From one father to another
Photo by Isaac Quesada on Unsplash
In today’s episode, Dave talks about fatherhood with his dad
During this episode we’ll discuss:
What lessons Dave’s grandfather passed on to his dad, which was ultimately passed on to Dave
What parenting aspects Dave picked up from his dad
How Dave’s parents approached building trust between parent and child
If you like what you heard, please consider subscribing, writing a review, and sharing the podcast on social media.
Transcript
[music]
Host: In today's episode, I'll be talking to my dad, and getting some insight into how he was raised, and the parenting decisions he made as a young father. Hey everyone, welcome to The Papa Est Fatigué Podcast, the podcast for dads by dads. We always hear about role models and the impact that parents have on their kids. We've talked a lot about our own parenting style, but how did our upbringing affect how we think about family? Today, we're going to be doing something a little bit different.
I've got my dad here, and we're going to be delving into his relationship with his father. First, here's my deal, I'm Dave, and I have an eight-year-old daughter, and a five-year-old son. First off, can you tell us a little bit about your family? How many kids were in your family? What your parents did? Just give us a little bit of sense of the familial background, if you will.
Guest: I grew up in the '50s and '60s, and certainly back then, the families were more traditional. I had an average size family for the time. I had two brothers and one sister. I was the third in a family of four.
Host: What did your parents do?
Guest: My father initially, was a blue-collar dairyman, and my mother worked in an office in an administrative function. She didn't always work. She worked from time to time, but my dad eventually became white collar. He ran a test lab in a dairy.
Host: Let's see. When you were growing up, how old were you approximately, when your mom was working?
Guest: She was working when I was in elementary school. I remember her working when I was in the sixth grade.
Host: From seventh grade and on she was no longer working?
Guest: No, she was working.
Host: Okay. I see. When you were younger, she wasn't working, and then when you were a little bit older, from sixth grade on, then she was working?
Guest: That's right.
Host: Got it. Okay. We recently finished up a podcast on mealtime challenges, and we got a lot of our house, but I'm wondering if you guys grew up eating as a family.
Guest: Yes. We always ate as a family. We eat in the early side, we eat together. When we got older, we somewhat split up, but when we were younger, probably through my eighth grade, we ate as a family.
Host: Was that more normal for the time?
Guest: You know what, I don't know, because I didn't spend much dinner time with my friends. There was one friend, when I did go to his house, the family eat together around the kitchen, the dining table.
Host: I guess when you guys got older, it was just a function of different schedules, or just that you guys were older now, and too cool for school?
Guest: When we're older, we would eat in the living room watching television almost as a family. My parents ate in the kitchen, the four kids eat in the living room watching television.
Host: [laughs] Nice. All right. At least you got some family time when you were younger, and then you were still spending time in front of the TV together.
Guest: You know what, even though we ate-- Whatever we did together my parents were not big talkers.
[laughter]
Host: Even when you were at a table, it sounds like it was you and the siblings?
Guest: Yes, they weren't big talkers, and neither were we. We were the quiet family among all the cousins, uncles and aunts. We were the quiet family.
Host: Family size, that was, I guess, you were saying, pretty typical--
Guest: That was pretty typical. Sometimes, there were three. Four to five was somewhat the norm.
Host: Can you talk a little bit specifically about your relationship with your father, and what his parenting style was like?
Guest: I don't think they thought much about parenting styles as a parenting--
Host: Back then.
Guest: They just did stuff. My father, I wouldn't say taught me a lot about what to do, what not to do, he just had me work a lot. Now, understand I was the third child, I got no breaks. We worked a lot. In the working a lot you picked up a lot of good habits. That's all of the kids, my brothers, my sister. We all worked, we had chores. I did a lot of the yard work, I did all the lawn cutting in the house. Everyone worked in cleaning up, we rotated. One week you'd wash the dishes, one week you'd dry the dishes, one week you'd put them away.
I remember doing laundry which I hated, because back in those days, you starched clothes, by the way, which was really messy and nasty, and then you hung the clothes out on a clothesline in the yard. Where I grew up, it would rain fairly rarely. The first droplets, my sister would yell, "Rain coming." She and I would both run out into the yard and gather the clothes as fast as we could. We grew up having a lot of responsibilities. I would say my sister never worked in the yard so, to that extent, they were gender roles.
