Fatherhood – Poppa University

This is the moment to treat fatherhood as a national, not niche, strategy. A father’s presence is a protective factor, not a slogan. A father’s stability is both personal triumph and public good. A father’s ability to co-parent peacefully is bigger than a relationship win; it’s child development work.

America can keep debating fatherhood like a moral argument, or we can finally treat it like what it is: a practical, urgent, solvable challenge that requires real investment.

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

Men don’t show up to a fatherhood program when life is easy.

They show up when the noise in the house grows louder than their pride. When the co-parenting situation feels like a daily contest with no referee. When the job isn’t steady enough to promise anything beyond next week. When they’re tired of hearing, “Be there for your kids,” without anyone offering a practical path to actually do it.

That’s what the men who reach out to Fathers Incorporated (FI) about our Gentle Warriors Academy (GWA) tell us. It isn’t theory. It isn’t a tidy narrative that makes everyone feel good. It’s experience, shared by real men who raise their hands and say, “I need help, and I’m willing to do the work.”

What we’re seeing is not a local or isolated story; it’s an early warning system for the country. And this is why the national responsible fatherhood field needs to pay attention right now.

The fathers reaching out to FI and GWA are not on the margins of parenting. They are in the most active, demanding years of raising children. Their average age is mid-thirties, and nearly all have children under 16. They are in the years where routines are built, school calls happen, emotions run hot, relationships are tested, and the presence or absence of a father leaves marks that last.

This matters because the national fatherhood conversation still treats dads as attitude problems who just need motivation or inspiration or enough guilt piled on them that they’re shamed into doing better.

Our data tells a different story.

Fathers Seeking Support Report Three Main Obstacles

The stories our dads share are about constraints:

Work: Many dads who reach out to us are unemployed, but even for those who are working, the ground under them is still unstable. Job tenure is fragile or elusive. This means fatherhood program models with “show up every week” requirements become unrealistic fast and force fathers to choose between doing the right thing for the long term (program attendance) and surviving the immediate reality of bills, schedules, and volatility.
Housing: A significant share of fathers who come to us do not have stable housing, and some are in shelter or homeless conditions. People love to talk about “responsible fatherhood” until they meet a father who is trying to be responsible without a place to lay his head.
Transportation: Another meaningful percentage report lack of reliable transportation. This one detail alone can erase the most beautifully designed curriculum if your fatherhood program model assumes everyone can travel or move easily around the city or community.

When you stack these realities, you see beyond “need.” You see structural risk. You see fathers who can drop off, not because they don’t care, but because the logistics of survival are winning.

Now here’s where urgency enters the room: The children of these fathers can’t put their childhood on pause while systems get it together.

This is why the national responsible fatherhood field must stop treating wraparound supports as optional upgrades. For many fathers, wraparound support is the doorway. It’s the bridge between intention and completion. It’s the difference between finishing a program and becoming another statistic people later argue about.

When the Legal System Stands in the Way of Father Involvement

This is the part of the story that too many fatherhood efforts tiptoe around: family law.

If you want to understand why fathers struggle to stay engaged, you cannot keep pretending that love is the only factor governing access. You can’t keep giving fathers lessons on effective communication while systems hand them confusion, barriers, delays, and legal dead ends.

Many unmarried fathers who complete FI’s intake form need help navigating legitimation — not just legitimation awareness, not just a legitimation brochure, but practical support. This isn’t a small technical issue; it’s a national fatherhood issue playing out in Georgia.

Legitimation is one expression of a broader truth: In too many spaces across the country, America treats fatherhood and fathers’ rights as separate conversations. A man can be expected to provide, but not automatically empowered to participate. He can be held accountable, while still being excluded. He can be judged for absence while struggling in a legal maze that creates barriers to his presence.

This imbalance doesn’t just frustrate fathers; it destabilizes families.

Child support systems are also part of this dynamic, and it needs to be said plainly. Most fathers do not object to supporting their children. Many are trying to do it while working unstable jobs, managing multiple obligations, and sometimes carrying arrears that feel like a permanent shadow.

