Why are new dads generating an epochal revolution?

Culno, breastfeed, changing diapers, cook. They are thirty, forty years old and are marking a very important cultural change within society. The new dads are redefining their parental idea. They do not replace mothers, but support them in a new, precious sharing of roles that sees them present, today why in history, also in the care of the children. And not only that: the dads of the third millennium express a strong will to expand the time shared with offspring, they want to contribute firsthand to management and education since the first years of life, they discover “unpublished” feelings such as tenderness.

The new generations of fathers are in practice by distancing that regulatory and detached attitude that for decades had characterized their role, moving towards greater emotional connection with their children.
A mirror of the times, a cultural evolution that is also the result of the multiple changes taking place in society, both on the economic and familiar front.

This metamorphosis began to become very evident from the 90s, in the wake of transformations that the feminist movement had brought to the world of paternity, where however men had changed because women asked him. From that moment, then, “men really began to think much more deeply on their paternal awareness, a debate and also an attention different to the theme has been generated,” commented the psychotherapist Alberto Pellai, an expert in the evolutionary age, in an interview with Vanity Fair. “We also realized how much the family, in its fragility, then risks not adequately supporting the growth needs of a child”.

Family-work conciliation, within the couple, is therefore no longer a question only to female, but also to the male. From here, the increasingly incisive requests of new working policies that favor the family time available also of dads, the drastic positions of those who, in this sense, do not find professional support, the choices of “enlightened” companies that expand the benefits and concessions available to Neopapà employees.

And all here is the core of the matter. Because in Italy – in the face of an unprecedented demographic drop – there is a new generation of fathers willing to be there, to get busy, to live more fullness within the couple. Dad – even just potentials – which however collide with family and work policies still unprepared on the regulatory front, unable to indulge and support this change of parental perspective.

“Being father taught me that the world of work is not ready to support shared and conscious parenting,” he highlighted Carlo Crudeleinnovator dad, who a few days ago, in Rimini, presented Word to the fathersa project-event to make a significant point on the figure of the contemporary father. «If we more enhanced the paternal role and made it the protagonist, working on the men themselves and on society, we would free women from an exclusive and castrating management of the family and we could increase trust. I believe that the “demographic” delay with which many Italian dads face parenting derives from the lack of concrete tools, both regulatory and corporate, and from a widespread uncertainty about the future “.

Based on the data that emerged from the new Italian research conducted by Neosvoc, and presented precisely on the occasion of Word to the fathers, 70% of dads say they feel in difficulty in asking permits or leave to deal with children, fearing repercussions on his career. Alone 15% of fathers used parental leavewhile 55% say that, if it were longer and more paid, it would gladly use it.

And if the awareness, the united will to the need to redefine the idea of ​​paternity is not enough, can be leveraged what emerges from science: Prospective studies carried out on the medium and long term have shown how children and young people who grew up with a dad present have minor behavioral problems, demonstrate a better success in the school field and can also count on multiple skills from a self-regulatory point of view.
In short, the future of paternity – with its social repercussions – will also depend on the ability to break down stereotypes, to promote an equitable distribution of parental responsibilities and to guarantee greater work flexibility. Let’s think.