Fighting For Better Paternity Leave | Alex Lloyd Hunter (Dad of 1, The Dad Shift)

[00:00:00] Alex: Our goal for ours has always been that we share everything as parents as equally as possible. That means careers like she has a great job that she enjoys. We wanted her to be able to carry on with that and one of, we'll come on to this. One of the big problems with a lack of paternity leave and other things that support dads to be present parents is the impact that has on women and how many end up stepping back from their careers.

It's a big driver of the gender pay gap and so on. So one thing is we wanted to make sure we could protect that for her. The other is that I was very clear that I wanted, as I see it, the kind of joy of being, you know, being present and a big part of his life. So we were very aligned on that.

[00:00:35] Adam: Welcome to Startup Dad, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of dads who are also leaders in the world of startups and business. I'm your host, Adam Fishman. In today's conversation, I sat down with Alex Lloyd Hunter. Alex is the co-founder of The Dad Shift, a group of men, dads, and co parents campaigning for better paternity leave in the UK.

He has been a founder. A nonprofit leader and an organizer for the labor party. In addition to being an advocate for better paternity leave policies, he's also a husband and the father of a young son. Today, we spoke about just how bad paternity leave is in the UK. Something I was surprised to learn about.

We talked about what the Dad Shift is trying to achieve and how we can do a better job working to define men a little less by their professional lives, and a more by their participation in the household. We talked about how Alex's own father and the birth of his son shaped his views on fatherhood and parenting, along with how he proactively adjusted his career to prepare for his son's arrival.

I also learned about the biggest obstacles to better paternity leave policies in the UK. I hope you enjoyed today's conversation with Alex Lloyd Hunter and can help him in his journey with the Dad Shift.

[00:01:56] Adam: I would like to welcome Alex Lloyd Hunter to the StartupDad program. Alex. It's a pleasure having you on the show today. Thank you for joining me.

[00:02:07] Alex: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

[00:02:09] Adam: So Alex, you are the co-founder of The Dad Shift, and that is what we are going to spend a lot of our time on today. Talking about The Dad Shift, the goals of The Dad Shift and what inspired you to start it?

But let's start with what is The Dad Shift? 

[00:02:31] Alex: So The Dad Shift is a new campaign in the UK of men, dads, and other parents campaigning for better statutory paternity leave. I think we'll come on to this, but our paternity leave is particularly bad in the UK and we are part of a new generation of parents that think it’s not good enough. It doesn't match our values and how we want to parent.

And we're calling for change.

[00:02:51] Adam: Awesome. I love that so much and I'm so excited to talk about this on the show. This is a new campaign and you've been talking to some folks about this and I read an interview with you and your co-founder on Brene Brown's blog. Brene Brown, who is awesome. And I wanted to quote something that you said really quickly and then I wanted to talk about this for a second. So what you said, and this is a series of questions that you've been asked, and one of this is, I'm copying just a, chunk of one of your responses.

So you said, “society still often defines men primarily through their job and conversely women through family and relationships. But more and more dads want to be present, loving, supportive caregivers to their kids. We need space for both these things and how we think about what it means to be a man.” That's especially powerful.

What were you thinking when you said that? Or, can you elaborate on that quote a little bit?

[00:03:49] Alex: Yeah, for sure. One way I think about that is thinking about my own experience with my dad. And he was part of a generation that I think where it was pretty typical for dads to not particularly be actively involved in childcare at home. He, of course, had no paternity leave.

We didn't have paternity leave at all back then. And he worked really long hours. So my brother was born at nine o'clock on a Sunday night. My dad was back at work 9am the next morning at his desk. He worked, you know, he was up in the morning commuting at 7 30 back in the evening, 7 30/8 p. m. So we didn't see him five days a week.

And as a result, we didn't really form a stronger bond with him as we did with my mom. And what's been interesting is that I have a three year old son. He's a very sensitive kid. Soppy and devoted grandparent, almost to my surprise, actually how much he is and how much he loves playing with my son and being involved in looking after him.

And he's even offered to change a nappy. And through that, we've started to talk about his experience as a dad and really regrets that he wasn't there and wasn't able to be part of looking after us more. And the way he says it is, well, I just didn't know it was an option. Like, I didn't know it was a thing.

And actually, today there's a generation of men who do think that's a thing, who do want to be more there. But still in society, there is a lingering norm around dad's go out and earn money, mom stay home and look after the kids. And actually a lot of people's attitudes have changed, but it's a society and in companies and in government, that's still quite sticky.

And if you think about women in public life, they're constantly asked about their families, right? And like, you know, about a famous woman, you often know how many kids they have, who their husband is, but for men, you're typically not, you're, you're very much seen as your job and that's what you contribute to society.

And in the same way that we are starting to recognize rightly that women can contribute to society through their careers, we need to be doing the same with men and thinking about how men contribute to their families and to society as dads. And so that's part of the point we're trying to make the campaign.

And that's part of the point we're trying to make of launch stunts.

[00:05:52] Adam: I want to talk about that launch stunt in a second, but before that, you know, you hit on something that really resonates with me there. And that is kind of the point of this podcast and why I started this in the first place was to have conversations with men about fatherhood, men who people know professionally, people who are leaders primarily in technology companies and things like that.

And the same thing that you mentioned, we often know if a successful woman is a mom or has kids. We rarely know if successful man is in the same boat, is a dad. And I've even found that really challenging in finding people for the show in that I know people professionally who are quite successful and, you know, would love to talk to them about professional things.

