"I want to be someone my children can talk to": Fathers reflect on caregiving at Papa School 2.0

Author: Jaeeun Lee^*

Sungmin Lim did not expect to walk away from a parenting workshop with a new resolve, and a daughter who had already noticed.

The Senior Manager at Doosan Corporation had come to Papa School 2.0 carrying a quiet worry. His older daughter, a third-grader of ten, had started pushing back. Arguments had become more frequent. He could feel the distance forming between them.

"I was afraid that once she hits puberty, my daughter and I would stop talking altogether," he said. "That I'd become a stranger to her, someone she lives with but doesn't really know."

Lim was among 30 fathers from 18 organisations who participated in Papa School 2.0: Caring Fathers, Caring Companies on 24 June 2026 at Somerset Palace Seoul, organised by the UN Women Knowledge and Partnerships Centre in the Republic of Korea in partnership with Root Impact, BCCK, and UNGC Network Korea. The session was the Centre's third delivery of Papa School this year, continuing a programme that first launched in July 2025.

"I felt like I was orbiting from the outside"

Lim has two children: a daughter of ten and a son of seven. He and his wife both work. It is a household where caregiving is meant to be shared, but where, he admitted, the weight has not always been equal.

"Society expects mothers to be the primary caregivers from the very beginning. So the bond forms early and deepens, and fathers can end up on the outside of it. I felt like I was circling around the edges of our family for years."

What concerned him more was a closeness with his older child that had recently begun to slip. At Papa School, he came to recognise the pattern: an instinct to demand explanation rather than offer understanding, and a voice that, shaped by a regional dialect and the habit of directness, could land harder than he intended.

"If she did something I'd already told her not to do, I'd get angry and ask: 'You know better, so why?' But I came to understand that my reaction itself was part of the problem."

Professor Hyun Lee, a child psychologist and family counsellor, gave him a framework for what to try instead. "Empathy first. Accept the child's temperament. Use words, not punishment."

That night, Lim went home and pinned his certificate of completion to the wall before going to sleep.

The next morning, his daughter found it. She read it aloud, the full title. She asked what it was.

"I told her: Dad went to learn how to be better for you. She said: We should hang this up properly."

A space for fathers to speak

Lim was not alone in what he found. His colleague Dr. Seunggeun Oh, also a Senior Manager at Doosan Corporation, came with his own quiet fear: that the easy closeness he shares with his four-year-old son might one day fade, as it had between him and his own father. For nearly all participants, the day marked their first time talking openly about parenting with other fathers.

"The discussion among the fathers was something I hadn't known I needed," Lim said. "I got to share what I had been carrying, and learn from fathers who had been through it before me."

Post-evaluation results reflected this: 100 per cent of respondents said the workshop strengthened their parenting and family relationships. Papa School 2.0 is part of the Centre's broader effort to engage men as active participants in the care economy, recognising that gender equality in caregiving requires not only policy reform, but a shift in the everyday practices and norms that shape family life.