How the pandemic led to a nation of better dads

Let’s be honest, Father’s Day is the most half-hearted day of all, isn’t it? Today, most dads will be unwrapping a novelty mug, a barbecue scraper or if they’re really lucky, assorted beers.

Scribbled cards will be handed over with a teenage grunt, backs will be briefly patted and the TV turned back on. But this year, before life returns to normal, we might pause to think about Britain’s seven million dads of dependent children, and what they’ve done since March 2020.

At the beginning of lockdown, the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that fathers doubled the number of childcare hours from four to eight hours per day. In a follow-up survey by the Fatherhood Institute last June, 65 per cent of married or cohabiting dads reported a better relationship with their children, rising to 78 per cent of those who had been at home full-time.

“We’ve found that their confidence as parents has increased,” says Jeremy Davies, of the Fatherhood Institute. “A majority of the 2,000 respondents felt more competent as a parent and better equipped to support their children’s education. They’ve also reached a better understanding of the pressures of parenting, which tend to be shouldered primarily by the mother.”

Although it might not seem like it after singing Baa Baa Black Sheep 10,000 times, fathers of very young children will have benefited the most – and the children, too. The so-called love hormone oxytocin, long associated with the mother-child bond, also strengthens the connection between father and child.

Mothers experience bursts of oxytocin while breastfeeding, hugging, caressing and gazing into the baby’s face. For men, it’s stimulatory play like tossing the baby into the air or encouraging exploration and laughter.

“Girls and boys play slightly differently,” says parenting expert Anita Cleare, “and mums and dads often play differently, too. Dads are more likely to engage in riskier or more physical play. Play is how young children wire up their brains, so it’s really important that they get as wide a variety of experiences as possible.

One of the biggest advantages of the pandemic for many fathers has simply been more time with their kids. That extra time has led to an enriched understanding of what makes their children tick as well as some precious memories and experiences.”

Those memories, along with the hormonal rewards, can have benefits far beyond infancy. There is evidence that children who have a strong bond with a caring, loving father do better at school and form better friendships. There’s even evidence that you’re more likely to have a successful adult love life. It affects your confidence and self-esteem.

If the joys of playing with toddlers are obvious, dads of teenagers may have found it harder to detect oxytocin surges among the slammed doors and woke lectures. But they, too, will have been doing an important job by being at home.

In a survey during the first lockdown, one third of young people said they felt lonely often or most of the time, despite spending three hours a day on social media. A YouGov poll in the second lockdown found that had risen to two thirds.

Psychologist Angela Karanja, author of Raising Remarkable Teenagers, says that teen loneliness is a major vulnerability factor for risk-taking involving crime, drugs and sex.

“Research suggests that fathers are a major protective factor,” Karanja says. “A lot of dads will have got to know their teens better this year by spending quality time and supporting and influencing them positively. Of course there have been frustrations from the loss of independence on teens’ side during lockdown. Dads need to connect emotionally, be available and ready to engage.”

Karanja points out that not everything has been rosy between teens and at-home dads. She points to an increase in adolescent-on-parent violence, for example. This is just one way in which lockdown has been hard on some fathers.

For those who live apart from their children, the Fatherhood Institute’s survey found, only half saw more of their children during lockdown. The other half saw less of them. Billy McGranaghan runs the charity Dads House for separated dads and lone fathers. For those men, not being able to see their children was heartbreaking.

“I spoke to dads about that on a daily basis,” McGranaghan says. “They come to us broken. The travel bans should not have affected separated dads because there was a rule that they could travel to pick up their children, but a lot of dads didn’t know that.

"Because of Covid, lots of mums didn’t feel comfortable with, for example, a dad driving to pick the little one up and taking them back to London. Lockdown was the perfect excuse for estranged partners to stop them seeing their kids. I’ve spoken to men who didn’t see their kids for a year. Some have been suicidal about it.”

Hardship during lockdown was not confined to separated dads. While furlough protected many jobs, the number of people claiming out-of-work benefits almost doubled from 1.4 million in March 2020 to 2.6 million in April 2021. That’s a lot of fathers spending a lot of time at home with no work.

