It’s not uncommon for Bruce Robinson to find himself among the gardening supplies or power tools in an aisle at Bunnings, talking to a stranger — with tears in his eyes.
It’s been ten years since Robinson, a respected respiratory physician and trailblazing researcher, formed The Fathering Project, pouring his time, energy and money into using science to help men become better dads.
The towering former footballer and UWA professor of medicine has spoken to thousands of fathers in that time, and regularly gets stopped by one who recognises him.
“I get bailed up in the street or in a cinema or in Bunnings and someone will say, ‘oh you’re that guy from The Fathering Project, I’ve gotta tell you, my life was s...house and now, it is just so wonderful’,” Robinson says, sitting in his Shenton Park loungeroom, surrounded by the scattered toys of six grandchildren.
“I usually say, hello and thank you and appreciate it, but if they keep telling me their story, which they often do, I start to cry. I think about their kids — because it’s not just the dad’s life, the before and after, that I see in my mind. I know that the trajectory of their kids’ lives is going to be so different.”
The night before his interview with STM, Robinson was lauded at a packed celebration at Government House, marking the 10-year anniversary of the official formation of The Fathering Project. Started in WA, it’s now a national organisation with headquarters in Sydney. Its ambassadors include Dennis Lillee, Fiona Wood, James McMahon, Dennis Cometti and Justin Langer.
Governor Chris Dawson tells STM afterwards that the project’s impact “has been astounding . . . (and) will continue for generations“.
“I feel Professor Bruce Robinson and the team . . . have helped to re-define the way we as a community now view fathers and father figures,” he says. “There are stereotypes, too often demeaning and devaluing fatherhood. The Fathering Project’s work shows that it is vital that fathers and father-figures are present and engaged, in order to positively shape the lives of their children.”
Over the years, Robinson has interviewed 400 fathers one-on-one, racking up 1000 hours, and spoken to 16,000 more in live audiences.
His message to fathers is this — you matter, more than you know. What you do is important and the time is now. Your choices about what kind of father you will be will affect your children, for better or worse, for the rest of their lives.
“A lot of the time they think mum is the important one, and that’s still true,” Robinson says. “But often dads think they are just the icing on the cake. So we explain to them, with statistics, why they are so important and why, if they are missing in action, their kids are at risk.”
As he summarises the research, the evidence seems stark — a positive father figure is associated with a 50 per cent reduction in the risk of someone becoming addicted to drugs, a 30 per cent reduction in mental illness in young people, an 80 per cent drop in negative behaviour at school and a 90 per cent drop in the likelihood someone will go to prison.
Latest estimates are that The Fathering Project has reached the fathers of 750,000 Australian kids, via talks, its school programs and its website, which has resources including podcasts with advice on dealing with everything from talking about sex to bullying.
Robinson says the numbers are “pretty spectacular” — but he wants more.
He wants The Fathering Project funded to set up in every school across the country, creating dad’s groups that can pull in those who need help, and foster a community of like-minded father figures who can be there for kids whose dads are not in their lives.
“We talk about it in terms of, we can keep mopping up the water, or someone can turn the tap off. We want to turn the tap off,” he says.
“I mean, it is such an obvious thing . . . I have said to a Federal politician, if you think about the costs — prisons, courts, health, drug addictions, kids mental health, bad behaviour at school, teachers quitting, all the problems that are on the news virtually every night — how many billions of dollars do you think would be saved if we are successful?”
Robinson is an affable man, but his frustration at the slow wheels of governments is palpable. Just that morning he texted former Chief Justice Wayne Martin about what they can do to incite action. Robinson remembers that he and Martin first went to see a State MP when Martin was still in his former role, imploring the then-opposition politician to “spend $2 million and save $2 billion”.
“But then they became the government so in the fullness of time, we’ll have a green paper and a white paper and a subcommittee and then nothing gets done,” he says.
The fuse for The Fathering Project was lit through Robinson’s daily work as a doctor. He’s broken the news to hundreds of men, some of them young, that their diagnosis is terminal. Again and again, he heard the same desperate lament: I should have spent more time with my children. I should have been a better father. I won’t ever get that time back.
