Welcome to the Daily Dad podcast, where we provide one lesson every single day to help you with your most important job, being a parent.

I'm Ryan Holiday, and I draw these lessons from ancient philosophy, modern psychology, practical wisdom, and insights from

parents just like you all over the world. Thank you for listening, and we hope this helps.

We spend a lot of time looking at the absolute worst parents, not just because so many

leaders and celebrities and artists

seem to put their families absolutely last in order to achieve their success, but because

artistically flawed and tragic figures quite naturally fill up most of the pages in the screen time.

As Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina, all happy families resemble each other, but unhappy families are unhappy in their own way.

That certainly makes for quite a story.

But does it have to be that way?

Another great novelist, Ursula Lequin, who we talked about recently, disagreed.

The hell with that, she is quoted as saying in the baby on the

fire escape. Tolstoy got it wrong. They're the ones that are all the same, but a happy family,

which doesn't mean that everybody's happy all the time. The so-called happy family is a fascinating

thing, the interplay of power and control and love and dislike and frustration. It's endless.

The reality is that there are so many fascinating, happy families out there. Plenty of people

who are great at what they do and present and balanced at home. And as entertaining as the train wrecks

are, we ought to be studying talking about celebrating the better

examples. Ursula's family being a good example. We would all be well served by picking some

parenting fathers. Mr. Rogers seems like a successful guy with a happy family. Atticus Finch and

To Kill a Mockingbird is a great role model, though Atticus and Gossetta Watchman is much less so.

Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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