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Success is not just more fatherhood programs. Success is creating conditions where fathers, families, children, and communities thrive.

by Kenneth Braswell

The room in Albany did not feel like a meeting.

It felt like a moment that had been waiting on all of us to arrive.

There are rooms you walk into and immediately know people are there because an agenda told them to be. Then there are rooms where something deeper is moving before the first microphone is lifted. The New York State Fatherhood Convening felt like the latter. It had the energy of memory, responsibility, unfinished work, and possibility. It felt like elders had been carrying a baton for a long time, and a new generation was finally standing close enough to receive it with both hands.

I came to New York that day as a keynote speaker, but I also came as a son, a father, a practitioner, and a witness. Much of my life’s work began with a question I could not escape: What about Dad? That question followed me from my own father’s absence into courtrooms, child support offices, barbershops, classrooms, jails, churches, policy tables, and family living rooms. It followed me during my years working in New York State government. It follows me now through Fathers Incorporated and the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse. It is not a slogan to me. It is a scar, a calling, and a compass.

That is why what New York is doing matters.

The launch of the New York State Fatherhood Steering Committee is not simply another initiative. It is not just another committee to gather people who already care. Done right, it can become a model for the rest of the country because it is beginning with the right recognition: fatherhood is not a side issue. Fatherhood is a child well-being issue. It is a child safety issue. It is a permanency issue. It is an economic mobility issue. It is a mental health issue. It is a reentry issue. It is a maternal and infant health issue. It is a systems change issue.

Too often, fatherhood work has been treated as something adjacent to the real work of family services. We build systems around mothers and children, then invite fathers in after the architecture is already complete. We ask fathers to be accountable, but we do not always build the pathways that make accountability possible. We expect fathers to show up, but we do not always ask whether our systems are designed to see them when they do.

What I heard in Albany was different.

I heard leadership say fathers are not visitors in their children’s lives. They are not babysitters. They are parents. I heard the room wrestle honestly with what it means to include fathers in case planning, visitation, decision-making, and services. I heard people name the truth that when fathers are engaged, present, and supported, children and families are stronger. I heard a public agency say, in essence, that protecting children also means strengthening the people who love them.

That is not small.

One of the most powerful themes of the day came from the conversation about young fathers in juvenile justice settings. We heard the story of facilities that once did not even ask young men whether they were parents. Imagine that. A young man can be inside a system, carrying the weight of confinement, trauma, immaturity, responsibility, and fatherhood, and the system does not even ask the question: Are you a parent?

That question matters.

If you do not ask whether he is a father, you cannot help him understand what fatherhood requires. You cannot connect him to his child. You cannot help him prepare for the responsibility waiting on the other side of incarceration. You cannot teach him that his life still has value to someone beyond himself. You cannot interrupt the cycle if you refuse to name the child attached to his future.

Commissioner Dr. DaMia Harris-Madden offered an image that should stay with every person who heard it. She talked about walking through juvenile facilities and seeing pictures of babies on the walls. She described the ache of realizing, “This is a baby raising a baby.” That one line carried the whole room into a deeper place. It forced us to ask a harder question: What if fatherhood is not a distraction from rehabilitation, but one of the strongest reasons rehabilitation might work?

There are young men in systems right now who have children. Some of them have harmed others. Some of them have been harmed. Some of them have no model for healthy manhood, no map for parenting, and no language for the hurt they carry. If all we do is process them, punish them, and release them, we should not be surprised when the next generation inherits what we failed to interrupt.

New York has an opportunity to do something different.

Group photo of diverse individuals at the New York State Fatherhood Convening, with a presentation backdrop featuring the Office of Children and Family Services logo.

It can build a statewide fatherhood infrastructure that reaches across child welfare, child support, juvenile justice, workforce development, public assistance, family court, housing, mental health, domestic violence prevention, early childhood, maternal health, and community-based services. It can stop treating fathers as a special population and start recognizing that fathers are already present in every system. Sometimes they are visible. Sometimes they are hidden. Sometimes they are named only as a debt, a risk, a case, or a problem. But they are there.

That is why data matters.

There is no such thing as a fatherless child. Every child has a father. The question is not whether he exists. The question is where he exists. Is he in the home? Is he across town? Is he incarcerated? Is he deceased? Is he unknown to the system but known to the child? Is he trying to show up but blocked by poverty, shame, conflict, fear, misinformation, or a court order he does not understand?

If systems do not collect the data, they will continue to operate as if fathers do not exist. And when systems behave as if fathers do not exist, children are often left without language for the hole in their hearts.

That is not just an administrative issue. That is a human one.

One of the gifts of the convening was that it held both story and structure. People did not only speak in data points. They spoke in memories. They talked about fathers showing up at school. They talked about paternal family trees helping reconnect young people to relatives they had been cut off from. They talked about grandfathers, uncles, mentors, coaches, and men who stand in the gap. They talked about fathers who need jobs, fathers who need healing, fathers who need legal help, fathers who need to understand child support, fathers who need parenting time, fathers who need mental health support, and fathers who simply need someone to stop assuming the worst about them.

In the café conversations, one participant said success cannot only be about creating more fatherhood programs. Success must mean creating conditions where fathers, families, children, and communities thrive. That is the language of a movement, not a meeting.

Another person spoke about the need for a “family-safe community culture.” That phrase struck me because it understood something many systems miss. Fatherhood work is not about separating fathers from the family conversation. It is about restoring fathers to the family conversation in ways that are safe, accountable, supportive, and child-centered.

Safety must lead this work. Always.

Fatherhood engagement cannot mean forcing unsafe relationships. It cannot mean ignoring domestic violence. It cannot mean romanticizing father presence without assessing harm. But safety cannot become an excuse for excluding every father by default. The work must be mature enough to hold two truths at the same time: children and co-parents must be safe, and fathers must be engaged with dignity, accountability, and the right supports whenever possible.

That requires training. It requires courage. It requires staff to examine what they believe about men before they engage fathers. As one panelist powerfully stated, you cannot really talk about fatherhood until you are willing to ask how the people delivering services feel about men. That is not an easy conversation. It is, however, a necessary one.

In the panel, we talked about healing because fatherhood work cannot stop at compliance. We can count how many fathers attend a class, how many sign a form, how many complete a program, and how many appear at a meeting. Those are outputs. They matter, but they are not enough. The deeper question is outcome. What changed because they came? Did a father repair a relationship? Did a child feel safer? Did a mother feel supported? Did a young man learn to pause before reacting? Did a system shift its practice? Did a county begin asking better questions? Did the work move from personality to permanence?

I said that day that fatherhood is not hard work. It is heart work. If we are not willing to get to the heart of men, we will never get to the actions of men. That does not excuse harmful behavior. It explains why surface-level interventions often fail. Too many policies are built only around what men do, without asking what they think, what they feel, what they fear, what they carry, and what they have never been taught to name.

New York can model that deeper work.

It can build a steering committee that does more than meet. It can build a backbone. A committee gathers. A backbone aligns. A committee reacts. A backbone organizes. A committee produces minutes. A backbone produces movement.

That movement will require permanence. Enthusiasm will not be enough. A successful convening can inspire people for a day. A permanent infrastructure can change systems for a generation. If this work depends only on one commissioner, one coordinator, one advocate, or one charismatic leader, it will rise and fall with personnel changes. The goal must be to embed fatherhood into policy, practice, funding, training, data systems, community partnerships, and public expectations.

The country needs that model.

Across America, states are still trying to figure out how to make fatherhood more than a program category. Some have commissions. Some have grants. Some have local fatherhood champions. Some have child support reforms. Some have reentry programs. Some have maternal health efforts that include dads. But too often these pieces are scattered. New York has the chance to show what happens when a state connects the pieces.

That means OCFS cannot do this alone. It also means OCFS does not have to do this alone.

The room in Albany was filled with state leaders, local leaders, nonprofit leaders, practitioners, fathers, advocates, faith leaders, and elders of the work. That mix matters. Government can convene. Community can translate. Practitioners can build trust. Fathers can tell the truth. Researchers can help measure what changes. Philanthropy can help seed innovation. But only a shared infrastructure can sustain the work beyond a moment.

Troy Grant captured that spirit when he reminded the room that we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, and we have a responsibility to leave something stronger for those who come after us. That is what this moment requires. Not nostalgia. Not performance. Not another cycle of starting over. Something stronger.

There was a moment later in the day when the conversation turned from “passing the torch” to “passing the baton.” That distinction matters. A torch can be carried by one person. A baton requires timing, trust, shared pace, and a clean exchange. The runner receiving it cannot be treated as an afterthought. The runner passing it cannot disappear in resentment. For the race to continue, both must move together long enough to make sure the baton does not hit the ground.

That is what New York is being asked to do now.

Honor the elders. Equip the next generation. Listen to young fathers. Train the systems. Fund the work. Measure the outcomes. Protect the children. Support the mothers. Engage the fathers. Keep safety at the center. Keep children as the main thing.

And do not apologize for fatherhood.

In the café conversation, I pushed the room to stay focused. Language matters. The work can be welcoming without becoming vague. It can honor grandfathers, uncles, mentors, and men who serve in fathering roles without losing the clarity of the word father. A fatherhood steering committee should not have to apologize for focusing on fathers. The point is not to exclude others. The point is to finally include those who have too often been missing from the plan.

A group of professionals engaged in a discussion around a conference table. One man in a light suit and teal tie is speaking while others attentively listen. A flip chart and a closed door are in the background.

At the end of the day, this is not about saving fathers for the sake of fathers alone. It is about strengthening fathers for the sake of children, families, and communities. When fathers are healthier, children are safer. When fathers are supported, mothers are less isolated. When fathers are engaged, families have more capacity. When fathers are accountable and equipped, systems have better outcomes. When fathers are visible, children no longer have to invent explanations for absence that adults never had the courage to name.

