What's a dad's job anyway?
I'm not telling my kids they can be anything they want
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I was working on another post for this week when, a couple of days ago, I realized Father’s Day was upon us. So instead, I decided to post about one of the challenges of being a dad and living the ethos that I’m trying to articulate in this newsletter.
Last week, I posted about how my parents began “situationally arranging” my life from a very young age so that I’d end up marrying someone they’d approve of. It isn’t an arranged marriage, but it’s perhaps as close as you can get if you’re a WEIRD person1. And my point was that this was ultimately a good thing; my parents’ choice to curate my opportunities gave me a kind of head start.
But teasing this idea out, it’s easy to see how situational arrangement can apply to anything: Parents can set their kids on certain paths when it comes to things like jobs, social relationships, etc. The easiest way to think about this is someone who takes up the family business, but as I’ve pointed out before there are plenty of people who follow their families into particular fields, more generally, as well. And this kind of thinking is, I believe, what separated my own branch of my family from our politically powerful distant cousins.
All of which is to say, my personal goal for parenting means not just pushing my kids toward a specific goal like getting into college or a healthy relationship, but also thinking strategically about what lies at every point down the road for them. I can’t make my kids do anything, but I can try to make sure the options that lie before them are the best ones possible.
This may just sound like normal parenting. But while most parents do want the best for their children, research suggests that many also increasingly take a hands off approach very early in their children’s adult lives. For example, a 2012 study of college students in Florida2 found that parents’ involvement in their kids lives “can be very
influential as it relates to major career decisions.” But that involvement quickly tapers off:
Parents tend to be greatly involved during high school years. They continue to be influential in their children’s decision to attend college. The data, both qualitative and quantitative, support that parents have lower levels of involvement in the area of career choice. Respondents mentioned that their parents choose not to be involved in decisions regarding their majors and career. Initially, students report to have highly involved parents who retreat from their supportive role as students complete high school and transition to college and become observers.
Why is this? Why do many parents disengage when their children are just barely on the precipice of adulthood?
My guess is that it’s often because that’s what parents think is best for their kids.
But I disagree. As I’ve researched the family, I’ve been surprised to discover that this idea of young adults striking out on their own is very recent; it really only became a thing after the industrial revolution3.
It can also leave people adrift. Take, for example, my career path compared to my marriage path. Though I had the privilege to come from a family that valued education, I wasn’t really pushed in any particular professional direction. In college I bounced around in a few majors and, as I’ve written previously, my entry into the professional world was somewhat rocky.
Things have ultimately turned out well and today I’m fortunate to have a job I’m very happy with. But if I had a head start in finding a lasting relationship, I had something of a handicap by comparison in finding a career.
(Obviously as a white, male American from a middle class family, I had a huge head start compared to the vast majority of people in the world. The “handicap” wasn’t relative to other people — clearly that’s not the case — it was relative to the advantages I had in finding a marriage partner. In other words I’m using my own experiences to compare the outcomes of high verses low parental involvement.)
What I’m ultimately trying to get at here is that maybe my parents should have arranged my career more like they “arranged” my marriage.
I don’t say this to call out my parents4. My dad reads this newsletter, and I just want to say to him, you’re a great dad. Happy Father’s Day!
Instead, I say this because — as the headline of this post indicates — I’m interested in what I should be doing as a dad going forward. And I think my parents gave me a useful case study in the way they handled relationships. Looking into the future, then, I’m curious if I can take that example and apply it to everything else.
For me, this means thinking realistically about what career options might be available to my kids. I’m not telling them they can be anything they want, because the odds are that isn’t true. But I am going to tell them they can get a slice of the good life, even if they aren’t, say, an astronaut or an A-list movie star5.
In conclusion, here’s a metaphor: I think sometimes a lot of us think of parenting as pushing for 18 years to get kids into a boat, which we then set adrift on the seas of adulthood. That probably won’t ever completely change, but I think of my job as a tugboat, pulling them along as needed for the duration.
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Headlines to read this week:
Dads Just Want to Help
Fatherhood, like motherhood, requires obvious economic and social sacrifices. But on the happiness balance sheet, the evidence supporting it is very strong: Fatherhood, for the average man, is a huge source of net well-being.
[…]
The idea that staying childless and footloose is more satisfying is, on average, wrong. Everyone has a different experience of fatherhood depending on many factors, including the quality of one’s parenting partnership. But all things being equal, fatherhood is an excellent investment in happiness.
How 'alloparenting' can be a less isolating way to raise kids
"‘It takes a village’ can sound like a platitude, but, evolutionarily speaking, it is serious business. Despite the fictions surrounding contemporary motherhood, humans, supermoms included, did not evolve to care for our children on their own. Evolutionary biologists and anthropologists believe we wouldn't have survived, or thrived, as a species if we didn't rely on others to help care for our kids.”
WEIRD is an acronym researchers have coined that stands for “Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic.” It’s a term that was coined to help explore why Western democracies such as the U.S. have pulled so far ahead in terms of economics and world influence.
“The Impact Of Family Influence And Involvement On Career Development.” Latashia L. Joseph. 2021.
“Patriarchy, Power, and Pay: The Transformation of American Families, 1800–2015”. Steven Ruggles. 2015. Page 1800-1803
My mom died when I was 20. My recollection is that she was more involved in setting me up for certain outcomes, at least when I was a kid, and I would have loved to have had her perspective here on why and how she steered her kids into particular life paths. It’s also worth noting that I have an incredible step mom too. No one has been luckier than I to have both an amazing mom and stepmom.
If my kids want to purse those kinds of career opportunities, I will definitely support them. And I won’t tell them not to do those things. But I do plan to talk to my kids realistically about the odds of succeeding in different fields, and the costs of failing. If you want to be a movie star but fail, for example, life may be more difficult than if you were on another path.