Fathers are not the punchline.
Fatherhood gets two kinds of coverage: none, or a joke. The dad who can't work the car seat. The dad babysitting his own children. That caricature has outlived whatever truth it once held, and it quietly excuses men from the work while insulting the ones already doing it.
The men in this archive are sensitive, attentive, and unmistakably present. They are not perfect and they are not saints — they are involved. This project documents what that involvement looks like up close, and what it costs, and what it builds.
We are especially interested in daughters. In how a man's understanding of women shifts when he is responsible for raising one. In what he starts to see that he did not see before. In who she becomes with him in the room.
The Questions We Ask
- How does raising a daughter change how a man sees women in society?
- How does it change what he notices about the sexualization and exploitation of girls?
- What does his involvement actually do for her independence and self-assurance?
- What did he have to unlearn from the fathering he was shown?
Method
Each family is interviewed twice: father and daughter separately, then together. We photograph at home, in the ordinary hours. The audio runs long and stays long — the podcast is the interview, not a summary of it.