But then oftentimes I'm like, I don't actually know if this person is a parent and has kids because I can't find anything anywhere where they talk about it. So. I'm trying to change that. You too are trying to change that. So let's talk about the kind of guerrilla marketing campaign that you did to launch The Dad Shift in London.

And this I think was designed to help put that spotlight on dads as caregivers. So it was brilliant. It's like a marketing masterclass. So tell me a little bit about how you launched The Dad Shift?

[00:07:14] Alex: So we launched with a stump where we went around London and Edinburgh as well and found statues, some of famous people like football players or politicians, one of Laurence Olivier, the actor, and also statues of just members of the public. There's a guy hailing a taxi, there's a city trader taking a call outside his office, and we put slings, baby carrying slings with baby dolls in them and took photographs and a journalist wrote it up as part of an article about the launch of the campaign and it sort of went viral across the world.

We had a ton of media interest from ever from the States through to India, millions of people saw it online and to me it, people were connecting with it both because kind of the visual stories are fun like it's funny seeing a footballer on his knees scoring a goal with a baby strapped to his front but also because people really want to have this conversation, right? We're not pushing a boulder uphill in terms of public opinion we open the door and people rushed through it and people are sharing it because they're like this this is what I want to talk about this is what I want to change. So yeah that's been really interesting for me to see how much passion there really is out there for this and people haven't yet had quite the outlet they need to drive change.

[00:08:27] Adam: How long did the baby slings and the baby dolls stay up on these statues around town?

[00:08:32] Alex: So we took them down straight away. I'm afraid it was the photos. We had a, expert in sling tying with us um, Mel from the Bethnal Green in London sling, which she runs a sling library, and she brought along all these slings and her baby dolls that she uses to help people learn how to tie their slings.

And she was like, these are really expensive. So I need them back straight away. So we just put them up took the photos and took them down.

[00:08:55] Adam: I don't know if you did this under cover of darkness or in the broad daylight, but did anyone try to stop you or did anyone ask questions of you while you were doing this?

[00:09:03] Alex: No, not really. I mean, we were a little bit concerned about that, but we started about 7am and went through for the rest of the morning. And then to be honest, I mean, it's very British thing as well. People just ignored us. You know, people don't like to make a scene and there were places where there are security guards who sort of looked at us and just like shrugged and walked off.

Cause like we weren't damaging anything. And that was kind of the point, but we did have a few people come up and say, Oh, what are you doing? And we told them about the campaign and a few dads sharing their experiences. I chatted to one guy who's like, yeah, I've had five kids and rubbish paternity leave every time.

And like, yeah, I completely, completely support this. So yeah, we didn't have any trouble.

[00:09:38] Adam: Okay, great. So you are yourself a dad. That's one of the reasons that you're on the show. In addition to The Dad Shift, you have a three year old son now with your wife. And you talked a little bit about your relationship with your dad as a kid and how hard he worked and how little time he had for you and your brother.

I'm curious about how the arrival of your own son started to shape your views on fatherhood and parenting.

[00:10:10] Alex: I think I grew up feeling like I probably wasn't very good with kids. Like that was something that was sort of socialized into me. And I think a lot of boys I went to school with, it was a bit, babies were a girl thing. Right. And I didn't know that many kids when I was growing up.

So I was always the guy that you'd hand a baby to and it would instantly start crying or like I'd walk past a toddler in the street and it would start crying. Like I was, I sort of had felt like I had this magical power to make babies cry. And actually in the years running up to having a kid, I was lucky to be around you, my wife is really like clued up on this stuff, be around friends who have babies, and I started to learn about these social pressures that go into making men feel like they're not good with kids, right?

And so that helped me challenge my assumptions that I wouldn't be able to be a good father. And so by the time my son has come along, we put in place a bunch of stuff that's really intentional about putting me in a space where I can be really actively involved in his life and looking after him and take an equal share.

And so I feel like I am able to be a good father and I'm able to be the father I want to be to him. And we're really lucky with all the practical, there's so many practical jigsaw pieces that need to fall into place, which we can come on to as part of why we need to change paternity leave to make it easier for other people to do that.

But yeah, I think that that's the journey I've been on becoming a dad and learning actually that you can do this differently. You don't have to do this the same way you saw when you were a kid.

[00:11:43] Adam: You alluded to this a little bit, but I think I also read that you had a pretty intense, stressful, you know, high I guess high intensity career in the years before your son was born and you very intentionally made some changes in your own life, your own professional life to prepare for the arrival of your son.

Can you talk a little bit about what your career arc or what those changes look like to get ready for your, you know, now, three year old son.

[00:12:15] Alex: So I used to run a business, sort of 20, 25 staff, a small business. And when you're at size of company, you know, as a founder, you do a lot of stuff. It's that, I mean, you know this, it's a Startup Dad podcast. You're kind of filling three different roles at once and doing it through my mid twenties when you make a bunch of mistakes cause you don't really know how the world works.

And so, yeah, it was just really full on quite stressful and I was really conscious doing that, that I didn't want that pattern to repeat, right? I didn't want to be what my dad had to be, which is really stressed, always focused on work. And I know the way that my brain works is that if I am too focused on that, it's very hard to be present outside of that.

