Kevin Maguire: 'Cause like so much of the modern world, it's polarized. And there are dads like you and I, and dads we know, that are pushing fatherhood forward, that are pushing for more equality in their relationships, that are learning how to open up and be vulnerable, that are rethinking their relationship with work so that they can be more present at home. But there are also dads on the other side thae, you know, "Wwe should go back to when men were men, return to the traditional values of family." And what that traditional values tends to mean is I, as the guy, will do whatever I want, and you, as the woman, can be some kind of trad wife, whether you wanna be a trad wife or not, but that's the way that things should be. And the job of the book is not to convince one side to come to the other. The job of the book is to convince all those guys who are looking at fatherhood right now and seeing a very different version than they grew up with that, like, this is good for all of us.

Scott M. Curran: Welcome to Better Good. This episode's a little different. Most weeks on this podcast, we sit down with leaders and change-makers who are creating positive change through a specific entity, organization, or programmatic initiative. Today, in honor of Father's Day, we're exploring a different kind of leadership and a different kind of impact.

One of the defining realities of our time is change. Technology is changing, work is changing, community is changing. Our understanding of mental health is changing. Our expectations of leadership are changing. Even our understanding of success is changing. Many of the assumptions that guided previous generations are being rewritten in real time, and fatherhood is no exception. 

For thousands of years, the role of a father was relatively clear: protect, provide, and preside. Today, fathers are being asked to do something very different: be present, be emotionally available, be an equal partner, be successful at work, be engaged at home, be vulnerable, and be resilient. The expectations have changed. The old rules are fading. The new rules are still being written. 

My guest today is Kevin Maguire, author of The New Fatherhood. Kevin is a leader and change-maker in his own right, though his work isn't focused on a single organization or initiative, 'cause he's spent years helping fathers better understand one of the most important and influential roles they will ever hold: being a dad. Because while we often think about impact through the lens of organizations, programs, and public leadership, few things shape the future more profoundly than the way we raise the next generation. So fatherhood matters. Families matter. The men we become matters. And at a moment when so many fathers are navigating change without a clear map, Kevin's work provides awareness, intentionality, community, and a path forward. 

Kevin didn't arrive at this topic as an academic observer. He arrived through lived experience. After building the career he had spent years pursuing and becoming a father of two, he found himself confronting questions that millions of men are asking, often silently. Who am I beyond my job? What kind of father do I want to be? How do I navigate challenges that nobody has prepared me for? And how do I show up for the people I love in a world that keeps changing around us? His answers became a newsletter, a movement, and now a book that serves as a guide for fathers trying to thrive in a rapidly evolving world. 

This is Better Good, and here's my conversation with Kevin Maguire. 

Kevin Maguire: Hey, thank you for having me, Scott, and thank you for such a lovely, warm intro.

Scott M. Curran: Well, thank you for a lovely body of work, a life being well-lived and shared in a way that is so profoundly important and has an incredible social impact all its own. I have your book. I love your book. I've started marking up your book and tabbing your book. Your Substack is amazing and a great movement all its own. I can't wait to unpack so much of it with you. 

I always start this podcast, or each episode, with a question about an earliest memory, and this is a little different, and it's a special Father's Da edition of the pod. But, tell me about your earliest memory that fatherhood was something of its own in a world around you, whether it was your own father and/or becoming a father. When was it that fatherhood itself crystallized for you as something unique, worthy of attention? 

Kevin Maguire: It's been interesting kind of going through this process of, you know, bringing a book into the world. My wife was joking, saying like, "This is your third child. This is the first one that you've birthed yourself." Uh, you know, I've really been reflecting as we're coming up to Father's Day. I found a picture, I found a picture, and it was, it was me, my dad, and my grandfather, the three of us huddled in one photo in my grandparents' room in Northern Ireland. And I would say I was, I'm probably about six at the time, and my dad is just shy of 30. And it was just, you know, it's, it's one of these... I, I have memories of this time of kind of like, you know, my parents left Northern Ireland in 1979, so the height of the Troubles, you know, left a war zone to come and live a different life and to raise children in a place where they felt safer and they felt there were, like, more opportunities available. And I, you know, I think a lot. I left, I left the UK and spent some time in the US, spent some time in Barcelona. I think, you know, the dads who've came before us, I don't think they had it easier, but I definitely think it was simpler for them. 

You know, so when I think of, like, when I think of those times, when I think of the dad that I grew up with, you know, there's a, there's a line always. It's like he did the best he could with the tools he had, right? I think we are, we are navigating very different seas today, but the tools we have to navigate them are, are, are really, like, better than, than my father or grandfather or any of the men who came before them ever had. 

Scott M. Curran: All right, so let's, let's dive into this. So two companion questions. One, um- Your, your book is based on this, this, this reality that fatherhood is undergoing a fundamental transformation. So I'd love for you to share with the listeners what is it that's changing, and then how, how can they better understand it the way you beautifully break it down, that for thousands of years fathers have been expected to do th- the three Ps: protect, provide, and preside. What an incredibly helpful frame. Um, how is it changing, and then why doesn't that framework fully work anymore? 

Kevin Maguire: Yeah, I call these the traditional anchors of fatherhood, right? 'Cause protect, we are physically 10 to 15% larger than the women in our lives, and that was what was important. Like back in the day, you had to protect from the saber-toothed tigers, the other tribes that might try and attack your family. You had to keep people safe, so the bigger, the gender who was bigger would do this. Nowadays, the threats that our children face, like my physical size does not help protect my daughter from body dysmorphia issues, from cyberbullying on Instagram. Like, it doesn't help my son navigate kind of like the manosphere and toxic masculinity. So, so the idea of, like, Dad's role as a protector, well, Dad doesn't do that on his own anymore. 

Dad as the provider, it's also cooked. You know, in a third of marriages in the US, they're, they're called egalitarian marriages. Men and women earn roughly the same. In a sixth of marriages in the US, the wife brings home most of the money whilst still doing most of the work at home. You know- the idea is, is that she's bringing home the bacon, and she's actually cooking the bacon too. So the idea of, like, Dad as the sole provider also it's an archaic idea that just doesn't really apply in so many marriages today. 

