026: Tiffany & Brian

Written By Tiffany Yu

Tiffany & Brian | Fatherhood, Gender Equity & Redefining Masculinity ft. Brian Anderson, Fathering Together

Listen on: Apple // Spotify // Google // YouTube

In this episode, we’re joined by Brian Anderson, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Fathering Together, to discuss redefining masculinity through fatherhood and what dads can do for gender equity.

We discussed:

  • Fathering Together (FT)’s origin story

  • Brian’s own models of fatherhood

  • Expanding Fathering Together

  • Why equity matters for FT

  • Turning dads into advocates

  • Building a community on vulnerability

  • What role dads can play in gender equity

  • What’s wrong with patriarchy

  • Moving from hobby groups to equity groups

  • Why more men around involved in this work

  • Other resources

  • Parenting as a skill

Show notes:

About Brian Anderson

Brian Anderson is the father of 2 spirited daughters that keep him inspired and exhausted. He started Fathering Together as a way to better connect and learn from his fellow dads. During the work day, you can find him working at IFYC as a Student Leadership Manager where he trains undergraduate students to build bridges across lines of religious difference.

Follow Brian/Fathering Together

Transcript

Tiffany Yu: Hi, everyone. You're listening to this episode of Tiffany & Yu, the podcast. I'm your host, Tiffany Yu. Tiffany & Yu is a podcast where I'm chatting with friends who are using their voices and platforms to cultivate creativity, compassion, and change. Today I have with me, Brian Anderson, and he is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Fathering Together. Hi, Brian. 

Brian Anderson: Hi, thanks for having me. 

Tiffany Yu: Part of the reason why I ended season one of this podcast is how Brian and I met. So Brian and I met about six or seven months ago, because we were both part of Facebook's Community Accelerator. How was your experience in the accelerator? 

Brian Anderson: Accelerating. We knew sort of what we were getting into with the material, but once you get going and once you start having phone calls and building that network, all of a sudden we were done. And I looked back on the fall and wonder how we all survived because there's just so much going on, but we're here. We did. 

Tiffany Yu: We did survive. I have the saying now when people ask me about the accelerator and I say, it's very difficult to try and accelerate during a pandemic. So Fathering Together, it was 125,000 members. Extremely large Facebook community. Diversability for context has like 3000 members. I would love to hear your origin story of why it became so important for you to create a community of dads.

Brian Anderson: I think for me, it was didn't even really make an impact until my daughter was born and I became a dad. And even the months that we were preparing, I was building the crib and my wife and I were planning and planning. She had referenced all these moms groups that her friends were sending her to and nothing like that was happening. I would have some conversations here and there at work, but there wasn't a dad community that people were saying, Oh, you got to join this and join that. I definitely struggled with some depression and some isolation and just feelings of like, not being good enough because I didn't read the right books or  my daughter was doing things that I hadn't prepared for. And so on my own, I kind of built a network of community dads in my hometown here and Chris and I had known of each other through higher education, but as I really got going with fatherhood, I realized there's a lack of community and dads are lacking coping skills. And so when Chris created this online space just called Dads with Daughters and invited me, I knew, I was like, yes, sign me up. This is great. I've got a local group, but I'd love to connect nationally. And then it just started growing and growing. And then Facebook said, Hey, you've got a great group. Can we use you as a model in our group campaign, the More Together campaign that happened in 2019? And that's where we really saw numbers just explode. And again, all the dads were joining to boast and brag about their kids, but there was an underlying current of anxiety, depression, isolation, and the questions were not brain science. They're just like, Hey, my kid's doing this, what do I do? And so it was very clear to me that there was a need that could be met here. And so how could we organize and help dads get that baseline of education and confidence in their ability to be a father? 

Tiffany Yu: Thank you for sharing that story. What were some of the messages that you learned? About what the typical dad looked like that you quickly had to unlearn? Part of it is just this idea that you have to figure everything out and then you created this community and realized there were over a hundred thousand other people who were attracted to that.

