difficult to balance work and family,5 and a study by LinkedIn revealed that “balancing work life with a family is the number one career concern for both men and women.”6
According to a common assumption and stereotype, the father loves his job and neglects his family. But in researching this book and talking with other fathers, I’ve found it’s even more difficult to be a good dad when you hate your job. Dreading going to work is often followed by dreading going home. Often it plays out like this: If you hate doing something at work, you procrastinate. If you procrastinate at work, you think about what you didn’t accomplish during the day while you’re supposed to be enjoying dinner with your family. And even if your job isn’t built around projects, fathers who spend eight or nine hours working jobs they don’t enjoy come home completely drained.
Doing a good job at work seems to be a prerequisite for doing a good job as a father. At the very least they are inseparable. Russell Verji, a business coach who has run an amazing father-and-daughter retreat, told me, “Men find their identities in their careers. We care so much about what we do because it defines who we are.” Regardless of what our job is (business, marketing, stay-at-home dad, movie mogul), we want to crush it. We want to redefine, re-create, and push the boundaries. Work is hardwired into our identities, and it’s difficult to feel like successful dads and husbands if we don’t also feel successful at what we’re doing during the day.
This goal starts with a simple question: What does it mean to do a good job? Seems obvious, but I’ve never actually defined what it means for me to do a good job. What are the ground rules for accomplishing what I set out to accomplish when I leave for work every day? As I talked with some of my father mentors and read articles and widely shared blog posts about how to succeed at work, I kept coming across these four ideas.
1. Understand priorities. It’s important to know what the priorities are for the organization you work for. I often ask myself, What am I trying to accomplish? How can I hit my deadline? How can I stay under budget yet still wow everyone creatively? Priorities are often unstated or difficult to find until it’s too late. I’ve jumped all-in on projects, giving everything I had without asking if they were a high priority. I’m learning to ask what the goals are for the company/client/organization. I’m working to understand those goals and let that shape how I approach the job.
2. Embrace challenges with a smile. It’s tough to keep a smile on your face when a newborn baby is there. Working and being a dad is going to be difficult every single day. I’m telling myself to embrace it. Learn to love it. Be like the offensive lineman who wears short sleeves during the Ice Bowl.
3. Stay focused. I feel as though I live in the worst time in human history to stay focused. Yes, I can practice time management and set aside times to work, but if I don’t focus, my family and my work will both suffer. When possible I answer email in batches and turn off my Wi-Fi.
4. Better yourself. One of the best things about having kids is the way it consistently changes the way I look at the world. Our living room is an ocean or hot lava; cardboard boxes are castles or forts. My kids take ordinary things and make them better. If I’m going to be successful at what I do, I can’t just turn out the status quo over and over. I have to push myself to take on more complex projects and get the training to tackle those projects.
I started implementing these practices at work. I began evaluating my attitude and focus; I looked for new ways to better myself and embrace challenges with a smile. I can’t say the work always went better, but Robert’s trend concept was revolutionary in my life.
When I was a new parent, every moment felt so significant. Am I handling this meltdown right? Does my tone of voice affect how she’ll look at all authority figures for the next 20 years? Looking at trends helped me not worry so much about every frustrating conversation at work or a family dinner that didn’t go perfectly. I now looked at both my work and family life in terms of days instead of hours. Did everything go badly the last few hours? No big deal; it happens. But if everything has been going badly for days, that’s a trend, and I need to address it.
“Investing is the key,” Robert said. “There were times when I went to work extra early so I could be home with the kids later in the day. There were times when I had to give a lot to work or a lot at home. But if I was investing in my career and my family, then my wife understood if I stayed late for work, and work understood when I had to take the kids to the doctor’s office.” This made sense to me. For any father and husband, the key to juggling work and family is to realize there is no such thing as balance. The key is investing all you can when you can. I need to invest everything I can into my career, to create good relationships and a good reputation. If I do this, then when there is a family emergency, my coworkers know I truly need to leave and take care of that. Likewise, during a busy week at work, my family knows it’s just that. A busy week. It’s not a busy season that might last months or years. I will always have busy weeks, but I need to let my family know that when Dad’s at home, he will give his all.
Provide for the Future
Robert also told me my job is to provide the best future I can for my kids. Sometimes that’s financial, and sometimes it’s just teaching them to take care of themselves.
My first thought: I have no college or wedding fund for my kids.
My second thought: My wife is quitting her job.
As I mentioned, I have four girls. The first thing people say to you when they see you have daughters is, “You better have a plan to pay for all those weddings.” Strangers at the movie theater say this to me as if they are judging me for buying overpriced popcorn instead of investing in my daughters’ wedding fund. It feels like these strangers are right. My daughters are going to get married one day, and if I don’t plan ahead, I’ll be broke by the third wedding. And I don’t want to just pay for their weddings; I want to help them go to college to become astronauts or veterinarians or whatever they dream of becoming.
I contacted Scott Palmer, another father I respect. He and his wife, Bethany, are coauthors of a series of successful books about financial planning. They are known around the country as the Money Couple, and they give advice about investing, providing, and creating budgets. I told him about my book, and he invited me to his office. As I sat in a conference room with a modern circular table and walls of frosted glass, I told Scott, “I have daughters, and I need to plan for their weddings. And college. I’ve found some advice about planning for college, but not much on weddings.”
“I have helped finance a lot of weddings,” he answered. “They kind of sneak up on dads.”
This made me feel better. I could picture other dads like me in 20 years—silver-haired Steve Martin types wrestling with how they could possibly afford to pay their daughters’ wedding bills. I was in good company, maybe even slightly ahead of the curve because it was still (slightly) acceptable for me to wear vintage Ms. Pac-Man T-shirts, and I was already creating a plan for how to pay for my daughters’ weddings.