And then the third one of preside, like Dad was the boss. I grew up in a household where it was just you wait until your father gets home. And it's like, you know, the, the dad ruled the, ruled the roost with an iron fist and like it was, you know, I remember this was a line in my house, "It's my way or the highway." It's like, "Get on board or get out." And so it's like this is this old model of fatherhood that's been allowed to exist for the longest time. And what Dad's role was back then, it was, it was a lot simpler. Like you did these three things, and that was kind of all you were meant to do. You know, as long as you brought home a paycheck, as long as you made sure the family was safe and that you were the disciplinarian, you know, that's what you did. And even, you know, when it comes to the role of the dad, well, you provided, but not only did you provide money and income and a house and food, but you provided what the next generation would do for work. You know, historically, dads would pass on a trade to their sons because it would be the men who were working, and they would give that trade along with a surname. So, you know, all of these surnames that we know, Baker, Spicer, Butcher, Taylor. You know, and it's not just in the Anglosphere. Interesting, when I was researching the book, you know, you look at the-- You look at India, and you have Tobacco Walla, Chai Walla. You know, it's like the tobacco seller, the tea seller. Like the names were given along with the j- the role itself. 

So our entire sense of self and identity was passed down from the men who came before us. And all of these things are starting to shift now, Scott. And it felt like when I, when I kind of--I didn't set out to say, "Well, I'm gonna be a fatherhood guy, and I'm gonna kind of chronicle the changing face of fatherhood," but I just kept seeing all of these markers that me-- the dad that I was expected to be was so dramatically different from those two men in that picture. And really, like, I think so much about the newsletter, you know, the five years of writing the newsletter, the three years I've put into this book, is I'm kind of just thinking in public, and I'm really trying to figure these things out, and it's just been so interesting to see it resonate with so many who are on that same journey and trying to figure these things out themselves, too.

Scott M. Curran: I love it. And, and it, the, I will just say the first 15 pages of your book, and pages like 14 and 15 specifically, which are the old rules and the new rules, are worth the price of admission alone. I mean, any, any dad or, or family-focused person should get it for that reason alone. I mean, I, we could spend probably the whole hour going through just the, the old rules and new rules. And if, if there's a couple favorites you, you, you have, I'd love to, to have you share them now, or if we want to run through all 17, we could. But I think that the reality of old models being dismantled and disrupted without a clear new path forward is the challenge that, that every father is facing. And for all the reasons you've already unpacked a little bit, um, you know, technically there's, there, you know, they never gave us a, a roadmap or a path for what to do when, and when we take the kid home from the hospital. I found that amazing when I was a, a new dad. My kids are now 17 and 15, but when I was, when we first had our son, our oldest, I thought, "They let us take him home. They just let you leave the hospital with him." Like, you didn't have to go get a permit or a license or anything. It was harder to go drive a car than it was to bring a human home and, and then be responsible for it. But I would, you know, some would say that there's no new rules to take their place, and, and maybe it's not rules, but, like, this guide you provide is amazing. 

Of the 17, any specifics that you have found resonated most with readers or that you feel are most valuable if somebody has to pick just a smaller number than, than all of them? 

Kevin Maguire: For me, I would say the core one that runs through, like, if, what, what the new fatherhood is in a nutshell is, I can't, I won't remember the number off the top of my head, but the old rule was push it down, and the new rule is bring it up.

Scott M. Curran: It's number 10, by the way. For those following along at home or getting the book, it's pages 14 and 15. Um, push it down is the old rule. New rule is bring it up, number 10. 

Kevin Maguire: And that's it. And like for so, for so long, the dads before us, you know, we've grown up with this archetype of the like, emotionally distant father with the stiff upper lip. It's like you could go to Dad for advice, like how to change a tire, how to knock a hole through a wall, but don't ever go to Dad to talk about your feelings because what you'll get there is nothing. This-- And that, that advice, you know, that still exists, right? Like so many of us will have a back-and-forth text message chain with our fathers where you're just kind of like, it's a sea of bing, thumb up emoji, thumb up emoji. And I think what we've learned to do and, and what has been driven by the shift, and, you know, part of it is driven by the changing face of what it means to be a man today and modern masculinity. Part of it is that, well, if this traditional model of fatherhood isn't fit for purpose anymore, our kids need more from us, and we need to step up, and we need to be kind of emotionally there.

You know, my, my daughter is about to turn 12, and I'm at the cusp of teenage years, right? And I'm realizing that my ability to be emotionally present for my daughter is more important than any skill I could possibly be working on as a father right now. So for me, it's like, you know, when, for me, there's this emotional yin and yang of, of fatherhood right now, and vulnerability is part of it, and empathy is the other. Like, these two things work hand-in-hand with each other, and if you can be more open and vulnerable with, with your partner, with your children, with friends, then this will lead to richer, deeper, more meaningful relationships with them. And then that will kind of unlock this newfound empathy as you're able to talk to them, as you're able to really listen and understand their thoughts and feelings. It's not something that we grew up learning how to do. It's not something that many fathers modeled for their sons in the generations past. So I really think, like, that is the, that is some of the biggest, most important work that we, that we'll do. 

Scott M. Curran: Yeah, I would just offer that for those who, who haven't seen the book yet and you dive into it, r- not all the rules directly flow from, from the other, but 11 and 12 build beautifully from the push it down to bring it up of number 10. Number 11's control their behavior, control the kids' behavior. The new rule is understand your own behavior, being in touch with that and aware so that you can be empathetic. And number 12 is, the old rule is tough it out. The new rule is tune it in, and I think all of those three go beautifully together.

For those who aren't familiar with your story, share how this came to be. You talked about the photo of three generations in one picture, and you, you actually describe it in the book in a, in a funny way. It got you used to being on FaceTime with people because the framing of it was a little off and geared more towards the ceiling than the subject of the photo. But share a bit about, um, you know, one, two, two parts of this. One, your dad, what he did, which I think has a beautiful synchronicity to the fact that he was laying cable, brought it home one day to show you what it was, and then described it. If you could share a little bit about that story just because it, it dovetails beautifully with, with where I'd like to go next, which is when and how you sort of achieved the dream job but ultimately realized that achievement without fulfillment is the ultimate failure and sort of had this real epiphany for your own life that led you on this journey.Could you put those two pieces of your own story together for those who aren't familiar with it yet? 

