Dadicated Joe

Being physically there for our kids is not the same as being present. I know how easy it is to be in the room, but still carry work, stress, old wounds, and unfinished emotional work into fatherhood. Stephen joins me to talk about sobriety, men's work, the Mankind Project, and what his absent father taught him about becoming a present father. We get into fatherhood, emotional awareness, breaking g...

Why do entrepreneur dads who've built successful businesses still feel like they're missing fatherhood?  Jon Vroman built Front Row Dads after his wife told him: "Thank you for being a moment maker for the rest of the world, but we want you to be a moment maker at home too." That wake-up call changed everything.  In this episode, Joe Carr and Jon Vroman go deep on:  → Why dads hide at work (even w...

I didn't feel free to go water skiing or spend three hours making a costume when my wife was still worrying about the house. It didn't feel fair, so I didn't do it. And then I felt resentful. Fair Play changed that for us. It gave my wife and me a clearer way to divide the household mental load, not just the chores. When I fully own my cards, she does not have to keep worrying about them, and I do...

I wanted a formula for a better marriage. Ken Blackman basically told me that was the problem. After more than 10 years of coaching Serenity and me through our marriage, business, and parenting, including many very real breakdowns, Ken has seen the pattern clearly: I keep trying to replace presence with scripts. If your relationship has felt different since having kids — harder to connect, easier...

If this one resonated, go back and listen to the episode on why men feel unappreciated. It gets into the resentment that builds when we serve from sacrifice instead of joy, and it pairs directly with what I cover here.  Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv9L_Bhz6bk Also worth hearing: the Fair Play episode, where I break down how clearer roles at home help dads set better boundaries, pr...

Parents spend a lot of time trying to get their kids to change their behavior. I know I struggle a ton with how to do this in a way that teaches her long-term skills, and doesn't just manipulate her into bending to my will in the short run. The heavily researched science of "behavioral psychology" has the answer! Put simply, humans DO things because they WANT something.  I discovered that some of...

For this Mother's Day special, I sat down with my biggest fan, the woman who raised me — my mom, Jackie Carr, aka Nana — for a conversation about childhood, parenting, shame, unconditional love, and what it looks like when a kid who never fit the mold grows up to become a dad who's trying to do it better. My mom was in every parent conference. She heard the same words on repeat — bright, enthusias...

Feeling unappreciated as a dad? If you do a lot for your family and still feel invisible, this episode is going to challenge something you might not want to hear. I used to think feeling unappreciated meant the people around me weren't seeing how much I was carrying. What I had to face is that a lot of that pain wasn't about them at all — it was about self-sacrifice, resentment, and the story I wa...

Ben Greenfield's wife lifted and swam until six days before giving birth to twins. That's not the surprising part. The surprising part is what he says he'd change. A lot of dads want to help during pregnancy but still feel unsure about what actually matters. This conversation reminded me that support isn't always big or complicated — sometimes it looks like helping your partner stay steady, protec...

Fatherhood has a 100% failure rate. There is just no way to do it perfectly. Fatherhood gets healthier when you stop chasing a rigid role and start paying attention to what your family actually needs from you.  Devon Neisen brings so much honesty to that. We talk about his role as a stay-at-home dad, masculinity, the pressure of providing for your family, emotional presence, and what it means to b...

If you're raising an autistic child or have an autistic person in your life, then this episode is for you!    I was diagnosed autistic at 22 — not as a child, and for a long time, I felt broken before I ever understood I was autistic. What made that harder was not just the challenges themselves, but the shame that came from constantly feeling like I was broken or made wrong. But my inhibition, fas...

For years, I complained about my wife nagging me or criticizing me. What I finally saw was that I was acting like the house was hers, and I was just there to help. So when she gave me feedback it felt like it was coming from a boss instead of an equal.  This episode is about what changed when I stopped seeing myself as a guy trying to be fair and help my wife with her house, and started seeing the...

Fatherhood isn't just about parenting. It's about the kind of man I become. In this DadicatedJoe episode with Kenneth Braswell, we explore a deeper idea that has challenged how I think about fatherhood. Kenneth argues that many efforts to "fix fatherhood" miss the real issue. The problem isn't that men don't know how to parent. It's that many men do not know how to be men. Most of us were never ta...

