Adam Wenn was still in his 20s when Friday Night Lights aired on TV for the first time.
The show centred around a group of high-school football players, and he loved its complex characters and depiction of young male identity. He identified with the themes of triumph over adversity, and the team’s rallying cry: “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.”
Most of all, he loved the character of Coach Eric Taylor. The benevolent father figure who smiled with his eyes, who was firm but always fair, and took the ragtag group of boys under his wing to guide them into young men. Coach Taylor, the family man. The model father to his own daughter.
Mr. Wenn dreamed that one day he might be a dad like Coach Taylor.
So about a decade later, when Mr. Wenn, then in his 30s and still childless, instead found himself going through a divorce – facing the very real possibility that he might not get to be that family man, or the chance to become that dad – he felt gutted.
He thought he might never have those family cookouts, those board game nights, that full dinner table.
“It felt,” he said, “like mourning.”
For decades, demographers and economists have warned of the steady drop in Canada’s fertility rate. Of the rise in young people choosing to have fewer kids, or no kids at all. Fertility rates have plummeted especially over the past decade, dropping in 2024 to another record low, at 1.25 children per woman, gaining Canada entry into the dubious club of “ultralow fertility” countries.
Much of the discussion so far has focused around women. And for good reason. For the most part, women still sacrifice more when becoming a parent. They’re the ones most likely to take on the work of caregiving, and to bear the hit to their career. They’re the ones most likely to feel the loss of autonomy, and the loss of personal freedom.
But this only paints part of the picture. Because the data for men tell a slightly different story. If it were up to men alone, the fertility rate might not be quite so low.
Since at least 2011 in the U.S., men have been more likely than women to say they want biological children. In 2023, 57 per cent of young American men wanted kids, compared with just 45 per cent of young women.
In Canada, it’s a similar picture: Both in 2021 and 2024, young men were more likely than young women to want kids. And not only that: They’re more likely to want more of them.
This contradicts persistent stereotypes around men and fatherhood: Clichés around disengaged or detached dads, of bumbling Homer Simpson types, or men who are “trapped” into fatherhood.
It also challenges our assumptions around human behaviour in times of crisis. Experts have long argued that, in times of uncertainty, fertility intentions generally decline.
Everywhere around us is upheaval. There’s unprecedented youth unemployment. Record-level living costs and impossible home prices.
There’s the collapse of long-held cultural assumptions, including our ideas around family, and what a family looks like.
For men specifically, there’s the confusing, oftentimes polarizing debate around masculinity. In parts of the world, traditional ideas around masculinity are being interrogated, dismantled. And in other parts, “trad-dads” and the manosphere are being celebrated.
In the middle of all of this turmoil, men and women are coming away with different ideas about family. With different reactions on how the uncertainty might affect their families.
At the same time women are turning away from parenthood, men are turning toward it, despite all the uncertainty – perhaps, even, because of it. What does it mean that men are still, somehow, hoping to become fathers?
Dakota Vine poses for a portrait at his Toronto home.
Growing up in the mid-aughts in Toronto, Dakota Vine and his friends had a very clear sense of the path ahead.
As a 33-year-old millennial, he assumed he’d study and work hard, graduate and then land a steady, well-paying job.
“You grew up, you got married and you had a kid,” he said.
There was a specific order to things, a list of boxes to check off before a young man like him might ever consider kids.
But with so many factors upending both the economic realities and traditional family roles, some young men are starting to think differently.
The popular narrative around fatherhood generally goes something like this: That dads in the past brought home the paycheque. They were the providers. But, when it came to the day-to-day caregiving, they did very little.
For years, this idea has been used to help explain why men are more likely to want kids.
It’s true that there are still major gender imbalances around work and unpaid labour: Women in Canada still spend 52 hours a week on unpaid child care compared with 30 hours for men. And they spend 18 hours each week on unpaid housework, compared with 10 hours for men.
What this doesn’t fully capture, however, is that fatherhood is changing, and has been for quite some time.
Mr. Vine, who grew up in the early 2000s, saw this in his own childhood home. His dad worked three jobs, but was still actively involved in the household. His dad coached Mr. Vine’s sports teams. Walked him to school every morning. Did a fair share of the cooking and cleaning in the house.
Dads today spend, on average, roughly triple the amount of time on child care compared with dads two generations before them. And they spend double the amount of time on housework. So men know what they’re getting into; they know about the labour involved. And it’s not putting them off.
It’s tempting, too, to attribute the difference between men’s and women’s wishes to ideology. To blame it on a growing conservatism among young men, pronatalism and a doubling-down on the traditional nuclear family.
