29 Jeremy Davies: Men, Fatherhood and the Gender Pay Gap

Dr Jeremy Davies is Deputy CEO of the Fatherhood Institute, a UK charity working to build a society that values, prepares, and supports men as involved fathers and caregivers.

Jeremy leads the organisation’s communications and policy work, including the FI’s 6 weeks for dads campaign for a better statutory paternity offer for all UK fathers; manages funded research and impact projects, including collaborations with universities, like the PIECE (Paternal Involvement and its Effects on Children’s Education) study; and develops evidence-based resources for family practitioners (e.g. the Engaging Dads toolkit, with the Royal College of Midwives), and for fathers (e.g. Becoming Dad, with the Mental Health Foundation). 

He has led the development of ISAFE (Improving Safeguarding through Audited Father-Engagement), a social work training package undergoing a randomised controlled trial in seven English local authorities, and is now part of a project to bring Fathers for Change, a US one-to-one therapy intervention for men who have used violence against their co-parent and/or children, to the UK. 

A passionate believer in the transformational power of involved fatherhood, Jeremy is a former journalist, who joined the FI in 2006 after completing a Masters in Research and a PhD about gay fathers' paternal experiences and practices. He has a son, now 24.

Key points from the interview:

• How his childhood was idyllic and free and easy, but it became harder as he got into his teens.

• How Boy George on Top of the Pops was a huge cultural moment!

• How there is seemingly less freedom today on rules, but more on restrictive gender stereotypes.

• How he felt that no one was really talking to him or supporting him as a Dad, because of the "boxing in" of men.

• How he posited that gay men were "redoing" fatherhood....

• And how their sexuality was the least "interesting factor in it!

• Looking at fathers as a risk AND resource.

• How the current services can be somewhat biased.

• What causes the gender pay gap.

• How men are hard wired to care.

• How the media love a black and white story.

Reach out to Jeremy on www.fatherhoodinstitute.org