Robinson had three children, and a demanding career. But he could not ignore the anguished pattern of regret in front of him. And so he began researching fatherhood, its impact on children and the evidence-based ways men could be better dads. He wrote two best-selling books, Fathering from the Fast Lane and Daughters and their Dads, and set up up the early iterations of The Fathering Project.
In 2013, he was named West Australian of the Year and received an Order of Australia for his work in cancer research, including breakthroughs on mesothelioma, as well as his work on The Fathering Project. The following year, he was the WA Australian of the Year.
His passion for helping fathers has seen Robinson at the forefront of what parenting expert Maggie Dent describes as one of the most positive societal changes in a long time: that fathers can be — should be — hands-on, attached parents.
“He really began a conversation that I think, in Australia, has led to a profound cultural shift,” Dent tells STM.
“Particularly in WA, when I was running dads only seminars, I was selling them out even seven or eight years ago, because there was that hunger. They genuinely wanted a much better relationship with their kids than they felt they had with their own dad.
“When you go to playgrounds on weekends now, you don’t see many women — it’s a lot of dads, with babies tied on their chest, with two other kids, just nailing it . . . what Bruce has done is give such beautiful permission for dads to have more of an opportunity to be that tender heart and hands and share the parenting load.”
Robinson says the modern world can be a complicated place for fathers. Kids are exposed to social media, cyber bullying, drugs, alcohol, pornography and myriad other issues, at a time when dads are spending more time at work, are more often divorced or separated and are surrounded by fewer role models and support, including male relatives.
But that makes it more vital than ever to seek out support and education. Robinson says everything The Fathering Project advises is evidence-based, aimed at working out what children need from their dads to thrive. And the ‘how’ of fathers stepping up can be beautifully, deceptively simple.
One of his favourite tips, a “24-carat gem” he did with his own kids, is the “dad date” — dad goes out, one on one, with each of their kids. It can be to a movie, the beach, a cafe, but it has to be just the two of them, and the father’s job is to listen, without distraction.
“The child, probably subconsciously, looks across the table and says, ‘you know what? My dad has a lot of interesting friends, but he chooses to spend time with me. He could be playing golf and going to the footy . . . but he chooses to spend time with me. I must be worth spending time with. I must be a worthwhile person,” Robinson says.
“They then go through life with this sense of worth, and that is powerful. When teenagers get peer pressured, if you don’t feel very worthwhile, then you’re going to need that external validation. Whereas if you feel worthwhile as a person, you can say, ‘I’ll pass’ . . .
“These strategies get embedded in a kid’s soul, and they carry it with them forever, long after dad is dead.”
At the heart of The Fathering Project’s strategies is what Robinson calls the BUS principle — being there, unconditional love and feeling special (see graphic). It is grounded in speaking, clearly and repeatedly, with your children about their value and your unshakeable love and support as a parent.
Robinson estimates that about five per cent of dads don’t need The Fathering Project because they are already seeking out education about parenting. Another five or so per cent occupy the other end of the scale.
“I’ve had some really intelligent people tell me I’m wasting my time, because fathering is all gut feeling and you can’t learn how to be a dad,” Robinson says. “All of that is just incredibly illogical, so I just thank them for their feedback.
“But 80 to 90 per cent of dads are in the middle. They love their kids and once you say to them, ‘you’re so important and here are some ideas for being a better dad’, you’ve got them.”
Dent agrees that fathers want pragmatic, action-based advice. “They want to know three things they can do tomorrow,” she says.
“One mum told me that she was wondering what her husband was up to that morning and he’s writing little notes to poke into the kids’ lunchboxes. After school they ran in saying ‘there was a note from daddy in my lunchbox’ with this massive joy on their faces.
“One of the big messages in my book From Boys to Men is if they don’t feel connected to their teenage sons, feed him and sit down with him and say, ‘I want to be a better dad — give me three things I can do better’. And then they leave it for a week and come back together. My God, relationships get changed.”