“At the beginning of lockdown, it was OK because it was like a holiday,” McGranaghan says. “But as it went on, it was heartbreaking for some dads. Guys who’ve never missed a day’s work in their lives. They’ve always been providers. I’ve had dads who were self-employed or who’d just started their own businesses, who had to call us up and use our food bank. We don’t ask questions, we just fill the bags up.”

Even among the fathers who kept their jobs and had a broadly positive experience of lockdown, the worry is that the family gains will be lost as we return to normal working patterns. A huge 76 per cent of respondents to the Fathers Institute survey said that they’d like to work more flexibly in the future.

A campaign called Time With Dad has been set up to help them, encouraging employers to allow fathers more time at home. Schools are encouraged to involve fathers more in their children’s education. The benefit to British society of more confident, more engaged fathers seems too good to lose.

There was a lot of talk last year about a possible baby boom resulting from couples spending more time together. That may or may not turn out to be the case – in fact there are fears of a baby bust. But could we instead see a daddy boom – a generation of kids with much better relationships with their dads?

“I think so, yes,” Davies says. “For the children who’ve been locked down with their fathers, we may well find in future that they are happier and more balanced, have higher self-esteem and all of those things. As a natural experiment, it seems to me there’s a lot to be positive about.”

Adam Argent and his son Ezra, 3

‘I’m not just there for the fun. I’m there to show boundaries as well’

I worked from home during lockdown – for a secondary school in Barnsley – and obviously we weren’t able to go anywhere, so I’ve had a lot more involvement in Ezra’s life. At first I wasn’t in a good place mentally.

The pandemic had a significant effect on me and my wife Claire. One of us would get up before dawn to be with Ezra, then go back to bed when the other one woke up, so it became a strange routine that wasn’t at all like our normal working habits.

All of the days blended together. Ezra lost confidence in doing new things because of the isolation and even became scared of his own grandparents. It had an impact on our marriage.

We believe in child-led parenting, but there were times when I felt like all the boundaries had been blurred too much and I had to assert my authority as a father. As a result, I think I’ve got a better relationship with Ezra now than before the lockdown. When he went to pre-school, he always used to talk about mummy. Now he talks about mummy and daddy. I think that’s a consequence of having spent a lot more time with him than I would have.

On Father’s Day, I hope people will give their dads a hug and say thank you. In the early years no one asks how the dad is. You’re just expected to know what to do and get on with it. That’s why I joined a group called Leeds Dads. We do a fortnightly walk, go to the park and discuss how we’re considered second class when it comes to parenting.

For example, I have an extremely supportive workplace, but if Ezra is poorly and I need to take the day off there is an undertone of, well, shouldn’t his mum be taking the time off? Even though my wife earns a considerable amount more than I do. Underlying it is the idea that, if a father takes the day off work, he’ll just be dossing around.

Having said that, the guys are definitely grateful for the time they’ve been able to spend with their children. There’s no other time when you would be forced by the Government to stay home and look after your family.

This last year has definitely made me appreciate the things my dad did for me that I was unaware of. I think there should be a greater appreciation of that. I believe I play a key role in bringing Ezra up, I’m not just there for the fun. I’m there to show him boundaries as well. We’re not just “daddy daycare”.

Eve Makis and her father Yiorko

‘I’m glad we didn’t leave it too late to ask the right questions’

My father worked behind a fish and chip shop counter for 50 years. It isn’t always easy to spark up a conversation with him, but occasionally he lets slip a story about his life that gives you a glimpse of the real man behind the wall of silence.

It was this man I wanted to learn more about when I gave him a book of life-writing prompts as a homemade gift. I hoped it would cheer him up, give him a sense of purpose and let him know that he was treasured. He wasn’t wowed by my present but I hoped he would give it a try.

A month later, I asked him if he’d written anything. “Yes,” he said, “but I don’t think much of it.” He looked like a schoolkid who’d failed to do his homework properly. What I read brought a lump to my throat. He wrote about being taken out of school because his father wanted him to be a shepherd. He told a story about the young brother who had died in his arms and how he was told “not to bother”, that God would “bring another”.

He wrote the following lines about his name: “My Greek name is Yiorko. It originates from yi-or-gos, which is farmer. It is humble and uncomplicated. It is based on honesty and trust. My nickname is Yiorkoulli, which means Yiorkos who is small and petite. To this day, if you don’t say Yiorkoulli in my village people won’t realise it’s me. I quite like it.”