I think that's the case for a lot of people. And so over the course of several years, I worked up to a point where I was able to hire people to take on some of the work I was doing. I was really lucky to be able to take a step back a day and work part time. So I have one day a week that I spend looking after my son, which is amazing to be able to do and also to eventually to move on from the company, which is partly why I'm doing this now, but it took a long time to.

You know, that was really a five year goal to work towards that. And it took longer than I thought. And we were lucky in one sense in that my wife and I really struggled to get pregnant and we ended up doing IVF, which is how our son was born. So we had a lot longer to prepare then in some ways we expected, which is, you know, one self learning to that. But yeah, it was, it was a kind of a real life mission for several years to get to that place. And it wasn't easy.

[00:13:45] Adam: I want to ask you in a second about. This idea of intentionally changing your career and your plans to prepare for the arrival of your son and that long journey, what was the conversation like with your wife kind of get on the same page about this is our shared view of what needs to happen or we're going to change things?

I'm sure it was many conversations, but…

[00:14:14] Alex: Like our goal for ours we always been that we share everything as parents as equally as possible. Right, so that means careers like she has a great job that she enjoys. We wanted her to be able to carry on with that and one of, we'll come on to this. One of the big problems with a lack of paternity leave and other things that support dads to be present parents is the impact that has on women and how many end up stepping back from their careers.

It's a big driver of the gender pay gap and so on. So one thing is we wanted to make sure we could protect that for her. The other is that I was very clear that I wanted, as I see it, the kind of joy of being, you know, being a parent. Present and a big part of his life. So we were very aligned on that.

Like we both wanted the same things and you know, she works part time to have that time at home too. Like she wanted to be there too. So we had the same goals and it was just a case of working together over those years to make it happen.

[00:15:06] Adam: You know, I've had a couple of interviews with folks who live in the UK and in other parts of Europe, and you know, and I live in the U. S. And my perception of, you know, the blob that is not the U.S., the blob that is Europe.

Is, oh, it's so amazing to, raise a family there. You have tons of support from the government. You get to take 12 months off, you know, and I think that is a misconception based on some other countries within Europe and some of the places in the EU. And as I was reading about The Dad Shift and learning about you, I realized that that's actually not the case in the UK.

It’s significantly worse. Maybe even worse than the U S in some cases. And it's interesting is that that never came up in my conversations with some other dads from the UK. We kind of glanced over that piece. And I would have talked to them more about that had I known so, I now have the chance to correct the record here.

So just how bad is paternity leave in the UK?

[00:16:15] Alex: So our paternity leave is the worst in Europe. We get two weeks paid at what is less than half the minimum wage here. So it's 184 pounds a week. That works out at something like 220/230 dollars a week which is less than a third of the average salary. So it's, nothing basically. And as a result, there are tons of problems that creates, so there are a third of men who just don't take any leave at all.

They just can't afford it. In most cases, half of people do end up in financial hardship when they go back. So, you know, when you have a kid, it's an expensive time. If you need to buy a pram, you need to remortgage your house, they're so expensive. And you add to that if your partner's off on maternity leave, which is also not very well paid here, you've got that real financial pressure cooker.

And so you can't afford to take that hit on paternity leave. So people end up really struggling financially and it leads to all sorts of problems in women's careers, means that kids miss out on having that relationship with their dads, which has been shown to be really good for all sorts of things, like how we do at school, their emotional cognitive development and so on.

But yeah, we're, we're miles behind the rest of Europe. The average in Europe is eight weeks, equivalent of eight weeks at full pay. So we're at two weeks, almost no pay at the top end you have countries like the Scandinavian countries, not surprisingly do this really well, but even outside of that, Spain now offers 16 weeks at a hundred percent pay. It’s better than every other country you look at. And in fact, if you go outside of Europe and you look at the OECD, the kind of wealthiest countries in the world, we're right down the bottom there as well. We're in a bottom four with Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and the U. S. at the federal level, but it's different state by state, of course.

So it's a real outlier and it's something that is incongruous both with how well they do it in Europe, but also actually other areas where we're quite socially progressive as a country.

[00:18:04] Adam: Yeah in the U S we rely a lot on sort of non government mandated stuff. So if your company has decided that they will offer you something, then great. And so in the world of the tech world, which I operate in, a lot of the companies have moved in that direction, but you know, some haven't, but it's not required and so a lot of places they just don't do it. They do the absolute minimum, which is only what is legally required of them. But you said 184 pounds a week, which is about 220 dollars. That is not even what I spend on groceries in a week for my family of four to be honest, that is a very small amount of money. Now I realize like I live in one of the most expensive parts of the United States, but still this is even, you know, you, you live in or around London, right?

London is not an inexpensive city as I've come to realize. So wow, that's that's pretty, pretty bad. When you think about the goals of the dad shift, is there a particular country that you're trying to model after? I mean, obviously you're not gonna go from what the UK has to like a Scandinavian country.

That's like over a year, I think. Where are you trying to land? Are you just trying to get it just better?

[00:19:22] Alex: Yeah. We've got three goals for a new paternity policy. So one is that it needs to be longer, like a substantial amount of time. That means that dads can properly bond with their kids, properly support their partners in those first few weeks. Secondly, that it is properly paid, so it's affordable for everyone to take it without the money.

The time means very little for most people, they're just priced out. And thirdly, that it takes steps towards equality between men and women so that couples get to choose for themselves how they want to parent based on what works for them rather than based on their gender deciding that for them.

