Advice for Working Dads

by Harvard Business Review, Daisy Dowling, Bruce Feiler

You can have a successful career and be the dad you want to be. Finally, we've moved past the days when providing for your family meant taking a backseat role in your children's lives. Still, many of us aren't finding the support and flexibility we need, and the time-management challenge of performing at work while being a present dad at home can feel impossible. Advice for Working Dads will help you balance and integrate your career and fatherhood, navigate always-on work cultures, and find success and fulfillment in one of the toughest—and most important—jobs you’ll ever take on. You'll learn

Genres: Nonfiction, Parenting

256 pages, Paperback

Published June 8, 2021

Reviews

[Bill Nielsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helpful. But like super repetitive. Basically read the first two articles and you’re 80%+ on your way. Love that there are advocates for a more balanced approach to fatherhood and careers.

[Andrew Breza · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've had several conversations with my wife like this:
"I just talked to my coworker Joe. He's great."
"Did you send him a picture of our daughter?"
"Why the heck would I send a coworker a picture of our daughter? I'm at work."
"People like to know you're human."

I'm lucky to have a job that supports my needs as a father. I took an extended paternity leave in 2020 when Scarlett was born and was promoted a few months after my return. My boss never texts or calls during dinner/bath/bed time. Yet I still fall into the trap of pretending I'm not a parent when I'm at work. I'm slowly working on softening the division between those two worlds. It's a tough balance.

I was pleasantly surprised to find Advice for Working Dads.

I have a love/hate relationship with Harvard Business Review books and the magazine. I like them because they tackle difficult topics with a practical perspective. I dislike the glib attitude and often questionable statistics. This book is an excellent example of all of the above. I give it 5/5 stars for being willing to discuss a topic, working while fathering, that is all too often neglected. The actual content gets 3 stars; the advice is either too high-level to be useful or specific but conflicting with another chapter written by a different author (one chapter suggests conducting quarterly planning meetings with your children and another suggests living one day at a time). I'll average it out to 4/5.

[Vaidas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad. But it is for a person who has yet to welcome his first child or maybe just did.
If you already went through the suffering of finding answers yourself - this won't be much of a help.
I think this boils down to (for me anyway):
1. Decide on your priorities (family/work/self-time) and act accordingly;
2. Find a community of fathers to share the burdens.

If you are not the community type, the daily dad emails are very helpful: https://dailydad.com/

This book is a collection of articles from HBR, so it reads a bit too business-like for my taste, but still, the content for someone who is yet to experience the pain of choosing between yourself, your career, and your family, is worth the time.

[Dave Irwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this advise is all very good but some won't be applicable to everyone, which is fine. You can certainly go back and reread the specific chapters that are applicable to your own circumstances. There is a lot of lessons included in the book and specific methodologies for meeting the challenges that these lessons present. Useful for those of us who are about to welcome a new addition to our home.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the advice presented on the book is useful, its clearly focused towards workaholic parents, or people working in the USA, which have a very much different approach on the work-life balance than most european countries.

[Robert Roy · Rating 3 out of 5]

No m'ha semblat res de l'altre món, li dono 3* perquè té el mèrit de ser dels pocs llibres que tracten el tema i algunes parts m'han semblat interessants.