Kevin Maguire: You know, I grew up with a father that m- really followed that traditional model right down the line, and he would, he was in construction. He would go out. He, when he first moved over to the UK, he moved to a country where at the time there were still signs on pubs that said, "No dogs, no Blacks, no Irish." Right? They would just like, would, would be, you, you know, you wouldn't be allowed in here. You'd go for a job, they would see you were Irish, they'd be like, "Nope, you're not getting this job." And he went and worked into, into construction because that was where all the Irish people in the north of England worked, and he would just go away and do whatever needed to be done wherever, wherever it was. So he spent a long time building motorways at first. Like, he would come home, and I could smell the asphalt. Like, even to this day, when I smell that smell, it reminds me of, like, my father as a, as a young boy. And then it, then he kind of moved into a different area, and he was less about laying motorways, and he was digging holes for utilities, for water pipes, for, like, uh, sewage, for whatever it would be. And I remember him coming home one day, and he came home, and he came home with this little, this cable, and it was probably about the thickness of my finger. And out of that cable sprouted a kind of like a floral display of tiny, tiny hairs, okay? All, all transparent. I was, and I was looking at it like, "What is this?" And he said, "I have no idea what it is, but they're paying me forty pound for every one meter of it that I put into the floor." And it was fiber optic cable. So my dad literally paved the way for the future that we all started working in. You know he did this work for a it t was an American company. It was a company called Nynex. They were a big American company who kind of installed cable all across the US and then went to the UK. You know, and then later I would use th- those exact cables to start to build a career for myself. 

I went to university. I did computer science. I ended up leaving and working in a record shop.I fell into advertising, and that, that kind of road eventually took me to Google. It's like this was this job that I, you know, I, I learned about Google maybe when I was 18. You hear about these incredible lunches, and they've got slides in the office, and they look after their employees so well, and I thought, "This is where, this is what I wanna do," you know? And for me, I've always been like a internet kid. Like I was a, I often joke with this, like I built a PC before I ever kissed a girl. You know, it's like that was my, that was kind of my history. I was a real, I was a real geek. And the idea of working for Google, it's like, "Oh, cool, this is the company. And I did it. I worked for an advertising agency. Google was a client. I made that jump. And I got there and I was probably 28, 29 when I got this job. And it was, it w- it's like the dog that catches the car. Like, what are you gonna do? Right? I got there and the, the ambition, the vision that I had to get this job, like I'd done it. And there was a kind of like a h- a, a hole, a sense of lacking of what next? And what, what happened next, Scott, was I just got caught up in the trappings of what everyone else was chasing. It's like people thinking about promotions, people thinking about performance reviews, like, "Oh, what, how much stock could I get at my next, at my next kind of salary review? What, what is the VP gonna think of these projects that I'm gonna do?" And you get, you kind of get caught into this vortex of, of what feels like meaning and purpose, but it is very unnourishing, right? And the, and the kind of like I, you know, I was there, was there for eight, nine years. I had a great time. I did some fantastic work there. But there was a moment I end, I ended up in the Bay Area. You know, I kind of like made the switch over. 

I spent two years living in San Francisco. And there was a moment, there was a moment where I was at home and I was emailing ah, emailing about some kind of crisis. It was like, and I can't even remember what it was now. And I r- I looked down at my daughter, and she's three years old at this time, and she's trying to get my attention. She's like, "Hey, can I show you this? Can I show you something?" I'm like, "No, no, no, I'm, I'm, I'm busy. I'm, I really need to figure this thing out and work on it." And I caught myself. And we were in this, we were in this world where, you know, life in San Francisco, working for a tech company, on paper, like I've never been more wealthy. And in reality, it was, we were just keeping our head above the water. You know, like everything was so expensive. We were just trying to figure out how to make ends meet. And I had this realization, I thought, "I could stay here another 10 years. I could stay in this job and carry on working with my head in this laptop, and in 10 years' time, I'll close the laptop, and I'll look up, and there'll be a teenage girl there. And I'll wanna talk to her, and she will just say, 'Where have you been?'"

So it was just this moment of going, "This thing that I have been chasing for so long, this is not it. And I don't know what's going to come next, but it's time to pull the rip cord and, and make a change." 

Scott M. Curran: Yeah, I, I love it. There, there's a quote, it's, it's not mine, but that "Achievement without fulfillment is the ultimate failure." And, you know, we, a lot of us can, can grab a title or, or, you know, work for an organization, um, live in a place, do a thing. But your rule number five, the old rule is, you are what you do. The new rule is you are not your job. And I think that that is a very profound, it's a very simple observation, but a very profound one. I think a lot of us struggle with that. 

Kevin Maguire: And Scott, to get there, you, you have to push back against like generations of conditioning. Like I said before about the surnames that are passed down. You know, I work as a coach. I work with like so many dads, and th- like the core thing that it always comes back to with men is how much of our sense of identity is wrapped up in the work that we do. And if we don't have that, then what do we have? And, you know, there's, there's an anecdote in the book that, that I'll share, which was I'd made this decision to leave. And I was talking to a friend, and he was at Facebook, and he'd also made the decision to leave. And the two of us were sat there, and I said, "Are we crazy? Are we crazy to be leaving by our own choice these two jobs that everybody wants?" And he said, "No." He said, "How lucky are we at this age?" Maybe like I was 34, 35. "How lucky are we at 35 to have had the thing that everybody wants and to know that it's not enough? Like, you could spend your whole life chasing this and never get it."

Scott M. Curran: It's such a powerful insight on the double-edged sword that is a big, big platform, right? You, you're on this huge platform with a name brand business that was obviously skyrocketing and, and some ways still is. And to, to leave that is a highly vulnerable career move in its own right, but that it challenges this notion of our identity and that who we are and how we're defined by that platform that we have stood on or served in one way or another, especially when fulfillment is not the an equal part of that equation, and then having to go in the direction of fulfillment.

So you have this career challenge and this reality that for a very long time we have all been, you know, identified as, if not actually named after the, the professions that we're in. Then fatherhood delivers a new challenge for you. And so it wasn't your first child, it was your second child. For those who haven't yet read the book, share what happened with the birth of, of your second child, your son. 

Kevin Maguire: Yeah, I mean, so we left SF in 2018. We moved back to Europe. We didn't really have an idea of where we wanted to land, and I took a short sabbatical after leaving Google. And we found ourselves pregnant again during the sabbatical. So we had to get the wheels in motion. We had to figure out what we were gonna do. And we ended up in Barcelona through like a process of, uh, like an intentional process of trying to design the life that we wanted to have. And we landed here at the start of 2019, and my son was born four months later. I knew one--outside of my wife and daughter--I knew one person here who was just a friend of a friend, we'd met and had a beer a few times. And I was, it's moved and I was-- I didn't have a job any-- I had, I was working for myself, so I didn't have an office I was going to every day. I didn't have a ready-made community that I could just slot myself into. And my son was born, and it was an incredibly isolating experience. And it was in- it was really tough, and I didn't know what was happening.