Brian Anderson: I will say I was very blessed. I had a grandfather that was not the greatest of dads. And so my dad was very great. He wanted to not be his father. And he was very vocal with me, especially in my teen years of like, I'm doing this because X, Y, and Z. And I was like, Oh, okay. I get it. It's annoying that you asked me all these things. It's annoying that you wanted me to be so emotionally developed, but now looking back, I'm like, Oh, my dad was awesome. In some senses though, a lot of what I picked up was from the media and other dads when I would have play dates at friend's houses. I'm like, why is your dad so standoffish, why isn't he playing with us? Or just this kind of jarring sensation that my dad was very present in my home. And so for me, I think it was not falling back on the societal tropes and more messages of masculinity than fatherhood explicitly, like men have to know everything. We have to be lone wolves that can go out and solve crimes and know how to find places and not ask for questions or not ask for directions. And I fall back into that all the time. And as great as I want to paint myself, I'll be vulnerable and say, I'm not the perfect dad. Yeah, surprise, surprise. And there's constantly moments where I'm like, Oh, I'm slipping back. I'm making assumptions or I'm falling into a gender dynamic that I don't want to illustrate for my children. And so again, it goes to that this dads need to know it all, but also I think the internal struggle of, Oh, I'm not the breadwinner or, I need to be the breadwinner and that's all I have to be. And we know that that's wrong and more and more dads believe in that. Pre COVID, there was a growing number of stay at home dads that chose for themselves, but also to amplify that message of dads can be caregivers. We can be present and emotionally available to our children. And to demonstrate that and to give an alternative example, so to speak for other boys and men to look to and say, Oh right, I don't have to do just what the TV shows say or the movies or what my dad and his generation did. There's another route to my identity here.

Tiffany Yu: I love what you said about how your dad modeled for you how important of a role and influence he played in how you want it to be a father as well. And as you know, Brian, so I lost my dad when I was nine, but I still have a relationship with him. And I think that it would be remiss if we just didn't acknowledge that our parents were very heavily influential figures in terms of us becoming who we were. And then, because you were in this accelerator, it really got me thinking about, Oh, wow. What would the world have looked like if maybe he had had a group like Fathering Together? Again, I'm coming back to the origins of this group. It started as Dads with Daughters and then it expanded to Fathering Together. Can you talk about what exactly Fathering Together does? 

Brian Anderson: So yes, it began as Dads with Daughters. And that is the group that has 125,000. We have 12 other groups. And just this morning, we're in conversations to launch an Indonesian dad group as well. And so, as the group grew, definitely a gender dynamic was involved in almost every conversation because that unique bond between dad and daughter. And I've done a lot of anti gender-based violence work with men. My research in graduate school was in men against violence programs. And so I'm aware of a lot of things in the back of my head, as I'm engaging with dads and conversations. And one of our primary rules that would constantly be broken were these memes of a dad holding a gun, is saying, this is how I greet the door when my daughter brings a boyfriend home. And we have made a firm stance to say, we do not condone violence at all. There are other ways to empower your children to not bring a guy or a girl home that you don't want them to be dating. And so that was like a huge tension point in the early days. As we started talking more in depth, I realized, I don't want us to be a nonprofit that only works with dads who have daughters, because we're cutting off all the dads who have young men that need to also be educated about gender equity and a host of other issues. And so, the group that I was forming here in Evanston, I was calling Fathering Together as a storytelling group. And I put that away as the Dads with Daughters grew. And I brought it back to the co-founder Chris Lewis to say, what if we name ourselves more holistically so that anyone who identifies as a father can enter into this space and into conversation with us. And so that really then changing the conversation to not just being dads that have daughters on Facebook, but opening dads with sons, dads who are going through recovery, dads who have any other number of issues, but having this guiding principle that we are servant leaders for our families. We are not here to lead and be bullies. And just say, this is the way it goes. But instead shifting the conversation to how do we serve our families? How do we serve our partners, our children, the larger community, our neighbors, and really giving that the guiding principle, open doors to equity conversations, opening doors to accessibility conversations, and then using that to get dads to work internally on the biases and other prejudices that we all carry with us. It's an open the idea of external action and moving forward  as a champion for your children. 

Tiffany Yu: I want to put a pin on it. We're just going to take a quick break here. And when we come back, we will continue chatting with Brian Anderson, who is the Executive Director of Fathering Together.

And we are back from the break. I have with me Brian Anderson, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Fathering Together. And before the break, we were talking about how he wanted to use Fathering Together as a vehicle for equity conversations. And one of the things that I was really impressed by was the fact that the group did start as Dads with Daughters. And what I mean by that is it started with, here are dads who are raising young women. And in a way you almost modeled culturally saying, Hey, we, as dads can be better models for our daughters and promote this equity conversation. And then as you open it up to Fathering Together, you're still instilling that value in there. So you said, since 2016, the me too movement political figures and language, it's time for dads to step up and advocate for their children and for their community. Do you want to elaborate on that of why this conversation is so important now?