We try not to use punishment or reward as ways to motivate our child's actions because it diminishes their intrinsic motivation and harms the parent/child relationship. See my episode on how we use an evidence-based approach that utilizes natural consequences.  But there are times when natural consequences alone don't work. Like if she refuses to get in the car and I say, "OK, well then we're not...

Most parents focus on the obvious stuff: food, sleep, discipline, and school. But there's another factor that shapes how our kids' bodies develop that almost nobody talks about: their feet. The shoes we put on our kids can affect how their entire body functions for the rest of their life. I tracked down a foot health expert Barak Argov, " the barefoot guy" to learn more about this. He said the bes...

I was punished constantly as a kid. I was undiagnosed as autistic and literally incapable of following a lot of the strict rules at school and at home. What punishment taught me wasn't responsibility. It taught me to fear authority, to lie when I needed to, and to focus enormously on pleasing others to avoid getting in trouble. And left me with a deep sense of shame when I constantly fell short, w...

"You are talking about a seven-year-old being addicted to something that was designed to manipulate her." That's uncomfortable to hear. It's also what this week's DadicatedJoe guest, Dr. Susan Linn, said to me. Screen addiction starts earlier than many parents are aware of, and at the same time, we have to acknowledge the real pressure families face. Because screens are everywhere, work demands ar...

When can babies eat meat? As soon as they're eating solid foods, which is around six months old. Meat is a CRITICAL first food, and here are three major reasons why. My wife and I became experts on this topic before starting Serenity Kids Baby Food, and we've heard the same question again and again: Do babies really need meat? Why not start with rice cereal or fruit? In this episode, I walk throug...

Father-daughter relationships are shaped long before kids have the words to explain what they feel, and I've learned that firsthand with my daughter, Della. The moments that seem small, the ones we rush through or don't think twice about, can often be the moments that teach our kids what they're worth and how they should expect to be treated. Madeline Anderson, author of Girl Dad, brings a daughte...

Sex education can still be such a taboo topic that by the time we talk to our kids about it we may avoid, freeze, or fumble, and even accidentally pass down the same shame we grew up with. In this episode, I sit down with Megan Brinkerhoff, a mother of two, to talk about what actually helps kids feel safe, informed, and confident in their bodies. We get into why naming body parts early matters mor...

Parenting feels hardest on the days when you are already running on empty. I used to think my daughter was just being difficult. Something as small as her spilling a drink could send me over the edge. What I eventually realized was that a lot of what was driving me crazy had nothing to do with her and everything to do with what was being reflected back to me. In this episode, I break down the four...

Survival mode, self-sacrifice, and avoidance are not strengths. They are the drift. Fatherhood doesn't fall apart all at once, it erodes quietly. You keep showing up, you keep providing, you keep telling yourself this is just a season, and then one day you realize you're exhausted, disconnected, and not totally sure how you got here. In this episode, I sit down with Larry Hagner, host of the Dad E...

Moms spend between 400 and 650 hours breastfeeding in the first six months alone. When my wife, Serenity, started breastfeeding our daughter, I had no idea how hard it actually was. How many things can go wrong? I've always wanted to be an involved father, but like a lot of men, I assumed breastfeeding was mostly her thing and that my role in it would be minimal. Watching her deal with pain, latch...

​​​​Fatherhood starts way before the delivery room, but most dads don't realize it until the stakes get high. Sometimes conception may feel like luck, pregnancy like something mom handles, and birth like the starting line. Then we wonder why we feel behind once the baby is here. In this episode, I sit down with Ben Greenfield, a health consultant, New York Times bestselling author of Boundless and...

It's been said we're the first generation reparenting ourselves at the same time we're parenting our kids. Becoming a dad didn't just change my schedule. It exposed parts of me I didn't know were still running the show. A wounded inner child is desperately in need of a loving parent. My parents did their absolute best, but just didn't have the tools and skills we have today to allow for feelings a...