There were all kinds of negative emotions, Scott. There was just like feelings of anger towards a baby, feelings of like resentment for this decision that we'd made, feelings of shame around like why was I feeling like this way about my son? And I would just, I would take myself out of the house every day under the excuse of taking the dog for a walk and then just go and sit somewhere and cry and cry and try and figure out like, "What is going on in my life?" Like, "What, why do I not love this child, this new baby who's been born?" And I came across an article written by a doctor in, it was in Psychology, Psychology Today, written by a doctor, Dr. Levine out in the US, and he talked about going through the exact same symptoms that I'd been going through. And I just saw three words there together that I'd never seen before, paternal postpartum depression.

I had a really, I had a very strong idea of what postpartum depression was because, you know, we as, as husbands who are trying to support our partners, you know, you learn about this as an issue and to look for the signs. I had no idea that dads could get it. And, you know, there is all kinds of data that there is so much data around postpartum depression in women because it's something that they, that they've been studying for like hundreds of years, and there's been a real battle for women to be able to kind of have it recognized. It only went into the DSM-V, the kind of manual for disorders very recently, and I think four or five years ago. And but I had no idea that it's like this can happen to men too. There's, there's all this data with women that they say maybe 12% of new moms get this. With dads, when I first started looking, they said it's somewhere between 5% and 25%. And we don't really know because men aren't talking. We're not screening for it. Men aren't talking about it. And if they do go to the doctors, like they're not being asked, and if they do get asked, they don't want to speak up about these things. They're not talking to each other. 

So this began this real kind of, um this real process of understanding what this is and what I needed to do to get through it and to get, to get myself better. nd a huge part of that, you know, the... And, and I, and I leant on all the research for what women do in these in these spaces. You know, it's like opening up. It's therapy. It's exercise. It's kind of like intentionally spending time with the child, like all these different things that you do to work to get through it. And I did this, and I, I found that one of the biggest things that helped me, Scott, was opening up, not just to my wife, not just to family, but to other men in my life, and that was this huge... It was like trying to use a muscle that not that it had atrophied, but just that I'd never had to use. Like this idea of being emotional and being vulnerable with other, with other men. 

One of the, one of the side effects of spending a like the majority of my adult life in the corporate world is we are trained to see vulnerability as synonymous with weakness, and if you show a weakness, then that weakness will be used against you by someone who is more ambitious. Like when the promo cycle- 

Scott M. Curran: And this goes back to that same biological sociological history, right? Like, 'cause I was gonna ask you why do so many men struggle to ask for the help when they need it most, but it's kind of been part of our evolution for, for a long, long time now. 

Kevin Maguire: Yeah, well, if we're the person who is supposed to protect, then we can't show that we are weak ourselves. Like those two things, like there is a, there is kind of a a, like, mental paradox. We can't be strong enough to protect while also being weak at the same time. And I think this is what's tripping so many guys up. This is why, you know, you look at the male loneliness epidemic. When I was researching for the book and realizing that, like, so many of these kind of like famous men that we know who have committed suicide did it whilst they had-- were fathers of small children. Like you have Kurt Cobain from Nirvana, you have Michael Hutchence from INXS, Chester Bennington from Linkin Park. Like these, these men were all fathers of small children. And you know, we weren't, we aren't talking about this. We weren't talking about this. It's like it's still-- I still go out and talk about this and, and men, women, they, they're like, "This-- Like we didn't know this exists. Like, and sometimes it comes with a... It's men going like, "I had no idea." I've had men email me, Scott, over the years and say, "I had no idea this was a thing, and this explains so much. Like this explains why I was in this like, this horrible place for the first year of my, of my son's life. This explains why like I did these, I had a gambling addiction for a year of my life that I've never had before."

You know, the symptoms present differently for, for men and women. There's, there's a lot of similarities. There are some differences, and men tend to exhibit more self-destructive tendencies. 

Scott M. Curran: Depression tends to pull forward addictive behaviors, right? So it could, it could take its form of any number of addictive behaviors.

Kevin Maguire: Yeah. And I think, you know, a great piece of advice that I was given, and this is great advice for any-anyone who has a partner going through any form of depression, but postpartum depression especially, which is that you You both sit on one side of the table and you put the depression on the other side, right? You work together to figure out like what you need to do to get through to like to get rid of this because I think all too often that it can feel like, okay, well, me and the depression are here and you're over on the other side and actually like trying to figure out how you can connect and communicate and help each other get through. There is a whole host of data out there that says if one parent gets postpartum depression, there's a fifty percent chance the other parent gets it too. And then there is all kinds of data that I go into in the book which is the knock-on effects for children when their parents have had any kind of a depressive episode but postpartum depression especially and untreated and what it, what it means to them in later life.

Scott M. Curan: There's a couple really interesting corollaries here and I just want to note that the three Ps are helpful as a frame for anybody, uh, who might be struggling through this. It's not just that, that being vulnerable, um, or feeling like we're, we're failing to live up to ideal goes just to, to protection. It's also about that providing and presiding piece where if you're expected to provide you must be strong and capable and competent. You can't be weak. If you're expected to preside you're expected to lay down the law, to make the decisions my way or the highway. I have to be strong and, and fit and I can't be there- therefore vulnerable or something less than the ideal against those three Ps.

So I think just being able to name what those three Ps are in the historic context of how people have traditionally looked at fatherhood helps people understand that frame in a way that's like, oh, okay, these are the things that feel like they're being undercut if I am any of the things I feel strongly the need to be while overcoming a challenge. And, and that's okay. I think we can just live in that space of acknowledging it and that provides the, the first step in the new direction. 

Similarly you talk in the book about the difference between scarcity and abundance which I think is another wonderfully helpful frame. Could you walk people through how that dichotomy is set up and, and what the distinction is so people can identify that too as they progress on this journey?

Kevin Maguire: Yeah. So I realized during this work that historically like, you know, you look through the fatherhood literature on offer. You know, I don't know how many books you read when you were about to become a dad for the first time, Scott. But like it says a lot that there is only one book out there that I will continue to recommend for other dads who are about to have a kid and it's called The Expectant Father. It's by a guy called Armin Brott. If you read one book about fatherhood you-- this was the one that you read. It, it gets reviewed very well. It's like people recommend it to each other. It's a great book. It is thirty years old. Okay? He's updated it five times. It has sold 1.5 million copies. It's great. Like, if I can, if I can even sell a fraction of that, I'll be a very happy person. 

