Hello, I'm Denucian Melina Durbin, and you're listening to Parents Who Think. Today, I'm joined by journalist and father Matt Blake for a grounded conversation about what it really means to share care, emotionally, practically, and systemically. We talk about what shifts when you split parenting 50-50, not just in your calendar, but in your identity. Matt speaks openly about the career trade-offs, the cultural assumptions that still sideline dads, and how his definition of success has changed since becoming a father.
Let's get into it. Hello, Matt. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me, musta be here.
How did you sort equal share? I'm assuming, sickle. Yeah, it was just 100%. I mean, we'll just talk background.
I mean, ever since really since she was born, I already since her mother came off of my turn to me because I'm a mum and I run business, and I run mine, of course, as a journalist, and writer. So from the very beginning, we divided it up down the middle. So when we were together, it was she would have Monday. Once once the boss went to nursery, she'd have Monday, and then on Fridays, I had one Friday since the three days of the three days of the three days of the first week, and after we split, we just carried that on.
So I've continued to take Fridays off as a freelance writer, I can juggle, I can do that, and sometimes it's working at night. Yes. So I'm going to get that time back, and I just feel it's worth making, taking the financial or the career hit in order to be with her. I think it will pay off for the long term, but how do you work?
So what's be about the career hit? What do you see? It doesn't be taking on less work. Sometimes you have to say no to things because you just can't, you know, if you're deadlines on a Friday afternoon, sometimes you get to really try to turn around and there's not enough evenings to get it done, and you just have to say no.
And that's tough. And also, if there's ever been an opportunity to take a full-time job in the whole, a few couple of options will come up and I'd say no, because I think having kids, and again, I'm sure every parent would agree with this, but I mean, this is actually such a parentically shape, but it changed my entire perspective on life and my career. I think before she was born, I had, again, lots of people, I was really into my career. I was really into becoming the great kind of, you know, great journalist and my name in all the big newspapers and magazines and I had plenty of success in doing that.
But I think just having her, I had to put, I felt it was no brainout to put myself. And don't get me wrong, it's not a completely selfless act either, of course, because I want to do right by her, you know, and that is good for me, I think, if she's happy. Does that make sense? Yeah, completely makes sense.
So talk to me about the journalist, you, where was he? What's changed with him? He's about lost your ambition, have you? No, no, no, I mean, it's just, you know, like, before she was born, I was the most important thing in my life.
Your identity is really, really wrapped up in your career as a journalist, because it's your name and often if you're a feature writer, as I am, you know, you, you pipe a lot of your own personality or try to in your work, it's a projection of yourself. I think maybe I've just switched my focus, you know, rather than this relentless chase of the story, constantly trying to work out angles and new ways of telling a story, new stories to tell, I still do that, but, you know, I want her story. So, it's a shine, is that too cheesy? We're going to put it again.
No, no, but it sounds like you have a bigger story, that's a running story. Yeah, and it's the most important story I've ever seen myself saying this in an out body, but I think her story is my important story, I'll have to tell, and I'm not alone in telling it, of course, she will tell it ultimately, but I'm, and her mother, and the other people around her too, and our family are, you know, we want to tell her story, and we want her to tell her story and give her the tools to do it. Makes complete sense, so much has changed, and you, your identity, and what you see is important now is very different than maybe five years ago. Absolutely, I mean, I know we're just a one man band, as a, I'm not just a, you know, I'm just a journalist, I'm a dad, I was well, and these are two things that are the two most fundamental elements to my sense of self, I suppose.
Do you think being a father has actually changed you as a journalist in terms of how you come to, you know, features, how you, how you write? I mean, I've started writing about being a dad a bit. Has it changed my, my journalism? I've always, I've always, I've always focused around people, and why people, men, especially do the things that they do make the choices that they make in life, I suppose.