Albany gave us a glimpse of what is possible when a state decides to stop treating fatherhood as an accessory to family policy and starts treating it as part of the foundation.

Now the question is whether New York will build what the room imagined.

If it does, the rest of the country should pay attention.

Because on June 3, 2026, New York did more than convene a room. It opened a door. And if that door stays open, fathers, families, and children across the country may one day look back and say: that was one of the places where the work stopped starting over and started standing up.

Black maternal health must be named because Black mothers must be seen. And when Black mothers are seen, families are better protected.

A recent article reminds us that language shapes priorities. Priorities shape funding. Funding shapes programs. And programs shape whether families receive the care, support, and protection they deserve.

Dads belong in the maternal health conversation, not to speak over mothers, but to stand with them. Not to replace their voices, but to amplify the urgency of their safety.

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

A recent article by Barbara Rodriguez in The 19th raises a concern that should matter deeply to families, fathers, policymakers, and anyone invested in maternal and child well-being. The article reports that the word “Black” has been almost completely removed from the latest version of the “Momnibus Act,” a package of federal bills originally known as the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act and long understood as Congress’s primary legislative effort to address the Black maternal health crisis. That may sound like a small wording change, but it is not.

Words do more than describe policy. Words point policy toward the people it is supposed to serve. When a crisis is racialized in its outcomes, but race disappears from the language used to address it, we risk creating solutions that are too broad to reach the deepest wound.

The article explains that earlier versions of the legislation clearly named Black women, and later Black pregnant and postpartum individuals. By 2023, most of that language had been removed, with the word “Black” appearing only once, referring to historically Black colleges and universities or other minority-serving institutions. These changes carried over into the latest version.

The stakes are high because the maternal health crisis in America is not evenly distributed. The United States continues to have maternal mortality rates that exceed those of other developed nations. In 2023, the national maternal mortality rate was 18.6 deaths per 100,000 live births, while the rate for Black women was 50.3 deaths per 100,000 live births. In other words, Black women are about three times more likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related causes.

Maternal health isn’t a women’s issue alone. It is a family stability, child well-being, and fatherhood issue. When mothers are unsupported, endangered, unheard, or erased from policy, fathers are left to carry grief, fear, confusion, and responsibility. A pregnancy-related death does not end with the mother. It changes the life of a child. It alters the emotional foundation of a family. It can leave fathers navigating parenting, trauma, medical mistrust, financial strain, and unanswered questions all at once.

Writing for The 19th, Rodriguez captures a tension inside the current debate. Supporters of the revised Momnibus language argue that the substance of the bill still helps Black women and that broader definitions may help ensure funding reaches communities experiencing elevated maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity. Rep. Lauren Underwood, one of the lead sponsors, emphasized that the bill remains connected to the Black Maternal Health Caucus and continues to advance maternal health priorities.

At the same time, several advocates interviewed for the article expressed concern that removing the word “Black” weakens the bill’s clarity. Their argument is simple: If Black women are the population most harmed by the crisis, then Black women must be named in the solution.

We can’t build strong families with vague language, and we can’t repair inequity with language that tiptoes around the people most affected. There’s a difference between being inclusive and being evasive. Inclusive language expands the circle without erasing the center. Evasive language makes the center harder to see.

For fathers, this becomes a call to pay attention. Too often, fathers are invited into maternal health conversations only at the edges. They are told to show up for appointments, help with transportation, support breastfeeding, monitor postpartum recovery, and encourage medical care. All of that matters. But fathers must also understand the policy environment shaping the care mothers receive.

If Black mothers face a higher risk of dying during pregnancy, childbirth, or postpartum, then Black fathers, families, and communities need to know. Churches, barbershops, fatherhood programs, maternal health advocates, doulas, midwives, hospitals, and policymakers need to speak with clarity and honesty so that families can prepare, advocate, and protect one another.

Good policy shouldn’t fear precision. Good policy should be able to say “Black mothers,” “rural mothers,” “Indigenous mothers,” “Hispanic mothers,” “low-income mothers,” “incarcerated mothers,” “young mothers,” and “postpartum mothers” without pretending that one group’s pain cancels out another’s. Specificity isn’t division; it’s how we get help to the right people at the right time.

For fathers, the lesson is this: Maternal health advocacy must become part of responsible fatherhood, which means:

  • Asking better questions at prenatal visits
  • Learning the warning signs of postpartum complications
  • Making sure mothers are heard when they say something doesn’t feel right
  • Respecting doulas, midwives, nurses, doctors, and community-based birth workers who help families navigate systems that can feel intimidating
  • Standing beside mothers when policy conversations attempt to soften the truth.

Black maternal health must be named because Black mothers must be seen. And when Black mothers are seen, families are better protected.

The article in The 19th reminds us that language isn’t cosmetic. Language shapes priorities. Priorities shape funding. Funding shapes programs. And programs shape whether families receive the care, support, and protection they deserve.

Dads belong in this conversation, not to speak over mothers, but to stand with them. Not to replace their voices, but to amplify the urgency of their safety. Not to make maternal health about men, but to recognize that fatherhood is strongest when it protects the whole family.

A child’s first home isn’t only a place. It is the health, safety, and stability of the people who love them. And that begins with making sure mothers survive.

family stability matters. We say responsible fatherhood is connected to child well-being, school readiness, emotional security, economic mobility, public safety, child support compliance, maternal health, and healthy co-parenting.

But too often, we fund fatherhood as though it only belongs to one agency, one grant category, one department, or one short-term initiative.

That’s the contradiction we must confront.

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

For more than two decades, the responsible fatherhood field has been asked to do something remarkable with something fragile. We’ve been asked to help fathers heal, work, parent, co-parent, navigate court systems, repair relationships, manage child support, address trauma, understand their rights, strengthen families, and show up for their children while standing on funding structures that are temporary, narrow, and uncertain.

That’s not sustainability. It’s survival. And survival can’t be the long-term strategy for a field that touches the lives of children, mothers, fathers, families, and communities.

Across this country, we say we want fathers to be more engaged. We say children need their fathers. We say family stability matters. We say responsible fatherhood is connected to child well-being, school readiness, emotional security, economic mobility, public safety, child support compliance, maternal health, and healthy co-parenting.

But too often, we fund fatherhood as though it only belongs to one agency, one grant category, one department, or one short-term initiative.

That’s the contradiction we must confront.

If father engagement benefits multiple systems, then multiple systems must help support father engagement.

Responsible fatherhood isn’t simply a program category. It’s not simply a curriculum, class, or support group. It’s not simply a six-week intervention where a man comes in, receives a certificate, takes a picture, and goes home.

At its best, responsible fatherhood is upstream infrastructure.

Responsible fatherhood is 

  • The bridge between a father and his child before absence becomes permanent
  • The conversation that helps a co-parenting relationship mature before conflict hardens into court battles
  • The support that helps a father find work before child support debt becomes unmanageable
  • The guidance that helps an unmarried father understand legitimation before a medical emergency exposes the limits of his legal standing
  • The brotherhood that helps a man speak honestly about stress, grief, shame, and fear before those emotions become silence, anger, or withdrawal.

This is what upstream work does. It moves before the crisis. It doesn’t wait for a family to collapse before asking what could have been done. It doesn’t wait for a child to struggle in school before asking whether Dad had the tools to be engaged. It doesn’t wait for a father to fall behind in child support before asking whether he had stable employment, transportation, parenting time, or legal clarity. It doesn’t wait for child welfare, reentry, housing, behavioral health, or family court to inherit problems that could have been addressed earlier with the right investment.

Yet the funding model for fatherhood often lives downstream. We fund crisis. We fund removal. We fund enforcement. We fund incarceration. We fund emergency housing. We fund remediation. We fund systems after harm has occurred. Then we ask why prevention is so hard to sustain.

The answer is simple: We haven’t built a permanent funding architecture for father engagement.

The responsible fatherhood field has too often been expected to chase grants rather than build institutions. A grant opens, organizations apply, programs launch, staff are hired, fathers enroll, relationships are built, data is collected, outcomes begin to emerge, and then the field holds its breath for the next funding cycle.

That kind of instability doesn’t just strain organizations. It weakens the very communities those organizations serve.

Fathers who are trying to rebuild their lives need consistency. Families navigating co-parenting conflict need consistency. Children trying to trust that Dad will remain present need consistency. Staff doing the delicate work of engagement, navigation, coaching, and accountability need consistency.

You can’t build generational stability on temporary scaffolding.

Braided Funding for Responsible Fatherhood

The field needs a new funding imagination.

That begins with recognizing that responsible fatherhood should not depend on a single grant. 

Federal Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood (HMRF) funding should remain an anchor, but it can’t be the only anchor. These grants are among the clearest federal pathways for supporting father-child engagement, healthy relationships, marriage and relationship education, co-parenting, and economic stability. They allow organizations to build structured programming, hire staff, collect data, evaluate outcomes, and serve fathers with intention. 

But no field should be dependent on one federal stream to prove its national relevance year after year. It should be braided through every system that benefits when fathers are engaged. Here are several examples from critical sectors.

State-Level Funding for Responsible Fatherhood

A state legislature could create a direct line item for responsible fatherhood. That line item could fund fatherhood programs, legitimation navigation, child support education, reentry fatherhood services, father-centered workforce development, and statewide capacity-building for local organizations. It could create a dedicated home for work that too often falls between systems. Fatherhood is relevant to child welfare, workforce, courts, public health, corrections, education, and housing, but when no system owns it, every system can pretend it belongs somewhere else.