He said the book was a safe place to express emotions he would never talk about openly, got his brain going and helped him forget everyday problems. “It’s good to remember your heyday,” he said, “even the bad memories. To think, I lived through that and survived.”

Just as I had hoped, writing made him feel good about himself and his response was the green light for what came next. I joined forces with the writer Anthony Cropper to develop the book, adding more prompts and simple writing advice.

We called it The Accidental Memoir. With Arts Council funding we ran writing workshops for the elderly, refugees and women on probation. We worked with a group called Being Dad made up of male prisoners wanting to reconnect with their children.

On the week of his 80th birthday, when he could barely walk, my father stood before an audience for the first time in his life and read from his memoir. He charmed everyone with his honest, emotive writing and the following lines: “The only person I miss is my brother, Andreas.

He was kind and thoughtful and would do anything for anybody, even strangers. I saw him last in 1974 just before he was captured in the Cyprus invasion. When I saw him dead in Nicosia, where they kept all the missing persons’ remains, it felt like he was there in person. I felt a shudder going through my body. I felt he was going to talk to me.”

My father was recently diagnosed with a degenerative disease. We don’t know how it will affect his ability to access the past. I’m glad we didn’t leave it too late to ask the right questions and gather his stories.

Simon Lewis and his father Alan

‘I remember him towering above us’

Dad only ever pretended to like whisky so we had something to give him on Father’s Day. He didn’t want us to worry about it. What made him happy was looking after us. Most Father’s Days he’d be out in the garden fixing a fence, up in the loft with a screwdriver or at his desk, solving problems we didn’t even know about.

Dad worked hard all his life and on more or less the day he retired Parkinson’s disease and cancer showed up to tell him he wouldn’t be enjoying it. Not long after that, I got a letter saying I had power of attorney over his affairs. It would make things less complicated when the illness began to take away his mind. He’d fixed that for us, too.

It’s unfashionable to talk of dads as protectors and providers, as if mums don’t do that too, but I think there’s something special in the way my dad stood in the way of pain. He’s still doing it now. For the past few years bone metastases have been digging into nerves in his spine, causing agonising pain that never goes away. He goes to sleep with gritted teeth. But I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve heard him complain.

When we were little, my brothers and I played a game called Giant where we’d try to bring dad down by pulling on his arms and legs and whacking him with our little fists. I’m sure some of those blows hurt. I only remember him towering above us, taking it in his stride. Fatherhood is something like that, I think.

I never stopped looking up to Dad and he never stopped giving me things. His incredible collection of books and records set me on the path to being a journalist – although I could never do it like him. In the 1960s, dad persuaded Melody Maker to let him do a weekly column on soul, the start of a long career in the music press.

On a good day until recently, we could put on a record and he’d tell me about a spiky backstage encounter with James Brown, or being alone with Tina Turner in a hotel room, or hearing Lionel Richie composing Three Times A Lady on a bar-room piano. Now, on a bad day, the hallucinations are so bad that he can’t see the room he’s in. The best I can do is to be next to him so he can hear my voice.

This will not be a happy Father’s Day for everyone. My heart breaks for anyone who has been unable to visit parents in care homes during lockdown. If that had happened to Dad, he would have been lost to us. I have to be thankful.

We managed to get a live-in carer just days before the world shut its doors and I’ve been able to work remotely. So have my brothers. So Dad has had our help this year as he gradually loses the ability to walk, talk, sleep, eat and remember.

We’re not a hugging family. I don’t think I held Dad’s hand once after the age of five. I hold it a lot now. I don’t have children, so I can’t know what it’s like to be a dad on Father’s Day. But I hope I do know how to give care. He taught me that.

Mark Williams and his son Ethan, 16

‘If I’d been working I wouldn’t have been able to bond with him’

I work in mental health, doing face-to-face training, speaking at conferences and training midwives and health visitors. It requires social contact so within two weeks of the first lockdown, all my income disappeared. I wasn’t eligible for furlough, or any of the other job retention schemes or grants. All of a sudden I was home all the time, and expected to home school Ethan. It was tough.

It was similar to the months after Ethan’s birth. Back then I was self employed in sales and marketing. My wife Michelle had an extremely traumatic birth and, although we didn’t realise it at the time, the experience gave us both postnatal depression.

