Bringing Engaged Fatherhood in from the Margins for Men, Families and Gender Equity

July 2026 | IESE Business School, Universidad de Navarra, Barcelona, Spain

This Experts Meeting is organised by Home Renaissance Foundation (HRF) in partnership with Harvard University, the International Centre for Work and Family (ICWF-IESE), the International University of Catalonia and the Social Trends Institute, which also provides the funding for the project.

The following proposal builds on expertise garnered and research published on the significant social trend recognizing the societal as well as personal need for, and benefit from, engaged fatherhood.

There is increased public commentary and political interest not only on the life-long consequences of absent fathers to their children but also on the physical and mental health of the men concerned. More widely, the generational shift in expectations of how men live, work and contribute to family and society has rendered male roles less clearly defined, and men, often unintentionally, less engaged. In simplest terms, the perception that these roles are eroded and devalued requires a strong positive revaluing of men’s contribution to both the private and public sphere, for the mutual benefit of men and women.

Engaged fatherhood is a strong and positive model of how the role of men in family and home life retains crucial value within the current social context. Further, fatherhood is seen as enriched and enhanced by newer understandings of gender complementarity rather than diminished by them. Engaged fatherhood, or the lack of it, is experienced primarily in family relationships, which function in the context of home. For this reason the home should be understood as not just a beneficiary of engaged fatherhood but an essential contributor to its nurture and development.

In the depth and breadth of what follows, it is the positive evaluation of fatherhood and the centrality of the home context that offer relevant research bearings for Home Renaissance Foundation. As will be seen, the previous research and this proposed meeting take seriously the need for, and use of, multidisciplinary expertise.

This approach underpins the work of HRF over the last twenty years, and our previous fruitful collaborations with STI and ICWF-IESE.

Main questions to be addressed:

What are the positive characteristics of engaged fatherhood in the current social
context?

How can these be supported in domestic, familial, social and work-based instruments
and structures?

Is the Care of the Home an essential contributor to Fatherhood?

Academic Leaders

Marc Grau  | Assistant Professor of Social and Family Policies, Vicedean of the Faculty of Education Sciences, Researcher of the Joaquim Molins Figueras Childcare and Family Policies Chair and Director of the Institute for Advanced Family Studies at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya

Dr Hannah Riley Bowles|  Roy E. Larsen Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at the Harvard Kennedy School

Milton Kotelchuck | Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Senior Scientist in the Maternal Child Health Center in the Center for Child and Adolescent Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital

Mireia Las Heras | Professor of Managing People in Organizations at IESE Business School, University of Navarra, Spain – where she is the Director of the International Center for Work and Family (ICWF)

Understanding the role of the home in equipping people for working life

8-9 July 2024 | IESE Business School, Universidad de Navarra, Barcelona, Spain

This Experts Meeting is organised by Home Renaissance Foundation (HRF) in partnership with the International Centre for Work and Family (ICWF-IESE) and the Social Trends Institute which also provides the funding for the project.

The prompt for Nurturing Healthy Relationships at Home and Work is the question of how the home plays a distinctive positive role in equipping people for the relational demands and opportunities of working life, and how these can be harnessed and nurtured. The intention is to hold an Expert Meeting to identify and discern the best ways to support and connect these mutually beneficial healthy relationships at home and at work.

Experts were invited to contribute their own research to:

1. Draw together evidence of how, within the home, personal and social virtues are fostered to build positive relationships.
2. Examine how these attitudes and relational skills contribute beneficially to the culture of workplace settings and business expectations.
3. Design practical instruments and interventions to nurture and enable the maximum mutual benefits of positive relational development at work and home.

Key Questions

1. The Work of the Home

• What are the virtues fostered at home that lead to transferable healthy relationships and attitudes at work?
• How are these attitudes and relationships formed and encouraged in the distinctive and privileged context of the home? (The significance work of the home as a model of service and care.)
• What are the soft skills developed at home that translate into better performance at work?
• What are the habits at home, such as dialoging or dining with others, that translate into higher levels of energy and attitudes that allow companies to give better service to clients?

2. The World of Work

• What are the marks of positive relationships in the culture of the work place and how can they be measured?
• What allows vs. hinders developing positive and quality relationships at work?
• What are the positive relational models of the home that can be applied and encouraged in a work context, and how can this be achieved?

     3. Connected Lives

• What are the relational indicators for an integrated, mutually-supported work/home life?
• How can new ways of work, such as hybrid work or more flexible work, foster better flow of resources between work and non-work?
• How can strong and enriching relationships be intentionally nurtured in the workplace?

Academic Leaders

Mireia Las Heras | Professor of Managing People in Organizations at IESE Business School, University of Navarra, Spain – where she serves as the Director of the International Center for Work and Family.

Yasif Rofcanin | Professor in Organizational Psychology and Human Resource Management at the University of Bath and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Organisation and HRM Division, Ph.D. in Organisational Behaviour and HRM at the University of Warwick -Warwick Business School.

Marc Grau | Professor and a Researcher at the Childcare and Family Policies Chair at Universitat International Catalunya and a WAPPP Research Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School.

Event Programme

Two days, three panels, over 15 experts and a step towards our Open Access publication.

See here the event programme. 

See the report here.

The Social Trends Institute (STI) is an international research centre dedicated to the analysis of globally significant social trends. STI focuses its research on four subject areas: Family; Bioethics; Culture and Lifestyles; and Corporate Governance.  STI pioneered the model of  Expert Meetings and publishes research across these fields. As non-profit and independent centre it offers institutional and financial support to institutions and academics who seek to make sense of emerging social trends and their effects on human communities. STI has been collaborating with HRF since 2015.

Home Renaissance Foundation has led an Experts Meeting focused on Home and Climate Change in collaboration with Nottingham Trent University and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs to find out how homes and families can meet the challenges of climate change.

Conclusions and recommendations to be published soon…

Academics and Experts involved in the partnership:

Gamal Abdelmonem | Professor and Chair of Architecture and Director of the Centre for Architecture, Urbanism and Global Heritage at Nottingham Trent University.

Antonio Argandoña | HRF director and Emeritus Professor of Economics and of Business Ethics and holds the “la Caixa” Chair of Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Governance at IESE Business School, University of Navarra.

Renata Kaczmarska | Social Affairs Officer and a Focal Point on the Family located in the Division for Inclusive Social Development in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) at the United Nations Secretariat in New York.

SEE HERE THE EVENT PROGRAMME