Episode 123: How To Be a Feminist Dad with Jordan Shapiro
The Divorce Survival Guide Podcast
Kate Anthony
4.4 • 574 Ratings
🗓️ 17 June 2021
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jordan Shapiro joins me to talk about being a feminist dad. Jordan is an author, educator, and researcher. He's Senior Fellow for the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, and Nonresident Fellow in the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. Finally, he is the author of Father-Figure: How to be a Feminist Dad.
In this episode, we discuss gender essentialism and how men can begin to change habits, behaviors, and ideas in order to behave differently in the world. Seriously, Jordan is paving the way for what it means to be a man today. Ladies, all of the men in your life need his new book. And they need to listen to this episode, so share it with them too!
Show Highlights
- Father Figure: How to Be a Feminist Dad: what it means to be a feminist dad, plus Jordan's response to his son when asked, "Dad, are you appropriating feminism by being a man and writing this book?" (5:25)
- The familiar assumptions about the origins of so-called traditional parenting roles. (10:33)
- "We live in a world where gender is being renegotiated." (17:59)
- Men should interrogate their behaviors and habits of mind so that they can make their own decisions about how to behave differently in the world. (19:46)
- We talk in-depth about male privilege, toxic masculinity, and the patriarchy. (22:32)
- From narcissistic patriarchal authority to responsive fathering. (30:32)
- The psychology of a father from an archetypal perspective. (37:30)
Learn More About Jordan:
Jordan Shapiro, PhD, is an author, educator, and researcher. He's Senior Fellow for the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, and Nonresident Fellow in the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. He teaches in Temple University's Intellectual Heritage Program, and he wrote "The New Childhood: Raising Kids to Thrive in a Connected World" (Little Brown Spark, 2018), which received wide critical acclaim and has been published in 11 languages. His upcoming book, "Father-Figure: How to be a Feminist Dad" (Little Brown Spark, 2021) offers a norm-shattering perspective on fatherhood, family, and gender essentialism.
Resources & Links:
Jordan's book: Father Figure: How to Be a Feminist Dad: http://www.feministdadbook.com/
Jordan on Instagram: http://instagram.com/jordosh
Jordan on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jordosh
Jordan on Facebook: http://facebook.com/jordosh
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Divorce Survival Guide podcast, where we have open and honest conversations about co-parenting, separation, divorce, and the hardest question of all, should you stay or should you go. |
| 0:17.7 | I'm Kate Anthony, your divorce survival guide, and I'm here to help you navigate |
| 0:22.8 | some of the roughest waters you've ever swum in and answer some of your toughest questions. |
| 0:28.5 | I've been to hell and back, and now it's my mission in life to help you get to the other side |
| 0:34.2 | of this process with your sanity and your heart intact. |
| 0:47.9 | Hey, hey, hey, welcome back. How you doing? I really mean that. You know, when I ask you, how are you doing |
| 1:00.0 | every week? I actually invite you to drop in and really check in with yourself. How am I doing? How am I doing |
| 1:10.2 | today? So many of us ask that, |
| 1:12.5 | right? And of course I do when I say that. Like, I know you're not going to answer me. |
| 1:16.7 | But so many of us sort of say that and, hey, how you doing? But like, are we really invested in the |
| 1:22.3 | answer that the other person gives us? I want you to be invested in yourself. I want you to be invested in taking a moment |
| 1:30.7 | and checking in with yourself. How am I doing today? For many of you, I know that the time that you |
| 1:38.5 | take to listen to this podcast is intentional. And so I also want you to be present with yourself when you're being present with me. |
| 1:47.1 | That's just an invitation. Not a mandate. It's not a prerequisite, but it's an invitation. |
| 1:53.9 | So today I have, this conversation blew my mind. Two weeks ago, we had Amanda Steinberg on the podcast, |
| 2:07.4 | and I told you that I was going to be interviewing her partner, Jordan, who is also one of the |
| 2:13.2 | smartest people that I know. Jordan is one of those people that when you start having a |
| 2:17.0 | conversation with him, you're, for a minute, you have to like take a deep breath and be like, |
| 2:20.4 | okay, hold on. I have to, I have to like put on my brain's gym shorts right now, if you know what |
| 2:27.9 | I mean. Like my brain actually has to be present for this, like fully present for this conversation, because his brain |
| 2:35.1 | is so magnificent. So Jordan Shapiro is an author, an educator and researcher. He's senior |
| 2:43.0 | fellow for the Joan Gans Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and non-resident fellow at the Center |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Kate Anthony, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Kate Anthony and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.