Interviews Available: Father’s Day

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WILL GLENNON
Glennon is author of Fathering: Strengthening Connection with Your Children No Matter Where They Are, for which he interviewed 180 fathers, aged 15 to 87, almost all of whom cried during their interviews. He said today: “Fathers need to get deeply engaged in the upbringing of their children. Fathers don’t want to be isolated, children don’t want them to be disconnected and mothers don’t want them to be absent — physically or emotionally. But we have patterns of how we raise our children which keep fathers distant, cost them emotionally, cause pain in their relationships, making boys more violent and girls accepting of misogyny.”

JOE KELLY
Executive director of Dads and Daughters, Kelly said today: “Fathers are key in their children’s lives — we know this already. But fathers have a unique influence (for the bad or the good) in a girl’s life. A dad is in a powerful position to help his daughter resist the media and cultural pressure to worry exclusively about appearance and sex. Plus, dads are in powerful positions to make our communities and world better for girls, working for greater opportunities for girls which helps to also bring about greater opportunities for sons. This Father’s Day, we should give our kids the gift of talking with them about media messages for girls and boys. Kids are bombarded with ads and shows and products and attitudes that tell them things like: ‘How a girl looks is more important than who she is. Inner beauty only goes so far.’ And, ‘Boys are tough and show no feelings. They are only interested in titillation and violence.’ These messages are manipulative, corrosive — and blatantly false. We need to help our kids understand this — and, as responsible fathers, we need to stand up and protest these messages, too.”
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DAVID SADKER
Professor of education at American University and author of Failing at Fairness, which documents gender bias in schools, Sadker said today: “Father’s Day should be an important marker, reminding fathers that they are educational advocates for their children. Fathers should work with schools to make sure that their children are not shortchanged by gender bias. Their daughters are likely to be given less attention in the classroom, ask fewer questions and be praised less; girls quickly learn that being silent and conforming results in higher report card grades, but results in a loss of initiative. Their sons in school too often get disciplined out of proportion to their behavior and too often learn to demean girls. Fathers should provide a caring bridge to their sons, teaching them to respect girls and women. Fathers should help their daughters to develop a public voice and their sons to develop a public ear.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167


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