But, like, everything else, like in my experience. The way it talked about fatherhood, the way it looked at fatherhood was this idea the, of all the things that it will take away from you. The late nights, you won't get any sleep anymore, your relationships will suffer, you won't have any money, your career is gonna be impacted, like all these different things. And, you know, in psychology, we call this a scarcity mindset. So in the book, I call it scarcity fatherhood. Like, and from that perspective of scarcity fatherhood, raising children is a distraction. Raising children is something that is just, it's not part of the main narrative. It's not part of like you go out, you work hard, you can kind of like, you achieve, you nail that American dream. Kids, might happen for you, it might not happen for you, but it's not part of that main thing that you're going for. And the more and more time I spent as a dad myself, and the more and more I surrounded myself with the kind of dads that I looked up to and respected, like these people were looking at fatherhood as, as additive to their life. It like, it made them feel more, it made them happier, it gave them more meaning and fulfillment, and like from this kind of, from this perspective, from this abundant fatherhood perspective, like having children does not take things away from you. Like having children leads to a richer, more meaningful life You can have a rich, meaningful life without children. I know a lot of people who have. 

But for me, it's like, yeah, it's weird, you know? I spent this huge chunk of my career searching for meaning and fulfillment through work, and having it as the primary source of meaning and fulfillment. And if I wasn't getting it through work, then I wasn't getting it in my life. And this huge shift that actually came, it came through working with a coach actually back in 2016, 2017, was that f- there were so many places for me to get, for me to find fulfillment. And I-- But I was like standing with a bucket under the one pipe that was just dripping like a, like a, a little drop every day, and I was trying to squeeze that pipe for all the fulfillment I could get out of it. And there was work, and there was family, and there was friends, and there was hobbies, and there was food and music and art and all of these different things that were just bottomless wells of fulfillment. And I just really had to make that mind shift change and go, "I don't need all of this from work.” And that was, that, that got me to the place where I could step away from a job that, that had really defined me up to that point. 

Scott M. Curran: So if anybody's listening and they're wondering, "Okay, am I in the scarcity fatherhood or am I in the abundance fatherhood, or I'm probably a combination of the two," what is the quick and easy checklist for someone to know they're in scarcity and then abundance? Let's start with scarcity. If, if this is true for you, you may have more of the scarcity column than the abundance column. What does that look like for somebody who's in a scarcity fatherhood?

Kevin Maguire: I thinkyou tend to look at Interaction, like experiences with your children, interactions with your children as like, "What is this costing me? And by cost, I could be speaking financially, I could be speaking time, I could be speaking energy, I could be speaking a combination of all the three.  It's like, "Oh, the kids wanna do... The kids wanna go to the movies this weekend." Like, "Okay, well that's gonna be like $40 for the tickets and six- $30 for popcorn." And I wanted to g- I wanted to watch this game, and I'm not... It's just like that feels like for me, that's scarcity fatherhood. 

Like the dad who turns around and says, "Oh, cool. 'Toy Story 5' is out. Like I loved the 'Toy Story' movies as a kid. Can we go watch that together? Like, well, well let's go pick up some sweets on the way and sneak them in. And it's like the kids... I have found that kids, can be this Trojan horse to just get into all kinds of different things. Like right now, Scott, my son is obsessed with football. He's seven. We're here in Barcelona, so Barcelona is his team. The World Cup is on, so he gets to watch Lamine Yamal play. He gets to watch Messi, Ronaldo, like all these people. He's collecting football stickers. There is a meetup every Sunday in Barcelona where all the kids in the city and, you know, quite a few dads all meet up to swap cards and stickers. And it is probably about 200 people every Sunday, every Sunday morning at Mercat de Sant Antoni. Okay? It's just, it's a 15-minute walk from our house. This for me has just been an absolute joy, right? From the scarcity fatherhood mindset is, "I can't believe how much I'm spending on stickers. Like it's 150 a pack and he wants to buy a pack every day, and it's gonna be, it's gonna take 100 packs to fill this thing, and it's gonna be €200 altogether.” The mindset of abundant fatherhood is I get to go with... Like he i he knows all these players. He can look, he can look through a s- a pack of 10 stickers and instantly know which four he has and which two he hasn't. Like all these, you know... And then he goes like... 

The first time I took him to this meetup He was quite shy.He's kind of looking around. He doesn't know what's going on. And I said, "Well," and I, and I was kind of leaning in. I was talking to the little kid. I was like, "¿Quieres cambiar?" Like, "Do you wanna s- do you wanna change? Do you wanna swap?" And then in a little, like after a few times, he was in, and now we've gone down a few times since, and he's like like jumping around, "Can I go here? I wanna talk to this guy." It's like, "Have you swapped with him yet?" "Yeah, I've already swapped with him, but I haven't swapped with him." It's like this for me, it's like I get so much joy out of watching him learn this and watching him navigate the world, but also, like I’m hanging around, I'm talking about football. Like I'm getting to practice my Spanish with other dads who are there, and like there is so much just absolute joy and meaning to be found in these experiences with our kids. But the wrong mindset can just block us off from so much of it. 

Scott M. Curran: It reinforces for me one of my favorite mechanisms for, for flipping the script, which all of us are imperfect at this, so I wanna be clear that there's no expectation any of us get this right all the time. We're allowed to have our, our down times, our moments, our scarcity. It's normal. It means we're human. But one of the mechanisms I've used primarily in, in the past decade of my life, and I'm 50 in a few months, so in my 40s I've learned this, is flipping my have tos into get tos.

I don't have to take the kids to a movie, I get to. And what does that make possible? I don't have to go to the card shop or the coin shop or whatever, I get to. And what does that do for us? And I'll, I'll give an example just that resonates in a slightly different way. Just in the past couple weeks, my kids... We're recording this in the summer in June, right before Father's Day, and one of my kids' tasks for the summer is to go through really just a whole bunch of boxes of coins that have been left to, that have wound up in our home as a result of several people either cleaning out basements, downsizing, sadly passing away, et cetera. And so we have this whole set of coins and things, and I was like, "We don't have to go through that this summer, we get to." And the process and just that tweak of mindset has revealed that this isn't a task for my kids this summer to clean out boxes in a room. It's been an opportunity to do a few things. 

