The habits encouraged by National Family Literacy Month don’t have to end after November. Fathers can still read. They can still ask questions, tell stories, and visit the library.

They can sit beside a child and listen. They can be curious about what their children are learning. They can make literacy relational. And schools, communities, and organizations can continue asking whether the environments they create truly make room for fathers.

By Dr. Matisa Wilbon, Co-Chair, Moynihan Institute for Fatherhood Research and Policy

Every November, when conversations turn toward National Family Literacy Month, I find myself thinking about fathers and the Real Dads Read program.

Created by Fathers Incorporated in 2017, Real Dads Read was a two-generation literacy and father-engagement initiative designed to help fathers and male caregivers become more intentional participants in their children’s reading lives.

The program is no longer active, but its lesson remains: Fathers matter in literacy. Not just as supporters standing on the sidelines. Not just as adults who make sure homework gets done. But as active participants in how children develop language, confidence, curiosity, and a relationship with learning.

Literacy Was Never Just About the Book

On the surface, Real Dads Read was about reading. It engaged fathers and children in grades K-8. It brought books into community spaces, created opportunities for shared reading, and used places like barbershops, schools, and other familiar spaces to make literacy feel accessible.

But the deeper work was always about relationships.

When a father sits down and reads with his child, something happens beyond the words on the page. A child experiences attention. Conversation. Encouragement. Questions. Laughter. Connection.

And the message underneath it all is simple: What you’re learning matters to me. That’s powerful. Children experience literacy through relationships, expectations, routines, and environments, and a father who reads with his child helps shape all of those things.

Challenging Assumptions About Father Engagement

One of the most important lessons from Real Dads Read was that father engagement often requires us to rethink where and how we invite fathers to participate. If we only create literacy opportunities inside schools, during traditional school hours, or in ways that assume every parent already feels comfortable in educational spaces, we may unintentionally leave some fathers out.

When we take literacy into the community — when barbershops became places where children can encounter books, for example — fathers can engage with reading in spaces that already feel familiar. Literacy becomes something that happens outside of the classroom and beyond the boundaries of traditional parent-engagement events.

Sometimes we ask, “Why aren’t fathers showing up?” when perhaps the better question is this: “Have we created meaningful ways for them to engage?”

That’s an important distinction.

Fathers Often Influence More Than We Measure

When we talk about literacy, we often focus (understandably) on reading scores, grade-level proficiency, vocabulary, comprehension, and academic performance.

But there are other outcomes worth considering:

• Does a child associate reading with positive time with Dad?
• Does a father feel more confident participating in his child’s education?
• Does a child see that learning matters to the men in his or her life?
• Does reading create space for conversation that might not happen otherwise?

Father engagement can become part of the culture surrounding a child’s education. A father asking, “What are you reading?” A dad taking a child to the library. A grandfather telling stories. A male caregiver listening while a child reads aloud. A father asking questions about a book at bedtime. These may seem like small interactions, but children build their understanding of what matters through repeated moments like these.

Literacy and father engagement shouldn’t be treated as separate conversations. Fathers can be educational assets. Community spaces matter to this effort and so does approaching fathers as partners rather than problems to be solved. Father engagement isn’t an “extra.” It’s part of strengthening families and improving outcomes for children.

That’s central to the work of Fathers Incorporated.

The Invitation Is Simple

The habits encouraged by National Family Literacy Month don’t have to end after November (or after a program like Real Dads Read runs its course). Fathers can still read. They can still ask questions, tell stories, and visit the library.

They can sit beside a child and listen. They can be curious about what their children are learning. They can make literacy relational. And schools, communities, and organizations can continue asking whether the environments they create truly make room for fathers.

Perhaps that’s the lasting legacy of Real Dads Read. It was never only about getting a book into a father’s hand. It was about helping us imagine fathers as part of a child’s educational ecosystem.

That work remains unfinished.

So this November, as we reflect on fathers and literacy, the question is this: What do we still need to practice?

And one answer is clear: When fathers are invited, equipped, and encouraged to participate in literacy, children gain another person invested in their learning, their confidence, and their future.

That’s worth remembering.