So you're right, we're realistic that in the immediate term, we're not going to leap from the worst policy in Europe to the best. That's not going to happen. And every country does it differently. So at the moment, we haven't got a set target in mind. What we want is to hit those three principles. We've got a moment in the next six months where we got a new government that was elected in the summer.

They promised in the election to review parental leave. They've acknowledged it's not working. So they're going to review the whole system. That's a big moment that we're aiming towards. And when we get closer to that, we'll find a policy position and start advocating for it. But we're realistic that, you know, the economy is not great here at the moment.

The government's been quite gloomy around the amount of money available, and that's going to be a barrier. We're looking for something that's achievable, but we want a bold step, right? We don't just want something token.

[00:20:43] Adam: Yeah. And there's kind of nowhere to go, but up at this point.

[00:20:46] Alex: Yeah, right. That's one way of looking at it.

[00:20:48] Adam: When you're at the very bottom of the barrel yeah, a lot of upside. What have you found are the biggest obstacles to improving the paternity leave policies in the UK?

[00:20:59] Alex: So the big one is going to be that someone has to pay for it and it will be the government that pays for it. The way the system works here at the moment, the government covers almost all of the admittedly pretty pathetic amount that they pay out for potentially, but they cover it. We think that's right because it's very hard, particularly for small businesses to bear that cost themselves.

Like we similarly here have more and more big companies bringing better potentially policies because they recognize it's good for them as a business, but that's a problem that we're seeing a two tier system emerging, right? Where smaller companies are more and more left behind. They're typically companies offering lower salaries anyway, so what we don't want is guys in big salaries working for tech companies get six months off and the majority of people get almost nothing. So that's going to be one barrier and actually there's a really good economic case for doing this. So the main economic benefit you get is that there's evidence from other countries.

And this is another upside from being at the bottom of the table. You can see how it's played out everywhere else before you make your own decision. And there's really clear evidence in other countries that better paternity leave helps more women who want to go back to work. And so if you model that out, you actually get a lot of extra tax income from a kind of treasury perspective.

So there's a good economic case for doing it. Even though cost is one barrier, the second is that a lot of businesses do support doing this, but there are inevitably going to be some nerves from businesses saying, well, it's quite difficult to cover that time off. So actually part of the case that we're making is more and more businesses are doing this more and more businesses see not just that it's good for them in terms of retention, but it's actually good for them in terms of staff morale and productivity and I used to run as I mentioned a small business and we had a six weeks paternity policy at full pay and part of the reason we brought that in is, you know, we wanted to try and do the right thing within the budget we could, but also you know, I went off and had a kid and like if I was back after two weeks, you're barely sleeping, your world's just been turned upside down, you've not had time to adjust, your heads elsewhere.

The idea that you put that person in front of a client and say, right, go, you know, do 100 percent your best work like that's a fantasy and it's not actually good for a business to do that. And more seriously, longer term, you know, there's a ton of evidence that like two thirds of men don't feel ready to go back to work when they do after the end of paternity leave.

And there's a ton of problems you get with people's mental health. Both mothers who are left without support, but also dads who back at work, really struggling and it's not good for them, but it's also not good for your company if you're pushing your staff too early, too hard and their mental health plummets.

So yeah, it's getting through that argument actually has a really good economic case of this and the businesses on the whole will support it. Those are the two big barriers.

[00:23:43] Adam: Yeah. Yeah. And those seem like pretty convincing reasons to extend it to me. One of the things I've heard you talk about and George as well, your co-founder in the dad shift. Is it this, there's a younger generation of men. So there's this sort of arc that's happened, right?

Like our parents, our fathers, were kind of clueless on this stuff, right? Like they really didn't know. And then there's been a push for the more modern father to get more progressive on issues to be more involved to be more equal in their partnership.

But there is a younger generation of men, boys, in some cases, even, coming up behind this current group that’s regressing a little bit. On some of these issues. Can you tell me a little bit more about that and what you've observed there?

[00:24:29] Alex: Yes, I think this may be familiar to a lot of people in the U. S. context in some way and some of the discussion about the recent election and the gender divide, in fact, is probably more stark in the U. S. than it is in the U. K. at the moment. But essentially, what a lot of people are writing and talking about this now, this is not just our kind of theorizing.

There is, of course, a has been a change in the last few decades in the role of men in society. There’s a really good thing. Women are becoming more economically empowered. Women are more likely now to have good careers. The gender pay gap is decreasing. And the old role of men as you aspire to be breadwinner, kind of the man of the house who's in charge, that is gone.

And we haven't replaced that with something else. There isn't a clear societal story that we're telling about this is what an ideal to aspire to, to be a man is now, now that that's gone and to us, that includes things like being a really present active father, which we can come onto, but what we're increasingly seeing is that void is being filled by ideas around reasserting male dominance, right?

And the most extreme example, you can point to this with figures like Andrew Tate, who have really taken hold in a large part of society of some young men and some really extreme misogynistic ideas. But there's increasingly a kind of politics typically on the right that portrays this kind of masculine strength as the thing to aspire to.

And so we're seeing this growing split in many countries between men and women and their social values and their political values and young men are at the forefront of that in some ways. And that's obviously a concern because they're men coming through now are going to drive social agenda for the next 50, 60 years.