One, learn about something we don't know anything about. Two, specifically learn about what these coins are and aren't. Some of them are old, some of them are new, some of them are, are of, of no more value than is on the face of them, and some of them have been shockingly more valuable than that. Not a lot, just a couple, but there have been a few of those needles in the haystack, here it turns out this was pure gold or pure silver coin for any number of reasons. And now, all of a sudden, my kid's going to the coin shop and having an experience not just with the shopkeeper, I mean, this is a pretty old-school coin shop in our community, which is, is pretty awesome 'cause there's not a lot of those left. But they wound up just last week talking with four older gentlemen in the shop who are regulars there, and, and those are not experiences that, that people have as much anymore for a whole bunch of reasons. And my son started asking some questions that were effectively about the market. Do we think the price of gold or silver is gonna go up or down? And they wound up in this conversation with these, you know, the current version of old heads from the community. And, and one of the guys said at one point, he's like, "Hey, listen, come with me, and I promise this isn't a scam. I wanna take you out to my car, and I wanna give you guys something." He's like, "I love the questions that you kids were asking, and I hope that you're excited about this." And, and he gifted them each a pure silver coin that he had been cleaning out and he was gonna go take from one office to another office. And it was this lovely moment where I was like, we turned this task from a have to into a get to, and it just opened this new way of thinking about the task the items themselves the world in which they fit, and, and the world in which we interact. And to me, it's been unexpectedly, and thanks honestly to your book now, I'm now seeing it as one of my proudest parenting moments, which is that we turned this have to task into this get to.

And by the way, I use this for myself in my own business. I don't have to send out invoices at the beginning of the month. Oh, this laborious task. You have to log in, you have to do this thing, et cetera, et cetera. I get to because it means I have clients. It means that I work with people who are part of my mission and my purpose and my fulfillment in life. So for anybody who's wondering how this applies to you, and you don't have to be a dad for it to, but turn your have tos into get tos and you can discover that abundance mindset. You go from scarcity to abundance. Just alittle nugget that I use in my own life and work. 

Kevin Maguire: There's a, there's another thing that I came across. There was a, there's a philosopher called William B. Irvine. He's still alive. He's still with us, and he has this thing called the last time meditation. Now, I wrote about this in the newsletter four years ago. I had a dad tell me, he said, "I've probably thought about it every week since." And the idea of the last time meditation, it isn't... You don't have to sit and close your eyes. It's just a, it's a thought process, and what you do is the... If you're ever doing something that you don't wanna do, right? That is a, "I, you know, I must do this," catch yourself and just say to yourself, "There will come a time where I won't be able to do this anymore.  Like, and, and William B. Irvine talks about mowing the lawn. It isn't something that he loves to do. But there will come a time where maybe he's too old to go out and push the mower. Maybe he loses the house, and he has to downsize, and he doesn't have this nice garden anymore. And just catching yourself in that moment and saying, "I won't be able to do this forever." And I kind of like the example. 

When I talk about this in the book, I talk about my daughter's hair because she has long, long hair. She's only had it cut once in 12 years, and the problem with long hair is it gets knotty. It gets like, it's a nightmare. You know, we have to wash it. We have to comb it all out, and she hates it.She hates me combing through, and I hate doing it, too. And I would catch myself, and I would go, "One ti- you know, sometime soon, I won't have to do this anymore. I won't be able to do this anymore, and I'll really miss it." And in between writing the book and publishing the book, that time has passed And I walk past and she's in the room doing it herself, and I do feel this pang of like, of loss, of, of thinking like, "Oh, the man. Like, I-- we don't get to have that anymore." And so often, Scott, I just catch myself and, and think, like in, in 20 years' time, I will give anything just to come back to this hour, to this day, to this moment just for for another few minutes. And it's just little things like this, like you said, these reframes, the little ways that we can catch ourselves that really unlock a completely different perspective on not just what it means to be a dad, but what it means to be alive. 

Scott M. Curran: Two, two things to yes and that. Um, I guess three. One is I identify with the combing of the hair thing. It's probably one of my daughter's, um, you know, very manageable traumas in her life is that she has long, curly hair, and there was a time when I was trying to help her, we were just in conflict about it, and I was like, "Okay, we give, we... I give up." And that was something we refer back to every now and then, uh, is that the dad hair salon is not a happy place. Um, so, so ours ended prematurely, but by mutual choice. But she's at that point. Second, what you mention in the book, which is difficult 'cause...and there's memes out there or there's Instagram reels about this, but you talk about it in the book and it is so very true. The, we don't know when the last time is that we're going to pick them up and hold them. Mine are 15 and 17. I couldn't pick them up and hold them without injury if I tried. But there is a last time we have the last bedtime story, when they're little, unless we choose to go back and do it again out of a desire or intentionality. But there's a lot of lasts that, that happen in front of us and we don't know it, so being mindful that there will come a time when these things don't happen. And then the third thing, which has happened to me last night as a parent. 

It was a busy, busy, busy day for both my wife and for me. The kids are on summer break, and so they were in different places doing different things, and it was not a convenient night to have friends over or to order the friends food. And our son was out with friends, said, "Hey, could I have friends over? And if so, could we order food?" And the answer really was kinda no. And my thought was he's a junior. He's a rising senior in high school. This time June of next year I will be soaking up every single one of the opportunities before he leaves for college for him to want to come hang out at our house with his friends. And I found my way to yes last night, but I literally had that thought. And maybe it was because I was reading your book, too, and I knew we were gonna have this conversation. I don't think that. That was not part of my conscious thought process, but maybe the pump was being primed. But I offer that for any listener who may benefit from this exercise or knowing what else that might look like. Be aware, a time comes when you're doing - it's the last diaper you change. It's the last time they hold your hand because they need your, need the stability from you. There will come a time when you'll be holding their hand because you need their stability, God willing. And, there'll be times that are inconvenient, but that may be among the precious ones you lose over time. And I think the more aware we are about those and the more intentional we are, the better we can be in that abundance mindset. So thank you for that. Thank you for the reminder, the refresher, and the mechanism for, for everybody. 

Kevin Maguire: But also, Scott, you know, you, you hit on a great point, which is, like, you, you caught yourself in that moment. You just had it front of mind that, like, this won't be forever, and it allowed you to kind of like interrupt the programming, interrupt the narrative. And I think what-- the reason I put this book out into the world is I've read so many books on how to be a better person. Like how to be better at work, how to be more productive, how to be more mindful, how to be more patient, like all of these different things. And there was nothing out there that spoke to the kind of dad that I wanted to be, right? That told me, "Here are some actionable t-tips, some techniques, some frameworks, some like knowledge you can use to help you be the dad you wanna be." 'Cause like I-- we're, we're so busy. We're jumping from thing to... We're jumping. Like there's a, there's a crisis at work, there's a crisis at home, there's something with family, there's something with friends. And you know, I remember an email I got in the early days of writing the newsletter, and it was from a dad and he said, "Thank you so much for the work you're doing. Like thank you for giving me some language about these things that I think about all the time. But thank you for giving me just ten minutes a week where I sit down and I am able to be more intentional about the dad I wanna be." 'Cause I think, you know, Scott, every day there will come a time in the future where your two children, your children will sit down at a table with adult friends of their own. You will not be there, and they will talk about the childhood that they had And every day you have, what you are doing influences that story. It influences the kind of dad that they'll remember. 

