If you give a dad a pickleball: Why what men need most this Father’s Day is a connection to other dads

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David Sax’s most recent book is The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World.

“Is that … pickleball?”

My wife, kids and I had come to the skating rink in the park by our house one sunny afternoon last month, to rollerblade and skateboard around the smooth concrete. Within minutes, a group of people showed up and began setting up a net.

My curiosity was too much to resist, so I skated over to the quartet as they attached poles together and I asked my question.

“Yeah man, you should join us,” their leader said.

“I don’t know how to play,” I said, cruising by at a respectful distance as they began volleying the pickleball back and forth with playful plinks. “I don’t even have a racquet.”

“It’s called a paddle,” he said, whacking the yellow ball. “You should totally get one and come out!”

“Maybe I will!” I shouted back, as I rolled to the other end of the rink to join my family, with a huge grin.

“Guys, look, it’s pickleball! How cool is that?”

“Well,” my wife said, “now we know what to get you for Father’s Day.”

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If you give a dad a pickleball paddle, he might just play. Then again, he might not. The pickleball kit will most likely join the assorted pile of forgotten Father’s Day gifts from years past: the cocktail book and scotch rocks buried in the pantry, novelty barbecue tools shoved to the back of the drawer and “cool” shirts he never wears, along with a Canadian Tire commercial’s worth of briefly indulged items mouldering in the garage – woodworking kit, yoga mat, a new hockey helmet with its tag still on, assorted bikes, boards, blades and beer carriers that were briefly indulged, then promptly forgotten.

The gearification of dads and the orgy of consumption wrapped around Father’s Day have become a well-earned given.

Though the holiday’s origins run back to an earnest YMCA-led celebration of one hard-working single father in the early 20th century (U.S. Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart of Spokane, Wash.), it only gained national prominence when Smart’s daughter, Sonora Smart Dodd, paired up with trade groups representing clothes, tobacco and other commercial goods to transform it into a day where children buy Dad crap he doesn’t need.

The postwar consumer boom in North America accelerated the Father’s Day avalanche of gear, at a time when the “man of the house” was encouraged to stock up on the tools and toys that married domestic practicality with happiness: the new car, lawnmower, power saw, recliner, giant TV and boats that were totems of modern success. We love you, Dad! Here’s a tie with golf clubs on it, and a fresh pipe.

Most of the stuff we fathers will get this weekend is wasteful and unnecessary, quickly destined for yard sales and the curb, and so each year, when my wife asks me what I want for Father’s Day, I reflexively reply, “Nothing.” I don’t need another gadget clogging the house. Another hobby to abandon or pastime to carve out time for. What I need is a few new pairs of boxer shorts to sleep in and some T-shirts that aren’t from sandwich shops.

The last thing I need is pickleball … unless, actually, that’s exactly what I need.

10 ways to spoil your father

If you do want Father’s Day swag for yourself or a loved one this year, consult our gift guide for 10 great ideas.

We are enduring a global crisis of mental health rooted in loneliness and social isolation. Around the world, people are disconnected from others because of a variety of factors, including a decline of community ties and institutions, such as religious congregations and social clubs, changes in lifestyle habits (longer commutes, less contact with neighbours, rising remote work), and the anti-social effects of digital technology, which incentivize us away from spending time with others, in favour of time on screens or drowning out the world with headphones. The long-term effects of all this, on mental and physical health, are well-documented, detrimental and potentially deadly.

Men and fathers are particularly vulnerable to social isolation for a variety of reasons. Social norms continue to perpetuate the myth of the emotionally distant rock of a man, despite its toxic impact on men’s health. Just a generation ago, the idea of grown men hugging or speaking about their feelings openly with each other was remarkably rare, and many of those retrograde habits continue to shape male relationships.

For fathers, much of the infrastructure of parental social supports remains geared toward women (there is no dad equivalent of mom groups, mom blogs, mom and baby yoga), and mothers continue to bear the disproportionate burden of child care across Canada and the world.

And, of course, many fathers today are highly involved parents. But in my experience, it remains true that they are often outnumbered by moms – at the playground, birthday parties or on the elementary-school parent council – and this reality can compound that sense of isolation.

In a 2019 IPSOS survey conducted for the men’s health organization Movember, nearly a quarter of new fathers said they felt isolated after becoming parents, and a fifth of them said they had fewer friends in their first year of fatherhood, about the same percentage, coincidentally, who said that having close friends had become less important to them.

Which is a shame, of course, because friends are what dads need more than anything. Close friends and lifelong friends, but also casual neighbourhood friends, swing pushers to gripe with, fathers of your kid’s classmates and really anyone who understands you and can be that outlet to talk with about the reality of being a father. Which brings me back to the gear, gifts and, yes, pickleball.

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If you give a dad a paddleboard, he might make a new friend …

Six years ago, I bought myself an inflatable stand-up paddleboard for my birthday. Though you can now find them in the aisles of any large supermarket for a few hundred bucks, at the time, this was costly, rare, transformational technology, and I had to seek it out from a surf shop. I drove it down to Lake Ontario right away, and rode waves on that loose, half-inflated thing with kooky glee. The next day, I happened to run into my old friend Jaimie, who told me that her husband, Josh, had also just acquired a new paddleboard.

“You two should go together,” she suggested, with the practised subtlety of a matchmaker. “He needs a buddy.”

From the first time we hit the water, that sunny September day, Josh and I became instant buddies. We paddled and we lunched. We went to concerts, started surfing in the winter, biking in the spring and fall, and he joined my annual ski trip. I refer to him as my “paddle bro” or “aqua husband.”

