The ex-AFL coach helping dads tackle the Andrew Tate factor

Rodney Eade spent more than half his lifetime within the hypermasculine world of Australian rules football, first as a player with AFL clubs Hawthorn and Brisbane, then as coach of, respectively, the Sydney Swans, the Western Bulldogs and the Gold Coast Suns. “One thing I learnt,” says Eade, 67, who retired his clipboard in 2017, “is that boys and young men need direction and mentoring. And when they become partners and fathers, they continue to benefit from support.”

Such lessons continue to resonate in Eade’s current role as partnerships manager for The Fathering Project, a secular, not-for-profit organisation that he says is in increasing demand for the father-focused support groups and programs it runs through schools, corporations and sporting clubs.

“Most fathers are looking for a better connection with their kids and to be a better role model, but often they don’t know how,” he says, stressing the considerable benefits of addressing this.

“Evidence shows that the developmental outcomes of children [improve] exponentially when they have an engaged father, or father figure, in their life,” he adds, referencing research linking attentive fathering to a reduction in children’s behavioural problems, emotional problems and delinquency.

Founded in 2013 in Western Australia by respiratory physician Professor Bruce Robinson, The Fathering Project facilitates almost 500 dads’ groups around the country. Demand has never been greater, says its chief executive, Kati Gapaillard, something she puts down to fathers feeling caught between expectations of providing for their families during a cost-of-living crisis and what can feel like a conflicting desire to be a more present parent. “So they come to us looking for tools to help them connect with their kids and to other fathers – without judgment,” she says.

While The Fathering Project’s focus is on fathers and children of both sexes, it has highlighted many boys’ struggles with emotional regulation, aggression and gendered stereotyping, issues highlighted to devastating effect in Netflix shows, such as the universally acclaimed British drama Adolescence and the Danish thriller Secrets We Keep.

“Boys, especially, are looking for a way to see who they are and express their masculinity,” says Gapaillard, “and if we don’t provide that identity-development support, then they find it somewhere else, either through a peer group or online, via potentially harmful male role models.”

Professor Michael Flood, a Fathering Project associate and researcher on masculinities and gender at the Queensland University of Technology, says influencers such as Briton Andrew Tate use discussions about finance, fitness and self-improvement as “Trojan horses through which sexism and misogyny are smuggled in”. Fathers, he says, can help inoculate their sons against such things: “Just as violence can be passed down through generations, so can nurturing.”

Gapaillard says many fathers were bequeathed poor emotional role-modelling, leaving many hampered by stereotypical notions that they must be stoic rather than supportive. “Men who are becoming fathers now need to look at that and almost unlearn what no longer serves them and transform their own fathering potential into what’s good for their children and what’s good for them,” she says. “Being a good father is great for children, it’s fantastic for men and also really good for mums. It’s positive in every way.”

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