Breakfast With Brooke

Dottie Lamm's New Book Looks At Changing Families

DENVER (CBS4) ― Former Colorado First Lady Dottie Lamm has had a long career in politics and the media, survived breast cancer at age 26 and is now a grandmother. Her experience has led to a book called Daddy on Board: Parenting Roles for the 21st Century.

Lamm said she saw families, including her son's and daughter's changing with fathers taking a more active role. She interviewed 10 couples about the trend for her book.

"The parents ...are really what motivated me to write the book," Lamm said. "I raised my kids back in the late 60s, early 70s. I had them then, and my husband and I thought we were doing things new because I was going to have a job and our mothers did not, but we were really very old fashioned in the way we fell into roles."

Former Gov. Dick Lamm was the longest serving chief executive in Colorado history. That did change the family dynamic.

"He wishes he had spent more time with the children when they were little," Dottie said. "And because that was the beginning of his career, not when we got in the mansion and had a lot of help, he feels he wishes he could do more of what these fathers are doing and he marvels about Scott and our son-in-law Alex."

One of the book's strongest messages is that every family is different and each has to do what is right for them.

"The biggest problem wasn't a specific thing around child rearing, their biggest problem was if they fell into roles without negotiating or without talking about it," Dottie said.

She calls her husband an "absolutely super Granddaddy on Board."

"Men can learn to do what women have done, just like women have learned to do what men have done," Dottie said.

A one time candidate for U.S. Senate, she hopes public policy and employers will lend more support to fathers.

The former First Couple now enjoys speaking engagements together, and they stay very active politically and physically.

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