1. Mindset and Identity – The Dad I Want to Be

Before diving into the details, it’s worth defining the kind of father I aspire to be. If our fatherly aspirations align, then more of what this post covers will apply to you.

I grew up in the ‘90s with peak Hollywood and Disney films promoting the happy nuclear family. Happy mum and dad with a few kids and a dog, cat and bird (and usually a random lizard, axolotl or tarantula).

The dad would come home from work and shoot hoops with Macauley Culkin and Drew Barrymore and the family would sit at the dinner table and connect over their days. Then the dad would read bedtime stories in a bunk bed as the kids drifted off to sleep. The simple life—I wanted it.

But Asian families didn’t work like that—dads always worked, and grandparents were often more involved. Instead of a purebred Golden Retriever or Collie, we had an affectionately boisterous Rottweiler from the pound who happily fed dinner scraps that would make today’s pet owners clutch their pearls.

What those ‘90s films didn’t cover were the financial realities (including generational wealth) that enabled that lifestyle. Few Asian families in 1990s Melbourne had those preconditions, so my dad had to work countless hours to provide.

Fast forward to 2025, where I’m typing this post on a $3000 MacBook, sipping a $7 almond cappuccino in a suburb where the median house price is $3 million, patting a passing Cavoodle (we have a Collie). The preconditions are set for me to be the father I once idealised.

It’s hard to nail down an exhaustive list of the attributes of the dad I’d like to be. This blog is a living journal to help me constantly tweak and reflect on the dad I’m becoming.

But at this early stage, I’ve identified three core qualities I want to embody as a dad:

• Present— Spending as much time as practically feasible with my wife and kids. This includes quantity of time—doing the mundane stuff together without saying a lot—as well as quality time, which is not multi-tasking or counting down the time together before moving onto the next thing.

• Affectionate—Asians don’t hug, kiss or express their love for one another. That’s fine—it worked for me because I never doubted whether my family loved me. But a few years ago I realised I hugged my in-laws thousands more times than my own parents. So I thought I’d save my children the trouble of needing to play catch-up for decades of missed physical affection—even if it’s counter culture to growing up Asian in Australia.

• Unconditional—I want my kids to know that no matter what they do, what I say or don’t say, that my love and support for them is unconditional and unwavering. No matter what.

What do you reckon—are there any core qualities that you’d like to practise as a parent that I haven’t covered or even clash with above? Let me know in the comments!

-Will

Where was I writing this?

22/3/25 Eden Espresso ($7.82 large almond cappuccino—smooth, slightly under-extracted choc powder of our childhood)