And I think that's probably amplified how I sort of see people and the way that we interact with each other, which is the most, I suppose, honest, most important part of life and what is life with other people we fancy up against. Yeah, yeah. So in reporting on fatherhood in some ways, it sounds like it has intensified or interesting why people, particularly men, they do. Absolutely, and a lot of that has to do with, you know, I become more interested in what makes a person, you know, as I'm currently in the process of jointly trying to make one.
Journalism kind of does give you the opportunity to sort of go deeper into that as issues of identity, really, and sense of self. I found myself doing more mental health writing as well. It was a phase, you may remember, sort of did the concept of toxic masculinity, came very fashionable in the media, and it's still being talked about, I think it's sort of started to dissolve a little bit now as the conversation just moved on, but it's sensed that men, you know, should only show one emotion and that's kind of, and other should be very kind of cliche, the odd cliche, the toxic masculinity, and where that comes from. I had a hunch about Matt's changed views on what success is in his life.
Here's my clumsy segue into this topic. When we build a human being, what is the outcome that you're looking for? You're looking for someone that's got self, you know, agency, self-esteem, or for some people, they're looking for, oh, they've got a professional job, they're employed, they're others, they wouldn't care about, it's not that, it's a metrics of success really. I mean, I suppose it depends on your definition of success, doesn't it?
I suppose, especially success, well, success in life and also success as a parent. I mean, I think for me, the bottom line is to build a child who will grow to affect ultimately, trust herself, trust her decisions, her choices, and who she is, as a person, I think. I mean, how you do that is a whole, enough fit, I mean, sorry books being written on this, far from the expert, I've made mistakes, you know, I can play it. But that's, I think, I'm not opinionized, that's the secret, really, it's about teaching a child to trust him or herself.
Would you be saying that? I think I would. I mean, we're talking about how children treat other children or how they, as boys treat our young men, and treat young women, for example, we're talking about a slightly different conversation that requires quite specific guidance. Well, I'm picking up, though, that actually your daughter gets to focus on trusting herself, whereas a son, your focus goes over to how he will treat others, as opposed to how he will treat himself.
Maybe you're right, and I'm glad you've called me out on that, because I think as a father of a daughter, I am perhaps unjustly, I don't say fixated, but I think I do worry about things like young people's relationship with sex, for example, consensus on the way I have to teach her now, but it's something I'm really going to, I'm really thinking about how I'm going to tackle that when the time comes. But you will in 10 years, and maybe eight, and maybe even in primary school. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. You know what I mean?
In an age-appropriate way, consent comes up so early, even when, you know, if they don't want to hug, you know, when someone says, oh, come over here, and they're like, oh, I really don't want to. And it's whether you say, go on, go on, give that nice lady in the supermarket a hug, or she's just touched you, you know, and said, oh, is it you, Britney or whatever? Oh, actually, it's like, how do we teach our daughter to say, no, I don't want my hair sneeze, thank you, you know, and I don't want to be called cute. Well, the trick is, my daughter already has suspended many strong kids.
Her own about what she wants to wear, where she wants to be, who she wants to hang out with. My job is just to guide her, I suppose. Yeah, exactly. Tell me, are some struggles where you have had to prove that you are as involved?
What do your daughters are bringing? Perhaps it's assumed how mother is. It's an interesting one, and it's tricky. It's something that comes up all the time, and I mean, there's so many directions I could go in this, but I mean, since we split up, our daughter, as she's grown over the last two years, had become more and more aware of her situation, and it's been really interesting to think how that's developed, especially in those three.
Like, for example, her teacher, they always get back at the gates and pick up, of course, and, you know, they'll say, not that long ago, they said, oh, she was, she's straw-polding her, her classmates to find out if their mum isn't done, he's done it together as well. Trying to understand her place in the context of her world. And she very regularly, especially when she gets upset, she'll use this. And in a way, I'm quite, you know, quite nice to see my child trying to manipulate me, because, you know, it shows a certain level of cognitive development, I suppose, but I'll say, on a stat a moment, she'll say, I really want mummy and daddy to live together, or she'll say, I want to live at mummies.