Brian Anderson: Before the break is what I was saying. We need to serve, we need to be listening. We need to be in a place that, we understand the people that matter most to us. And if we go into our children's lives and dictate every ounce of the way what they're going to do, they're either going to rebel terribly like my sister did, even though, I mean, we all have our rebellious phase, my sister rebelled like crazy. I had my own, I was a latent rebellion, or we just become miniature versions of our parents and for better, for worse. We have a goal of every Father's Day to put out an anthology of stories from our members. And, last year for the conclusion, I wrote that there's no one fatherhood manual. There's thousands of them, but the most important manual that you have is the one you co-write with your children. Because I have a four and seven year old and they're very different. And I can't do the same strategies with both of them, but if I don't take the time to listen and understand, and really empathize, get down on their level and connect, then they're going to be leaderless. I'm just going to be saying it's my way or the highway, end of story. Now there are moments where I have to be that way, kids need structure. Kids need to know what the bounds of good and wrong and all those good things are. But those deeper level conversations, I mean, my kids pick up everything. And my seven year old really struggled this summer around George Floyd and her best friend is a black boy down the street. And she's like, what's going to happen with him? If I don't listen to her cries and read deeper into her emotional development, then what am I doing being a dad? And to be fair, I've not always prepared for each stage. Every stage I'm looking to my mentors and my friends. Chris, my co-founder, his girls are in high school. So a lot of times I'm like, okay, Chris, this is happening. What do I need to do? But it comes with that feeling of listening and I think that's in a broader context of what I meant in that statement of the me too movement and political figures is, is there's a push back. Every time there's advances, there's a group that says no, what we had was okay, it's good enough. And I am someone who never thinks good enough is the right answer. There's always a better way to be creatively thinking about a better way to live and a better way to move through this world. And so with Fathering Together, the challenge is how do we message a calling into the conversations and not a calling out and still putting up the boundaries of what's acceptable in our group, but creating invitations to that space.

Tiffany Yu: I want to touch on something that you said around just the power of listening, lending an empathetic ear. I remember you mentioning about how Fathering Together really wanted to adapt to the times. So you launched a couple of groups. I think one was called Dads for Racial Equity. Can you talk to me about the shifts that have happened over the past six months?

Brian Anderson: So the first groups that we expanded to are very hobby based. We had dads asking about fantasy football leagues and stuff that dads bond over, which is great, but it was taking the conversation away from our purpose. So we just started creating these hobby groups. And then you had dads struggling with addictions and recovery. And so we started one that was more focused on helping get those guys to services. And then with the accelerator, we really wanted to say, okay, if we're thinking about all the needs of fathers, there's the baseline of like Maslow's hierarchy. Let's get them some basic skills to cope and communicate. And once they've got those down, what's next, how can we turn them into advocates? And so we started a racial equity group and a gender equity group. We have plans for more, but we figured we'd start with two just to test the waters. And we're not coming in as experts. We're bringing folks in, we're bringing in conversation starters, but it's really a space for someone who might be a full trainer in gender equity work to step in and find a community of friends, but also someone who's just starting that journey and to really say, Hey, I'm also welcome here. Here's some resources I can learn, but now I'm going to see 10 years from now who I could be or even 10 months. And so really giving guys a chance to decompress and deconstruct stuff that's going on internally. So then as I said earlier, then they can start to say, Oh, I'm recognizing that my daughter is being treated differently at the school or my daughter's talking to me about these racial dynamics at her school. Here's how I can address that, or my son, I should say. And really help hone their development in their identity, but also do that internal work as a father. Both groups are starting small, but are mighty. And actually in the month of March, we're going to be launching a five-part series with quite a few thought leaders across the country around gender dynamics. And how do we talk to our kids when they're little, when they're teenagers, how do we role model that home life balance as well as the work-life balance? And more. The little nuggets that you see and you saw during the accelerator, really starting to germinate into positive action.

Tiffany Yu: It sounds like, again, with this theme of really listening, it's meeting dads, where they are wherever they are in their journey. I'm curious how you're able to maintain a safe space within this community that doesn't enable for some of this toxic masculinity to come in, like how do you model that behavior? 