“There are a few options to fund college and weddings,” Scott said. “But it’s most important to take care of your own retirement first.” He told me there is no point in trying to take care of our kids if we can’t take care of ourselves. It’s why the airlines tell you to put on your own oxygen mask before you put one on your kids. You can’t take care of your own kids if you can’t breathe. He explained that for fathers, weddings are as jarring as turbulence in a prop plane flying over Mount Kilimanjaro, but they are nothing to bankrupt yourself over.
“Weddings are emotional. Dads can overspend. They can be irrational. The best thing is to create a budget first. Decide what you want to spend on college or a wedding, and put that away,” Scott said.
College expenses are skyrocketing. CNBC reported that by 2030, state schools are projected to cost $41,228 a year, while private schools are a projected cost of $130,428.7 However, not all is hopeless, according to Kal Chany, author of Paying for College Without Going Broke. He says, “The colleges may just discount more and increase the aid budget. It’s funny money. They want to attract kids who can raise the academic profile of the school. You get them in by letting them pay below the academic full price.” So saving up for college is important, but kids also need to get good grades. More on that in chapter 10.
Scott helps ease my fears by saying, “You’re not going to be able to pay for everything, and I believe it’s important for our kids to contribute as well so they can understand the value of their education.” This seems to be the key. I don’t want the college price tag to be so completely overwhelming that my kids never go, but I also don’t want to be (and can’t be) Daddy Warbucks, giving my kids so much that they don’t appreciate it.
Paying for weddings gets a little trickier.
“Now, there are a couple of ways to fund what you want to fund,” Scott said. “One strategy is to keep putting extra money away in your retirement fund.” The idea here is to keep growing your money to make sure you have enough to retire. “I’ve funded a lot of weddings using retirement plans,” Scott told me. But it’s worth noting how your particular retirement fund works. There may be extra costs involved, either from losing corporate matching funds or from incurring penalties for early withdrawal.8
This option doesn’t make a lot of sense to me because I have more than one kid. They are young but already competitive. If I split a candy bar in half, they turn into tiny engineers, precisely comparing each half to decide which one is bigger. Everything must be equal. So I will save for each one of them.
I found a college calculator online and discovered that I must save an extra $1531 dollars a month to pay for only 50 percent of my kids’ estimated college costs. That’s nearly an extra $19,000 a year I need to make just to pay for half of my daughters’ college bills. I want to cry. For just a moment I regret all my life choices. I should not have had so many children. Or I should have become a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills.
I have a start but not enough. I decide to take on at least one freelance project a month and put everything I make into my kids’ college funds. For me that means some early mornings and late nights of crafting scripts, website copy, or form letters, or maybe an extra directing project on a weekend. When I get the checks for these jobs, I immediately put the money into the college funds.
I don’t want to fall into the provision abyss. I don’t want to become a workaholic, so busy providing for my kids that I don’t actually parent them. Remembering why I’m doing the extra work helps me walk this tightrope. Sometimes early in the morning I sip a cup of coffee, look out the window, and picture the day when my firstborn graduates college. I can see Julianna’s blonde hair spilling out of her cap as she proudly holds her diploma, ready to conquer the world. She stands by me to take a picture. I have silver hair. I’m beaming with pride. Every morning and night I slaved away to help her earn this moment was worth it.
Teach Your Kids About Money
Here is a recurring theme from most fathers I’ve talked with: Providing for your kids is necessary, but the best way to set them up for a successful future is to teach them the value of money. Everything I’ve taught my kids about money involves chores. We make little charts with stickers, and they get an allowance when they complete certain tasks. Each star, bunny, or whatever equals a quarter.
It’s a joke. The charts never last for more than a week, and they teach the kids nothing about the real world.
“Give them practical ways they can understand money,” Scott Palmer said. He told me he made a deal with his 15-year-old son: He would match dollar for dollar whatever his son made to save up for a car. “I had to put a cap on what I would match because he’s saved so much. It’s scary what kids can do when they’re given any sort of real motivation.”
I decided to go with an age-appropriate lesson for my elementary-age kids, and we opened a lemonade stand. This was going to be a real business venture. No charity. No “Dad takes care of everything, and the kids get the money and warm fuzzy feelings.”
My goal is for them to walk away from the experience with some understanding of basic business ideas. I tell them with any business they need some start-up funds. I will be an investor and provide the initial cash, but they have to pay me back with interest. “Okay!” they shout. They have no idea what interest is. They’re going to learn when I start pulling dollar bills out of their ballerina cash box. This probably sounds cruel, but it’s better for them to learn from me than from credit card companies 15 years from now.
We go to the store and buy muffin mix, lemonade powder, and strawberries. Not the finest ingredients, but people will be buying their cuteness more than the product. Mom helps them bake because she’s much less likely to burn everything. She pours the fresh strawberry lemonade into a fancy pitcher and places the muffins on a decorative display, and the kids make a giant sign.
Muffins & Lemonade
25 cents each
We decide to set up shop on our neighborhood’s annual garage-sale weekend. This is the time of year when nice suburban neighborhoods turn into third-world markets. Our quaint street has a postapocalyptic vibe as driveways are cluttered with broken toys, water-stained books, dated stereo equipment, and piles of jeans. Soccer moms and dads in cargo shorts haggle over this stuff as if their family might starve if they have to pay one quarter too much for a Barbie dollhouse. The businessman in me knows this is the time to strike. Garage sale-ing is hard work, and our neighborhood gets more foot traffic this weekend than the other 51 weekends combined.