Within the house itself, my brothers and my sister, there was no differentiation between, if you were a boy or a girl, y'all did the same thing. We did laundry. Actually, my sister and I did the bulk of the ironing. Sunday night was ironing night. We would all iron our own clothes, but my sister and I would be responsible for my parents' clothes. I ironed my father's trousers, and she ironed my father's shirts. Actually, the trousers were a lot harder that's why I did it.
Host: Wait, really? The trousers are harder?
Guest: Trousers are much harder than shirts.
Host: Really? Why, because of the pleats? You taught me how to iron. I always thought the shirts were the pain in the butt.
Guest: You know what, it's because of the inseam that you got to get right in terms of, very flat, it's hard to get parts of the pants flat, and you had to put in really good creases.
Host: I guess part of it too, probably would have been as the styles have changed over time and going a flat front and just wrinkle-free. I suppose, that my job would just have been easier, because of the technological advancements in clothing design.
Guest: I still iron today, and it's a lot easier to iron.
Host: [laughs] Yes, thankfully.
Guest: In fact, one of the things your mom appreciates is, I iron all her clothes too.
Host: I think that brings me to another topic. When I was growing up, you were always a very involved father, and I think you took on what would have been considered at the time to be a lot of, "Women's work," like the cooking and cleaning, grocery shopping. I was saying in another podcast that growing up, we always had homemade breakfasts. I didn't grow up on cereal or frozen foods in the morning, and even at dinner, there was always something that was made fresh on the table.
We would get up at 7:00, so I'm assuming that you had to get up at, whatever 6:00 or 6:30 to make that breakfast. In my house, I've taken on the role of primary caregiver. My wife has a very intense schedule, and so that has naturally has fallen to me. I've never had an issue with that primary caregiver role and doing a lot of the cooking for sure. Cleaning, nobody wants to do cleaning, but I think that taking on those more., "Stereotypical gender roles," I never really had a problem with that.
I think that is in no small part to having a father who showed me that that was perfectly normal, that men cook, and they clean, and they do the shopping, and stuff like that, laying the early groundwork for what an equal parenting partnership looks like. If we go back in time to when you were growing up, and the gender roles and everything, my guess is that wasn't necessarily what you grew up seeing, and so I'm wondering if that is the case, and if so, how did you come about like, "All right, I'll just do these things."
Guest: Part of it is my dad, he didn't have a lot of outside interests outside of my mother. He spent all of his time with his mother.
Host: With his wife.
Guest: With my mother.
Host: Yes, his wife.
Guest: I've taken that on where I enjoy spending a lot of time with Sandy, so I like to do things with her, but one of the things that I was somewhat sensitive to fairly early on, is when we got together when we were married, I used to work long hours. I would start at nine o'clock, but being an accountant in a public accounting firm, it was not unusual during the busy season to work until 11:00 at night. This is of course before we had kids, but that laid the groundwork for trying to do more when you were home.
Then when you and your brother came about, your mother was also very busy with her career, and so it was important for me to support her by sharing a lot of the work especially, trying to get home earlier and trying to do more stuff. I do remember one thing, which I don't think any of you know, is I used to cook breakfast for you guys a lot. Part of that is I remember, your mom used to do all the breakfast, and I remember that you got eggs five days in a row.
[laughter]
Guest: I was thinking, "I can't let my boys eat eggs five days in a row," so I didn't complain. I didn't say, "What are you doing dear?" I just said, "I'll make breakfast."
Host: Yes, well, it's funny because we've talked about-- We have this little inside joke, me and my brother, that you are the expert for the breakfast. If it comes down to who's making breakfast, we'd rather you do it, and then mom certainly with desserts and stuff like that, but as far as like early morning baking goes, biscuits and crepes and pancakes and that is firmly your domain, and you establish that. It feels everyone's sunk into their specialties around the house and what they like to cook.
Guest: Yes, it makes it easier that way, because then it's not necessarily a chore. You're something that you prefer to do, and breakfast is relatively easy. In terms of learning how to cook, breakfast is all science.
Host: Yes.
Guest: It's all science, baking powder it works a certain way, eggs work a certain way. That makes it easy, it takes out the-- If you're learning to cook, it makes it a lot easier, because the results are more predictable.
Host: Yes, that's a good point. I hadn't thought about that. Thinking back on your story about working a lot-- My mom's got this story I guess when you were sent to-- I was very young at the time. I think it was under a year, and you were sent off abroad for some work, and she was concerned that I would forget who you were. Wasn't there some sort of like doll or balloon of your face or something like that?