Brian Anderson: Well, it does. We definitely have had to block people both because of their actions and trolling of other members or other things that come up. But I think the biggest thing is the second rule of our group is listen to understand. And anytime someone posts something that's really vulnerable, we always keep an eye on that. We have a great volunteer team of like 20 some guys that have been in involved with the group for years and they know like, okay, this is a post to watch and. We try to always, if we take a comment down or have to mute someone because of their behavior, really explain this is why. And some people are great about it. Some people really actually fall more in love with our group and stick around. And then there's those that are just kind of like, well, this isn't for me, this isn't my kind of masculinity. Summer of 2019, we had two different groups on Facebook form in response to our group because we were being too PC, being too polite. And some of our moderators went into those groups and were like, it's toxic. It's not healthy. Everything's sarcasm and making fun of one another. I hated it. And I think for me and the rest of the leadership team, you can't maintain safe space through sarcasm. Every once in a while it's nice, like gentle ribbing. It's fun to kind of tease a bit, but when you have a guy that's really struggling with depression or anxiety, or just not connecting with their kid, chances are you're going to be that person someday because everybody goes through distancing in their relationship with their children. But if you reach out and you know that there's going to be a healthy response, then that next person's going to feel that way too. And it's going to endear you to each other that much more. And I'm sure you see this too, in your groups where they kind of self police themselves. And I hate to use that term, maybe self-monitor, where I've seen posts start to get debated and members will step in and say like, Hey, that's not allowed here. Or, Hey, this isn't the space for that. And that's when I knew we were really onto something when the values that I was trying to instill early on really started to work. And one other way that I still try to maintain relationships is every Sunday I do a short reflection, four to five minutes based on things I see in the news or in the group. And I started bringing my daughter in, my seven year old and this past week, I talked about how I had a meltdown because I just was not having a good weekend, stressed about things. And she talks about how that was a little scary. And then she had a meltdown in response, and we talked about how that, that being vulnerable together makes a stronger bond. It's one of the most popular posts I've ever had because so many dads are responding with, oh, I've been there. Thank you for showing, modeling that vulnerability. I get why we can be vulnerable here now. And so if I'm not willing to go there, then who else will? 

Tiffany Yu: That's a beautiful, thanks for sharing. So I do want to come back to this gender equity conversation. I'm a little older than your daughters and  I'm seeing in the gender equity movement, a lot of conversation around like smash the patriarchy. I'm curious what your thoughts are in terms of where men and specifically dads play a role in this movement.

Brian Anderson: It's a challenging conversation to have because the work we're doing is very focused on fathers in the service of their family. And it's that in the service of the family piece that is critical because we can't end patriarchy without dads being a part of the conversation. White supremacy is not going to end by just having people of color to talk about how to end it. You need to be inviting people in it. And so for us, it's having allies in the field, women, strong women, people who are non binary, other identities, stepping into the space to relate their experience. And my hope is down the road also to get kids to start speaking and having letters to dads to speak back to, Hey, this is what happens when you act this way or act that way, because if there aren't-- as imaginative as, and creative, as people can be, it's so much easier when you have healthy examples or case studies if you want to think more research oriented. If there's a case study to point you to say, look at what happened here and how people changed. We can take that to our dads to say, look, there's an alternative message here. We don't have to uphold these patriarchal structures. We don't have to always be in charge. We need to learn to let go a little bit. We need to be able to be in conversation because when we do life gets so much richer. There's so much more to see and experience when you let your kids lead some days. And if we're not communicating that to our dads, then we're really stuck. And some of the strategies that come with that are partnering with organizations. There's a great organization out there that I'll give a shout out to Third Path Institute. Jessica DeGroot is the Founder and Executive Director there. And the third path being what's that line between work and home, and how are you finding that balance between all of your identities. And especially now in this pandemic, we have so many dads stepping up and sharing stories of being at home. It's so great. I'm reconnecting with my kids in ways I never imagined because I was traveling for work. And so leaning into those experiences and saying, okay, look how much fun that was just being a dad. Just being present to your child's needs. If that's enough for you, awesome. If it's not enough, that's okay, too. But think about what your wife might be going through, your partner might be going through, when you don't allow that option to take place and getting some creative imaginations churning based on experiences that other dads have gone through, or they themselves have had a glimmer of. 

Tiffany Yu: Both you and I mentioned patriarchy and I think definitions are important. And so I'm curious, how do you define the patriarchy and what's harmful about it? 