So we see what we're doing is part of a push back to that to say, actually, we want to find a way to call these men back in like this isn't a happy, healthy ideal that they're, they're being given, right? Like we want to provide something that's more positive. It's more inclusive. It says you can find status and happiness through partnership with women as opposed to opposition and domination to them

[00:26:47] Adam: Yeah. And in some ways, you believe that fatherhood, being a dad, is somewhat of the solution to this problem. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

[00:26:58] Alex: for sure. So, I mean, at the heart of all these things is. It's people's identity, right? What makes you feel valuable and makes you feel included and loved? That's, you know, that's what everyone wants. That's sounding too kind of mushy. And yeah. We think that again, like the role of fathers has changed.

We're no longer the sole breadwinner. The clarity of our role is no longer there, but we haven't as a society made the changes to say, well, this is what's coming instead. And what we think people want now, and we have tons of evidence to show that this is what people want. Is to be more involved to feel more loved to have that stronger bond with your child to not end up as a stranger in your own family, but to be part of it and to share things with your partner. But we haven't taken the actual policy steps, at least in the UK, and I think in some, you know, many ways in the US as well, we haven't taken the policy steps to make that structurally easy for people. So coming back to paternity leave, the message we send is, you don't really need to be there at the beginning.

Like you're there a little bit, you know, kind of token, but then you're gone and it's, it's on your wife. And actually there's really clear evidence. If you give people at the beginning, a good amount of time, even better if you can give them like a month looking after their child on their own, that impacts them for the rest of their life, right?

They're more likely to have a strong relationship with their child going forward. There's evidence from Iceland that you're less likely to get divorced. Even, you know, they had a year where they brought in good paternity leave. You look at people who got married the year before and the year after 15 years later, there is still a gap in the likelihood those couples get divorced. And so fatherhood, I think is, you know, family is such a big part of people's identity. If we can encourage men to see active engaged fatherhood as something to aspire to that, that is part of their role as a man in the 21st century. We think that is an important part of the puzzle.

It's not the whole thing, but important part of the puzzle for giving a more positive ideal for people to aspire to.

[00:29:01] Adam: What have you seen as the response to launching The Dad Shift? I know it’s relatively new. You’re trying to build a lot of momentum. Obviously, you had this viral stunt off the bat, but what have you heard from folks? What is this movement shaping up to look like?

[00:29:19] Alex: So we've had literally thousands now, something like 5, 000 people share their stories with us about paternity leave and time and time again, you hear the same themes of, you know, from one end, we have stories of moms who had a really difficult birth. And we posted one the other day of someone who contracted sepsis and that he died and their baby nearly died.

And her husband was still back to work after two weeks. And he was trying to look after them on his own, trying to do his job, and he couldn't cope. He was signed off work, unpaid, so then they were struggling financially. You hear about people who went back to work and either they or their partner had a mental health breakdown because they just couldn't cope. You hear about people who felt like you still years on that they haven't felt like they've been able to bond with their child and they trace it back to the fact that they just they weren't there right at the beginning.

They never got that time to yes, okay, I feel comfortable as a dad. I know how to, you know, I know how to soothe them. They want to come to me if they're crying and that kind of cements and then you're locked in and you're still feeling like you're not quite in there, you know, years later. And then the other side, we hear from people who said, I, I was really lucky.

My company gave me good paternity leave and it changed my life. It's complete transformers. It was brilliant. Like I know that this is what we need and I want it for everyone. So there's those stories. And then actually like across the social political spectrum, there's a huge amount of support.

We've not really come across any significant bodies of people saying, no, this is something that shouldn't happen. And people believe in it for all sorts of different reasons. If you believe in the gender equality piece, but also on the conservatives, people who believe in the idea of strengthening the family.

There are even folks who are really worried about the birth rate that's really falling rapidly in this country and how we can make it easier for people to become parents if they want to be. And so I think this is something that a lot of people feel like if the time has come. We just need to get over the practical hurdles to actually making a reality.

[00:31:25] Adam: In your goal with the dad shift has been collect these stories, collect signatures and support, build the case to then go to effect change at the government level. Is that right?

[00:31:38] Alex: Yes, that's right And alongside that we've been working with some mps in parliament. So there's a really good body of new mostly new labor mps often a lot of them are parents themselves in the mid thirties to early forties and they completely get this and they say, yeah, of course, this is change which happened.

So we've been really lucky that they've had some good support from inside the system. And now we're just trying to grow that both the public noise around this and the internal lobbying to the point where the government bumps up the agenda and takes the action that we want.

[00:32:09] Adam: So I wanted to ask you a few questions about your own. Fatherhood journey. I would be doing the show a disservice if I didn't ask you a few questions about that. What are some of the more surprising things that you've discovered as a dad?

[00:32:24] Alex: I mean, this is a cliche, but sort of how much your kids change and how significantly they change. And like one thing that I often get into a pattern of thinking is that we might be going for a difficult phase. I think, you know, have I broken my child?

Like, is this how he is forever now? You know, he won't sleep or he's really nervous around other kids. Or we had a thing last summer where our son got really scared of the wind. He'd be terrified of something blowing away. Right. It was this thing about losing something. And, you know, we went on a summer holiday to the beach and it was windy and the umbrella would blow away and he would have a complete meltdown.

And then it's gone. And like every time I'm surprised by it, for some reason, like I sort of think, Oh, it's so easy to get into a pattern of thinking, Oh, no, there's something going wrong. And actually they're just constantly changing. It's all phases. So that's something I keep trying to remind myself.