Guest: You were about three weeks when literally I left the country to go work in the middle of the pacific ocean. I was gone for about six weeks. Actually, I think you knew me when I get back, or you didn't forget me. The bigger issue was your brother. When he was about maybe a year and a half, I took a new job in Silicon Valley, and I was leaving at 5:00 in the morning, and I was getting home at midnight.
After two months, he stopped talking to me. He didn't know me. Your mom said, "Your son doesn't know you anymore." I quickly adjusted my hours.
Host: Which it's funny. I was telling at Jim in a previous podcast-- I can't remember what it was about, but we were talking about our routines growing up. I remember-- I think because of that change of hours that you made to see my brother that I would be dropped off at school at 7:00 AM in the morning. It was me and the guard before school or maybe just me waiting for the guard to show up.
At different times of course, where you can just drop the kid off and walk away, and no one's there, and they're fine, but I think that's how I-- It was never a big thing for me, but that's I think how I now see how that relates to this story about not being able to see my brother when he was younger.
Guest: Although you don't know this too, but each school year, because I was dropping you off so early, and you were typically among the first there, I would go and check the grounds to see who was there. There was usually one other kid there, and that gave me some comfort that you weren't totally by yourself, but you were pretty young. You were in third grade. Some people might consider that child abuse these days.
Host: Yes, different times.
Guest: Yes, we thought things were a lot safer in those days.
Host: Yes, certainly. We recently did a podcast on raising girls and doing the research for that show. One of the things that I saw was how a strong relationship between a daughter and a father sets up the daughter's expectation for what her future relationship should be, vis-à-vis men and how she should be treated. I think in a similar way, having a strong father-son relationship can show you how to treat women. Mom tells this story I guess about your dad who--
Again if we go back to the times, very different, but who used to carry his wife's purse-- My grandmother's purse which at the time would have been just weird. I'm a little bit curious if you can talk about how your father treated your mother and other women, because I think that has certainly filtered down into you and down into my relationships with women?
Guest: Well, at the time men were supposed to be gentlemanly. Of course, that is being somewhat chivalrous towards women, but my dad was a little bit different. He was like that, like many other men, but he would do things that were certainly non-traditional, like carrying her purse, which I don't think anyone had done at the time. I don't think people do that today either, but they were very close. I remember even right through when I was in college, that when they went out together and these were like the days of bench seats in the car, my mother was always in the middle seat sitting right next to him.
Even though they were the only two in the front seat. I was in the back and they were like high school dating kids. He cherished her. Other people said he spoiled her, but the other thing I was just thought about is, he treated my sister the same way with a lot of great respect and kindness. He was a very kind person, is the thing that my brothers and sisters and I all remember about him, that he was a very kind man, and a very gentleman.
Host: Yes, I think that as we have gone through this podcast, Jim and I talk about why we do it. Certainly one of the reasons is for people who maybe didn't have a father figure, I can see that thread right it gets passed down, you get passed down to me, it'll be passed down to my son in terms of how you relate with other people and how you respect other people, men and women.
It's so important I think especially if you don't have those people to look up to, or you just had a very different experience growing up to know what other people might have experienced if you would like maybe something different for how you're raising a child, but you maybe don't have an understanding of, "Well, how do other people do it?" You don't have anywhere else to look.
Guest: Well, one of the things I do remember is the anti-parenting lesson. I had my very best friend from the ninth grade right through college graduation. He had a contentious relationship with his father. I would go to his house often, and his father was-- I knew his father cared about him, because his father was always trying to give him guidance, but not in a very gentle or kind way. His father was usually yelling at him. You take lessons from the environment also from what you see in terms of who you come in contact with.
Host: Yes, absolutely it's funny, because I know a couple of parents where their relationship or a couple of friends, and their relationships with their parents are very interesting. One guy, the mom just the parents, just drove him super hard, and because of that, his own parenting style is a complete rejection of all that. As he's looking for preschools for his daughter he's like, "I want schools where they're not going to teach the kids anything, that they're just going to run around." I guess that Montessori style, it's a free-for-all and that's what I want."
I know somebody who again had the same experience with her parents who just drove her really, really hard. She's like, "It made me the person I am today." I think even with that hard-driving, some people take it in different ways. Certainly sometimes just it's very contentious, the-- I think how the child responds to that is very different. Also, the way that that message is conveyed can also lead to I think different outcomes for how that child decides that they want a parent.
I think ultimately we are all a reflection either-- I don't want to say negatively or poorly, but I guess in a similar versus a rejected way of the parenting styles that we grew up in. Certainly my goal has been to replicate the way that I've grown up, and take the lessons that I've seen from you guys, whereas again other people are like, "I'm going to do the exact opposite of the way that I grew up."
