Juggling family life with work isnt only an issue that affects women dads suffer too.
Increasingly, many fathers are finding the pressures and time commitment of their jobs is affecting the quality time they crave with their children and families, not forgetting the children’s desires to see their Dads more too.
So we were really pleased to see a new initiative that’s been started by one of the UK’s fastest growing online retailers, notonthehighstreet.com. They have teamed up with Olympic gold meadalist James Cracknell and Michelin starred chef Jason Atheron to launch a 'Dadpreneur Movement' to help highlight the issues and challenges facing the modern working father.
It’s all about encouraging dads to come up with ideas for new businesses that they can run themselves and that might help them escape the 9-5 rat race and help them achieve more of a work life balance. Working fathers themselves, Cracknell and Atherton will form part of the judging panel to find the best idea.
James Cracknell, said: “The nation’s fathers are in real danger of missing out on building those special memory moments. Balancing a busy career with a family can put strains on time and relationships at home and as such fathers in the UK missing out on important stages in their children’s lives due to working pressures. As a father, I appreciate how challenging it can be to ensure you have quality time with your kids especially when with varied working hours often mean pitching up at home post bedtime.
“The ‘Dadpreneur Movement’ will underline the problems that fathers face with work and family expectations weighing heavily on their everyday lives and how they cope with these challenges.”
The smart initiative is the brainchild ofnotonthehighstreet.com Founder and President, Holly Tucker, who said: “We are keen to champion fathers and the importance of the role that they play at home. Dads are often forgotten and whilst the issue of mums struggling to ‘have it all’ is well known we felt that the issue of dads and their work life balance had been neglected. "
A recent survey of over 1000 UK dads of children aged 16 and under, revealed that six out of every ten dads are only spending quality time with their children at the weekends, with ‘long working hours’ and being ‘too knackered’ averting them from valuable family time. A further 62% of dads have missed a parents’ evening and over half have missed out on big milestones in their children’s lives such as first steps, first words and even school awards ceremonies.
Psychotherapist, Phil Hodson who will also be on the panel of working dads, said: “Numerous studies have shown the benefits of play for children. A dad spending time with his children and participating in creative play is invaluable to a child’s development - not only does it have huge emotional benefits, it can help with cognitive development, social development and physical development.”
Whether its creative play, cooking tea or helping with homework, there is no argument form us that having dads around more at home is only a very good thing.