What’s striking is how layered these challenges are. Co-parenting, custody, and visitation struggles appear alongside legitimation, child support, and legal issues. Fathers are not showing up to fatherhood programs with one clean problem at a time; they’re showing up with bundles of real-life hurdles.

This means the national responsible fatherhood field has to evolve past siloed programming.

Lessons for the National Responsible Fatherhood Field

If a father needs clarity on parenting time, child support navigation, and co-parenting conflict management, giving him only one of these and calling it “impact” is not accurate. It’s a partial “solution” that leaves him exposed where life hits hardest.

And life does hit hard.

A majority of fathers who complete GWA intake forms are interested in support related to mental health, stress, or substance use. Justice system involvement is present, with notable proportions reporting probation, parole, or recent release from incarceration. Housing instability correlates with higher need in these areas. This isn’t surprising, but it’s revealing.

It tells us the national responsible fatherhood field must stop asking fathers to manage unbearable pressures with willpower alone. Fathers are saying, “I need tools. I need structure. I need someone to walk with me, not just lecture me.”

And here’s the most overlooked part of this whole story: These fathers are not only bringing needs; they’re bringing assets. They have skills and capacities that align with real workforce pathways and community contributions. They’re not asking to be rescued; they’re asking to be resourced.

Their stated goals reflect that. They want personal growth, stronger bonds with their children, and healthier co-parenting. And they want help navigating legal processes so they can show up fully and consistently.

So why should the national responsible fatherhood field treat this as urgent? Because what GWA dads reveal goes beyond a program metric for us to measure. It provides the field with a national temperature check.

When fathers show up in significant numbers and say the same themes over and over, they’re telling us where society is cracking. They’re telling us what’s happening in families before it becomes a headline, CPS case, fatherhood program dropout statistic, or generational pattern we pretend we didn’t see coming.

They’e also telling us what works.

Fathers respond to environments that respect them enough to be honest with them. They respond to fatherhood programs that don’t treat them like villains or visitors. They respond to models that acknowledge the full reality of fatherhood in America, including systems, legal barriers, economic instability, housing insecurity, and emotional strain.

The national responsible fatherhood field cannot afford to operate with outdated assumptions. Motivation is not the main barrier. Access is. Stability is. Navigation is. Support is.

And this is where funders need to lean in, not step back.

The Urgent Need to Fund Well-Built Fatherhood Programs

It’s a mistake to fund fatherhood work as a small, feel-good add-on to “real” family policy. Those attempts misunderstand what fatherhood programs actually do when they are built well:

They stabilize families.
They reduce conflict.
They increase consistent parenting.
They support economic mobility.
They help men become safer, steadier, more emotionally present caregivers.
They give children more of what they need: reliability.

If we want outcomes, we must invest in infrastructure like FI’s Gentle Warriors Academy and we must expand program capacity. A national-scale response fully funds:

Robust case management to prevent attendance drop-off when life collapses.
Embedded legal navigation.
Built-in workforce partnerships.
Culturally-grounded mental health and stress supports.
Flexible delivery formats that accommodate dads’ scheduling, transportation, and housing needs.

This is the moment to treat fatherhood as a national, not niche, strategy. A father’s presence is a protective factor, not a slogan. A father’s stability is both personal triumph and public good. A father’s ability to co-parent peacefully is bigger than a relationship win; it’s child development work.

America can keep debating fatherhood like a moral argument, or we can finally treat it like what it is: a practical, urgent, solvable challenge that requires real investment.

The fathers are already arriving. They’ve already raised their hands and reached out to us. Now, the responsible fatherhood field has to decide whether it will provide a level of support that matches dads’ willingness.

When fathers show up asking for a pathway, and we respond with underfunded programs, limited staffing, and fragmented services, we are not just failing them. Our children inherit the gaps, and we already know what happens when children inherit gaps for too long.

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.

A halftime show cannot heal what our culture keeps reopening. It can’t carry the weight of every taste, every tribe, every wound, every algorithm, or every complaint that has been waiting all year for this public stage. We are asking art to do what relationships require time to do.