Speaking of that, I guess-- Again it was a little bit of a different time, but did you have any other role models for fatherhood, or were you just winging it? How did you come about with the style that you decided you wanted to portray?
Guest: Well, one of the things both my parents did particularly my dad is he always gave me wide latitude. He trusted that I was going to be making the right decisions. That I thought about things before I would do things it was-- I was not a rash person. That I think falls into the parenting where you are winging it.
You don't really know what the right things are, but the main thing you do is you don't put your child in a situation that's going to result in some major consequence that is not good. You err on the side of safety. I remember when you first took the bus, I think you weren't in sixth grade.
Host: Yes, I think so.
Guest: I put you on the bus, and I followed you in the car.
Host: [laughs] I didn't know that.
Guest: Until you got off the bus and got to where you were, I was following the bus in the car.
Host: It's good to know, I like that little tip, because we're already starting to think about our daughter, and when she's going to be ready. All right. I like that. As I'm hearing this, I think that part of what we're saying here is that, in some respects, some of this stuff is you learn by other people's actions. It feels like, "Look, if I give you the right set of values and morals that you will when you have that opportunity to make a decision, I trust that you will make the right decision," and setting you up for opportunities where you can make those right decisions seems like how you grew up.
Again, I brought this up in other podcasts. I was talking to Jim that one time I remember I was over at a friend's house. She didn't live very far away. I remember it was probably got to 3:00 in the morning, and I just didn't come home. She's like, "Oh, just crash here. I got an extra bed, don't worry about it." I'm not going to call you guys at 3:00 in the morning, just to say I'm crashing in someone's house. I woke up the next day, I'm like, "This was a mistake, they're going to kill me."
I called you in the morning, you said, "Oh yes, we just figured you crashed her house, and you'd come home." I was like, "Well that was not at all what I expected." I think that we actually had that conversation to say-- I was surprised. I think we actually had a conversation that's in something along of like, "Look, we trust that you're making the right decisions, and we trusted that you weren't sleeping on the street or something, we knew you're at a friend's house. We thought that was pretty safe"
Remember, in senior year, I don't know how any parent allowed this. The senior class took a field trip by themselves, no chaperones, no nothing.
Guest: I remember that.
Host: In hindsight, if you think about it, it's a bunch of 18-year-olds, relatively speaking just got their licenses. Also, when we got to where we were supposed to be, I remember, everybody was like, "All right, I got to call home." The guys never and asked me to call home and I'm like, "Well I guess I should call him because everybody else is calling home."
Again, I think it was one of those, again, "We trust that you're making the right decisions along the way, and all these other things," and I thought that was very telling. I don't know that you recognize it at the time. I think you internalize that there's a level of trust that your parents have in you.
That's what I'm trying to also instill in my kids also, is that one of the things that I've tried to do with my daughter, just simply because she's older, and a little bit more capable is fostering this relationship with her where she can confide in me.
I think that if we have those kinds of relationships that those more difficult questions about drugs, and sex, and all these other things, will hopefully at least get filtered through the parent through parental lens before she might get into trouble. That she feels, "Okay, it's three o'clock, I'm at a party, this thing is going south, I am going to call my parents, because they're not going to be mad at me, they would rather come pick me up and make sure I'm okay, than yell at me or curse me out because I was at a party I shouldn't have been at."
I think those are again, those kinds of relationships, at least, that I'm trying to create with my daughter. I think that is a function of the relationship that we have in the way that I grew up.
Guest: I think from an early age, that both your mother and I were sensitive to allowing you to be in situations where you had to make decisions, and allowing you to be in situations where you had the ability to make a good decision. If you made a weak decision, the consequences were not terrible, that if you made a mistake, it'd be okay.
The whole idea, I think was let you make lots of decisions, make mistakes, learn from those mistakes. Certainly, by the time you're in high school, we trusted your judgment totally. You had already demonstrated you knew how to not do dumb stuff. Also, we knew your friends.
Host: I think that certainly helps growing up with the same bunch of kids to say, all right, these are all pretty good kids, at least from what I understand, and that we know the parents. I think that's the other thing about being with a cohort of kids as you grow up, whether that's the kids from the neighborhood, or whether that's kids from school, that you've gone whatever K through 12 with or K through 6, K through 8, that there is some level of, "All right, these are our good kids and, hopefully, my kid's not going to go astray."
