It doesn’t really matter if you’ve seen a single episode of the 1950s sitcom Father Knows Best to understand the template for what a TV dad is supposed to be like. He works hard all day and inevitably serves as the family’s main source of some combination of three things: tough love, gentle fatherly insight or bumbling but endearing ineptitude.

Jordan Shapiro is out to help break the mold. A father of four, senior fellow at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at the Sesame Workshop, and former New York City restaurateur, Shapiro is the author of the 2021 release Father Figure: How To Be A Feminist Dad.

On this episode of Paternal he weighs in on the psychology of fatherhood and why some dads today are struggling to reconcile the kind of father they want to be - open-minded, responsive, inclusive, and (gasp) feminist - with the template of what a dad is supposed to be, often rooted in examples set by their own fathers or by those TV dads we still see on our screens today.

Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at [email protected] with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.