But this doesn’t seem to reflect the broader view among young men in this country, where, according to Statistics Canada, some 80 per cent still support gender equality.
Instead, it might be something else entirely that men are looking for.
Childcare policies and family dynamics have changed over the years. Today, close to half of fathers in Canada take some form of parental leave.
Many of our ideas today of what constitutes a “traditional” family are in fact products of a specific moment in time. The Industrial Revolution marked a huge shift in the lives of families across North America.
It feminized the domestic sphere, turning homemaking and child care into the jobs of women. In an agrarian household, fathers and their children worked intimately alongside one another. But as men entered factories, they left the home behind. This model continued to shape our ideas of fatherhood for centuries.
And then things began to change again.
The most major shifts here in Canada, of course, took place in the last decades of the 20th century.
From the 1950s until the 1990s, the number of women working outside the home skyrocketed from about 24 per cent to more than 75 per cent. The amount of time that dads spent on child care and on housework increased, too.
Policies have shifted accordingly: Fathers today can share in parental leave, with five weeks specifically allotted to non-birth-giving partners. Today, about 46 per cent (a figure that rises to 7 in 10 in certain regions, like Quebec) of fathers take some form of parental leave.
At the same time, the economics of most families, too, have changed.
A growing number of Canadian families now see women contributing more than half of the household income (about one-third of families in 2023, compared with a quarter in 2000).
And, with the country’s economy in stagnation and unemployment on the rise, young men face higher rates of unemployment. In Quebec, male university graduates are 1.7 times more likely to be unemployed than their female peers.
With that, men have begun to find their role in the home once again. The notion that their value is tied to professional performance is eroding, allowing them to seek meaning outside of their career.
Take Josh, a 38-year-old housepainter living in Toronto, for instance. He’s single, and has never been married. He lives in a shared apartment, with roommates. Has never been able to afford to live on his own. (The Globe has agreed to only use his first name.)
He doesn’t have kids, but often wishes he did. The economic disruptions have led him to try to find fulfilment in different ways, he said.
Kids, he feels, might give him a greater sense of purpose.
“If you have kids, you’re living for someone else,” he said. “Trying to do the best for them and teach them.
“Whereas, currently, it’s just 30 or 40 more years of punching the clock.”
The list of factors young people consider when thinking about kids is long. It runs the gamut from climate change and overpopulation to political instability. Ultimately, it seems, decisions around fertility are as personal and distinct as the individual.
But one thing is clear: optimism matters.
Those who feel hopeful about the future are more likely to want kids. A Statistics Canada study from 2024, for instance, found that 50 per cent of those with an optimistic outlook want kids, compared with just 36 per cent of those with a less-positive outlook.
And men, it just so happens, tend to be much more optimistic. This is especially true among younger generations. An Ipsos study from 2023 showed that young women are more likely to feel anxious about everything from climate change and the environment to their future in the work force.
The result? Young men, 56 per cent of them, were much more likely to be excited about their future, compared with just 43 per cent of women.
For men, there are other gender-specific reasons for having kids, too. Some see fatherhood as a rite of passage. As a marker of success, or a milestone marking adulthood.
In his lifetime, the 33-year-old Mr. Vine saw the stability that previous generations could enjoy crumble just as he entered the job market. In his adulthood, he’s witnessed one economic crisis after another. So for Mr. Vine, all of the external disruptions have caused him to look within. To reassess his values.
He and his wife only just got married late last year. They’re still technically honeymooners. But he already knows he wants kids, at least once his wife is ready, too. And he doesn’t feel pressure to have reached any specific career milestone before doing so.
“I think that younger men today are being encouraged to not be stuck into this rigid box,” he said.
“Now, we’re maybe getting a chance to explore what we want and what we value in life. And to think about that earlier in life.”
He cares about financial security for his family, he said. But it’s not necessarily tied to gender, or his sense of masculinity.
“I wouldn’t say I feel like I need to be the man of the house,” he said.
“I just want to be able to provide for my family. But that’s because it’s my family. Not because I’m a man.”
Brandon Hay was in his early 20s when he learned he would be a father for the first time.
Brandon Hay, too, found for himself new meaning in fatherhood.
Mr. Hay, 46, had a different kind of relationship with his own father. He was born in Jamaica. His parents split up when he was young, so he saw his dad only on weekends. After moving to Canada at the age of 10, he would only see him during visits to Jamaica in the summer.
Even under these limited circumstances, his dad was an inconsistent figure.
“There’d be times where he’d say he was coming, and I would be out there waiting,” he said. “I would wait, and hours would pass. And then I’d get the call to say he wasn’t coming.”