Fatherhood Funding at the Local Level

A city council or county commission could do the same. Local government contracts could support fatherhood work as part of violence prevention, family stability, youth development, neighborhood revitalization, or public safety. Imagine a county investing in a fatherhood navigation program inside its family court, child support office, jail reentry program, or workforce center. Imagine a city funding fatherhood coaches in the neighborhoods where young dads are already showing up: barbershops, schools, recreation centers, community colleges, churches, and housing communities. That’s not charity. That’s local infrastructure.

Using TANF Funds to Support Fatherhood 

TANF, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, should also be part of the conversation. If TANF is meant to promote family stability, economic mobility, and child well-being, then responsible fatherhood belongs inside that purpose. TANF can potentially support noncustodial parent employment services, job readiness, job placement, parenting support, co-parenting education, financial literacy, transportation assistance, and public benefits navigation when these activities align with TANF goals. A state could use TANF dollars to support fathers who are trying to work, pay child support, stabilize their families, and remain connected to their children.

Partnerships Between Child Support and Fatherhood Programs

Child support systems should be central partners for fatherhood programs. Too many fathers first encounter government through enforcement, not support. That doesn’t mean child support is unimportant. Children deserve financial support. Mothers deserve reliability. Families need resources. But a system designed to collect support should also invest in the conditions that make support more likely. Child support agencies could contract with fatherhood programs to provide employment coaching, parenting-time education, arrears navigation, order-modification assistance, mediation referrals, and co-parenting communication support. Access and Visitation funding can support services connected to custody, parenting time, mediation, counseling, education, parenting plans, supervised visitation, and safe exchange. These aren’t side issues. For many fathers, these are the very conditions that determine whether they stay connected or disappear under the weight of confusion, conflict, and debt.

Child Welfare Funding for Father Engagement

Title IV-B can support family preservation, family support, reunification, and services that help stabilize families before removal becomes necessary. Title IV-E prevention funding can support time-limited, approved services connected to mental health, substance use, and in-home parent skill-building for children and families at risk of foster care involvement. The strategy isn’t to simply rename every fatherhood activity as child welfare. The strategy is to position father engagement as a child-safety, permanency, kinship, reunification, and foster-care prevention strategy. If child welfare systems are serious about keeping children safely connected to family, fathers can’t remain an afterthought.

Health System Collaborations With Fatherhood Organizations

Medicaid and behavioral health systems offer another opportunity, especially when fatherhood organizations partner with eligible providers. Medicaid may not directly pay for a fatherhood curriculum, but it can support health-related services, including behavioral health, substance use treatment, care coordination, community health worker services, health homes, Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics, and certain health-related social needs, through state plans or waivers. A fatherhood organization could partner with a Federally Qualified Health Center, a behavioral health provider, a Medicaid managed care organization, or a community health worker program to support fathers dealing with stress, depression, trauma, reentry health needs, substance use, or family stabilization challenges.

Father-Inclusive Public Health Initiatives

Public health and maternal and child health systems should also see fathers as part of the solution. Healthy Start, Title V, home visiting, perinatal health initiatives, and maternal health efforts often focus, understandably, on mothers and babies. But fathers influence prenatal support, postpartum stress, infant care, breastfeeding support, safe sleep practices, maternal well-being, and early child development. A public health department could fund father-inclusive prenatal education, father-focused maternal health outreach, rural father support, paternal mental health screening referrals, or father engagement inside home visiting systems. If the health of mothers and babies matters, then the support system surrounding them matters, too.

Father-Focused Employment Supports

Workforce funding is another natural fit. WIOA, SNAP Employment and Training, apprenticeship programs, community college partnerships, and sector-based employment initiatives can all connect to responsible fatherhood. Many fathers don’t need a lecture about responsibility. They need pathways to work that pays enough to support their children. SNAP Employment and Training, in particular, can allow community-based providers to use eligible non-federal funds and receive reimbursement through state SNAP E&T partnerships. That could support job readiness, credentialing, coaching, case management, transportation, and employment placement for fathers who need to move from survival work to sustainable work.

Reentry Services for Fathers

Reentry and justice funding should also be braided into the fatherhood field funding infrastructure. Second Chance Act grants, Bureau of Justice Assistance opportunities, OJJDP programs, state corrections dollars, county jail partnerships, probation and parole funding, and accountability court resources can all support fathers returning home. A reentry fatherhood program could begin inside a jail or prison before release and continue in the community with parenting education, child support navigation, co-parenting support, employment planning, family reunification, and emotional health services. A man coming home isn’t just reentering society. He may be reentering fatherhood. If we miss that, we miss one of the strongest motivations for change.

Housing Resources for Fathers

Housing and homelessness systems should also be part of this strategy. A father without safe, stable housing may struggle to exercise parenting time, participate in reunification, provide overnight care, or maintain consistent contact with his child. HUD Continuum of Care partnerships, emergency housing programs, rapid rehousing, family stability resources, and local homelessness prevention dollars can all intersect with fatherhood. A fatherhood program doesn’t have to become a housing agency, but it can partner with one. Together, they can help fathers address one of the most practical barriers to parenting: having a safe place where fatherhood can actually happen.

Block Grant and Title XX Funding for Fatherhood 

Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) funding, or Title XX, should not be overlooked. Because it is flexible and state-directed, it can support social services connected to economic self-sufficiency, prevention, family support, case management, and stabilization, depending on the state’s priorities. A state could use SSBG to support fatherhood case management, parenting education, family stabilization, responsible fatherhood navigation, or community-based prevention services. Flexibility matters because fathers rarely come through the door with only one need.

Philanthropic and Corporate Investments in Fatherhood

Philanthropy and corporate partners also have a critical role to play in fatherhood, but not as charity alone. Foundations can fund pilots, research, evaluation, innovation, communications, technology, and proof-of-concept work that public systems may be too restricted or slow to support. Corporate partners can support father-friendly employment pipelines, transportation solutions, financial coaching, digital access, work uniforms, tools, training, and family economic mobility. A local employer can partner with a fatherhood program to recruit and train dads for high-demand jobs. A foundation can fund the evaluation that proves the model works, and then state agencies can scale it. That’s how innovation becomes infrastructure.

This is what braided funding looks like. It doesn’t ask one system to carry the whole responsibility. It asks every system to invest according to the benefit it receives, and it asks us to deepen our understanding of fatherhood.

The Foundation: A Deeper Understanding of Fatherhood

If we only see fatherhood as a private relationship between a man and his child, then we will continue to underfund it. But if we understand fatherhood as a public good, as something that affects schools, courts, neighborhoods, health systems, child welfare agencies, labor markets, and the emotional development of children, then the funding conversation changes.

A father who is engaged is not only giving his child a hug, a ride to school, help with homework, or a weekend visit. He is contributing to a larger ecosystem of stability. That’s why fatherhood cannot remain trapped in the language of charity. We must embrace it as an investment, a prevention strategy, and infrastructure. 

When fathers are supported, children benefit. Mothers often benefit. Co-parents can communicate with more structure and less conflict. Child support is more likely to be paid. Schools gain another adult who can participate. Courts may see fewer unresolved disputes. Communities gain men who are more connected, accountable, and hopeful. Systems spend less time reacting to crises and more time building capacity.

We have to stop asking whether responsible fatherhood programs are worthy of funding and start asking why so many systems have been allowed to benefit from father engagement without helping to sustain the field that makes it possible.

There’s a familiar saying in public health: Instead of only pulling people out of the river downstream, we should go upstream and find out why they are falling in.

Responsible fatherhood is upstream work.

It stands at the place where a father is trying to decide whether to stay connected. It stands where a co-parenting relationship is beginning to fracture. It stands where a young dad is afraid he does not know enough to raise a child. It stands where a father wants to work but does not know how to overcome barriers. It stands where a man feels ashamed because he has fallen short, but still wants another chance. It stands where a child is waiting to know whether Dad will keep showing up.

If we fund only what happens after these moments are lost, we’ve already waited too long.

The future of responsible fatherhood requires courage, coordination, and a fatherhood program funding model equal to the complexity of the work. It requires: 

  • Public systems to stop operating in silos
  • Philanthropy to help build long-term capacity, not only short-term innovation
  • Policymakers to see fatherhood as connected to outcomes they already care about
  • Practitioners to document impact, tell the truth about what fathers need, and refuse to let the field be reduced to a single grant category.

Most of all, it requires us to believe that fathers are worth investing in before the crisis arrives. When fathers are equipped, children are strengthened. When fathers are supported, families have more options. And when fathers are engaged, communities carry less preventable pain. 

The responsible fatherhood field doesn’t need another temporary lifeline. It needs a sustainable investment strategy that’s braided through every system, reflecting the depth of its impact.

Television commercials have often depicted fathers in Black families as “missing,” failed to highlight their daily contributions, and reinforced the damaging perception that Black fathers are absent and disengaged. This falsehood doesn’t stay on the screen. It follows Black fathers into schools, hospitals, courtrooms, child welfare systems, social service agencies, workplaces, and even into their own homes, where children are still trying to understand how the world sees the men who love them.

by The Moynihan Institute for Fatherhood Research and Policy

There is a moment many Black fathers know too well. It happens while sitting on the couch watching television with your children. A commercial comes on, and a family appears on the screen. There’s a mother. There are children. There’s warmth, laughter, breakfast, homework, morning routines, holiday joy, and sometimes even a dog running through the frame. And often, the Black father is missing. Or, if he’s there, he’s flattened into something less than whole. The joke. The cool one. The physical one. The confused one. The man who appears briefly but rarely carries the emotional weight of the family story.

This absence or flattening is not innocent. It teaches.

Advertising has always done more than sell soap, cereal, cars, insurance, diapers, or fast food. It sells meaning. It sells belonging. It sells what family is supposed to look like. It tells the public who gets to be tender, who gets to be responsible, who gets to be trusted, who gets to be adored by children, and who gets written out of the picture.