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

We demand one performance to satisfy a country that can’t even agree on reality.

That’s the assignment we hand the Super Bowl halftime show every year. Be universal. Be current and nostalgic. Be safe and daring. Be family-friendly and edgy. Be for everybody, and do it in 13 minutes with a marching army of cameras, pyrotechnics, sponsorship expectations, and a nation hovering over the comment button.

So when a Super Bowl halftime performance becomes record-breaking, that number doesn’t just measure popularity. It measures pressure. It’s the biggest living room in America, and every living room has a different remote.

Much of this tension stems from a moment the NFL never forgot. Halftime used to be the break in the program, not the program itself. Then, in 1992, the league learned a hard lesson when viewers had other options. Once that door opened, halftime stopped being filler and became a battleground for attention. From that point on, the Super Bowl halftime show was no longer judged as entertainment alone. It was judged as a national statement.

Ever since, the show has been less like a concert and more like a referendum.

That’s why it can pull millions upon millions of viewers and still get dragged the moment the last note lands. And people aren’t only reviewing vocals and choreography. They’re reviewing what they believe the NFL is signaling about culture, identity, generation, and whose version of America gets center stage. They read the show as politics even when the artist is simply performing art. They ask, “Who was this for?” and “Was I invited?”

The halftime show is one of the few remaining moments when generations are forced into the same room. Grandparents, parents, teenagers, little kids, and cousins who don’t agree on anything all watch the same thing at the same time.

This is why the search for the perfect halftime show is really a search for something else: not perfect music, but perfect unity. And that’s the mistake.

A halftime show cannot heal what our culture keeps reopening. It can’t carry the weight of every taste, every tribe, every wound, every algorithm, or every complaint that has been waiting all year for this public stage. We are asking art to do what relationships require time to do.

The Architecture of a Successful Super Bowl Halftime Show

Still, if the goal is to make most people feel seen, the best halftime show isn’t built around one artist. It’s built around an architecture.

Start with something that belongs to everyone. Rhythm is the most democratic language we have. Before lyrics, before genre, before the arguments begin, a stadium-wide pulse can unify the room for at least a moment.

Then honor generations without turning the setlist into a museum. The smartest structure is a three-part bridge: a legacy icon, a current star, and a musical director who can stitch genres together in a way that feels intentional, not random. This combination addresses the most common complaint: “This wasn’t for me.”

End with a shared chorus. The best public moments in American life have always included a line that people can say together. Great speeches do it with repetition. Great songs do it with a hook that belongs to everybody in the room. A closing sing-along doesn’t eliminate criticism, but it lowers the temperature because participation changes how people feel.

A Fatherhood Moment at Super Bowl LX

Year after year, in the middle of all this arguing about the halftime show, the actual game almost always gives us what we claim we want: a story that cuts through noise.

Super Bowl LX and MVP Kenneth Walker, III, gave us one of those moments: a son reaching the pinnacle of his profession on the biggest stage, with his father there in person for the first time. The story isn’t tidy, but its impact is real – the power of fatherhood hiding in plain sight.

Fatherhood is not a performance. It’s the decision to show up and the courage to step into the room even if you feel behind, even if you can’t rewrite what you missed, even if you don’t know how the moment will receive you. That’s true in a stadium and in a living room.

Some people think showing up late means you shouldn’t show up at all. That lie has kept too many families fractured. But even when it’s “late,” presence has power. It doesn’t erase the past. It doesn’t cancel the pain. But it creates a new memory, and sometimes a new memory is the first brick in rebuilding trust.

That’s why the halftime debate is worth more than jokes and hot takes. It reveals something about us. If we can’t share 13 minutes without turning it into a cultural battlefield, that says something about our ability to gather. About our patience. About our willingness to let something be for somebody else without making it an insult to us.

The halftime show isn’t just entertainment. It’s a stress test for multi-generational America.

Maybe the real question isn’t why the halftime show can’t satisfy everyone, but why we keep demanding that it should.

