About the author:

Blake has been working in the corporate sector specialising in change management, organisational culture and organisation design for the past decade. In his consulting to banking and financial services, utilities, media and state and federal government he has always been passionate about diversity and inclusion in the workplace and the impact it has on individuals, organisations and the community. When Blake became a dad in 2016 his experiences seeking to understand and access the support available to dads who want to be involved fathers led him to create Suit Tie Stroller. Blake took ~9 months of leave during the first 14 months for both his son and daughter. He continues to work 4 days a week as a consultant and is passionate about encouraging and enabling working parents to both play an involved role in children’s lives.

Blake’s perspectives on parental leave and flexible work have been featured in various media outlets including the ABC, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Canberra Times, Blokepedia, MammaMia and SBS.

Inspiration for this site

Upon becoming a father, I quickly realised how bias society has become against dads playing an active carer role in their children’s lives. Marketing almost exclusively targets mothers for all forms of baby products and services. Mothers are referred to Mothers Groups by the government with a noticeable absence of similar support groups for dads. Furthermore, the social standard for being a ‘good dad’ are abysmally low with the general standard being free on weekends to play with the kids and ‘give mum a break’ by changing a nappy or two.

I also realised that friends, colleagues and peers were quite shocked at the amount of time I was taking off. There was an obvious double standard between how others perceived the time my wife took off to be with our child (11 months) versus the time I took off. While everyone thought it was great, I was continually asked “What are you going to do with all your time off?’’, as if there was an expectation that I needed to achieve something other than keeping my child alive to warrant taking such a long period of leave. Even while on leave, strangers would comment about how lovely it was that I took a day off to look after my son, verbalising the outdated, unconscious bias entrenched in society and many current corporate policies that a dad’s role in parenting is actually to simply work and provide for the family.