Do you know what the Co stands for in Mums & Co?

Even though Mums & Co was founded to celebrate the 345,000 business owning mums in Australia, it's also a community that recognizes their Co: the partners, friends and family who support mums in business to thrive. 

Our guest on episode 4 of Mumbition - The Podcast By Mums & Co, is one of our Co.

Jeremy Macvean is the co-founder of The Father Hood and saw what was happening with the rise of hands-on dads. A new generation of fathers is spending three times as many hours with their children as our fathers did with us. Jeremy and his fellow co-founders felt this wasn't being represented in the media. So the-father-hood.com was born to reflect this growing movement of involved fathers for the benefit of everyone. Jeremy advocates for a world where men, dads and father figures embrace their caring and their career.

Jeremy, may we invite you to share your elevator pitch?

“The Father Hood was founded around two years ago, by myself and two other dads, Andrew and Luke. We saw what was happening around us in the rise of the involved hands-on dad and felt it wasn't being represented in the media. So I created the-father-hood.com to reflect this movement of involved fathers for the benefit of everyone. In doing that, what we realized is, the greatest opportunity ahead of us is to shift things within the workforce, to shift the dynamic. That's why we are now focused on supporting organizations to support their dads to become more involved, because that then benefits everyone.”

What do you love about your business right now?

“I love that I think it's so important and I love that everyone benefits. We are not a boys' club, we're The Father Hood. We are telling stories from a male perspective and championing it. We're a high five, a celebration, support and inspiration for dads. We spend three times as many hours with our kids in this generation than our fathers did, so there's fantastic things happening out there and great opportunities for dads. What I love about what we're doing with The Father Hood is we're for everyone. Kids benefit from equally involved parents and importantly, partners benefit hugely. The way that we summarize that is, we believe that until it becomes unremarkable for men to play an equal role in domestic life, it will remain remarkable for women to enjoy equality in the workforce. So just to think about that, within an organization, there is this natural bias towards dad being the worker and mum being the carer. It exists today, we all feel it, I felt it as a dad. Small businesses and startups to enable mums to be able to work like they want to. They thrive if partners are equally involved and it opens up that opportunity. So we're for everyone. We're not a boys' club, we can work together on everyone benefiting from shaking up gender roles. We have the opportunity to do it now. In previous generations, we couldn't. So it's the best time in history to be a dad, we really, really believe that because dads can define themselves so much more broadly and be involved in new ways. It’s also the best time in history to be a mum, because mums can define themselves how they want to as well. So that's all pretty exciting stuff!”

What do you find are some of the transferable skills between business and being a dad?

“I think planning and interpersonal skills are really transferable. Often in the workplace, these planning and interpersonal skills are the things that transfer across professional roles into parenting role. So whether it's planning for the week ahead, if you're a small business owner, you have to work out how you're going to get these things done. For small business owners, the thing that we have to do is be flexible and as a parent, one thing I just think really strikes me since being a parent is it changes every week. Kids grow up. When they're little, the rub on the back to get them to sleep used to work last week, ain't working this week. And that doesn't stop. My oldest is now 10 and the game changes constantly. She's growing up. So that flexibility and thought to adapt to the environment, that's a skill that I think we all have as small business owners. In The Father Hood, we say being a dad is a champions league of manhood. It's kind of next level stuff.”

So how does everyone win when dads win? Why is it the best time in history to be a parent? And is inventing a time travel machine the next big thing?  Listen to the episode now to find out!
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