Brian Anderson: For me, patriarchy is a system that is male centric and male dominated. And I will say, being a student of history and things, patriarchy as a system of familial lines, inherently, there's nothing wrong with saying men should have a place in society and if this is a way that we track society, okay. The problem comes when that's the only way. And there's only one sided and we build all of this strength around one person. And if that person has a bad day. If that person decides actually, you know what? I don't identify as a male. I'm not cisgender or, you know what I'm supposed to be this engineer. And I actually want to go into the arts. There's a dynamic then that plays harmful on men as well. And I say engineer because in high school, almost every one of my male relatives on my mom's side of my family is some sort of engineer. And growing up, I'm okay at math. But I'm an artist at heart. I'm a community organizer. I love psychology. And I remember having a conversation with my parents saying, that I have a different path I see for my life. And they're like, we see it too. And that's okay. But if I was taught by my dad, Nope, you're going to be a carpenter like me, or you have to do these things. Then that's a patriarchal system that is keeping you back, just as much as it's keeping my sister who's actually the engineer in our family. She builds home. I'm never going to build a home without a lot of help from her.  So to have parents that say, you can follow your path, you have a story that is your own to create is a way to start to taking back pieces of the patriarchy and sharing that power and sharing the story of who we are as a community and a system and a society.

Tiffany Yu: As one of the leaders of this community, I'm curious what the turning point for you was in terms of creating these subgroups around gender equity, racial equity, hopefully other forms of equity. 

Brian Anderson: Part of it was just getting a critical mass of guys in the group, dads in the group that were interested in it as well. About twice a year, we always do a more formal surveying of the group, but once a week we're putting up host of some kind that's got to poll asking their opinion on something. And, about a year ago we did a pretty big survey saying, all right, our group is getting huge. What do you want to see from the group? And, one of the questions was around subgroups and naming. We've got all these hobbies, but what else? And since I made the survey, I wanted to put my own kind of bias into it. I'll be straight up. This was not scientific by any means. And I was like, do we want identity groups? And we've had a lot of dads who are gay join the group. Would it be helpful to have an LGBTQ focus? And we got a lot of responses came back. It'd be great to have a racial conversation here. We need to have a gender conversation. And so as I started to building a network of advocates in my professional circle, but then also dads in the group that were vocalizing things, we saw that the timing was the right time. And finding some dads in the group to lead the conversation so it wasn't just me again saying, all right, we're going to take the lead here, but spreading that leadership around and finding some dads also with curriculum design, knowledge and history and education to weave a context beyond just, Hey, let's talk, but having a jumping off point was really critical as well.

Tiffany Yu: That's so powerful because it can be so easy to not focus on the identities we don't have. I mean, that's inherent in the definition of privilege. Why don't men slash dads get involved in this sort of work?

Brian Anderson: I think part of it is, is what you alluded to in the beginning is we're not challenged to think about these things. I really didn't start thinking about my masculinity until college when I joined a fraternity and realized that most of my friends growing up in my immediate family group were girls. I have a sister, all of our close family friends had daughters. And so, I had some friends in high school, but I got to college and I was like, well, I don't have a lot of trusted, close guy friends. How do I learn about that? And so I thought, well, maybe I'll join a fraternity and seeing both the good and bad side of fraternity and brotherhood was really like earth shattering to me in some ways. And I was like really starting to question gender and dynamics and identities, that piece. But then the other piece was after college going into a service here with the Jesuit volunteer Corps, really starting to uncover the inequities and the systemic injustices that are just so ingrained because I was working in Anchorage, Alaska, where the primary client base that I was working with was native Alaskans and the stories that they would come to me and share with me was just so heartbreaking at times. And I saw that a lot of it was just a misalignment of language and misunderstanding of values within a culture. And I just saw like, okay, how do I do this work for myself? And now that I'm a dad, how do I weave that into how I raise my children? And as those questions kept coming back to me, I was like, I can't be the only dad. And so how do we invite deep conversation with potentially innocuous questions. And flipping the script around colors that we allow our kids to have and play with, posting like, Hey, my daughter loves playing with Legos. I don't have a problem with that. And seeing the kind of responses that we get. And so, again, grounding it in real lived experiences that we can then trigger a critical question to. I don't know naw at the back of their minds a little bit around, Oh, maybe I should think more about my wife's experience and her relationship.

