In this episode of the Dad Spotlight we interview Josh Levs about his book, [amazon text=All In: How Our Work-First Culture Fails Dads, Families, and Businesses–And How We Can Fix It Together&asin=0062349619] as well as the changing dynamics of society when it comes to offering equal rights to fathers today.

Josh Levs is a past journalist with CNN and NPR and when one of his children was about to be born he noticed that out of numerous categories of employees at CNN, fathers were the only groups that were not allowed to receive any specific time from his employer when his child was to be born. Josh Levs challenged this and though it was considered, it was denied eventually after a long period of time. Josh Levs’ child was born prematurely and this caused him to have to make the choice to leave CNN and stay at home with his kids. As he started to look across the country he heard many stories of other fathers that had similar experiences to his own that he pulled together in his book.

The book (All In)  came together because he took legal action against his company and people came out of the woodwork to tell their story. As he explored this this found that there are so many laws in place that do not support equality for benefits for dads. He wanted to bring this out into the open for men from all walks of life to have their stories told.

Even our own Don Jackson shared his story in Josh Levs’ book. In the book he shared his decision to why he chose to be a stay at home dad. He also said that he tried to share and show in his story the love that he has for his kids but also the things that dads will do to be a part of their kids’ lives.

It is sad that we are the most powerful country in the world but we are so behind as it comes to equal gender rights.

You may be interested to know that in the end, Time Warner, the parent company to CNN changed their policy to be more inclusive and to to provide more comprehensive coverage as it comes to equal gender rights.

We also talked about another high profile case that recently came out in regards to parental rights and a father doing what it takes to be a great dad. Recently Adam LaRoche of the Chicago White Sox had a year left on his contract and in the past he had been able to bring his son to the games with him. Recently, he was told that he would not be able to bring his son to the games anymore and he chose to leave the team. This decision brough a lot of media backlash and Josh Levs took this opportunity to address the story from a different standpoint.

The point that Josh Levs was trying to show was that even though Ada LaRoche was a high profile case, there are dads everyday that are making choices and decisions to put family ahead of work. As he said “The difference between the stereotypical dad and actual dads is huge particularly in how we prioritize work and family.”

There is still a ton that needs to be done to move forward with this discussion. Boys across the country are still being taught to not have emotions and this needs to change. We need to open up a conversation and have an open dialogue about this to change society in general.

Currently, Josh Levs is speaking at a lot of conferences and with businesses as well as consulting and helping businesses to create better policies. He is working hard to write and to make change that will help all parents. In the end he knows that dads want to be involved in the lives of their kids as much as moms are and the policies,