Ottawa dad Nathan Morris (pictured, right, with Niko) is launching a non-profit dads' walking club to help fathers connect and get light outdoor exercise. The first walk is on Saturday, March 5, 2022 at 8 am, meeting at the Tim Hortons on 2134 Montreal Road (Ottawa, Ontario).
Canadians are feeling increasingly isolated and lonely. In part, this is due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the public health restrictions on going out to community spaces. But even before COVID, Canadians were finding it hard to connect with other people in real life. We're texting, "liking" and sharing a lot with our screens, but it's getting harder to schedule a real life coffee meetup.
In Katharine Smyth's 2022 article in The Atlantic, she notes that by mid-life, we're busy with work and other commitments, and it gets harder to find the time and energy to make friends. Another challenge that she found is "finding someone who wants the same thing you do, and at the exact same time." Even if two people get along, if one person likes drinking at loud nightclubs and the other person enjoys sipping tea at cafés, it's going to be hard to agree a meet-up.
Parents face even more constraints to making pals. They're busy with raising kids and work, and many venues your pals might want to go to don't welcome kids (bars, rock concerts, even some restaurants) so it's hard to book in social activities. Parents tend to lose touch with their friends who don't have kids, and it's even hard to make hang-outs work with other couples and their kids, because it's rare for everyone (moms, dads and kids) to "click". So parents get increasing socially isolated, with social media "likes" and text exchanges becoming the main way we connect.
Dads face an additional challenge with making social connections because, as Peter O'Dowd and Kalyani Saxena point out in a 2021 article, men "often have more trouble making friends than women" and men tend to "rely on their romantic partners for a social network." By launching the Ottawa Dads Walking Club, Nathan hopes to help fathers connect more with other dads and build social connections with a wider community of parents.
References:
"Why Making Friends in Midlife Is So Hard" By Katharine Smyth
"You're not uncool. Making friends as an adult is just hard"
By Peter O'Dowd and Kalyani Saxena
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