And maybe the best thing the Super Bowl gives us every year isn’t a dynamic performance but a reminder that we are still watching together, still arguing in the same house, still capable, at least once in a while, of pausing long enough to witness something bigger than ourselves.

Showing up — even imperfectly — is still a kind of love.

Romantic love is celebrated for how it makes us feel. Fatherhood love is measured by what it asks us to do. It requires endurance when affirmation is absent, consistency when relationships are strained, and restraint when emotions run hot. It is love that shows up in consistency, sacrifice, and presence. And yet, despite its power, fatherhood is rarely centered in public conversations about love.

Many fathers learn early that their love is expected to be practical rather than expressive. Provide. Protect. Pay. Perform. As a result, many men carry deep affection for their children without ever being taught how to articulate it, nurture it, or receive it in return.

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

Love is often framed with flowers, candlelight, and romance, especially around Valentine’s Day. We’re taught to associate love with desire, partnership, and pursuit. Yet there is another form of love that rarely receives that same cultural reverence because it doesn’t fit neatly into greeting cards or consumer rituals. Fatherhood is an expression of love that is quieter, more complex, and far more demanding than romance ever prepares us to understand.

Romantic love is celebrated for how it makes us feel. Fatherhood love is measured by what it asks us to do. It requires endurance when affirmation is absent, consistency when relationships are strained, and restraint when emotions run hot. It is love that shows up in consistency, sacrifice, and presence long after the excitement fades. And yet, despite its power, fatherhood is rarely centered in public conversations about love.

Many fathers learn early that their love is expected to be practical rather than expressive. Provide. Protect. Pay. Perform. Society has trained men to demonstrate love through action, while discouraging emotional vulnerability. Fathers are often praised for what they do, not for how they feel. As a result, many men carry deep affection for their children without ever being taught how to articulate it, nurture it, or receive it in return.

This emotional distance is not born of indifference. It is born of expectation. Fathers are expected to be steady, not soft. Reliable, not reflective. Strong, not seen. In that space, love becomes functional rather than relational. Many fathers show love through long work hours, through enduring conflict with a co-parent, through navigating systems that often presume their absence or incompetence.

Romantic love allows room for imperfection. We expect misunderstandings, growth, and even failure. Fatherhood love, however, is often treated as a test with no margin for error. A missed moment becomes a character flaw. A season of absence becomes a permanent label. The grace afforded to romantic partners is rarely extended to fathers, especially those navigating complex family structures, legal barriers, or economic instability.

This imbalance has consequences. When fathers feel perpetually evaluated rather than embraced, many retreat emotionally even when they remain physically present. Emotions become guarded. Vulnerability feels risky. Over time, the relationship between fathers and their children can become transactional rather than connective, shaped more by obligation than intimacy.

Children, however, do not need perfect fathers. They need present ones. They need fathers who are emotionally available. They need fathers who model accountability, apologize when wrong, listen without defensiveness, and love without conditions.

But this kind of love requires emotional permission. It requires a culture that allows fathers to be fully human.

Society often frames fathers’ love as optional rather than essential. Mothers are assumed to be emotionally central, but fathers are treated as supplemental. This narrative is both inaccurate and harmful. Fathers are not secondary parents. They are distinct contributors to a child’s emotional, social, and psychological development. When fatherhood love is diminished in the cultural imagination, children absorb that message long before fathers ever do.

The state of love as it relates to fatherhood is complicated by systems that confuse presence with proximity. A father who does not live in the home is often presumed absent, regardless of his involvement. A father facing legal hurdles is often portrayed as disengaged, regardless of his effort. These assumptions flatten the emotional reality of fatherhood and reduce love to a mailing address.

Love from fathers also shows up in protection. Sometimes that protection looks like silence instead of confrontation. Sometimes it looks like restraint instead of reaction. Fathers often carry the weight of knowing when to speak and when to hold back, when to push and when to step aside. These decisions are rarely visible, but they are acts of love nonetheless.