Robinson says some men blame their own fathers for their failings as a dad, but he has a powerful ally in his argument against that thinking — the late Tony Cooke, beloved union leader, loving father and the son of serial killer Eric Edgar Cooke.
Robinson interviewed Cooke for a book and was struck by two poignant moments he relayed.
The first was when eight-year-old Cooke was sent to get fish and chips for the family and found himself sobbing uncontrollably at the counter. His emotionally abusive father was in Fremantle Prison, about to be hung for multiple murders.
The second was Cooke as a man, looking in the mirror after becoming angry with his daughter, and saying to himself, ‘Tony, you don’t have to be like your dad. If you want to be a good dad, that is your choice. Don’t blame your father. You’ve got to choose to break the cycle’.
Cooke was in his last days in 2018, Robinson visited him at home and got talking to his two daughters. They described a father so wonderful, that they modelled their parenting on his.
“You see how quickly things can change, through one man’s decision? In groups of dads, people will say, ‘well, I’m doing my best, but with a dad like mine, what do you expect?’
“But after Tony Cooke, no one has any excuses. You can choose to be a good dad, and you can commit to doing the work to find out what that means. And that’s what The Fathering Project does.”
Robinson says fostering a deep connection with children is not about being their friend or withholding consequences for bad behaviour.
“They don’t need another pal. These principles make you close enough to them, but you are their parent, and they need you to make a call on things,” Robinson says. He gives the example of a 16-year-old boy who breaks his curfew and comes home drunk to his worried, angry parents.
“You might say awful things, like ‘you bloody idiot, I told you’, or you can say ‘oh, it’s just fun, boys will be boys’ — and neither of things are helpful,” he says.
“The BUS principle says ‘you’re grounded . . . but you’re better than this and tomorrow, we’re going to go and get coffee and we are going to talk about how you can deal with it better next time’.”
Robinson is hopeful that society is moving towards embracing fathers being more involved; there is more acceptance of shared parenting, fathers taking paternity leave and workplaces acknowledging that men have responsibilities at home.
And he will continue to fly the flag for more funding because he believes The Fathering Project is not only life-changing for individual men and their children but can have a snowball effect that shapes a better future.
He’s long been putting his money where his mouth is, ploughing all proceeds from his books and countless speaker fees back into project.
“It sounds more generous than it is,” he laughs. “I mean, it is a lot of money, but I have another job so it’s not like I’m giving away the food from my table . . . And I actually don’t care about money.
“I care about the future of these kids; this is why I weep when I hear those stories of dads whose lives have been changed. It’s the kids I’m thinking of, who have a whole different trajectory in life. Trajectory matters.”
The BUS principle: three simple ways to be the dad your kids need
Never assume kids know how you feel. Tell them once, tell them twice and keep telling them that you will always be there, that you will always love them, and that they are special and worthwhile.
Being there
This doesn’t mean necessarily being with them more often, but is about being there for them at all times.
For Robinson, it was brought home for him at a hospital lecture, where a psychologist read aloud from a teenager’s suicide note: “There is no one on my side”.
“I told my kids, ‘You call me in the middle of the night, I will come and pick you up. If I get called to the school because you’ve misbehaved, I might get on your case but I’m going to be there for you . . . I am there for you whenever you need me. I won’t ask questions. I won’t criticise.
“That takes care of a lot because kids know, as they negotiate things in life, that dad, and mum of course, will be there.”
Unconditional love
Unconditional love is more difficult, Robinson says, because there is a fine line between being proud of your child’s achievements and giving them the message that your love depends on their success.
“As the parents brag about one kid, the other thinks, ‘they would love me if I was as smart as my sister’, or ‘they would love me if I could play footy as well as my brother’,” Robinson says.
Make sure they know there are no conditions to your love and no matter their grades, performance, likes and dislikes, or anything else, nothing will stop you loving them.
Special
This is about making your children feel worthwhile and special. You can help them see that their unique abilities and quirks are assets to be proud of, and to believe in their own potential.
The best way to do this is by making one-on-one time for them, pointing out the things that make you proud of them, and being genuinely interested in their hobbies.
For more, visit The Fathering Project at thefatheringproject.org
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