I was drinking more and feeling anger, my personality changed and I found I was unable to return to work. I’m from a mining community where working to provide for your family is very important. My father and grandfather were miners. I asked myself how I could provide and whether I was good enough.

I was home alone with my infant son for six months. There’s a photograph of me standing skin-to-skin with Ethan, bottle feeding him. It was only later that I realised what I was doing. Skin-to-skin contact raises oxytocin, which is a bonding hormone. If I’d been working for those six months I wouldn’t have been able to do that. By focusing on him, I started to get positive feelings. I’ve got an incredible bond with my son now.

When I felt better I didn’t return to sales. I started volunteering and eventually set up a support group called Fathers Reaching Out in 2010, for dads with postnatal depression. Over the years it’s very often been the mums who contact me. They say, “Mark, I’ve had support but my husband’s really struggling.”

The past year for me and Ethan has been a struggle at times, without the structure of school and him not being able to see his friends. I was worried about him, but we’ve been able to talk about it. I had a good relationship with my own father but if I was struggling, there was no conversation I could have with him.

On that level, lockdown has been good for my relationship with my son. I took him walking round the valleys, showing him things he hadn’t seen before. We’ve played a lot of chess, which is great for mental health and Ethan is good at it. There’s a lot of elderly people in our community, so we did games and quizzes for them outside in our gardens. Ethan’s been out and met more local people than he otherwise would have done. He’s back at school and playing football now, so he’s happy.

During the pandemic, Fathers Network Scotland did a survey where 64 per cent of fathers said their mental health had suffered during the pandemic – but at the same time, 60 per cent said it had improved their relationships with their children. Over half said they wanted to change the way they parented in the future. The amazing thing to me is how few fathers have ever been asked about it before. Hopefully that will change.

How to be a father to a teenager

By psychologist Angela Karanja, author of Raising Remarkable Teenagers

Teenagers question a lot of family values and norms. It’s OK to correct them in this. But most fathers are still in the zone of “I say, you do.”

There needs to be flexibility with teens, who are changing rapidly. If they seem to be acting immaturely that’s because, neurologically, they still are, even though their physique has changed and they may seem fully grown. The brain doesn’t finish its development until they are about 25. So we shouldn’t expect much logic and rationale.

Instead, we need to understand that the limbic part of the brain is still ruling the roost, and therefore understand the emotional outbursts both from boys and girls.

A useful technique with teens is the 80/20 rule. We all have a reward system in the brain called the striatum (this is the part of the brain that loves praise and reward) and it is heightened in teenage years. Before you ask your teen to do one thing, you need to praise them for four things, giving them that reward their brain craves.

Many fathers of teens have self-doubt. But when they understand what is happening in their teens’ brains, they are more compassionate and ready to engage in the roller coaster ride of the inner world of teens.

10 gifts on Father's Day that mean more than novelty

⇢ Try his hobby, just once

Of course you don’t like model airplanes or line dancing, but why not do it with him today so he can share something he loves with you?

⇢ Rescue home movies

Those dusty 8mm or camcorder recordings of holidays past can be brought to digital life by specialist companies.

⇢ Go away together

Either plan a family trip or just go for a drive with your dad – maybe to the places he grew up in.

⇢ Cook him a meal

Either learn to prepare his favourite dish or, if he’s a great chef, ask him to teach you the one he loves the most.

⇢ Make a book of his jokes

The good ones, the very many bad ones and the silly names he has for things are part of what makes your family unique.

⇢ Watch his favourite film together

The one that no one your age likes, but which gives him a warm glow. You may learn something.

⇢ Donate to a charity

Not necessarily one that he already gives to, just one that’s close to his heart, if he loves dogs, or forests, or is an ex-serviceman… there’s a charity for most passions.

⇢ Volunteer together

A dad who goes out litter-picking, or helping at a soup kitchen, will enjoy it all the more with a civic-minded child by his side.

⇢ Write him a letter

An actual, handwritten letter. Not a card. Share memories and tell him how much he means to you.

⇢ Swap stories

What do you remember about learning to ride a bike? He might have a different version. Talk about moments you’ve shared.

What have you learnt as a father during lockdown? Let us know in the comments