[00:33:12] Adam: Yeah, I had another dad on the show whose mantra was this too shall pass and the kind of less good things and the good things, you know, so like your son's scared of the wind, this is going to pass, right? Like, let's get into that mindset that like, probably a week from now, they won't be scared of the wind anymore, or he won't be scared of the wind anymore.

But also like, Oh, he's really into balloons. Maybe a week from now, not so into balloons anymore. So yeah, everything is just a phase, especially at that young age, right? Like there's so much rapid change, like weeks of, of huge change which is really interesting. So I think that's really good kind of grounding grounding thing for other dads to think about. So, you know, of course, one of the answers to this next question is probably around paternity leave, but if you could rewind the clock to the time right before you had your son. So let's go, you know, 3, 3 ½, 4 years back and you bumped into younger Alex.

More well rested Alex, probably, what advice would you give the younger version of yourself about becoming a dad.

[00:34:26] Alex: I would say, you're going to be good at this. You could do this. I still had that anxiety right up until the moment my son was born and that anxiety that a lot of men have. And not every man does immediately bond with their child, but you know, I remember holding him straight after he was born and just feeling that kind of rush.

I mean, like, okay, this is fine. I'm going to be fine. But yeah, I'd say like, believe you can do it. And also trust in trusting what's right for seems to be right for your child as opposed to what everyone tells you should be or shouldn't be how it it is. Like sleep was one thing, you know, particularly I think a lot of parents feel like oh my child doesn't sleep properly.

I failed somehow. I've not like correctly done the routine or trained them or whatever. Some kids just don't sleep, right? And we got one who didn't sleep. So I would say like, yeah, just, just do the best for your child. Work out what's right for them. Don't worry too much about other people saying it should be like this.

It shouldn't be like that.

[00:35:25] Adam: Yeah, we had two kids that didn't sleep. Needed to be held in order to fall asleep. And then needed to still be held in order to stay asleep. But you know what? That changed changed at some point. I’m sure you a ton of advice when people found out you're going to become a dad.

Is there any advice that you got that you would tell younger Alex to ignore?

[00:35:47] Alex: I mean, one thing is like everyone, I don't know if you, this is a thing in the U S but over here, as soon as people know you're having a baby, the default thing to say is, you know what you should do? You should sleep when the baby sleeps. Everyone will say that to you, like people who've never had kids, people who have had kids, it's sort of like, it's a right passage to say that.

And my response is like, well, what if the baby doesn't sleep either? Right. Or like you say, we had the same thing for the first, you know, six weeks you had to hold physically hold him the whole time or else he wouldn't sleep. So it's like, I'm not going to, I can't sleep. So I'd ignore that. And then, we had a lot of advice about when they should go to nursery, right? Like, and some people like you should, it's really good. If they're at nursery after one year, because that's good for development. I must be like, no, you should wait three years.

And like, people have very strong opinions about things like that. And again, just as I say, work it out for yourself. Actually, a lot of people don't know. And it comes down to their own personal preferences for some people comes down to their own guilt about decision. Maybe they had to make, they didn't want to make, and like, you've got to just work out what's right for you.

[00:36:48] Adam: Yeah. Every kid and every family is very unique, even when you have multiple kids inside of a family. So figure out what's going to work for you is a great piece of advice and ignore the things that people tell you are or aren't gonna work for you, figure it out yourself.

I love that. What is your favorite book to read to your son? What's he really into right now, at age three?

[00:37:12] Alex: Some classics are very series of books called Maisie. She's like a very 2d cartoon mouse and she has friends who are like a Panda, like a toy panda. And she's got a friend who's a crocodile. And the art style is just as basic as you It's almost like a child's drawn it, but it's so kind of colorful and simple.

And the stories are really simple, but kind of sweet and intuitive. Things like Maisie goes swimming, Maisie goes in the nature walk and like, he's loved them, he's loved them for, you know, a couple of years. And I really enjoy reading them. They're just like very calming and soothing and like gentle, pleasant.

So yeah, Maisie's a good one.

[00:37:48] Adam: All right, I am unfamiliar with this series so I might have to check it out, but we will definitely link to it in the, in the show notes. I assume it's available outside of the uk.

[00:37:57] Alex: I assume so.

[00:37:58] Adam: Yeah. Yeah, I mean. Amazon is global so we can get it anywhere. So um, what is a mistake that you've made as a dad?

[00:38:07] Alex: I mean, maybe this comes in the category of accident more than mistake, but things like this happen more than I'd like. I'm very clumsy person. And When our son was about four months old, so still pretty tiny, we were trying to buy a house and we were doing a house viewing and going down these stairs in the house that had that kind of hemp carpet, like really hard, but kind of shiny and slippery.

And I was wearing ankle socks holding the baby and I just slipped and went flying. And my son flew up my arms, went all the way down the stairs, landed at the bottom of the stairs. Bumped his head and obviously, you know, immediately freaked out, drove him to A& E. He had to have a CT scan to check he was okay.

And fortunately, like no damage, completely fine, but that was absolutely horrifying. And yeah, I'm just, I'm just super clumsy. So that, that's one that sticks in the head.