Yet fathers, too, need to be loved. They need affirmation not only for what they provide, but for who they are. They need spaces where their fears, doubts, and emotional fatigue are acknowledged rather than dismissed. Too often, men are expected to pour from an emotional cup that is never refilled. Love, when it flows in only one direction, eventually erodes.

Showing love to fathers means more than celebrating them once a year in June. It means building systems that include them, language that respects them, and policies that do not exclude them or punish their presence. It means offering fathers emotional literacy, mental health support, and relational tools without stigma. It means seeing fatherhood not as a problem to be managed, but as a relationship to be nurtured.

Love from fathers should not be measured by perfection or proximity, but by commitment. Commitment to growth. Commitment to repair. Commitment to remain engaged even when circumstances are difficult. Whereas romantic love often ends when things get hard, fathers’ love begins there.

As Valentine’s Day approaches, it’s time to expand our definition of love. To recognize that love is not only found in romance, but in responsibility. Not only in attraction, but in attachment. Not only in passion, but in perseverance.

Fatherhood is love that wakes up early and stays late. Love that learns on the job. Love that fights systems quietly and relationships patiently. Love that does not always receive applause, but changes lives nonetheless.

The question before us is not whether fathers love their children. The question is whether we are willing to love fathers back in ways that allow their love to show up fully.

Fatherhood is a movement stepping fully into its responsibility.

For more than two decades, Fathers Incorporated has operated from a simple truth: Fatherhood is not a private issue confined to households but a public good with societal consequences. In 2025, that belief was no longer aspirational. It was measurable.

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

For years, fatherhood work has lived in a strange tension. Everyone agrees fathers matter, yet the systems designed to support families often treat fathers as optional, secondary, or invisible.

The language shifts. The priorities change. The headlines come and go. But the underlying question remains unresolved: Are we serious about strengthening families, or are we simply managing the consequences of fractured systems?

In 2025, Fathers Incorporated (FI) chose not to debate that question anymore. We answered it.

This past year marked a turning point, not because fatherhood suddenly became fashionable, but because the work matured beyond symbolism. Beyond pilot projects. Beyond conversations that never quite reached policy, practice, or culture at scale. What unfolded in 2025 was not a collection of isolated wins. It was alignment. It was infrastructure meeting intention. It was data meeting lived experience.

Fatherhood is a movement stepping fully into its responsibility.

For more than two decades, FI has operated from a simple truth: Fatherhood is not a private issue confined to households but a public good with societal consequences. In 2025, that belief was no longer aspirational. It was measurable.

At the national level, FI’s continued stewardship of the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse (NRFC) made one thing unmistakably clear: There is demand for serious fatherhood infrastructure. More than 200,000 people accessed fatherhood.gov this year, generating nearly half a million pageviews across all 50 states. These were not casual visitors. Engagement rates exceeded 97 percent, far surpassing typical public-sector benchmarks. People did not skim. They stayed, searched, and returned.

This level of engagement matters because it reflects trust. Fathers seeking guidance. Practitioners seeking evidence. Policymakers seeking clarity. The NRFC is no longer simply a repository of information; it is an operating system for the field. Its Virtual Collaborative Community grew to nearly 2,000 verified stakeholders — researchers, grantees, advocates, and public servants — who actively exchange insights rather than reinvent the wheel in isolation.

For a field that has historically been fragmented, this matters. You cannot scale impact when everyone is working alone.

But data alone does not change behavior. Messaging does.

That is why the NRFC’s national fatherhood media campaign, carried forward in partnership with the Ad Council, marked one of the most consequential achievements of 2025. The campaign reached every U.S. media market, delivering more than 1.28 billion donated media impressions in a single fiscal year. The donated media value exceeded $37 million this year alone, bringing the lifetime total to over $600 million, with a return on investment more than five times the industry benchmark.

Yet the most important outcome was not reach. It was response.

Two-thirds of fathers nationwide reported exposure to campaign messaging. Among those fathers, nearly two-thirds took action to increase their involvement with their children. They talked more. They showed up differently. They sought information. Fathers exposed to the campaign were more than twice as likely to engage intentionally at home as those who were not.