Like, that's what drives me. That's what drives me to do this work. That's what drives me to kind of look at the patterns of fatherhood that have been passed down before us, that we are willing to do the work to interrupt to say like the buck stops here and, you know, my dad gave me some great things, my dad gave me some not great things, but I am being intentional about what I'm gonna pass on and what I won't.

Scott M. Curran: This is a perfect segue to the last piece I wanted to talk about, which is that you have discovered that there is a world of other dads just like you experiencing what you've experienced in whole or in part in various combinations, and that's what I wanted to sort of, number one, highlight, which is that this is a shared experience for every father, and that we are all having a shared experience on planet Earth at any given time. And from the macro to the micro, this has been real. And so through your own leaning in and leaning forward, your own discovery, your own vulnerability, and, and all that's come from that, you have a...Yes, this book is out, but there is this incredibly popular newsletter where you have found an entire world of people that by virtue of your speaking up, others have said, "Me too." They've raised their hand. They've said, "I've experienced this in, in some way as well." Share with people aren't as familiar with that yet or who aren't part of that ecosystem, that discovery, what you've learned from it and about fatherhood and the other fathers, and what each person listening right now should be empowered and emboldened and excited to know about this community of other dads out there, which Esquire, I think, described as like a group chat for dads who are all trying to figure it out as we go.

Kevin Maguire: Yeah, absolutely. You know, it really grew beyond anything I could have imagined. I started writing the newsletter in twenty twenty-one, in January of twenty twenty-one, and I said, "I am going to do this for a year." Like I've done, I've done various projects on the internet. I'm an old hand when it comes to the internet, and I've been around for a while, and I've done various things, and some things work and some things don't. And I went into this with the intention of just talking about my experience as a dad and using it, using it as an excuse to learn how to write. The only thing I'd written before this was the occasional PowerPoint, you know, not the occasional PowerPoint deck, hundreds upon hundreds of PowerPoint decks, emails for internal stakeholders, like all of this kind of what David Graeber calls bullshit jobs. Like a lot of bullshit job work. And I said, "Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna commit to this, and I'm gonna learn how to be a great writer." And I went and I bought a load of different books about writing. I just said, "I'm gonna do a year." And I sent out to a few friends who worked, who still worked at the various tech companies that we'd kind of intersected with And I just sent out this email, said, uh, "Hey, can you post this on your parents' groups if you have one?" A parent Slack channel, parent bulletin board, whatever you might have. And it just said, you know, dads don't look out for each other, and we need to do a better job of, of showing up and, and just creating a space where dads can talk about some of the kind of struggles that they're having. And in that first few weeks, there were 500 people reading it. And then a week, few weeks later, it was 1,000, 2,000. It's like currently stands at 23,000 dads around the world. 

Actually, I say 23,000 dads. I did a survey a while ago. Fifteen percent of the people who read the newsletter, I call them the curious moms. You know, there are women who read it who are really into it. It just became this space where, like, I just send out an email once a week. I just send it, and sometimes it's about the intersection of fatherhood and popular culture. Might be a movie, it might be a book, it might be a video game. Sometimes it's something I've seen in the news. But more, more often than not, it's just something that I've noticed at home. You know, there is a great book, speaking of books about learning to write, there is a great book by, uh, Vernon Klinkenborg called Several Short Sentences About Writing, and he talks about writing as just the idea of noticing. It's about letting yourself out into the world and noticing what comes back. And so many of the newsletters begin with like, "Huh, isn't, isn't that strange?" Like, you know, like a great example: Why do I feel so angry when I walk into a room and my kids' toys have been left out? Like, just the thought and a thought that led to this thing of, "Well, huh." 

Like in, in my house, like the house had to be clean or there would be, there would be kind of like repercussions. And now I'm repeating these same patterns again. And I'll go out and I'll go buy some plastic boxes from the local shop, and we'll clean the toys up together, and it's great. I'm such a huge fan of Larry David, and there was an interview with Larry David one time, and they said, "Is your life really like Curb? Like, is it really like this?" And he said, "Yes. So much so that whenever I get into a situation that I don't want to be in, I just take out my notebook and I start to write." And for me, like the newsletter itself -- I have been-- I'm trying to figure fatherhood out, and I'm like Jason in the labyrinth hholding the red thread, like leaving down the red thread so that if anyone else finds it, they can figure out, they can figure a way through. Because, and all of these dads have come along for the ride because they see themselves in this, in this shifting definition of fatherhood too. I always say the new fatherhood is not me, Scott. It's not me saying, "I am the dad who is pushing fatherhood forward." Like, I'm a journalist and this is my beat. Fatherhood is my beat, and I'm just noticing all the different things like the, uh, what Ethan Mollick calls the jagged face. It's like the jagged face of fatherhood, right? It's like, it is, uh, the William Gibson quote, "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed." That's how I feel about f-the changing face of fatherhood. It's here. It's just, it's, it's all around the place. 

You look at something like in the UK, there's an organization called Pints and Ponytails that have been getting a lot of press recently. It's a bunch of guys. They go to a pub, they have a beer, and they learn how to braid hair on, you know, the, the, the hairdresser kind of like mannequin heads. They're getting together and they're talking about these things. It's like, you look at these things that are happening everywhere. There's, there are these pockets. 

And I think, in your question, you raise a really interesting point, which is we're all experiencing this, like, different version of fatherhood together. Sadly, it's not the case because like so much of the modern world, it, it's polarized. And there are dads like you and I and dads we know and that, that are pushing fatherhood forward, that are pushing for more equality in their relationships, that are learning how to open up and be vulnerable, that are rethinking their relationship with work so that they can be more present at home. But there are also dads on the other side that, you know, "Let's-- We should go back to when men were men, return to the traditional values of family." And what that traditional values tends to mean is I as the guy will do whatever I want, and you as the woman can be some kind of trad wife, whether you wanna be a trad wife or not, but that's the way that things should be. And the job of the book is not to convince one side to come to the other. The job of the book is to convince all those guys who are looking at fatherhood right now and seeing a very different version than they grew up with that, like, this is good for all of us. This is good for, for us, this is good for our partners, this is good for our kids.