Tiffany Yu: For people who are not dads or maybe as you've discovered through your work, are there resources and organizations that you can vouch for and celebrate and amplify on learning more about gender equity and how to be a better ally?

Brian Anderson: Promundo is an international men's organization. They do phenomenal work and research, based out of DC, but they have branches all over the country. Men Can Stop Rape is a great group. They do a lot of training and helping boys and men understand their role in rape culture. The Third Path that I mentioned earlier, and then, now that you put me on the spot, it's alluding me. Oh, A Call to Men, Tony Porter's work and Ted Bunch over at A Call to Men are just so phenomenal and really a lot of the talking points I shared have been disseminated from them for years now around how do we call them out, but then invite them into deep conversation. 

Tiffany Yu: I just want to echo one of the themes that I think you really instilled within your group, which is instead of jumping to judgment, which we all have, use that as an opportunity to get curious. What's the best part and the hardest part of being a nonprofit co-founder? 

Brian Anderson: Fundraising. Let's just be honest fundraising. And also, making sure that you stay in your mission. It's so easy to say yes to things and start to creep away from that core of no, we are here ultimately to help dads understand equity and not all these other things. All these other things are great as a Facebook group, but ultimately, the bigger work is our mission. So focus on that. 

Tiffany Yu: And what's the best part? 

Brian Anderson: I think for me, it's the interactions with people. When we were first getting started and I was recruiting leaders, like I would meet so many fascinating dads that I would have nothing in common with. There's this guy I'll just call him John. He's out in Colorado. And, ex-con, lots of issues in his past that he's working to redeem himself on. But when he and I would start talking about our daughters, he would become my best friend. He sent me his profile to be friends with him. And I was like, ah, I don't know if I can be friends with you, but I love you, man. Like, this is so great. And I think that's the piece that I love in this work is no matter how different we are, our shared love of our children can really bridge a lot of those differences. 

Tiffany Yu: And what are you grateful for today? 

Brian Anderson: I'm just grateful that it's a Friday and my kids and I have a ritual of making really creative pancakes. So I'm looking forward to just my evening with my daughters. 

Tiffany Yu: And so if people want to support Fathering Together, either make a donation, either join the group, what's the best way to do that and to support your work? 

Brian Anderson: Right on our homepage FatheringTogether.org, we've got a donate button. You can go there. We're most active on Facebook and, in March we'll be posting all of our panels and conversations on our page there and on LinkedIn are kind of more professional dad.

Tiffany Yu: Brian and I were joking before we started recording about how I send out a pre guest checklist and I was like, have some nuggets. Was there anything on your list of nuggets that you didn't get to share? Any last words you want to share with our listener? 

Brian Anderson: Just to reiterate that this is really hard work for these soft skills that we talk about as soft skills. And yet it's so gratifying when you have those breakthrough moments. When you're hitting your head against the wall, talking to a dad, send us a message over at Fathering Together, we'll try to help you navigate some ways to engage your father or if you are a dad and you're butting heads with your kids, the same is true there. We'll get you some mentors to help you navigate that conversation.

Tiffany Yu: Someone said something and I feel like it really resonates with your work, which is, being a dad is not only an identity, but it's also a skillset. 

Brian Anderson: Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, there's a guy here that runs an afterschool program here in Chicago for student athletes that you really want to go into the big leagues. And we were talking and he's like, you know, I bring all these experts in to help them with their skills for schoolwork, because they're not all going to go into the major leagues. We also bring in professionals to talk to them about what it is takes. He's like, but you know, we don't talk about parent skills and getting parent experts in. And he's like, we're definitely going to bring you in to talk to our young men about fatherhood, but again, it goes to the larger problems so to speak of, we don't value the work that men and women do as parents in the home. We don't. Well, you can monetize it. There's not an equivalent in energy GP or whatnot. And I think there's a growing movement. I'm a part of a number of conversations where let's just say more and more women, but also some men are stepping up to say like, no, the freedom to have a job while, my wife or my partner, or my husband stays home to watch our kids is a privilege and we can't discredit the work that is done at home, whether it's skill-based or it's just playing a game of cards. I'm most likely going to have to play monopoly as soon as we're off this call and that's fine, but there's so much education that goes into playing monopoly. There's math, there's business  and the conversations just bubble up because that's what kids do. And, to ignore that as a skill set is really a tragedy on our societal level. 

Tiffany Yu: Thank you, Brian, for coming on the Tiffany & Yu podcast.

Tiffany Yu
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