This is what happens when fathers are spoken to with respect instead of suspicion, with invitation instead of indictment.

At the community level, 2025 revealed another truth that too often gets lost in policy debates: National messaging only works when local systems are ready to receive it. FI’s Gentle Warriors Academy (GWA) demonstrated what that readiness looks like in practice.

This year, GWA produced some of the largest cohorts in its history, including record-setting graduations in Metro Atlanta and within the Fulton County Jail.

One cohort alone saw more than 100 fathers complete our fatherhood program — men navigating incarceration, reentry, employment instability, fractured relationships, and legal barriers. They did not graduate because it was easy. They graduated because someone finally invested in them as whole human beings.

An independent evaluation confirmed what participants articulated long before surveys could measure it: Parental well-being improved significantly. This finding deserves attention. Too often, fatherhood programs are judged solely on immediate behavioral change, without acknowledging the emotional destabilization many fathers carry into the room. Stability precedes consistency. Healing precedes habit. Confidence precedes connection.

If we are serious about long-term outcomes for children, we must be serious about the internal lives of fathers.

2025 was also a year when fatherhood stopped asking quietly to be included in civic life and instead claimed its seat openly. The 20th Anniversary of the Million Fathers March (MFM) represented this shift in full view. What began two decades ago as a single act of presence now spans more than 20 states and over 50 cities. Across the country, children walked into schools with their fathers beside them, an image that should never feel radical, yet still does in far too many communities.

The MFM has endured because it does something rare in social change work: it asks for visibility without spectacle. Accountability without shame. Presence without performance. In 2025, it stood as living evidence that when fathers are invited into public spaces with dignity, they come.

Policy leadership followed the same arc. Throughout the year, FI played an active role in Georgia’s Legislative Study Committee on Legitimation, elevating voices that are often reduced to case numbers. Fathers who were present at birth, listed on birth certificates, and active in their children’s lives shared what it means to have no legal standing. No say in education. No authority in medical decisions. No guaranteed access.

The problem with legitimation has never been technical. It has always been moral.

Through testimony, research, and sustained advocacy for legitimation reform, FI helped reframe legitimation not as a procedural inconvenience, but as a question of whether our systems actually reflect what we claim to value: family stability, child well-being, and fairness. This conversation is not finished, but it is no longer avoidable.

The narrative change amplified this work far beyond committee rooms. In 2025, op-eds published in major outlets challenged the dominant framing of “father absence” by asking harder questions: What systems block fathers from showing up? What trauma goes unaddressed? What assumptions do we refuse to interrogate because blame feels easier than complexity?

Those pieces did not offer comfort. They offered clarity.

Culturally, the work expanded in ways that would have seemed unlikely even a decade ago. Strategic partnerships with national brands, documentary collaborations, podcasts, and long-form storytelling carried fatherhood into conversations about health, masculinity, aging, justice, and legacy. Millions of people encountered fatherhood not as a deficit narrative, but as a site of resilience, responsibility, and growth.

This matters because culture shapes policy long before laws are written.

Across every domain — national infrastructure, local programming, media, policy, and movement-building — 2025 revealed a consistent pattern. When fathers are treated as essential rather than expendable, outcomes improve. Families stabilize. Children benefit. Communities gain strength rather than manage loss.

The lesson of 2025 is not that fatherhood work needs more passion. It needs alignment. Between data and dignity. Between policy and practice. Between what we say we value and what we fund, build, and protect.

FI did not “solve” fatherhood in 2025. No organization could. But we did move the work out of the margins and into systems that last. We stopped asking for permission to belong in conversations about family well-being and instead accepted the responsibility that comes with leadership.

Fatherhood is not a trend. It is infrastructure.

And in 2025, that infrastructure finally began to look like something the nation can rely on.

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

A 2025 article published in The New York Times does something rare in modern discourse about gender. It slows the conversation down long enough to notice a pattern many families and communities feel but struggle to name.