We text and talk constantly, planning our next outing and adventure each week, checking forecasts and calendars, shifting around meetings and calls so we can get onto the water together. Sometimes the water is freezing, or rough, or just gross, but what draws us back is the time together on the lake, paddling for an hour while talking about our lives, our families, our work and the reality of being fathers, with all the ups and downs that come with it. Our kids are the same age. Our sons have identical names. We celebrate and commiserate and support each other, all because we bought paddleboards, and Jaimie saw an opportunity in that shared activity.

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In the growing practice of social prescribing, which marries medicine and community services to help isolated individuals connect with others socially, gear, hobbies and the other accoutrements of dad crap are often the simplest excuse to bring men together. In the small town of Portland, Ont., north of Kingston, where the Country Roads Community Health Centre was one of the first to pioneer social prescribing in the province, fishing rods remain the most effective bait, and men the catch. Put them together in a boat, drop the lines in the water and inevitably a conversation will start. What happens next is natural. A few pleasantries are exchanged, small talk about the weather or fishing, but inevitably the conversation will turn to the heart of someone’s life, and an opening forms for a healing connection.

“If you’re a depressed, lonely person, those conversations fill in a gap,” said Marty Crapper, the former executive director of Country Roads. “If you’re an anxious person, and the other person’s a good listener, and it’s the first time someone really listens to you, that could be the benefit.

“If you’re vulnerable in some way and connected to the right human being, there’s a lot of power there. If you’re older and rural, how many opportunities are there to meet other people?”

Pair this with the physical benefits of exercise, or even the positive paybacks of laughter and a few smiles, and what you get is a tried and tested form of stress relief. Because fatherhood is stressful. Not all the time and not for every father. But often, for most of us. We are responsible for our families, relationships, homes, careers and everything woven into them in some way or another. We shoulder a psychological, financial and emotional load that is complementary and yet distinct from that carried by mothers or other life partners. Eventually, for each of us, it gets to be too much.

“You need an out!” These are the wise words that my friend and neighbour Charles told me, on the first night we went out skateboarding together, deep in the pandemic, after he saw me on my new surfskate board (a type of skateboard I suddenly had to own), and I pressured him to buy one, too. “We all need an out!”

An out is your outlet. A repository for your energy and stress. It could be a tennis court or hunting blind, a camping trip, baseball diamond, the hot cedar boards of a sauna or even a poker table. What Charles meant was that each father needed a regular and reliable excuse to get out of the house. Away from the children. The chores. The mess. The endless conversations about finances, renovations, tae kwon do tournaments and the wonderful morass of everyday fatherhood that can feel like an end in itself. A way to physically and mentally remove yourself from that realm, blow off steam, talk and process it all, before returning home to kiss your sleeping children on their heads and do it all again tomorrow.

If you give your dad a bike, you might just ride with him …

Bicycling has been my father’s out for the past 3½ decades. When my brother and I were young, and he was working as hard as he ever would building a law practice, hustling clients, working past midnight, his good friend Walter invited him to enter a bike race in Vermont. Dad completed it on a 40-pound mountain bike, coming dead last and wrecking his back, but the fire was lit.

He got a road bike, joining Walter for weekly rides with other fathers from the area. They rode in the city and the country. They rode to our summer camp for visitors day and across various American states. New bikes piled up. Steel was swapped for titanium, then carbon frames. On came mountain bikes, hybrids, cross and now gravel bikes packing the garage and basement. Dozens of shirts. Endless spandex shorts and shoes and gloves. He rode two and three times a week, and took trips with Walter and the other “cycling crew” around the world. Every birthday or Father’s Day, we bought him more bike crap – not the gear he was so particular about (heavens no!), but bike art and T-shirts and funny hats and pendants and trips and whatever else fit the theme that Dad liked to bike.

Last spring, when my father told me he wanted to buy me a new gravel bike for Father’s Day, I initially refused. “But Dad, it’s Father’s Day, I’m supposed to get you something.” No, he insisted. This was important. I would love a gravel bike. It would get me to enjoy distance riding in a way I never had before, despite all the years he brought me on rides with himself or his crew on a stiff road bike. A gravel bike could go anywhere, he said, eyes brimming with passion. A new bike was the last thing I wanted, but I was hardly going to put up a fight. My father had recently experienced a major cardiac episode, and was now finally back on his feet with a fresh pacemaker in his heart. More than anything, he wanted to ride with me. How could I refuse that?

My friend who owned a bike shop helped me pick out a reasonably priced, versatile frame and components. When it was ready a few weeks later, my father met me at my house swaddled in his spandex uniform, whistling at the bike’s dark-green paint job. We hit the road. The bike blew me away. Light and nimble as a road bike, but tough as a mountain bike, it ate up bumps and rough terrain, flew on pavement and handled twisty trails with ease. “See? What did I tell you?” my father yelled at our first break, a huge smile on his face as he checked his heart rate. “You were right,” I said, panting. “Thank you.”

I ride that bike all the time now, by myself, with friends, other dads and my own kids. I love riding it, but there is no one I’d rather ride it with than my father, who, of course, just bought himself another bike. All my father wanted was for me to ride with him. To do something with his son, to spend time, to be valued and loved, which is all any of us want from fatherhood (which is why a Father’s Day bike ride is now our family tradition). If it takes a bike, a pickleball set, a Nintendo Switch or a baseball glove to do that, well, put a bow on it, and don’t let Dad waste another second of fatherhood alone.

Because if you buy Dad a pickleball paddle, he might just pick it up and take up the offer of that dude from the rink. He might walk down there in his new T-shirt, introduce himself and join a game. He might do okay, break a sweat, return a few serves, have a laugh and introduce himself after the game to the other players, and make plans to return for another game. If you buy a dad a pickleball set, he might just get the thing out of it that dads desperately need: a connection to others.

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Stories of fatherhood: More from The Globe and Mail

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