Hello, thanks for visiting.
You may be here because you saw our billboard takeover campaign on London’s TfL network. Or you may be here because you are an employer hoping to create a workplace culture where working dads can be loud and proud about their caring responsibilities at work.
Either way, you are in the right place!
We believe that Parenting Out Loud is transformational and can have a major impact on equality both at work and at home. It’s good for women, men, children and business.
Parenting Out Loud is when working dads are loud, proud and transparent about their childcare responsibilities at work.
On a daily basis, Parenting Out Loud looks like putting school pick-ups in the calendar, using your out of office to talk about your childcare responsibilities, being open and honest about the need to work from home to take care of your sick child, taking all the paternity leave available and requesting flexible working for childcare reasons.
Through our TfL billboard campaign, we are asking working dads to share their stories on LinkedIn using the hashtag #ParentingOutLoud. There have been so many stories shared, remarkable examples of support, joy, struggle, progression and love. We have created a Linkedin page where we reshare all of the working dads stories here.
The campaign has been featured on Princes of Wales’ Royal Foundation website (you can read the feature here) and even discussed on Loose Women!
We have also developed a workplace culture change programme to support employers as they encourage dads to parent loudly. The programme includes workshops, leadership roundtables, coaching for new dads and resources to establish and maintain a staff dad’s network. You can download more information about the programme here.
Please join us at the launch of the Parenting Out Loud culture change programme. We are hosting an online event at CBRE on Tuesday 30th April and you can register to attend here.
How is Parenting Out Loud transformational?
Parenting Out Loud is a major cultural shift – it’s a significant move away from how fathers have done things for generations.
Parenting Out Loud is essential for equal parenting and gender equality at both work and home.
Parenting Out Loud may not sound like a revolutionary act, but fathers parenting loudly at work is vital for changing how we all think about dads and male carers.
When dads parent loudly, they help normalise male caring in the workplace and role model this behaviour for others. They remove the stigma around male caring and help change the narrative around fatherhood in the workplace.
Supportive policies are great, they are essential. We champion employers who offer enhanced or equal parental leave (see our list of equal parental leave employers here). However, policy has to be accompanied by culture change to truly achieve the behaviour change and outcomes we aspire to.
Currently, 1 in 3 working dads don’t feel comfortable talking to their employer about family commitments.
Although many dads want to Parent Out Loud, we can’t ask dads to do so when they exist in cultures that don’t support it.
The Parenting Out Loud culture change programme supports organisations to build a workplace culture where dads can parent loudly.
Why is Parenting Out Loud so important?
Encouraging, supporting and enabling dads to be equal parents is essential to addressing the gender pay gap, the motherhood penalty and achieving gender equality at home and at work.
When it comes to gender equality for mothers:
- 80% of the gender pay gap is attributed to the motherhood penalty (World Economic Forum, 2022)
- The gender pay gap more than doubles for women over 40 (ONS, 2022)
- 54,000 women per year will lose their job due to maternity discrimination (Equality Human Rights Commission, 2015)
Supporting men to be equal and active parents from the start is key for gender equality. Research from Sweden suggests that for every additional month of paternity leave taken by fathers, it increases the mother’s lifetime earnings by 6.7% (Johansson (2010).
In addition, new research shows us that positive paternal involvement in the early years of children’s lives results in improved education and behavioural outcomes (Leeds University, 2023).
And for us dads, we want to have a career to be proud of, but we also want to be close with our children. In 2022, dads spent, on average, just 55 minutes per day with their children (ONS, 2023). This has to change.
So many fathers from previous generations were unable to strike a balance between work and childcare and ended up being distant from their grown-up children. We don’t want the dads of today to experience the same regrets of previous generations.
Gender equality, and breaking down the outdated ideas of masculinity, are good for all of us.
This is not a zero-sum game, it’s win-win. By Parenting Out Loud as dads, we are doing our bit to create a better world for everyone.
Not only that, organisations that support dads to parent loudly will benefit from better retention, recruitment and employee engagement.
How can your organisation join the Parenting Out Loud culture change programme?
We know that dads want Parenting Out Loud: people now consider flexible working and supportive family-friendly workplace cultures as important as monetary remuneration.
However, so many organisations still have lots to do to create workplace cultures that truly normalise male caring and enable Parenting Out Loud.
The Parenting Out Loud culture change programme supports organisations to build a workplace culture where dads can parent loudly. You can download more information about the programme here.
The programme includes a full suite of activities aimed to support behaviour change. We combine a top-down and bottom-up approach and work with key people across your organisation: senior leaders, managers, new dads and staff network chairs to ensure all levels are enabled and supported in this culture change.
The programme includes roundtables with senior leadership teams, organisation-wide workshops, resources to support the formation and running of a staff dad’s network and coaching for new dads, including pocket-sized Parenting Out Loud handouts for dads.
As an organisation, you can work with us across all four pillars, or mix and match as you see fit. We will collaborate with you to determine the best approach for your desired outcomes.
You can download more information on the programme here.
Parenting Out Loud is a movement
Dads need help and support in being active and equal parents.
The way we have done things in society for many generations hasn’t fully supported dads. We’ve had strict rules about masculinity and what it means to be a man, and this has largely excluded men as caregivers. For decades, dads have been expected to be the breadwinner and provider. It’s what many men saw growing up in their own households.
And yes, of course, dads can be breadwinners and providers, but they can also be caregivers and nurturers. To make this happen, we need better flexible working, better paternity leave and supportive workplace cultures that normalise male caring and enable dads to parent loudly.
Momentum is building. A movement is starting.
Join us to become a part of this movement.
If you would like to book a call to discuss the programme in more detail, please email: hello@elliottrae.com