[00:38:57] Adam: Wow. That's quite a story. And I'm really glad that your son is okay. You know on the clumsiness thing, I do not know if this is true or not, but I remember reading that clumsiness is somewhat genetic. And so it's a trait that will pass to your, to your kids. So I guess time will tell. I don't know if your wife is also a clumsy person, hopefully not, or else you'd have to probably put your son in like a bubble or something like that, but…

[00:39:27] Alex: Padded room.

[00:39:28] Adam: Maybe you have added room, maybe your son will not have inherited the clumsy gene from you.

[00:39:34] Alex: That's what I'm hoping that we have a lot of like joint problems and back problems in my family. And I'm really counting on my wife's like good genes to to sort of average that out.

[00:39:43] Adam: Okay. Final question for you before our lightning round which is, let's say there are folks listening to this and they want to help support the dad shift you and your goals, you and George's goals. How can dads get involved, I guess, and moms too, in advocating for better paternity leave and support for, for fathers?

And how can people who are listening to this episode be helpful to you?

[00:40:09] Alex: So if you go to Dadshift.org.uk There's a button at the top that says add your name for better paternity leave and you can sign up and say, you know I back better paternity leave and that's a really good entry point we can then start emailing you with all the various different actions we're taking so If you're in the uk We're going to be helping people go and talk to their mp about the issue and like the more people are going to do that the more likely they are to prioritize talking about it within government.

But there's also like tons of other stuff you can do. We'll be launching little petitions. You can donate to the campaign if you're able to, but really helpful. And if you're on Instagram, we, we post mostly there @dadshiftuk. So every, everything that you like or share again, helps get the message out.

So yeah, go to the website dadshift.org.uk or Instagram @dadshiftuk.

[00:40:55] Adam: Okay. We will link to all of that in the show notes to send as many people as possible there. So thank you for the work that you're doing on this. I think it's great and it's much needed. And I'm glad that this is getting some global attention too. So all right, lightning round, this is going to be a good one.

The rules of lightning round, there's one, and that is, I ask you a question and you just say the first thing that comes to mind and it's a judgment free zone. So here we go. What is the most indispensable parenting product that you have ever purchased?

[00:41:33] Alex: We've got a little bag that like clips to the back of the pram like on the handle and that is a lifesaver like we always have way too much stuff when you're out and you're like cramming it in. It's just a little like pouch thing and you can shove your keys and your phone in. It's a lifesaver.

[00:41:46] Adam: Okay. What is the most useless parenting product that you've purchased?

[00:41:51] Alex: When he wouldn't sleep, we tried one of those like sleepy head floor mattress things. Just like he never went in it. Just complete waste of money.

[00:41:59] Adam: Oh man. But the things that you will buy when your kid, it won't sleep.

[00:42:04] Alex: Anything.

[00:42:05] Adam: Really anything, middle of the night purchases. What is your signature dad superpower?

[00:42:12] Alex: My son likes to come to me if he's hurt himself. I feel like he finds that comforting big daddy cuddle. So yeah.

[00:42:19] Adam: Okay, dad cuddles are the superpower.

What is the crazier block of time in your house 6 a. m. to 8 a. m. Or 6 p. m. to 8 p. m.?

[00:42:30] Alex: 6 p. m to 8 p. m. Our son's right at the age where he doesn't want to nap anymore, but he still kind of needs to nap. So when we get to 6 p. m, he is completely knackered and very prone to freaking out. So yeah.

[00:42:43] Adam: I remember that. I remember that phase. It was a dark time. I feel for you. Okay. Swings or slides. What's the preference?

[00:42:54] Alex: It changes at the moment, slides, we had a big swings phase, but he's not into them anymore. Slides.

[00:43:00] Adam: Okay. This too shall pass

[00:43:02] Alex: Yeah.

[00:43:03] Adam: The ideal day with your son involves this one activity. What is it?

[00:43:09] Alex: So we live in Oxford in the UK and we're really lucky to live near a river and like canals. So something we do sometimes is we go for a walk along the river up to the part of the town. There's like a pizza restaurant. We get pizza at lunch. That's really nice.

[00:43:23] Adam: Oh, that sounds great. I kind of want to do that now, next time I come visit. Now, I'm sure at age three, your son doesn't have a full adult level vocabulary, but he probably says words and sentences. And so if your son had to describe you in one word, what would it be?

[00:43:41] Alex: Well, not always, but dragon. Sometimes we have like a game where I'm dragon and I've run off to, he says, chase me, dragon, chase me, dragon. So dragon.

[00:43:50] Adam: That's awesome. What is the most frustrating thing that has ever happened to you as a dad?

[00:43:56] Alex: This is mostly passing now, but there was a phase that I think a lot of kids go through where he would want two impossible things to be true at once. So like we'd be in the bath and he'd have the bar for finishing have his bath toy and he would both want to take the toy to bed, but also for the toy to stay in the bath. And frustration of not be able to make both these things happen. Would just escalate and escalate and escalate until he was completely distraught and it's like there's nothing you there's nothing you can do about it because you you physically can't make both those things true.

[00:44:29] Adam: That is amazing. It just captures the, like, two and three year old mind so well. You don't have very many of these to choose from, but what is your favorite age been so far for your son?

[00:44:41] Alex: My experience has been every new age feels like the best one, which is really nice. Like I sometimes stop and think like, Oh, I, I loved my son so much when he was six months old, but like that person is gone. And like, if you get too hung up with that, it could be really sad, but we're still like, you know, every new phase, every new thing he does is amazing and feels like a joy.

