Matt Okine worried about being the perfect dad. Then his daughter said four magical words

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Dad, I love today.”

Matt Okine had spent the day worrying he’d “not done enough” with his seven-year-old daughter, Sofia, when she gave him the sweet validation.

It had been an ordinary Saturday, with nothing booked or planned. Okine’s partner, Belinda, 44, was away for the weekend so it was a daddy/daughter day of cooking breakfast, wandering around the markets, mucking about on exercise equipment along the Brisbane River and going for ice-cream.

“I said, ‘Oh, is it because you got to have ice-cream?’” Okine recalls. “And she replied, ‘No, it’s because I got to hang out with you.’”

“I’d felt bad the whole day,” he explains. “I’d kept thinking, ‘Should we have gone to a theme park? Should I have taken her to some fancy museum?’ And the reality was that she’d had the best day just because we’d hung out together. Even now, I’m tearing up thinking about it because parents can be really hard on themselves without acknowledging that it’s these little moments that make the biggest impact.”

It’s a fitting anecdote for the comedian who has become a hilariously candid voice on modern Australian fatherhood. For all his achievements on stage, screen and radio, these days the 41-year-old is just as likely to be found sharing funny, unfiltered “dad content” online.

Real life has always found its way into Okine’s work. He made his name as a stand-up comic and co-host of Triple J’s breakfast show before creating and starring in the semi-autobiographical ABC-TV comedy-drama The Other Guy. His coming-of-age novel Being Black ’N Chicken, & Chips was based on his own teenage years, and he also stars in the revival of the beloved ABC sitcom Mother and Son alongside Denise Scott, in which he draws on his own experiences as a son and father.

Fatherhood is now his richest source of material and his current stand-up comedy show, No.10 Hope St, is “inherently connected to the challenges that we face as parents”. Okine also has “high hopes” of turning it into something we can watch on TV.

As an ambassador for Lego’s Little Years, Big Impact report, which highlights the importance of play in early childhood, Okine is urging parents on social media to “ditch the guilt” and lean into small, impactful moments. But despite being an advocate of not being the perfect parent, he admits he is far from immune from feeling that pressure.

“You’ve got all these incredible parents documenting all of these magical moments,” he says. “Meanwhile, you’re struggling to butter a piece of toast and get a school uniform on.

“And Bluey?,” he continues. “Bluey didn’t help [the pressure to be perfect]. Bandit has got to stop, honestly. That guy is too much. I mean, please let them have one argument about who’s going to stay home when Bluey’s sick.”

All jokes aside, Okine admits the biggest parenting pressure he faces is the understanding that time with a loved one is finite. Okine was 12 when his mother, Roslyn, died at 43. “It’s crazy to think that I’m almost the age that she was when she passed away. When I became a dad, it ignited this understanding of who my mum was, what she was going through, and just the tragedy of what it would’ve felt like to know you were going to pass away.

“The reality exists strongly within me that I will not be around forever, and that I need to make every moment count as much as possible.”

Okine’s memories of his mother are limited to his first 12 years, but the ones that have stayed with him most strongly are the smaller moments of togetherness. “I want to give Sofia as many of those memories as possible,” he says.

“I do put a bit of pressure on myself to be present as much as possible because I want her to know that I love her, and that I was there for her in the small moments as well as the big, fun moments. That’s a fundamental motivation.

“The only message I can offer as someone who lost a parent young is that you don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be present and show that you’re engaged, that you care.”

Becoming a father has also given Okine a new appreciation for his own dad, Mack, now 78. Having previously described Mack as a peripheral character in his life before his mum passed away, he says fatherhood has made him “completely understand what [my dad] sacrificed, and the position that he was thrust into”.

“It strengthened the relationship I have with him. He would have been learning so much as he went along, blindly trying to figure out how the heck you deal with a heartbroken 12-year-old kid. Suddenly, me and Dad were intertwined. Our lives connected in a way that is quite rare for a father and son, and that connection grew stronger and stronger over the years.

