Parents are a minority among parents channel followers – 08/12/2023 – Equilibrium

Last Saturday, August 5th, a meeting called Pai Summit took place in the south zone of São Paulo. Throughout the program, experts spoke, among other topics, about the importance of a more active fatherhood for children.

At one point, the master of ceremonies asked how many men were at the event because they had been taken away by their female companions. Most raised their hands. Who remembers this moment is the educator Humberto Baltar, 42, one of the speakers at the Pai Summit.

The event in São Paulo, with more attention from women to issues aimed at fathers, is far from being an isolated point. Channels on social networks aimed at them, with videos, texts and other types of content, are mostly followed by them.

“For women, it is not a problem to seek help; for men, it often is. Criticisms of men who make themselves vulnerable are still frequent. And, in fact, those who grow the most are those who are consciously vulnerable”, he says Baltar, from the Pais Pretos Presentes collective.

Created five years ago, the project has just over 50,000 followers on Instagram, considered by the educator to be the flagship for disseminating its content. Almost 70% of the audience that follows the channel is made up of women.

“I see a lot of people talking about toxic masculinity. But I think of this reality more as a cultural construction. Girls are taught from an early age for care, for collective sense. Boys, on the other hand, learn that self-affirmation comes with aggressiveness”, says the father of Apolo, 4 years old.

Baltar remembers a peculiar situation experienced by a company that invited him to give a lecture. Some time before the event, the company had increased the paternity leave from 20 to 40 days, without compromising the remuneration – the law in Brazil determines only five days as mandatory.

Interestingly, most fathers returned to work before the deadline to which they were entitled. Heard in a survey, they said, for example, that they did not know how to bathe the baby. “To escape this place of insecurity, these parents preferred to resume activities at the company right away”, he says.

Like Pais Pretos Presentes, the Paizinho, Vírgula! advocates a more effective participation of parents in their children’s daily lives. Created by educator and psychoanalyst Thiago Queiroz, the initiative has 252,000 followers on Instagram and 108,000 on YouTube.

Out of every five followers of Paizinho, Comma! on Instagram, four are women. On YouTube, the disparity is a little smaller: female participation reaches 70%.

“Historically, care tasks are left to the mother. We know that this is still the case today. So this need to improve themselves, to look for content falls on them”, says Queiroz, father of four children: Dante, 10, Gael, 8, Maya, 4, and Cora, 1.

“Women not only take responsibility for finding out about their children’s education, but also take on the responsibility of curating their partner in an attempt to get him to embrace this idea of ​​synergy”, says the 41-year-old father.

Queiroz says that mothers often come to him saying that their husbands find it difficult to deal with the children and do not follow their recommendations to improve the relationship between father and son. After this introduction, these mothers ask him for tips on texts or videos on a certain topic, such as the habit of yelling at children.

“I’ve been doing this type of content for ten years now. The fact that so many other parents have come along talking about it on social media is evidence that there’s a change. But I still meet men who say: ‘My wife sends me all the your videos, but I work a lot and I can’t see it’.”

Reviewing the conventional idea of ​​masculinity is essential for anyone who wants to become a good father, emphasize these influencers linked to parenting.

“We were taught to be a man in a way that is incompatible with the role of father we seek today. We were raised not to talk about our feelings. How am I going to help my children talk about emotions if I never talked about it?”, queries Queiroz.

For him, the biggest challenge for parents today is to overcome the ego, “which gets in the way when we try to become more sensitive and empathetic”, and mentions the excessive valuation of the professional career, more common among them than among women.

According to another educator, Tiago Koch, from the Homem Paterno channel, facing the macho culture is quite a challenge. “Precisely because we have never taken care of the children, there is great distrust, both on the part of other men and women.”

Launched six years ago, Homem Paterno on Instagram has 190,000 followers, of which 63% are women. “Years ago, their participation exceeded 80%, which indicates a transformation. Men are feeling more uncomfortable or are being prodded more by women”, says the father of Iara, 7, and Nalu, 2. “But still It’s a slow move.”

The “nudges” he refers to are part of the curatorship of the women, who follow the channel and send their husbands what they consider most relevant.

The birth of the first daughter “showed my lack of repertoire about the puerperium. I was experiencing situations that I didn’t even know existed. And if I can’t name or recognize them, I won’t know how to deal with them”, says Koch.

For this Sunday, Father’s Day, he leaves a provocation: “Before climbing, the mountaineer studies the mountain, evaluates the best paths. Before the university entrance exam, the student prepares. And so on. Why don’t we seek knowledge when we become parents?”