That is why our latest article, “Black Fathers Portrayals and Characterizations of Black Fatherhood in Television Commercials: A Descriptive Study,” is so important. Authored by Janice Kelly, Jeffrey Shears, and David Miller and published in the Howard Journal of Communications, it does what too much media analysis fails to do: It asks Black fathers what they see when they look at themselves on screen.

The study included 50 fathers enrolled in a fatherhood program and five fatherhood scholars connected to the Moynihan Institute for Fatherhood Research (MIFRP). Fifty-one participants identified as African American (92.7%). After watching 15 nationally televised commercials that featured Black fathers and aired between 2016 and 2021, these fathers shared their perceptions, rankings, and reflections.

Our findings should trouble every advertiser, creative director, media buyer, brand strategist, and executive who believes representation begins and ends with visibility. The paper identifies “the dearth of rich and complex representations of Black fathers” as a central concern raised by participants and argues that commercials bear a “critical responsibility” to “accurately and fairly depict Black men as engaged and nurturing fathers.”

This is the heart of the matter. Black fathers aren’t asking to be idealized. They’re asking to be seen honestly.

TV Commercials Perpetuate the Missing Black Father Myth

For decades, America has been sold the myth of the missing Black father. Sometimes that myth is loud, dressed in political rhetoric and cultural blame. Sometimes it is quiet, tucked into a family advertisement where the Black father simply never appears. Sometimes it is coded through a father who is present but emotionally thin, comedic, passive, immature, or disconnected from the real labor of parenting.

Our recent research indicates that portrayals of Black fathers in media advertising have often leaned into stereotypes, including absentee and uninvolved fathers. It also points to the 2018 Macy’s holiday ad controversy, where a Black mother and children appeared without a Black father, triggering national criticism. 

That moment mattered because Black families have long understood what others sometimes dismiss: Visual omission is a form of storytelling. When you repeatedly leave Black fathers out of the family portrait, you aren’t just failing to cast a role. You’re shaping public imagination.

Macy’s isn’t alone. Television commercials have often depicted fathers in Black families as “missing,” failed to highlight their daily contributions, and reinforced the damaging perception that Black fathers are absent and disengaged. This falsehood doesn’t stay on the screen. It follows Black fathers into schools, hospitals, courtrooms, child welfare systems, social service agencies, workplaces, and even into their own homes, where children are still trying to understand how the world sees the men who love them.

Our study also found key nuances. Participants often perceived Black fathers in commercials as physical, cool, and strong — traits that aren’t inherently negative. Many Black fathers are strong. Many are cool. Many carry a physical confidence shaped by culture, labor, survival, sport, discipline, and style. But when those traits dominate while wisdom, maturity, caregiving, and wage-earning appear less often, the image becomes incomplete. The paper notes that respondents perceived Black fathers as buffoons more commonly than caregivers, a finding that should stop the advertising industry cold.

This isn’t just a creative gap. It’s a cultural failure. A father is not merely the man who makes the room laugh. He is the man who checks the homework after a long shift. He is the man learning how to braid hair because his daughter asked him to. He is the man who shows up at the school meeting even when he feels out of place. He is the man trying to co-parent through tension. He is the man fighting to stay emotionally present while carrying the weight of work, bills, grief, race, and expectation. He is the man whose love may not always be polished, but it is often persistent.

TV Commercials With Positive Portrayals of Black Fathers

One of the most revealing findings in our research is that fathers responded strongly to commercials that showed ordinary, relational, emotionally recognizable fatherhood. A 2019 Denny’s commercial, featuring a Black father and his infant son, was most frequently selected as the highest-rated commercial, receiving 19 first-place rankings. An Oreo ad followed with 11, and a Dove ad with 10.

Why did Denny’s resonate? Participants said that it “depicted a father enjoying time with his son.” They also named “the need for more realistic portrayals of fathers with their children outside the home” and described the commercial as relatable. There’s something beautifully simple in that. The fathers weren’t asking for a superhero cape. They were asking for a booth in a restaurant. A child at the table. A father feeding, laughing, holding, paying attention. The ordinary stuff. The sacred stuff. The everyday stuff that becomes memory.

The Oreo commercial also ranked highly because participants saw the father-son interaction as relatable and appreciated the bond between father and son. The Dove commercial was praised for showing a father dancing with his children. These responses point to something advertisers should have understood long ago: Black fathers recognize authenticity when they see it. They also recognize performance when it is forced.

Pressuring Advertisers to Update Their Portrayals of Black Fathers

The fathers in the study were clear about what they want advertisers to do. They want brands to:

  • “Show more” Black fathers doing things with their children.
  • Show positive portrayals.
  • Show fathers with their kids and families.
  • Represent Black fathers across economic and professional lines. 

One participant called for “more dads with their kids that are really taking care of their kids.” Another wanted Black fathers represented “in all classes from white collar to blue collar to plumbers.”

These requests matter because Black fatherhood has never been one story. Black fatherhood is married and unmarried. Residential and nonresidential. Working class and professional. Young and seasoned. Biological, social, adoptive, and kinship-based. It lives in barbershops, boardrooms, truck routes, classrooms, construction sites, churches, gyms, correctional facilities, courtrooms, military bases, college campuses, and kitchen tables.

Advertisers have made millions selling products to Black families while too often refusing to tell the truth about Black family life. That must change.

The paper’s discussion states the business case plainly. Black fathers are not only subjects of representation. They are consumers, household influencers, brand interpreters, and cultural messengers. We argue that elevating the voices and perspectives of Black fathers as consumers could help media executives create more effective campaigns that resonate with Black fathers and families.

That means the moral case and the marketing case point in the same direction. If advertisers want to reach Black families, they should:

  • Stop guessing about Black fathers and start listening to them.
  • Bring Black fathers into the research room before the storyboard is finalized. 
  • Consult fatherhood practitioners who understand the lived realities of men raising children under complicated social and economic conditions. 
  • Show Black fathers in the full emotional range of parenting: tired, joyful, serious, playful, protective, affectionate, uncertain, capable, learning, repairing, and leading.

Most of all, they should stop selling absence.

America doesn’t need another commercial that treats Black fatherhood as a symbol, a risk, a joke, or a surprise. We need images that reflect what millions of children already know: Dad is here. Dad is trying. Dad is loving. Dad is learning. Dad is showing up in ways the camera has not always cared enough to capture.

The myth of the missing Black father has been profitable for too long. It has filled political speeches, shaped public policy, justified institutional neglect, and made it easier to overlook men who are doing the hard work of fathering in plain sight.

Advertisers helped sell that myth. Now they have a responsibility to help retire it.

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Kelly, J., Shears, J., & Miller, D. (2026). Black Fathers Portrayals and Characterizations of Black Fatherhood in Television Commercials: A Descriptive Study. Howard Journal of Communications, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/10646175.2026.2644249

If father presence matters, then father health matters.

Father involvement has long been associated with positive child outcomes. If we celebrate engaged fathers when children thrive, then we must also care whether those fathers are healthy enough to stay engaged.

And if we want stronger families, then fathers must be included in minority health — not as an afterthought but as part of its strategy, its urgency, and its promise.

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO,  Fathers Incorporated

Every April, National Minority Health Month invites the country to talk about health disparities, disease prevention, and what it will take to improve outcomes in communities carrying unequal burdens. 

This year, federal message focuses on preventing and reversing chronic disease and improving measurable health outcomes. This conversation is necessary, but if it never fully reaches fathers, then it never fully reaches families. The health gap will remain open as long as we keep treating men, especially Black and Brown fathers, as though they sit outside the circle of family health.

We must expand how we talk about minority health and address it beyond exam rooms, emergency departments, and public health campaigns. We need to consider minority health at home, too, and pay attention to:

  • the blood pressure readings fathers ignore because he’s busy holding life together
  • the untreated stress that becomes irritability, silence, distance, or collapse
  • the depression that goes unnamed because too many men have been taught that endurance is the only acceptable language 

The Office of Minority Health (OMH) itself makes plain that many of the forces shaping health happen outside the health care system — through income, education, housing, food access, and more. 

This perspective should push us to see fathers not as a side issue, but as part of the frontline.

The numbers tell a sobering story. According to OMH, the average life expectancy at birth for Black Americans in 2023 was 74 years, but for Black males it was 70.3 years. In 2022, Black Americans were also 35% more likely than the overall U.S. population to die from major heart and blood vessel diseases and 78% more likely to die from diabetes. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that high blood pressure remains more common among non-Hispanic Black adults than any other major racial or ethnic group, and that men have higher rates than women. 

Mental health belongs in this discussion, too. OMH says that in 2024, Black/African American adults were 36% less likely than U.S. adults overall to have received mental health treatment in the past year. This should disturb all of us. When suffering goes untreated, families often feel it before systems ever measure it. A man’s anxiety can become agitation in the home. His depression can become emotional absence. His exhaustion can erode patience, communication, and trust. 

We can’t keep asking fathers to be stable anchors in unstable waters while refusing to confront what those waters are doing to them.

Father Involvement and Minority Health 

And this is where the argument becomes larger than men alone. Father involvement has long been associated with positive child outcomes. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has noted that father involvement in early childhood is associated with positive developmental and psychological outcomes over time. CDC materials similarly note that increased father involvement is associated with positive outcomes for children and that fathers have a special opportunity to support the health and well-being of their children. 

If father presence matters, then father health matters. If we celebrate engaged fathers when children thrive, then we must also care whether those fathers are healthy enough to stay engaged.

This means we can’t reduce National Minority Health Month to broad calls for awareness. 

