This is a column for middle-aged dads; perhaps the forgotten cohort in the post-pandemic push to upend all our old ways.

With the median age of new fathers now close to 34, 50-year-old men are routinely navigating the tricky lives of mid-teens where COVID-19 has joined forces with social media to cut childhood short.

That’s the median age. Many dads are doing the same at 60, in a teen world bearing no resemblance to their own.

That’s at home. At work, their lives have never been less certain. Some have found themselves expendable, in an age where people talk and do business and network online. Others have moved offices –­­ from city high-rises and plush digs to the sunroom, off the family lounge room.

And across Snapchat and Instagram, climate change and gender, consent and diversity, some have found themselves lost; back in classes being delivered by those decades younger.

Tongs to the fore for the family barbecue.

Of course, they’ve had it coming. Decades of advantage over their female peers. Networks determined by anatomy. Friday night strategy sessions at the local pub. A clear way forward, personally and professionally.

At work, they ran the show. At home, they’ve held the tongs at the family barbecue while their partners have hunted down the meat, marinated it and made the salad to sit alongside it.

It’s a gross generalisation but women still carry that load, and early research suggests that was only cemented during COVID-19, when more male breadwinners spent more time at home.

And while the number of stay-at-home dads doubled in the first part of this century, it’s still lingering on a percentage you could count on one hand.

A different glass ceiling

But just as their wives and partners and female friends have spent years punching at a glass ceiling, men are now finding their own.

Workplaces, for example, where the push to right wrongs means diversity – in age, gender, sex and ethnicity – is (and should be) prized, they’ve found themselves last in line.

Ironically, though, employers are still seeing them as workers first and fathers second. Just check with a dad who has requested a few hours off from a top strategy meeting to hear their son play, very badly, in a school ensemble.

Or in schools, where mothers still run the networks and the tuck shops and the volunteer positions. Fathers, too often, are consigned to token inclusions, because, well, it’s not what traditionally happens.

Playing a greater role

But change is afoot, and this Father’s Day it would be mean of us not to help encourage a bit of glass-ceiling breaking.

Fatherhood is changing. Dads are now routinely single and married, gay and straight, parent and step-parent. And they almost all want to play a greater role in raising children, who are decent, clever, and kind.

Fathers of Girls (FOGS) is a non-profit organisation set up to foster best-practice in fatherhood, and its membership spans surgeons and footballers, tradies and the rare male schoolteacher. The glue that unites them, though, is their No.1 job: fatherhood.

Father’s Day has a few origins, it seems. But my favourite is the story of Sonora Dodd, one of six children, raised by a single father and US Civil War veteran after her mother died in childbirth. She wanted her father to be acknowledged in the same way mothers were.

It took decades to become an official day on the Australian calendar and has now been overtaken by the commercialism that runs alongside it.

Raising tomorrow’s leaders

But that doesn’t mean we should discard what is at its centre: a celebration of good fathers and father figures, who are helping to raise tomorrow’s leaders.

I met many this week, while talking to school parent communities across Australia. A widower raising two daughters, who were born overseas. A father of six, who’d taken long service leave (again) to ensure his wife kept a foothold in her job. Farmers who wanted to know why it was so damn hard, and why daughters didn’t act the way their sons did. City dads who wondered whether single sex or co-ed schools produced better young adults.

At several events, it was fathers – not mothers – who asked the most questions.

Today, like every day, we should acknowledge them – and help – in their bid to foster a bigger and better relationship with their children.

After 13 years of being the chief school parent – from volunteer traffic cop to attending hundreds of music ensembles and debates, my husband had his last day on tuck shop last week.

His job was to pile chocolate on to jelly in cups. Today, this Father’s Day, here’s to all dads and dad-figures having both their chocolate and their jelly.