The Future Is Fathers

An American living in Sweden observes that country’s hands-on, happy approach to parenting and wonders: what if the cure to the male loneliness epidemic and burnout isn’t more friends, more faith, or even more free time…but more fathering?

When Liz Kofman-Burns moved to Sweden, she realized something startling: Fatherhood looked completely different for Swedish men than it did for her male friends back in America. For one thing, Swedish fathers were more present: From the playgrounds to the pubs, Swedish dads were everywhere—actively caregiving and engaged from the earliest days of their children’s lives. And Swedish dads prioritize their role as parents: They would rather miss a board meeting at work than miss a school conference for their kids. But most of all: Swedish dads seemed so much happier, even though they were arguably busier at home and at work. The male loneliness epidemic she read so much about in American men just…didn’t seem to exist in Sweden. 
 
She started to wonder: Had Swedish men cracked the dad code? What if the cure to American male loneliness epidemic isn’t just more friends, more faith, or even more free time…but is in fact more fathering? 

Persuasive and groundbreaking, The Future Is Fathers: The Surprising Swedish Solution to Happier Men and Healthier Families, is both a serious work of reported narrative nonfiction and a stealth parenting book. Kofman-Burns, a sociologist and mother of two married to a Swedish man, offers a data-driven and deeply personal argument that the most overlooked force in modern society—engaged fatherhood—holds the key to solving problems we’ve been trying to solve for generations: the pay gap, the loneliness epidemic, the masculinity crisis, and the unsustainability of modern American parenthood.

Drawing on original interviews with Swedish and American fathers across the socioeconomic and political spectrum—from construction workers to CEOs, immigrants to native-born conservatives—The Future is Fathers combines international reporting, original interviews, and memoir with accessible, data-driven insights. It’s for the man wondering why he feels peripheral in his own family and the woman exhausted from carrying the caregiving load alone. Flipping the script on the age-old “have it all” debate, The Future Is Fathers isn’t a lecture about what men should do to help women—it’s a reported story about what happens when a country decides men’s caregiving matters: for men’s mental and physical health, and their longevity.