We need prevention strategies that go where fathers actually are. Barbershops. Churches. Job sites. Recreation centers. Fatherhood programs. Community colleges. Reentry spaces. Pediatric waiting rooms. We need health systems to stop treating men as difficult to reach and start admitting that many systems have simply failed to reach out them in ways that are trusted, culturally grounded, and consistent.

Given the federal emphasis on prevention and measurable outcomes, this is the moment to make fathers visible in the design, not just in the language.

We should also stop acting as though a father’s health is his burden alone to solve. When a man lacks insurance, transportation, flexible work hours, or a provider who understands his reality, it’s not a character flaw. It’s a systems problem. We need to understand how his stress is intensified by unstable employment, neighborhood violence, family court pressure, child support debt, housing insecurity, and the constant demand to perform strength while swallowing fear.

Minority health policy that does not account for those realities will always underperform, because it will always be treating symptoms while leaving conditions intact.

The consequences of ignoring this are indefensible. You can’t close the minority health gap while ignoring fathers. You can’t build healthier communities while overlooking the men whose health shapes the emotional and economic climate of so many homes. And you can’t say you are fighting for better outcomes for children while refusing to invest in the health of the people those children depend on. 

If we want stronger families, then fathers must be included in minority health — not as an afterthought but as part of its strategy, its urgency, and its promise.

or too long, American culture has offered Black men a narrow script. It has treated masculinity as hardness, distance, stoicism, or physical dominance. It has treated provision as if it only counts when it arrives in the form of money made through visibly rugged labor. Even the more sympathetic versions of this narrative often reduce men to role, function, and performance. Earn. Protect. Endure. Bring home the check. Stay tough. Never bend too much toward tenderness.

But care work disrupts that script.

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

When most people imagine Black men at work, they still tend to reach for the same set of images. They picture warehouses, loading docks, truck routes, construction sites, security posts, correctional facilities, and other jobs where strength is measured in pounds lifted, miles driven, or hours endured. These men and their labor are real. Their contribution is undeniable. But that’s not the whole story, and it is past time we stop pretending it is.

There is another Black man at work in America, and he deserves to be seen.

He’s helping a patient dress after surgery. He’s counseling a father trying not to collapse under the weight of addiction, debt, and shame. He’s walking alongside a family in crisis. He’s working with a child who cannot yet name the pain they carry. He’s in a school building, clinic, community program, treatment center, group home, hospital room, recovery circle, or social services office. He’s not simply earning a paycheck; he’s holding together some piece of the human condition.

This is strength, too. 

The labor data tells us more than many of our assumptions do. According to 2025 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS):

  • Health care support occupations were 83.4% women and 26.9% Black.
  • Community and social service occupations were 69% women and 18.2% Black.
  • In social assistance, the workforce was 84.9% women and 20% Black.
  • In individual and family services, it was 80.4% women and 21.2% Black. 

These are not small or trivial slices of the labor market. They are clear signs that Black labor is already deeply present in the care economy, even if our public imagination still struggles to recognize it.

Detailed occupation data from BLS in 2025 tells an even more compelling story: 

  • Mental health counselors were 72.6% women and 22% Black. 
  • Substance abuse and behavioral disorder counselors were 79.8% women and 20.6% Black. 
  • Child, family, and school social workers were 81.3% women and 24.3% Black. 
  • Educational, guidance, and career counselors and advisors were 77% women and 18.8% Black. 
  • Home health aides were 86.1% women and 30.8% Black.
  • Nursing assistants were 86.9% women and 39.3% Black. 

These numbers should force us to reconsider what provision – providing for one’s family – looks like, what masculinity means, and where Black men are already helping carry the emotional and developmental life of the nation.

For too long, American culture has offered Black men a narrow script. It has treated masculinity as hardness, distance, stoicism, or physical dominance. It has treated provision as if it only counts when it arrives in the form of money made through visibly rugged labor. Even the more sympathetic versions of this narrative often reduce men to role, function, and performance. Earn. Protect. Endure. Bring home the check. Stay tough. Never bend too much toward tenderness.

But care work disrupts that script.

A Black man who counsels grieving families, supports a patient through recovery, mentors a vulnerable teenager, or helps stabilize a household in crisis is not stepping away from masculinity. He is exposing how shallow our definition has been. 

He’s not abandoning provision; he’s expanding it. He’s showing that providing is not only to finance life but also to sustain it, not only to guard the home from the outside but also to help hold it together from within.

This matters in the responsible fatherhood field because fathers have often been discussed almost exclusively through the lens of economics. Work. Income. Employment. But if fatherhood is interpreted only in terms of wages, then care itself becomes invisible. The father who knows how to soothe, listen, guide, comfort, teach, counsel, and remain emotionally available is too often treated as a cultural exception rather than what he may actually be: a model of mature and necessary manhood.

The Census Bureau’s Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics program gives us another reason to take this seriously. The Census Bureau notes that its Quarterly Workforce Indicators measure not only employment, but also job creation, job destruction, hires, earnings, and other employment flows, and that these indicators can be studied by industry, geography, and worker demographics. 

This means we can study where care jobs are growing, where they are unstable, and where Black workers are concentrated within them — datapoints that should matter to policymakers, fatherhood practitioners, and anyone who claims to care about family stability.

The care economy sits close to the heartbeat of the family. It’s where maternal health is supported, where child development is protected, and where trauma is addressed. It’s where addiction is treated, where behavioral crises are de-escalated, and where elderly parents are kept alive with dignity. It’s where children learn how to trust adults again, and it’s where broken systems are sometimes softened by human presence before they become even more destructive.

And Black men are there.

Black men’s presence in the care economy challenges many stereotypes at once:

  • That Black men do not nurture
  • That men who work in care are somehow less masculine
  • That human service work is soft work, secondary work, or “women’s work” 
  • That men merely assist with care in the margins. 
  • That emotional intelligence belongs to somebody else

It also raises a harder question: Why do we so often celebrate Black men most loudly when they survive punishment, danger, or exclusion, but speak far less about them when they are practicing healing, empathy, and guidance?

Part of the answer is that America has long been: more comfortable seeing: 

  • More comfortable seeing Black men as a force rather than as care
  • More comfortable seeing the Black man as a body rather than a nurturer
  • More comfortable with Black men’s labor when it appears physically extractive than when it appears relational, developmental, or therapeutic

But if we are serious about reimagining Black fatherhood, then we must also reimagine Black work. This means affirming the Black man who is not only protecting life, but tending to it. Not only building structures, but also stabilizing people. Not only providing income, but offering calm, consistency, instruction, and hope.

There is no contradiction here. A man can be strong and gentle. He can be protective and emotionally fluent. He can be a provider and a caregiver. He can be deeply masculine and deeply attentive. In fact, the more unstable the world becomes, the more we need this synthesis.

The data shows us that Black workers, including Black men, are deeply present in occupations tied to care, counseling, and human services. Our thinking has to catch up. The next evolution in the fatherhood conversation should not ask whether Black men belong in the care economy. It should ask why we were ever taught to think they did not.

Because every time a Black man helps someone heal, every time he steadies a child, counsels a family, supports a mother, walks with a patient, or speaks life into somebody standing on the edge of collapse, he’s doing more than working.

He’s redefining strength and provision. 

He’s redefining what it means to be a man in the service of human wholeness, and that deserves to be seen.

Our study asks a question that the responsible fatherhood and human services fields sometimes avoid because it’s inconvenient: If we say fathers matter, why are so many systems designed as if they don’t? 

Those that truly want to engage fathers must adopt a simple discipline: Stop confusing outcomes with intent. If a father is not consistently present, ask what has been blocking him before you make assumptions or lean on stereotypes.

by Dr. Jeffery Shears, Co-Chair, The Moynihan Institute for Fatherhood Research and Policy

Fulton County, Georgia, sits inside Metro Atlanta, an area that has long been used as a national mirror, a place where America’s hopes and contradictions show up in high definition. The story many people think they already know is a tired one: Black fathers don’t show up. But new fatherhood research published by MIFRP fellows and their colleagues says something more honest. Black fathers show up with love, intention, and persistence, despite being forced to navigate a maze where the walls move.

At its core, our study asks a question the responsible fatherhood and human services fields sometimes avoid because it’s inconvenient: If we say fathers matter, why are so many systems designed as if they don’t? 

Our Latest Fatherhood Research and Its Findings

This research centers nonresidential Black fathers in Fulton County and explores what stands in the way of engagement, what helps it flourish, and what fatherhood programs and stakeholders must do differently to stop mistaking barriers for a lack of love.

Our approach to this study matters because its method signals respect. The co-authors used a qualitative, phenomenological design, conducting semi-structured interviews and follow-up focus groups with 12 self-identified Black fathers in Fulton County. These were not “checkbox” conversations. We intentionally made room for men to describe what it feels like to love their child and still have to negotiate access to fatherhood.

Here’s what we learned:

The study reveals co-parenting dynamics as a major fault line. 
When co-parenting is healthy, fathers describe communication that stays centered on the child and makes space for both parents to function. When co-parenting becomes hostile, fathers describe emotional strain, frustration, and a level of gatekeeping that can make dads feel like they’re auditioning for access rather than stepping into responsibility. Our research shows that strained co-parenting relationships are not simply interpersonal drama. They become structural barriers when reinforced by systems that lack pathways for repair and for shared parenting support.

The study points to a dearth of father-centered community supports. 
Fathers repeatedly described how family-serving environments are often built with mothers in mind, leaving men to either squeeze into spaces not designed for them or give up after repeated signals that they are peripheral. This is not an indictment of mothers or mother-centered supports. It is a challenge to the field: Family work cannot be fully funded, staffed, and structured around one parent and then act surprised when the other parent struggles to stay connected.