In popular media, meanwhile, he said he saw how Black fathers were often depicted as absent, or deadbeats. So while it was a shock to find out at the age of just 22 that he was becoming a father, he made the decision to view it as a kind of fresh start.
“I wanted to show up differently,” he said, “to fatherhood.”
In the subsequent years, Mr. Hay and his then-girlfriend would wind up getting married, and having two more children – three boys in total.
Mr. Hay says he finds joy in being present and engaged in the lives of his three sons.
He volunteered as a parent chaperone for school field trips. Coached his boys’ sports teams. Gave them home haircuts – what he described as closely shaven, “peanut-style” matching cuts that the boys all hated. He even started a group called the “Black Daddies Club” to give other dads in his community a place to share ideas and lean on one another for support.
“There’s been this joy of being present,” Mr. Hay said. “Not just present, but engaged.”
At a time when masculinity is often framed in a very specific way, and often negatively, fatherhood gave Mr. Hay a chance to be a small example of the kind of change he wanted to see in this world.
Growing up, he made sure his sons knew they were expected to help out with domestic labour, too. They were tasked with washing dishes, doing laundry and cooking meals.
And as teenagers, he’d have conversations with them about the cultural content they were consuming – if a song with explicit or misogynistic lyrics came on the radio, he’d talk to them about it. When Moonlight – a movie about a young Black gay man – first came out, for instance, he took his then-14-year-old son to see it, to give him a broader range of influences, specifically around Black male masculinity.
This idea of improvement over the generations is a common sentiment, said Jonathan Allan, a professor of gender studies at Brandon University in Manitoba.
“It’s this idea of being a better dad. Of doing dadhood differently,” he said.
“It’s the idea that, when you look at your sons, you look at the future. You look at how things can be.”
Brandon Hay plays a game of dominoes with his sons, Tristan, Julian and Elijah.
In some ways, this has always been the case, and for both genders. Every generation tries to parent differently – and better – than the past. Many expectant mothers and fathers have silently promised to never become their own parents.
But in the case of men, Prof. Allan said, it’s particularly interesting because so many of them were raised by fathers who grew up around such strict definitions around masculinity.
“Expressing a desire to be a father now is an interesting example of being both tender and tough,” he said. “Compassionate and strong.”
Now that his kids are in their 20s, Mr. Hay said, this relationship with them hasn’t stopped – it’s just evolved. He and his boys’ mom divorced about seven years ago, which led him to therapy. Today, he’s training to become a therapist himself.
“I’m crying a lot more now. They’ve seen me tear up for different reasons,” he said.
“That’s opened up conversations, opened up the space between them and me – the vulnerability, the curiosity, the sharing of struggles that I’m going through,” he said.
“They can also recognize, like, ‘Okay, this is a part of manhood, too.’”
Families use the swing set at Toronto’s Parkway Forest Park. To Brandon University gender studies professor Jonathan Allan, wanting to be a father nowadays is an expression of compassion and strength.
A few years after Mr. Wenn’s divorce, he reconnected with an old friend who was going through a separation of her own. They had more in common than they’d realized, and began their own relationship.
This time, there was no dithering. Mr. Wenn knew he wanted kids. And happily, so did she.
In 2020, their first son was born. Mr. Wenn had originally planned on taking paternity leave in order to be at home. But because of the pandemic, he was able to be there all the time. It felt meaningful, he said, to be able to spend time at home together like that. To feel useful, purposeful, like that.
Two years later, they had another baby. Another boy.
Today, his boys are three and five years old.
“It’s been way more difficult than I anticipated. Especially the day to day,” he said.
The two boys are constantly vying for his and his partner’s attention, he said. Constantly wrestling. Constantly trying to hurt themselves, or one another.
“They’re lunatics,” he said.
Just that morning, he’d been woken up by his older boy climbing up onto their bed and dropping an elbow onto his back.
He wonders constantly what they’ll be like when they’re older.
“My partner and I both feel this tremendous responsibility to mould these boys into becoming great people. A light in the world, and not a darkness.”
It’s been a lot of work. A lot of headaches and sleepless nights. A lot of moments of staying calm when what he really wanted was to scream. A huge investment of time and energy. An enormous amount of responsibility.
He’s found purpose and meaning, yes. And learned new things every day. He’s challenged old assumptions and found ways, every day, to be better.
But here’s one other thing: It’s also been a lot of fun.
It’s been joy. And light. And love.
“They’re wonderful. They’re sweet. They’re rambunctious,” he said. “And they make me laugh.”
All of the stress and exhaustion is forgotten when he sees the way they look at him – the same way the players looked at Coach Taylor.
“They look up to me,” he said. “And to my partner.”