“Becoming a dad has certainly made me acutely aware of the complexities of fatherhood and parenting.”

That closeness makes one memory from his own childhood especially poignant. “I remember when we went down to the park and kicked the ball together,” he says. “And that memory has stuck with me my whole life because it felt like that was the only time it ever happened.”

It’s less a criticism of his father than another reminder of how much an ordinary moment can stay with a child. It’s something Okine is determined to give Sofia.

I’m not stuck in the algorithm that’s sucking my attention out of my soul. I’m actually there in the room, and I’m present.MATT OKINE

“I’d love to play with my daughter so much that she forgets 98 per cent of the times we played together,” he says. “I don’t want that time that we played together to be so unusual she remembers it for the rest of her life.”

Back living in Brisbane after 16 years in Sydney, Okine now sees his father roughly once a week, and watching Mack and Sofia together has given him a sense of an intergenerational connection.

Raising Sofia has also sharpened Okine’s thinking about identity. He has often spoken about being one of the few Ghanaian-Australian kids in his suburb (Mack is originally from Ghana). Now, he wants Sofia to grow up proud of her heritage, through “trinkets and artefacts” from his father’s house, visits with Ghanaian family and exploring the country’s food and music.

It’s Sofia’s hair, though, that makes Okine most protective. “She’s got the most beautiful curly hair,” he says. “I’m deathly afraid of the moment she comes home and says she wants straight hair because no one on TV has curly hair like hers. I want her to know she’s beautiful and that she doesn’t have to look like everyone else. She can look like herself.”

For all the big questions that come with raising a daughter, most of Okine’s day-to-day fathering is considerably more mundane. Splitting the load with Belinda comes down to practicalities. “Belinda does breakfasts and school lunches, I do dinners,” he says. “I do drop-offs and pick-ups most days when I’m not away for work.”

Bedtime, though, belongs almost exclusively to Belinda, by decree of Sofia. “My daughter acts like I’m the boogie man if I walk into her room at night – the rage that comes out because I dared come in instead of Mum!”

He’s also quick to acknowledge that Belinda still carries the heavier load overall, though “we work really hard to try and change that”.

Lego has, fittingly, become the family’s love language. What started as a Duplo set to fill the locked-down days of the COVID pandemic, when Sofia was just a toddler, has grown into an ambitious hobby. Sofia recently built herself a Lego video camera she uses to “film” pretend documentaries. “She loves giving people instructions,” says Okine, laughing.

It’s also become an antidote to a habit he’s not proud of – the phone. “We give kids such a hard time about screen time,” he says, “but parents will tell kids to stop watching TV while they’re scrolling on their own phone.”

Now, Okine and Sofia build Lego sets together: “I’m not stuck in the algorithm that’s sucking my attention out of my soul. I’m actually there in the room, and I’m present.” The only downside, he jokes, is that he’s now “the Lego guy” among friends and family to the degree that he received two sets for his last birthday.

Asked what he hopes Sofia will remember about him as a dad, Okine doesn’t hesitate. “I want her to know that I think about her all day. She is the most important person in my entire world, and she has made me an infinitely better person. She’s taught me how to play, and how to love unconditionally.”

Then he adds with a laugh: “I’d also like her to remember that I did all these things for her when she was little. So when I’m a very old man who needs looking after, she owes me one.”

But for now it’s more about being present. He says Sofia is constantly calling him over – “Look what I did”, “Come and see this” – and sometimes, Okine admits, part of him would rather stay on the couch. But that part never wins.

“She’s not going to be little forever, and soon she won’t be asking me to come and see this thing,” he says. “If I died tomorrow, would I be glad I stayed sitting down, or glad I went and looked at what she made? Every time, the answer’s the same.”

Fashion editor: Penny McCarthy. Hair and make-up: Aimie Fiebig using Sisley Paris. Stockists: Converse; Country Road; Jac + Jack; The Bay Tree (02) 9328 1101; Venroy; Zara.

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