The research highlights legal and institutional barriers. 
The fathers describe legal processes, including child support and legitimation in Georgia, as confusing, expensive, and emotionally draining, especially when layered with experiences of discrimination within systems meant to administer fairness. When a father believes the system is rigged against him, he may still fight for his child, but he does it with a constant tax on his mental health, time, and stability.

The study explores what public narratives routinely ignore: fathers’ interior world. 
Many fathers described fear at the start of fatherhood. Younger men, especially, felt unprepared. However, fathers of all ages reported that these feelings often shifted to pride and deep attachment once their child arrived. Fathers spoke about identity, self-efficacy, and the drive to offer their children what they did not always receive. In the language of leadership, this is purpose forming under pressure. In the language of family, it’s a man deciding the pattern stops here.

One throughline should reframe how America reads Black fatherhood: resilience. 
Our findings do not romanticize struggle, but they do document persistence. Even with co-parenting conflict, limited community supports, and legal barriers, fathers described pushing to remain present and positively involved. The point isn’t that men should have to be heroic to be fathers. The point is that they already are doing the work, and the responsible fatherhood and human services fields have a responsibility to stop building (or advancing) systems that require heroics for dads to maintain a relationship with his child.

What This Research Means for Fathers Incorporated

Research is only as valuable as what it changes. Fathers Incorporated (FI) won’t let this study sit on a shelf. It sharpens service-delivery models and validates what frontline work has long shown: Fathers need more than motivational speeches. Fathers need navigation, skill-building, and systems that stop punishing involvement.

Here are practical ways this research is being used, and how it can shape the work going forward:

  • FI can continue to tighten the integration between fatherhood development and co-parenting support, treating co-parenting as a core engagement strategy rather than an optional add-on. If co-parenting conflict blocks access, then co-parenting skill-building is father engagement work.
  • The MIFRP study reinforces the need for father-inclusive program design across community agencies. This means leveraging FI’s expertise to train partner organizations to welcome and communicate with fathers, and to build father-affirming environments that don’t treat men as visitors in their own families. Our research even underscores how staffing and the presence of men in service environments can shape whether fathers feel supported enough to engage.
  • Since legal navigation remains a major lever, FI can continue building bridges between fathers and credible navigation, particularly regarding legitimation and the father’s understanding of rights, responsibilities, and pathways that protect the child relationship. When fathers know the process and feel accompanied through it, they are less likely to disengage out of exhaustion.
  • Our findings also point to a gap that many programs under-address: reentry stabilization and the financial rebuilding that makes consistent parenting easier to sustain. Programs that treat employment, stability, and father engagement as separate tracks will keep losing fathers to the friction of survival. In contrast, program models like FIs that serve incarcerated and returning-to-community dads holistically will successfully retain and engage fathers.

Research as Guidance for the Responsible Fatherhood and Human Services Fields

Now for the larger question: How can this paper inform fatherhood programs and stakeholders nationwide?

Fields that truly want engaged fathers must adopt a simple discipline: Stop confusing outcomes with intent. If a father is not consistently present, ask what has been blocking him before you make assumptions or lean on stereotypes.

Fatherhood programs across the country can take at least five cues from this study:

  1. Build fatherhood services that include co-parenting repair as a standard feature, because co-parenting conflict isn’t a side issue; it’s often the gate to the child.
  2. Make father supports visible in community spaces where men already are, and design programming that treats fathers as clients, not collateral.
  3. Create warm handoffs into legal education and navigation, especially in states with unique policy barriers that shape father access.
  4. Expand economic stability and reentry supports as a father engagement strategy, not merely workforce development.
  5. Teach staff to engage fathers with dignity and clarity, because program culture is a form of infrastructure. 

If this sounds like a big shift, it is. But history has shown how quickly public sentiment can change when truth is spoken with moral force. Dr. King did not persuade the nation by offering a softer story. He named what was happening and demanded alignment between our stated values and our public systems. That is the invitation in this research: Align the systems with the values we claim to hold.

Black fathers in Fulton County aren’t asking for trophies. They’re asking for a fair shot at being present.

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This blog post includes insights from “Barriers to and Facilitators of Paternal Engagement for Black Fathers in Fulton County, Georgia,” an article published recently in Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Servicesby SAGE Publications by Dr. Jeffrey Shears, Dr. Cassandra L. Bolar, Dr. Lorenzo N. Hopper, Dr. Matisa Wilbon, and Dr. David C. Miller from the Moynihan Institute for Fatherhood Research and Policy (MIFRP) with colleagues Carmen Rudd and Aremu M. Smith.

To learn more about the work of the Moynihan Institute, visit www.themoynihaninstitute.com.

You can also read summaries of MIFRP’s recent research right here on Dads Pad Blog:

From a programmatic perspective at Fathers Incorporated, we spend our days encouraging fathers to model respect for women, to support mothers, and to raise children who understand the value of dignity and healthy relationships. 

This partnership pushes against that work, and the contradiction deserves to be named.

by Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

There are moments when a story unfolding in the public square is about something deeper than sports, entertainment, or business. It becomes a moment that forces parents, leaders, and communities to ask themselves a simple question: What are we willing to normalize in front of our children? This moment arrived for me when I learned about the partnership between the Atlanta Hawks and Magic City.

For those who may not know, Magic City is one of the most famous strip clubs in the world. It’s an Atlanta institution in its own right, surrounded by decades of cultural lore tied to music, celebrity, and nightlife. Athletes, entertainers, and visitors to the city have long treated it as a rite of passage. And locally? It sits squarely within the entertainment culture of the city.

But this cultural familiarity does not erase the reality of what Magic City represents as an establishment: At its core, it’s a business whose model is built on the objectification of women.

Now, through an upcoming promotional partnership, that misogyny is being publicly aligned with one of Atlanta’s most visible family-centered institutions – the Atlanta Hawks.

For many, this may simply sound like a clever marketing stunt, a moment where sports and entertainment collide in a city known for both. But for fathers — and particularly fathers raising daughters — the question lands very differently, and I find myself confronting it in a deeply personal way.

I had already purchased tickets to attend an upcoming Hawks game with my youngest daughter, who is 24. It was meant to be a simple father-daughter outing, the kind of night many parents cherish: a basketball game, laughter, shared snacks, a memory created in a place that has long been considered safe and welcoming for families. 

But now, the Hawks, who invite families into their building, have decided it’s perfectly acceptable to celebrate a strip club. The arena where I planned to continue creating memories with my daughter has decided it sees no moral conflict in promoting a partnership with a business built around the commodification of women’s bodies. Because of this, my daughter and I will find another place to bond as father and daughter. 

This isn’t simply a conversation about Atlanta culture. Anyone who lives here understands the role that places like Magic City play in the city’s entertainment ecosystem. Atlanta is a global hub for music, sports, and nightlife. It’s a destination for celebrities and athletes. No one is pretending that those realities don’t exist.

But acknowledging culture is not the same thing as elevating it with an endorsement. The Atlanta Hawks are not simply another nightlife venue. They are a professional sports organization representing one of the largest cities in the United States. Their games are marketed as family events. Their arena is filled with children, parents, school groups, and youth teams who come to watch athletes perform at the highest level.

And when a family-facing institution aligns itself with the objectification of women, it sends a message. It tells young people what adults consider acceptable. It tells girls how the broader culture views their bodies and their worth. It teaches boys something about how women are valued. 

Our sons and daughters are forming their understanding of who they are in a culture saturated with messages that seek to define their worth and roles. We cannot be casual about the messages they receive from institutions they admire.

These messages do not arrive in isolation. They arrive within a broader cultural moment in which the lines between entertainment and responsibility are already blurring at an alarming rate. 

Consider what we are seeing across sports today.

Alcohol companies have long used sports arenas as their most powerful marketing platforms. And now, sports gambling has exploded into a multi-billion-dollar industry with advertising woven seamlessly into broadcasts watched by millions of young people. Athletes are no longer just competitors; they are marketing vehicles for betting platforms, encouraging viewers to wager money in real time.

Domestic violence remains a serious issue within sports culture, despite years of public reckoning and promises of reform. And now, on courts across the country — from the NBA to college basketball to AAU tournaments and high school gyms — violence between players has become increasingly common, with fights erupting almost nightly.

These trends share a common thread: They normalize behavior that adults may feel capable of navigating but that young people are still learning to interpret.

Children do not possess the lived experience required to filter these contradictions. They rely on adults — parents, coaches, institutions, and others — to model the values that shape their understanding of the world.

This is why the silence surrounding the Hawks/Magic City partnership is so troubling.

This week, I spoke with my staff at Fathers Incorporated (FI) about the partnership. Around the table were men and women, Black and white – professionals whose work centers on families, fathers, mothers, and children. Our discussion was thoughtful, reflective, and deeply uncomfortable, not because anyone was shocked by the existence of strip clubs but because of what it means when a major public institution decides to celebrate one.

From a programmatic perspective at FI, we spend our days encouraging fathers to model respect for women, to support mothers, and to raise children who understand the value of dignity and healthy relationships. 

This partnership pushes against that work, and the contradiction deserves to be named.

Equally troubling is the quiet that has surrounded this moment from voices that typically speak loudly about men’s issues, fatherhood, and community responsibility. Where are the leaders who champion responsible fatherhood? Where are the advocates who organize around men’s accountability and respect for women? Where are the voices within the NBA ecosystem willing to say that this partnership may cross a line?

Instead, the few individuals who have raised concerns have found themselves quickly dismissed, mocked, or drowned out by the noise of social media. But social media isn’t where moral clarity is forged. Social media rewards outrage, amplifies controversy, and generates clicks. It’s rarely where thoughtful conversations about ethics and community responsibility thrive.