In “What Happens When Most of the Adults in Boys’ Lives Are Women,” reporter Claire Cain Miller names a reality many educators, parents, and community leaders recognize instinctively: Boys are growing up with fewer consistent relationships with adult men, particularly in schools, youth programs, and other formative spaces. Miller highlights long waitlists for mentoring programs, the gender imbalance in education and caregiving professions, and the developmental consequences of limited male presence. And while Miller’s observations are valid, a larger context must accompany them if we are serious about solutions.

At Fathers Incorporated and across the responsible fatherhood field more broadly, we begin from a different premise. Parents are the first mentors of their children. Fathers, specifically, play a critical and irreplaceable role in that mentorship, regardless of household structure.

Before a child ever meets a teacher, coach, or volunteer mentor, they are already absorbing lessons about identity, responsibility, trust, and belonging at home. Any national conversation about boys and men that does not center fatherhood risks misdiagnosing the problem and misdirecting the response.

Mentorship matters. The work of mentoring organizations is admirable and necessary. Thousands of dedicated volunteers show up every day to support young people, often filling gaps created by economic strain, policy failure, or community disinvestment. But mentorship programs should never be framed, implicitly or explicitly, as substitutes for fathers or as evidence that fathers, as a group, are absent. That narrative is inaccurate and harmful. It reinforces a societal assumption that male absence is the norm and that external programs must serve as saviors for children, particularly those raised in single-parent households.

The existence of single-parent households is not an indicator of a lack of father involvement. This distinction is essential and too often ignored. Many fathers are deeply engaged in their children’s lives even when they do not reside in the same home. They attend school events, provide financial and emotional support, participate in caregiving, and remain active decision-makers. When public discourse collapses single-parent households into narratives of father absence, it erases these men and undermines the engagement we claim to want.

The New York Times article points to schools and youth-serving institutions as primary sites where boys lack exposure to men. That observation is accurate, but it is incomplete without acknowledging how cultural narratives about fathers shape those institutions. When society assumes fathers are peripheral, systems are designed without them in mind. Schools fail to engage fathers meaningfully. Social services communicate primarily with mothers. Policies default to maternal caregiving. Over time, this exclusion becomes self-fulfilling, not because fathers do not care, but because they are not invited, expected, or supported to participate fully.

Responsible fatherhood work exists to interrupt that cycle. It is not about defending men against criticism, nor is it about romanticizing fatherhood. It is about equipping fathers with the skills, support, and opportunity to be present and effective in their children’s lives. It recognizes that healthy masculinity is not taught through slogans, but through daily interaction. Boys learn manhood by watching how their fathers handle stress, treat partners, resolve conflict, and show care. Girls learn what to expect from men by observing how fathers show up, communicate respect, and model accountability.

This is why framing mentorship as a corrective for father absence must be handled with care. When mentoring programs are positioned as replacements for fathers rather than complements to parental involvement, they unintentionally reinforce a deficit narrative. They suggest that communities should plan around absent fathers rather than invest in support for present ones. They risk absolving systems of responsibility to engage fathers meaningfully, shifting the burden to volunteers while leaving structural barriers intact.

The article notes that men are underrepresented in education and caregiving professions and that boys respond differently when they encounter emotionally engaged male adults. That insight aligns with what fatherhood practitioners have long understood. Boys benefit from seeing men in nurturing, instructional, and relational roles. It begins by redefining how society values caregiving and invites men into those roles, starting with fatherhood itself.

Historically, gender roles in work and family life were rigidly defined. Professions were explicitly coded male or female, sometimes even listed as such in newspaper job classifications. Men were expected to produce. Women were expected to nurture. As women rightly gained access to education and professional opportunities, those boundaries shifted. What did not shift at the same pace was the cultural expectation that men should also be nurturers. Nor did workplace policies or institutional cultures adapt to support men in caregiving roles without penalty or suspicion.

Today’s data on boys’ academic struggles and men’s disengagement from certain institutions must be read through that historical lens. These outcomes are not indictments of boys or men. They are the downstream effects of systems that evolved unevenly. When men are socialized to equate worth with earnings and independence, caregiving roles appear risky or incompatible with masculine identity. When institutions treat male involvement as optional rather than essential, engagement declines.

