Men's Positivity Thread

FactCheck · 07-04-2015 11:28am

"This Is What It Looks Like When Men Are Allowed To Take 480 Days Of Paternity Leave"

In his photo series Swedish Dads, Johan Bävman documents men who take advantage of Sweden’s comparatively generous paternity-leave legislation to spend more time with their babies than the average father.

Some great photos here. I thought people might be interested considering the UK has just introduced something similar and there is talk of the same in Ireland.

Possibly my favourite thing about the pictures is the fact that he has managed to square the circle so to speak in portraying the dads as competent without romanticising the work of childrearing. I mean, too often we see lazy cliches that show dads as incapable of performing the most basic childcare tasks. That's rubbish, of course. But a rosy, soft-lensed version of parenthood that only shows the glowing Kodak moments is just as inaccurate and in its own way, it's just as patronising to pretend all fathering is easy and rewarding as it is to portray it as chaotic and incompetent. The photos manage to capture the effort and tiredness and the craziness of toddlers, alongside the funniness and the cuteness and the beauty that comes too.

I also like the way he manages to bring out the way the dads come from all walks of life, with different levels of education, careers, race, you name it. I think you can tell the big personality differences too. It's refreshing to see so many different ways to be a good dad, and an involved dad.