That's a good supporting group of people to have around them. We talk a lot on the podcast about intentional parenting. I feel like what you're describing is that intentional parenting. To take I think these concepts of how you instill morality, and how you check up on somebody their sense of doing the right thing. I remember one time we were at the grocery store, I was young, it was a big national chain, it wasn't like a mom and pop and they gave you too much change.
You said, "You gave me too much change," and you returned the change. Then we had a little discussion about it. "This is why I did it, it's not right to take money," Those little things along the way, I feel like all of these things that I'm hearing, those are how you set the groundwork for those learnings to make sure that your child is making the right decisions on the back end. Taking these little for daily teaching moments, and was that any part of how you grew up?
Guest: You can't create a teaching moment. What you have to be aware of when it pops up in front of you, and then use it. I think that was more of my growing up in a parochial school, where values were very important, including the value of honesty. You don't take advantage of someone else's mistake. If they give you too much change, you returned it, if they forgot to charge you for something which has happened, I will remind them.
There's been restaurants that we've had dinner at, where the server forgot to put something on the bill. We always say, "You forgot about this or that." That's just learning how you should lead a good life. When those opportunities come up, you share them with the children, so that they will hopefully take on those same values.
Host: Actually, you bring that up I also remember being in a supermarket one time where, again, the technology was different. Somebody forgot to ring something up, you said, "Hey, you forgot this." We had another discussion about that. Some of the ways that I've been trying to create those opportunities is I love getting books from the library. All of the books that I get from the library, I do a lot of research when I look for books. The way that I now handle reading to my daughter is--
One of the things I've realized during the course of this podcast, is that just reading the book is not quite enough. I think you need to give it a little bit more oomph. For instance, we'll read a book about morality or perseverance, actually, I have a lot of books on perseverance. There's a book on perseverance. Then we read the book, and that's it. What I've realized through this podcast and talking with other dads is that I need to include this feedback loop of, "What are you hearing out of that?"
Now the way I approach it with my daughter is, "I have checked out this book for a reason, there's something I'm trying to teach you here, when we get to the end of this book, I want you to tell me why I chose this book for you." I want her to start to listen to that story and to tease that thing out.
The other thing that I actually get out of that also is, she's just coming out of second grade. One of the things that I know they're working on in school in second through third grade, is inference and reading between the lines of a book.
That's what really all these lessons are. No one straight up says, perseverance, perseverance, it's can you grasp the story and can you understand what the underlying lesson is from that? That's how I've been trying to outside of those daily examples, which are forced my way into having those conversations with her. It also really reinforces the lessons that I want to teach her, again perseverance, and certainly, as a girl, I want her to understand that she can be in sciences, and she can be an athlete, and she can be a mathematician, and all of those things that typically we hear about in the middle schools where girls start to shy away from sciences.
If she doesn't want to do that, that's fine. I don't want her to shy away from sciences because she thinks, "Girls aren't supposed to do that, or boys are better." That's a completely different thing. I want to make sure that she doesn't think that. Those are the kinds of books that I borrow and that's why those stories to me are so important to teach her.
Guest: When you talk about teachable moments, books, I think are a great source of teachable moments, because most books will have gems in them that will teach you something that you don't expect. I used to read, and still do actually, a lot of military history, not because I like guns or war and all that kind of stuff, but military history teaches you about leadership, about management.
It teaches you about overcoming difficulty. Books, I find, are a very great source for teaching things to children. Certainly, when I read books to the grandchildren, I make sure that we talk about teachable moments in them, even if they're just a fun book. Hop on Pop can have a teachable moment.
Host: Yes, I agree. I think that getting with that concept of intentional parenting, that, to me, is part of what intentional parenting is. It's not just getting a book, but it's why did you get that book, and it's what are you trying to teach that child, and then also that last piece of using that book as a conversation starter for something that you may or may not be able to replicate in real life, or in your daily world of getting out with the kids. I think, yes, if you're into that intentional parenting thing, I think that's an excellent avenue to help teach kids.
Guest: You can also learn a lot about your grandchildren, your child too, because sometimes they really surprise you at what they see and hear in a book.
[music]
Host: Absolutely. I want to thank my dad for coming on the show today. We hope you found today's episode informative. If you'd like to support the podcast and hear more discussions around fatherhood, please subscribe and drop us a review. If you have any questions, hit us up on the Facebook page, Facebook.com/papaestfatigue, that's P-A-P-A-E-S-T-F-A-T-I-G-U-E. Thanks for listening.
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