FATHER FIGURE

From Sesame Workshop senior fellow and digital-age parenting expert Jordan Shapiro, a thoughtful and long-overdue exploration on fatherhood and masculinity in the 21st century.

There are hundreds of books on parenting, and with good reason - becoming a parent is scary, difficult, and life-changing. But when it comes to books about parenting identity, rather than the nuts and bolts of raising children, nearly all are about what it's like to be a mother. If you're looking for information about what it means to be a father, you'll find the bookstore shelves surprisingly bare.

Drawing on research in sociology, economics, psychology, cultural history, and the author's own experiences, Father Figure sets out to fill that gap. It's an exploration of the psychology of fatherhood from an archetypal perspective (think: Women Who Run with The Wolves for fathers) as well a cultural history of fatherhood that explains how we got to where we are. What are the paradoxes inherent in our current understanding of dads? Might it be time to rethink some of the current aspects of fatherhood?

Gender norms are changing, and old economic models are facing disruption. As a result, parenthood and family life are undergoing an existential transformation. And yet, the narratives and images of dads available to us are wholly inadequate for this transition. Victorian and Industrial Age tropes about fathers not only dominate the media, but also contour most people's lived experience. Father Figure offers an urgently needed update to our collective understanding of fatherhood - and masculinity - that highlights what's essential about fatherhood while guiding us to an image of manliness reimagined for the modern world.

Jordan Shapiro, PhD, is a world-renowned American thought leader. He's currently Senior Fellow for the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, and Nonresident Fellow in the Global Economic and Development program at the Brookings Institution. He teaches in Temple University's Intellectual Heritage Program, wrote a column for Forbes' on global education, digital play, and family life from 2012 to 2017, and is the author of The New Childhood, which was published in 12 languages. He lives in Philadelphia with his two sons.