What matters more is the conversation happening in living rooms and at dinner tables, in homes where parents are trying to raise sons who respect women, and in spaces where daughters are learning how society determines their worth.

Atlanta is not just another entertainment city. It’s the birthplace of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Atlanta is a place whose moral legacy helped reshape the conscience of a nation. This legacy reminds us that culture is not simply what exists — it’s what communities choose to elevate.

And that choice carries responsibility.

This op-ed is not written with the expectation that the Atlanta Hawks will reverse their decision, nor is it written with the illusion that a single column can alter the direction of cultural winds already blowing strongly. It’s written because silence in moments like this sends its own message.

If organizations dedicated to strengthening families remain quiet on topics like this, then we have abandoned part of the responsibility entrusted to us. 

FI has spent decades advocating for fathers to be more present, more engaged, and more responsible in their children’s lives. This advocacy includes teaching men that fatherhood is not only about financial provision or discipline. It is also about modeling the values our children will carry into the world long after we are gone.

Sometimes this requires speaking even when it would be easier to stay quiet, being willing to say what others are unwilling to say, and raising questions that cut through the noise.

Where do we draw our lines?

Children are watching and listening. The world we normalize today will become the one they inherit tomorrow. 

At the very least, somebody should say something.

One of the best gifts a father can give a son is a stable place to land. A place where the boy does not have to earn love with his stats. A place where he can be honest about fear and still feel respected. A place where he can hear, “I’m proud of your effort,” and also hear, “Now let’s get back to work.” These combinations are how boys learn that love is not fragile and standards are not cruel.
So what does encouragement look like in practice, beyond good intentions? Here’s what dads and others can do to instill belief and confidence in our boys.

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

This blog post is in conversation with “Dads, Let’s Build Our Daughters’ Confidence Long Before They Call Her ‘Too Much,’”a companion piece published by Dr. Matisa Wilbon. 

We talk about boys as if they are either born with swagger or born without it, as if courage arrives fully formed, as if self-trust is automatic, then look up years later and wonder, “Why are so many young men brilliant, capable, and still hesitant to step forward?” The truth is plain. Boys do not merely need motivation. They need intentional encouragement, repeated instruction, and a community that teaches them to believe in themselves before the world gets in the way.

A boy can learn the mechanics of a jump shot in a weekend, but his belief in those skills takes longer. Belief is built below the surface, layer by layer, under pressure, in weather that does not always cooperate. Yet in too many homes, schools, locker rooms, and neighborhoods, we treat confidence as a personality trait rather than a skill. 

A confident boy raises his hand when he is unsure. He tries out even after a bad game. He applies for the program that scares him. He speaks up when a friend is headed toward danger. He takes correction without collapsing. He can lose without labeling himself a loser, and win without becoming someone he does not recognize. 

Confidence is the inner permission to keep going, and that permission is one of the most powerful protective factors a boy can carry.

Many boys are learning to perform manhood while still trying to understand themselves. They’re absorbing messages that say emotions are weakness, asking for help is soft, being unsure is shameful, and failure is final. They are watching highlights, not habits; seeing applause, not the discipline that earned it; and envying the destination, unaware of the decades it took to arrive. So when boys struggle, they don’t understand that struggle is part of growth; they assume something is wrong with them.

This is why encouragement matters. 

Encouragement isn’t about flattery. Encouragement isn’t about pretending every shot is good. And encouragement isn’t about lowering standards. Real encouragement tells the truth and protects identity. It separates performance from personhood. It says, “That wasn’t your best rep,” and also says, “You are still becoming.” Encouragement corrects the work without insulting the worker. It challenges the behavior without tearing down the boy.

One of the most enduring lessons from great public leaders is how they speak belief into people who don’t (yet) see it in themselves. The best speeches in history follow the same pattern: Name the struggle, affirm the dignity, and call the next step. This isn’t just a rhetorical technique; it is a developmental blueprint. Boys need adults who can name the struggle without shaming them, affirm their dignity without coddling them, and call them to the next step without abandoning them.

Changing How We Talk to Boys About Failure

The “next step” is crucial. Boys do not gain confidence from speeches alone, but from the evidence created by doing hard things and surviving them and accepting guidance through discomfort rather than being rescued from it. Boys’ belief is built through repetition, not singular declarations.

A parent’s role in supporting boys’ confidence starts with how we talk to them after failure. Many adults accidentally teach boys that failure is dangerous. We rush to soften it or explain it away. We blame the refs, the coach, the system, and everybody else. This is the message this sends our boys: “Failure is so painful we have to escape it” — a lesson that breeds confidence so fragile it evaporates the minute the scoreboard shifts.

A better approach to guiding boys through failure (and teaching resilience) says, “That hurt. Tell me what you saw.” It asks, “What did you learn? What’s the adjustment? What’s your plan for tomorrow?” Instead of ignoring pain, this approach guides boys through pain toward growth, and a boy who can narrate his own setbacks becomes a young man who can lead himself through life.

This type of encouragement matters because boys need safe mirrors. Especially in adolescence, boys constantly ask, “Who am I?” and “What do I have to do to be accepted?” If the only mirrors they have are social media, peer pressure, and public stereotypes, they will construct their identity around performance and approval. This identity is an unstable one. It rises and falls on likes, laughs, rankings, and who is hot this week. A boy needs at least one adult who reflects something deeper back to him: character, effort, integrity, creativity, discipline, kindness, leadership, faith, and service.

This is especially urgent for Black boys, who often face an extra burden. They are often judged faster, punished harder, and understood less. In many settings, Black boys don’t receive the benefit of being seen as “still learning.” They get labeled, and if adults fail to disrupt these labels, they can be devastating. When we refuse to let a boy’s worst day write his life story, our encouragement becomes a form of advocacy. 

Teaching boys to believe in themselves means giving them a vocabulary for perseverance, teaching them to expect obstacles but not surrender, and showing them examples of men who overcame setbacks without becoming bitter, carried responsibility without becoming hard, and stayed tender without losing toughness.

In sports, the confidence struggle is easy to spot because there’s a scoreboard. A boy misses shots, rides the bench, doubts himself, and starts playing not to mess up instead of playing to win. Confidence becomes caution. His body is on the court, but his mind is in self-protection. Coaches either deepen that fear or dismantle it. Parents either multiply the pressure or build the platform.

8 Practical Tips for Encouraging Our Boys

One of the best gifts a father can give a son is a stable place to land. A place where the boy does not have to earn love with his stats. A place where he can be honest about fear and still feel respected. A place where he can hear, “I’m proud of your effort,” and also hear, “Now let’s get back to work.” These combinations are how boys learn that love is not fragile and standards are not cruel.

So what does encouragement look like in practice, beyond good intentions? Here’s what dads and others can do:

  1. Praise effort and strategy more than outcomes. When boys only get celebrated for winning, they learn to chase applause, not mastery. Celebrate preparation, discipline, and decision-making. Say, “I saw you stay locked in on defense,” “I noticed how you responded after a turnover,” “I love how you kept your energy up on the bench,” and “Your footwork was sharper today.” This feedback teaches boys what’s in their control.
  2. Normalize the idea of growth seasons. Let boys know that confidence rises and dips. Name the patterns: new level, new pressure. Teach them that discomfort is often a sign they are stretching, not failing. When a boy expects struggle, he is less likely to panic when it arrives.
  3. Give boys language for their inner world. Boys don’t lack emotion; they lack vocabulary. When you teach a boy to say, “I’m embarrassed,” “I’m anxious,” “I’m frustrated,” or “I’m discouraged,” you give him a steering wheel he can use to drive his feelings toward constructive action.
  4. Build a small, consistent routine that produces evidence. Confidence grows when a boy can point to his own work, and adults can help him create a practice plan that fits his life: 15 minutes a day of ball-handling, 20 free throws before school, film study once a week, strength work twice a week. Set goals small enough to do, then keep it consistent enough to become proof.
  5. Treat mistakes as data, not drama. When boys get coached with heat instead of clarity, they hear, “Mistakes make you unworthy.” This message leads to fear-based playing and fear-based living. After we correct the mistake, we must return the boy to his identity. “Next play” is not just a sports phrase; it’s a life strategy.
  6. Make room for mentors. Boys benefit from more than one voice. A coach can say something a parent cannot say. A teacher can see something the coach cannot. An uncle, pastor, neighbor, older athlete, or community leader can model a form of manhood that is grounded and whole. When a boy has multiple healthy mirrors, he is less dependent on unhealthy approval.
  7. Check the soundtrack. Boys listen to what we repeat, not what we intend. If dialogue at home is constant criticism, sarcasm, comparison, or jokes that cut, boys learn to doubt their worth. If they receive steady encouragement with clear standards, they learn self-respect. This isn’t about being soft; it’s about being wise.
  8. Teach boys how to define themselves beyond a single lane. A boy who thinks he is “only” an athlete will crumble when sports disappoint him. A boy who thinks he’s “the smart one” will panic when schoolwork gets hard. Encourage multi-dimensional identity. “You’re disciplined.” “You’re thoughtful.” “You’re a leader.” “You’re creative.” “You’re a servant.” Build a character-based identity that can survive changing seasons.

Encouragement also requires adults to do their own work. Boys know when our words are performative, recognize when praise is a bribe, and perceive ego in the expectations we set. When a father tries to relive his own missed opportunities through his son, the son carries weight that isn’t his. If a coach needs boys to win in order to feel respected, the boys learn that love is conditional. If a teacher has already decided what a boy can become, that bias shows up in every interaction, even silence.

The call for fathers is simple and demanding. Encourage boys with intention. Teach belief as a skill. Create evidence through routine. Correct without crushing. Love without requiring performance. Challenge without withdrawing affection. And show them examples of men who carry strength and softness together.