I don't want to live with daddy anymore. I only want to live with mummy, and I'd assume I'd just have to have mum as well about me, but it's difficult, you know, navigating that, certainly, as any parent or situation would agree. But as I said, we always shared care, 50, 50, half a week each, and every other we can. However, my mother's in the London and we agreed that, uh, daughter, she goes to crime and is going to be me and getting, you do have to, of course, you can only choose one address, you have to prove that she lives about address and that means finding, you know, documentation with her name and address on it.
The only way to do that, I'll try to benefit, call the GP and sorry I went down to the GP, and I had to register her with my GP. Uh, and I couldn't believe how difficult it was. I had to, I mean, I was on the phone to the ones twice a week for at least a month and a half. In the end, I had to get her mother to write a letter.
It's called a letter of surrender. I think, Richard, it's self-loaded, doesn't it? She said that she's happy for her daughter to use my address for the score. She had turned down to the GP's in person with her passport and he had to be re-expertively with both of her names done in order to prove I am a her dad and David.
She gave her permission, effectively to change GP's. And I asked the GP about this and she said, no, I wouldn't be the same with the other way around. So in that sense, there's still, uh, I would argue some way to go when it comes to giving. I don't want to sound too far to address this about this because, well, that's a whole conversation, isn't it?
But, and, and, and, and, and women have a hard enough time in society as it is, and, and, and we need to be sitting here, mumbling about, not being able to sign my daughter up to a GP sounds a bit, you know. But it was hard getting her to, or getting the GP to accept my daughter as dealing with me. Yeah, I mean, it's indicative of the, the kind of way that children are assumed to be the almost property of, and responsibility of women and mothers and has an adverse effect on wanting for a start. Of course it does.
Of course, but also men. Um, so you having to, you know, somehow try to get around a system, navigate a system that actually is built to assume that it's actually all the mother. And it does feel a bit sometimes like it's quite difficult to father to be the, to be accepted as the co-parent, should I say, rather than, I mean, it's easy to be the co-parent, you know, and you just have to make a decision with the mother. But, you know, the same when you take the, I'd say, in charge of the playground, I still get the odd kind of, you know, people still, it's not just other numbers.
You know, people all the time and say, I was at your, is it your day off today? You're not working today, are you? Like, I don't believe that many mothers get asked that question. Um, it should be asked that question, I suppose, if you're asking, well, you should ask another to, is he, you know, the assumption is that you're not the primary care, you're just having a day off to be a dead, to be a dead for the day, you know, when you're working back burner.
And that's a funny change, so kind of navigate. I do feel like we're being relegated to the sidelines slightly. And that's absolutely not, of its faults, that society. Well, you know, there are people that would suggest it is mothers that want to do that.
And I'm sure that they're individually are specific cases of that. I mean, they're always are under. And as I say, I really don't think that it will, I personally don't believe that it seeks anybody the way it is at the moment, you know, the over responsibility that's given to mothers and the, you know, the under, acknowledgement of the role of the father. I think they sit hand in hand.
And that's why I'm really committed to shaking this up and having the voice of men who are clearly not not wanting to, you know, be a temporary like, well, I don't know, can't speak from N on this. You know, that's what I've got your voice to see. Now, this has been a lovely, lovely conversation. Thank you very much for coming on and talking about your wonderful family and yeah, your fatherhood.
It's been fun. I've enjoyed it. Thanks, Demicia. What Matt is talking about isn't radical.
It's what so many mothers have done without fanfare for generations. But hearing it from a father matters because until men's choices around care are seen as normal, not noble, we'll keep reinforcing the same tired expectations. This isn't about heroics. It's about showing up consistently and refusing to outsource the emotional labor.
Until next time, keep thinking, keep questioning and as ever be kind to yourself.