As the newsletter began to snowball, all of these wonderful little things have started to pop up. You know there is a, a community of dads, it exists in Discord, so we call it the Dadscord, okay? Three hundred dads, just like all-- from all around the world who are helping each other out. There are 28 WhatsApp groups of dads at different cities in the US and the rest of the world who meet up, like, regularly and go out for a drink or they'll go to the park with their kids and in two hours I'm meeting the Barcelona dads. You know, and we're gonna go to a pub, we'll have a drink, we might watch a World Cup game. We've done men's circles, like online and in person I started a therapy fund where readers of the newsletter donated, and I put a call out to see if any dads wanted to get therapy. If dads, if dads were struggling with their mental health and didn't have access to a therapist because maybe they didn't have the right medical plan or maybe the waiting list was so huge, I would pair them with a therapist. Like, all of these things that have kind of sprouted up quite naturally under this banner of new fatherhood and this banner of dads supporting other dads, which it seems so strange. And it's only strange because we don't really see it. 

When I've been touring this book, a woman who ran a bookshop said, "This was so nice to have a bunch of men get together and talk about something like this," because there aren't spaces like this that exist. 

Scott M. Curran: I was gonna ask you what you, some of the, the surprise and delight that has come from this experience, but you just outlined it beautifully. So thank you for that. One related piece though, and, and the last question I'll ask is, what do you hope is true five years, 10 years from now, just in the future? What are you most excited about and what do you hope is true for new fatherhood, when this work scales and sustains beyond the current moment? 

Kevin Maguire: Hmm. I think I'll tie the surprise and delight into it. There was a moment in the, there was a moment in the launch event in London, and there was these two dads who were sat at the front row, and at the end of it, one of them threw his hand up and asked a question. He said, "You know, you spoke a lot about community, and you spoke a lot about kind of support networks and, like, what advice would you give of, you know, like, for an expectant dad to, to build these connections?" I said, "Oh, yeah. Well, you know, you know, you gotta learn how to be more vulnerable. You need to, you know," a thing I talk about in the book, "build your dadvisory board. Like, think about, like, mentors for fathership that you wanna, like, reach out and, you know, find a group that you can connect with, and if there isn't a group near, in this area, like, create a group yourself." I was like, "But you have time. Like, you know, how much time do you have? When does the baby come in?" And he said, "Uh, three days." And I walked and, and I was just like, I laughed. I said, "Well, you know, if anybody here lives here and wants to kind of like be friends with Paul, like this is the time." Uh, and I went away and I signed some books, and as I was signing the books, I looked over and he was sat there with another two of the dads, and they were exchanging numbers. And I went over and I sat down with them. I was like, "Hey, you guys, do you guys know each other?" And they said, "No, we just met each other here, but we all live locally and we're all about to become dads soon. So let's-- So we, we're gonna kind of like try and meet up regularly." 

I've started j-joining-- There's a, there's a, there's a woman-- You know, home births in Spain are very low, zero point two percent. And so if you wanna have a home birth, you have to go find a, find a midwife or a doula. You have to file a lot of paperwork. You have to pay for it all privately. And there is a woman here who does a lot of that work, and I've started attending her birth workshops and doing a small one-hour circle with the dads and talking about their hopes and their fears and everything that's going on and starting to--And I say to them every time, I said, "The guys in here, like this is the start of your group. Like these fi- these four other men will be so important to you over the next year. And you will think that in asking for help, you are being a burden to them. But like each of these people will want to help you." 

Like this is the thing that I found again and again with this work, Scott, and I found it through my own experience, like for kind of like this, this struggle with depression after my son was born.I didn't wanna reach out to people because I felt like I was a burden. And then I was angry that people weren't reaching out and checking in on me. And it's like this is a cycle we need to break. And you know, now when a, when a friend has a baby, it's like I'm texting them all the time. It's like, "How's it going?Are you o-- Like, hey, if you're not okay, it's cool. Like I went through this." Like we need to break these patterns. And you know, if I think about a, a future version of fatherhood, if I think about like my son in twenty-five years, if he's the same age that I was when I had a kid, in twenty-five years, what's fatherhood gonna look like for him. I would just like, I would love that we'd, we've gotten past this ridiculous charade where we feel that we have to project like strength and like a lack of weakness because that is the thing that is stopping us from showing up for each other. Like there's a, there's a version of fatherhood, it's not far out from where we are right now, where we all show up, where we kind of like show up, where we bring our whole selves, where we're not afraid to talk about the struggles that we're having. Like, women have been doing this for centuries. Women have been coming together at the time of a birth And supporting each other and forming these communities of care. And I think, like, that's where fatherhood needs to go. And listen, it's not gonna be for every dad, but if there are enough of us are out there doing it, then those dads who need it will find the support that they need. 

Scott M. Curran: The community and connection that you've created will be, in my view, your enduring legacy, and the legacy of this work. I can't wait to see where, where it goes from here. I hope that people take away from both this conversation as well as your example and the newsletter and the book and the community you've created, that we are stronger in the broken places, and things can be more beautiful when we reassemble them once they've been broken, which is another concept you talk about in the book. Achievement without fulfillment can be the ultimate failure. None of us are our job or identified by one thing or another. We are always works in process, but I think the real gift of this is the awareness and the intentionality that you make possible about what fatherhood is, what it can be, and how we can co-create it together when we need help, and that it's okay to, to say that we need help. I think it's a real gift to the world. And I was gonna end this by saying Happy Father's Day to you, but I, I actually think it might be more appropriate for us to say Happy Fatherhood- ... um, 'cause it is so much more than any given day, and we are all so much more than, than how we show up in any given moment. And I just wanna say kudos on the social impact side of this, and thank you for the gift that your story has been, the community you're creating and curating has been, and that this book is for the world and for everyone who, who is a father, knows a father, cares about a father, uh, or really just families. It's, it's a real, real gift to the world. So thank you, Kevin. 

Kevin Maguire: Thank you so much, Scott. 

Scott M. Curran: Thank you for tuning in to the Better Good podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please rate, review, subscribe and share. You can watch the show on YouTube or Spotify, and for those who prefer to listen, we're on all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts.

If you wanna learn more about how you can do more good better in your life and at work, order my book, Better Good, published by Simon and Schuster and available August 2026. It offers readers a simple yet powerful and proven framework for how to leave the world better than you found it—no matter who you are, where you live, or what you do.

I'd love for you to join the conversation about making a positive impact by joining me on Instagram, Threads, LinkedIn, or by subscribing to my Substack. You can find all the links you need to bring better good to your life and work at www.scottmcurran.com. Better Good is a Beyond Creative production. My executive producers are Kieron Banerjee and Aaron Shulman. Production is by Echo Studios in partnership with Palm Tree Island. 

Remember, the world's biggest problems won't wait and neither should you.