Society spends a lot of time asking boys to be confident without teaching them how. We demand resilience while neglecting the conditions that produce it. We ask for leadership while starving them of mentors. We want courage, but we punish vulnerability and act surprised when boys retreat.

A different future starts with one boy, one voice, one moment after a tough day, one adult who refuses to let discouragement have the last word. Belief is contagious when it’s credible. When a boy hears, “You can do this,” and then receives guidance on how to do it, he changes. He stands taller. He tries again. He becomes a young man who can look back and say, “I didn’t always feel confident, but I learned how to keep going.”

That is the goal. Not boys who never doubt, but boys who know what to do when doubt shows up. Boys who can take a hit and keep their hearts. Boys who believe in themselves enough to keep building, learning, and rising.

The purpose of the study is both practical and corrective. Practically, the team set out to learn which supports exist for fathers in NPU-V and which supports are missing, so service delivery can match real needs. Correctively, the paper pushes back on a long tradition of policy and public narrative that treats fathers as an afterthought in “family strengthening,” even while research keeps reaffirming that fathers are a protective factor in child development.

by Dr. Matisa Wilbon, Moynihan Institute for Fatherhood Research and Policy

Much research on Black fathers begins with an assumption and then seeks evidence, but we did the opposite. We began with a place, a set of neighborhoods, and a simple commitment: Listen closely to what young, nonresidential Black fathers say they are carrying, what they need, and what keeps them from being the fathers they are trying to become. 

Researching Young Black Fathers in Atlanta

The Moynihan Institute for Fatherhood Research and Policy (MIFRP) at Fathers Incorporated (FI) contributed findings from this research to a peer-reviewed article published by the Child Welfare League of America in its journal Child Welfare. Authored by Jeffrey Shears, David Miller, Lorenzo N. Hopper, Cassandra Bolar, Armon Perry, and Britany Hodges, “The Experiences and Needs of Atlanta’s Young NPU-V Black Fathers” focuses on Neighborhood Planning Unit V (NPU-V), a historically Black area of Atlanta with concentrated economic hardship and a high share of households headed by unmarried females.

The purpose of the study is both practical and corrective. Practically, the team set out to learn which supports exist for fathers in NPU-V and which supports are missing, so service delivery can match real needs. Correctively, the paper pushes back on a long tradition of policy and public narrative that treats fathers as an afterthought in “family strengthening,” even while research keeps reaffirming that fathers are a protective factor in child development.

Method matters here because trust is part of the data. The researchers employed a phenomenological approach and conducted semi-structured focus groups with 13 young Black fathers aged 18–30 who were connected to NPU-V. Fathers were recruited through familiar community touchpoints like churches and barbershops, along with social media and FI’s local reach. The conversations — conducted in virtual focus groups — were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using interpretive phenomenological analysis, alongside constant comparative qualitative methods.

This approach did more than “collect information.” It created a setting where fathers could address what they don’t usually get asked, a setting where they could hear each other say it, too. The final paper notes that this group dynamic fostered solidarity and that several fathers wanted to continue meeting after the study ended. This is a signal in itself: Sometimes the intervention begins the moment a man realizes he isn’t the only one trying to figure it out.

Young Black Fathers Face Fear, Stigma, and Service Gaps

Three core findings rise to the surface. Each is blunt, human, and teachable.

First, fear is not the enemy of fatherhood. Fear is often the doorway. Fathers described the transition into parenting as emotionally heavy, especially when many of them did not grow up with active fathers and had few positive models to borrow from. That lack of modeling did not produce apathy. It produced anxiety about getting it wrong. One father said the quiet part out loud. He was “excited and scared” because he might “screw up” his children’s lives, but he still had to “do the best” he could. That line is the opposite of inertia: It’s a mission statement.

Second, stigma is not just something fathers feel. It is something systems do. The young fathers we talked with spoke about the way Black fatherhood is socially discounted, as if fathering is automatically assumed to be a mother’s domain and a father’s presence is optional. “Everything goes to mothers,” one participant said, capturing how recognition, resources, and social permission often flow in one direction. The fathers also named how community patterns get turned into permanent stereotypes, such as “Most homes are broken” and “Dads not being there… is too much of the norm.” These narratives influence policy and culture, as well. People assume Black fathers don’t care, and so they question the logic of investing in them.

Third, the service gap is real, and fathers feel it in their bones. The fathers described limited access to support designed for men and contrasted it with what they routinely see for women. One line lands like an indictment of how we’ve built the safety net: “There is no welfare system for men.” Citing an example of a couple feeling pressured to claim separation to qualify for food support, another father described how public assistance rules can indirectly penalize a father’s presence. When eligibility rules incentivize the appearance of father absence, we should not be surprised when communities begin to normalize it.

How Research Impacts the Work of Fathers Incorporated

The paper does not stop at the problem. It highlights what fathers do when they face economic strain, stigma, and thin supports: They improvise. They build informal networks through relatives and “fictive kin,” and they keep trying to stay active. Some find their way into fatherhood programming that becomes a lifeline. 

Fathers described the difference that a local fatherhood program made. Without it, one said, he would not have had anything to help him with his child. Another said fathers need this kind of support at birth so they know their rights before crisis forces them to learn them in the hardest way possible.

This is where FI comes in, not as a footnote, but as the bridge between research and repair. The paper explicitly references FI’s Gentle Warriors Academy (GWA) as a response to the void of supportive services, a place where fathers can increase their capacity rather than be treated as a problem to manage.

This lines up with how FI describes its broader posture: Listen, lead, innovate, then turn what we learn into programming that reaches men where they are and walks with them toward where they’re trying to go.

The most important thing to understand about how FI is using this research is that it is not being treated as a “report to admire.” It’s being used as an operating document.

Fatherhood research informs how we design entry points. 

The study reinforces that young fathers often enter fatherhood with fear and uncertainty, not a lack of love. That means early engagement should normalize anxiety, build parenting confidence, and provide practical coaching quickly, before shame hardens into disengagement.

Fatherhood research informs how we talk about fatherhood. 

If fathers are navigating stigma as a daily headwind, then narrative change is not branding work; it’s service work. Programs utilize language that restores dignity and expectation and imagery that makes father presence feel normal, not rare.

Fatherhood research informs local partnerships. 

When fathers say they don’t see anything “specifically catered” to them, the answer is not simply to advertise harder. It’s to embed father-focused supports where fathers already are. The recruitment strategy, then, points toward effective community infrastructure: barbershops, churches, community hubs, and trusted relationships. 

Fatherhood research informs advocacy and policy reform.

In its conclusion, this recent paper calls for further exploration of co-parenting, father access, and legal rights, pointing directly to Georgia’s legitimation process as an added barrier for unmarried fathers’ access and decision-making authority. It argues that fathers are often required to carry responsibility while being denied rights, and that this imbalance harms families.

This policy emphasis is critical for other stakeholders across Metro Atlanta and beyond, because the MIFRP paper is not only about NPU-V. NPU-V is a lens. What the fathers describe shows up in many places: in child welfare systems that struggle to identify and engage fathers, in public benefits rules that unintentionally encourage father invisibility, in court processes that confuse rights with residence, and in agencies that have “family” programming that is functionally mother-only.

Research-Informed Action Steps for Fatherhood Programs

So how should other fatherhood programs, funders, agencies, and policymakers use this information?

Begin with one shift: Move from a deficit lens to a strengths lens. The paper directly situates its implications in the shadow of the Moynihan legacy and the corrective work of scholars who documented Black fathers’ engagement, including caregiving behaviors that contradict popular portrayals. The invitation is clear: Stop treating Black fatherhood as an absence to explain and start treating it as a capacity to build.

From there, the actionable takeaways are straightforward:

  • Design services that answer fear with skill. Build modules and coaching that increase parenting self-efficacy, especially for fathers who didn’t have an active father model. Normalize parents’ “emotional roller coaster,” while teaching practical routines: child development, discipline, bonding, and communication.
  • Treat stigma as a service barrier, not just a social problem. Audit your agency’s intake forms, waiting rooms, staff language, hours of operation, assumptions embedded in case planning, and the unspoken message about whether fathers belong. Are these father-inclusive? Fathers notice when “everything goes to mothers.” Fix anything that reinforces that message.
  • Build supports that are real, not symbolic. Fathers are asking for more than inspiration. They are asking for navigation: employment supports, legal education, child support guidance, parenting time pathways, and help building stable co-parenting routines. The study’s participants are clear that the gap is structural.
  • Nurture group-based brotherhood. The research shows the power of men hearing men, then wanting to continue. Be intentional about building cohort models, peer mentoring programs, and alumni networks that turn isolation into belonging.
  • Partner with women-serving systems without making fathers an add-on. Many services flow through maternal health, early childhood, schools, and child welfare. Create agreements that ensure fathers are identified early, invited, and engaged with dignity, while keeping family safety as a nonnegotiable standard.
  • Advocate for policy that aligns responsibility with rights. If your state has legal processes that delay or complicate fathers’ rights, build clear pathways to education, legal referrals, and reform efforts. The paper elevates legitimation as one such pressure point in Georgia.

Final Thoughts

If you want a single sentence that captures why this research matters, it’s this: Fathers are not asking to be rescued from fatherhood; they’re asking to be resourced for it.

Our research issues a challenge to every stakeholder who touches families. When a father says he’s scared he might mess up his kids’ lives, he is not confessing weakness. He is embracing responsibility. Our job as a field is to meet this instinct with structures that make his presence possible.

And that is what the rigor of MIFRP’s work accomplishes. It takes what has been treated as a private struggle and places it in public view. It takes what has been treated like an anecdote and names it as evidence. It takes fatherhood narratives that have become stereotypes and returns them to their rightful owners: fathers themselves.

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