So we're not at that stage. I'm like, Oh, he was really cute back then, you know, yeah. He gets better with age.

[00:45:08] Adam: Awesome. Like a fine wine. What is your favorite kids movie?

[00:45:13] Alex: Oh, I, I don't think we've watched any movies with him yet, but he loves, we have these programs over here that are called number blocks and alpha blocks and color blocks. And they basically, apparently they use them in schools, but they teach kids about numbers and letters and colors. And from watching these programs, he can now count to a hundred and like, I've never taught him to count.

He's just learned this on number blocks and he knows all his letters and he knows that if you mix yellow and green it makes lime. So like these are magical programs that just teach kids these amazing skills.

[00:45:46] Adam: Okay. All right. What is the fastest way to get your son out of bed in the morning?

[00:45:52] Alex: Oh porridge. He has porridge every morning. I often get woken up by him like screaming porridge in my face.

[00:45:59] Adam: Very food motivated.

[00:46:01] Alex: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So some stagger out of bed and make his porridge.

Alex: Yeah, exactly, exactly so, sort of stagger out of bed and go and make his porridge.

[00:46:06] Adam: Okay. What is the worst experience that you have ever had assembling a children's toy or a piece of furniture?

[00:46:15] Alex: Oh we assembled him a kitchen, like a kind of toy kitchen. And that was surprisingly challenging for what should be a kid's toy, but it was like proper kind of Scandinavian flat pack. So that was challenging. Not gonna lie.

[00:46:29] Adam: I think I may have purchased that exact same kitchen and had the exact same experience as you. I sat down one evening that my kids are older now, but when they were younger, I sat down and I was like, Oh, I'll just build this. And it was like multiple hours across multiple evenings to get this thing done.

And that was amazing. And it. It was not billed as such, like, it was not proposed to me that this would take quite that long, but yeah, full flat pack, hundreds of pieces, miniature screws, like…

[00:46:59] Alex: Nothing lines up.

[00:47:00] Adam: No, exactly. Wow. I can definitely relate to that experience.

[00:47:04] Alex: Getting some PTSD.

[00:47:06] Adam: Yeah, just to just a touch. How long can a piece of food sit on the floor in your house and you will still eat it?

[00:47:13] Alex: We're kind of hygiene freaks around this stuff. So it's like, it's a zero. If it hits the floor, it's gone.

[00:47:17] Adam: That's it. That's it. Is there a nostalgic movie that you will force your son to watch when he gets older?

[00:47:25] Alex: Actually, you know, we've already done it, but your question about favorite movies has reminded me there's a film called The Snowman. I don't know if it's a thing in the U S it's like a kind of UK institution. It's sort of came out in the eighties. It's a cartoon. It's like half an hour long for some reason, David Bowie introduces it and then like never is never seen again in the film. But it's this kid who wakes up one day, he makes a snowman. Um, Then the snowman comes to life and takes him on this journey. And the famous bit is there's a flying over the world and there's this choir boy singing a song called Walking In the Air, which was like, it's very beautiful.

And it's a real, like, yeah, it's a real childhood classic for people of my generation. We got into watch it over Christmas and he sat there for half an hour and watched it in the end. He said, “that wasn't very interesting.” So that was the, that was the verdict.

[00:48:13] Adam: I love that. Oh, that's so funny. Okay, The Snowman. We'll, see if we can find this. How do you keep your son occupied on a long drive?

[00:48:23] Alex: Good question. We used to let him sleep, but now that kind of destroys bedtime. So I'm not gonna lie, it's often some cartoons on the phone. I wish we had something else, but that's what works.

[00:48:34] Adam: Hey, no judgment here, remember? Judgment free zone. Okay, last question for you. I would be remiss if I didn't ask this. How do you feel about Peppa Pig in your household?

[00:48:45] Alex: Ah, yeah. Controversial. We are not massive fans of Peppa Pig. I'm not going to lie. I think she's really popular here, but we've never quite, we've never quite connected with Peppa, let’s put it that way.

[00:48:58] Adam: Got it. I feel like this is very popular in the United States because it's sort of a novelty. It's like, oh, look at this, this person, pig that speaks in a British accent, but there it's just like, this is a normal pig that talks.

[00:49:11] Alex: All pigs talk, talk in British accents here. Yeah, exactly.

[00:49:14] Adam: Exactly. Okay. Well, Alex. Thank you so much for joining me on Startup Dad today.

I am so impressed by what you're doing in the UK and the push for better paternity leave and to be more supportive partner as a, as a dad. So thanks for taking the time to join me. This was, this was a fantastic conversation.

[00:49:36] Alex: Yeah. My pleasure. I enjoyed it.

[00:49:37] Adam: And I wish you and George all the best with the push for better paternity leave in the UK.

[00:49:44] Alex: Thank you.

[00:49:46] Adam: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Alex Lloyd Hunter. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, share, and leave me a review on Apple or Spotify.

It'll help other people find this podcast. Startup Dad is a Fishman AF production with editing support from Tommy Harron. If you're a startup founder, leader, or just want to get better at your job in tech as a growth practitioner, check product manager or executive. You can join a growing community of over 11,000 subscribers and stay up to date on my thoughts on growth and product by subscribing to the Fishman AF newsletter at www.fishmanafnewsletter.com. Thanks for listening and see you next week.