Please join me, click on this picture, and share your work-family story at the It’s Working Project.
Join me in sharing your work-family story at the It’s Working Project. It will help spread the word about involved fatherhood (and you can even win a copy of my book!)
The awesome folks at the It’s Working Project (led by the incomparable Julia Beck) do amazing work in promoting the needs of working parents. One of the most important things they do is curate the “Portrait Project” a website where working parents share their work-family stories. Their powerful collection of first-person narratives are important for so many reasons:
While I tend to make data-based arguments when advocating for work-family concerns and working with companies, supplementing data with impactful personal stories can be persuasive in ways that numbers can not.
By reading through the hundreds of collected stories, you can see what has worked for other families and what others have struggled with. This can spark ideas large and small for how you can better rise to your specific work-family challenges. (For example, one dad wrote about how he used the bulk of his paternity leave a few months after his child was born as this worked best for his family)
Through these stories, managers and employers can discover small, low-cost or informal ways to support working parents. and it gives us examples to use when we advocate for ourselves.
From the start, the It’s Working Project has emphasized that they seek to help all parents- moms and dads. They completely get it that work-family is an issue that affects us all and on which we need to work together. And here’s where you come in.
My entry in It’s Working Project’s collection of experiences. I can’t wait to read yours.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle that prevents employers, society and public policy from recognizing the challenges faced by working dads is the fact that we have not shared our stories. Because our concerns are not commonly discussed, we feel as if our struggles are somehow “unmanly” and need to be hidden from view.
The cure for this is increased awareness through discussion. The more men recognize that others face similar challenges, the more confident we are in talking about our challenges. The more we talk about our work-family concerns at home, in neighborhood and at work, the more others will recognize and address the fact that supported dads make for stronger families and workplaces. When we share our stories, we make it increasingly clear that involved fatherhood is completely normal.
The Portrait Project is one great way we can share our stories in a way that can have a wide impact. Please, join me and dozens of other dads by sharing your work-family story (all the cool kids, including Charlie Capen, Chris Routly and Josh Levs are doing it!).
Here’s the quick link to a short survey in which you can share your story. It’s important that we show employers and society that involved fathers are everywhere.
But wait, there’s more… As a final incentive, all dads who submit their stories in the month of April 2016 will be entered in a drawing for a signed copy of my book, The Working Dad’s Survival Guide.
What do you think of the importance of sharing our stories? Let’s share in the comments. Plus, please let me know when your story is posted!!!
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