Responsible fatherhood addresses this by reframing masculinity itself. Healthy masculinity is not the absence of care. It is the disciplined presence of responsibility. Fathers who are supported, skilled, and confident in their role are more likely to engage with schools, mentor their children directly, and serve as visible models of balanced manhood. This benefits boys by providing continuity and girls by shaping healthy expectations of men.

The New York Times article correctly avoids blaming women for filling caregiving gaps. Women have carried disproportionate responsibility for generations, often without adequate support. The issue is not female presence. It is male exclusion. And exclusion, whether intentional or not, has consequences. When boys rarely see men teaching, listening, or nurturing, they internalize narrow scripts about masculinity. When girls rarely see men in those roles, their understanding of partnership and leadership is constrained.

We must also resist the temptation to frame this moment as a crisis that pits boys against girls. Gender equity is not a zero-sum equation. Supporting boys does not undermine girls. Engaging fathers does not diminish mothers. In fact, families function best when caregiving and authority are shared responsibilities. Children benefit from multiple models of adulthood, not from a single narrative.

Mentorship programs remain vital. They offer additional layers of support, exposure, and guidance. At their best, they reinforce what children are learning at home. But they cannot and should not be asked to carry the full weight of male engagement. That responsibility belongs first to families, supported by institutions that recognize fathers as assets rather than afterthoughts.

Policy matters here. Paid parental leave that includes fathers communicates that caregiving is a shared responsibility. Father-inclusive school engagement strategies signal that men belong in educational spaces. Workforce policies that allow flexibility without stigma make presence possible. Training programs that prepare fathers for co-parenting, communication, and conflict resolution strengthen families from the inside out.

The danger of omitting responsible fatherhood from this conversation is subtle but significant. Without it, we risk normalizing the idea that fathers are optional and that community programs must compensate for their absence. That narrative discourages engagement, undermines accountability, and ultimately fails children.

Fathers are not a problem to be solved. They are a solution to be supported. Parents are not peripheral to mentorship. They are its foundation. When fathers are equipped to be effective mentors to their own children, the demand placed on external systems decreases, and the quality of those systems improves.

Understanding how we arrived at current disparities requires honesty, not blame. Moving toward true gender equity requires intention, not nostalgia. Equalizing opportunity, expectation, and relevance across gender lines means recognizing that fatherhood is not merely a private role, but a public good.

The New York Times article opens an important conversation about boys and men. The responsible fatherhood field adds the missing context: The most powerful mentors are already in children’s lives, and our collective task is to ensure they are supported, engaged, and uplifted — not erased — by the stories we tell about families.

The question before us is not whether mentorship matters. It does. The deeper question is whether we are willing to invest in fathers as the first mentors of their children and to stop conflating household structure with parental involvement. If we are serious about boys, serious about girls, and serious about equity, that is where the work must begin.

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

Of all the legislation passed in Georgia in the last couple of years, one act continues to sit at the center of kitchen-table conversations: the Squatters Act. It passed in 2024, quietly for some, loudly for others. We’re revisiting it because housing remains one of the most unpredictable, life-shaping forces in this state. It’s the difference between stability and strain, between a family holding on and a family slipping through the cracks.

When I talk to fathers across Atlanta, I hear the same undercurrent in their stories. They’re not just looking for a place to sleep. They’re trying to build a foundation firm enough to stand on. They’re trying to stay close to their children. They’re trying to honor commitments while fighting battles that don’t always show up on paper. And when a law like the Squatters Act moves through the system, it shifts the ground under those efforts in ways most people never see.

This law gives property owners a faster path to reclaiming property from people living there without permission. In many ways, it brings clarity to a situation that can be confusing and, at times, unfair. For men who own their homes or sign proper leases, then return from work to find someone living in their property, this law offers a process that doesn’t take months or years to resolve.

But the fathers we serve often live in a different reality — one shaped by informal housing, temporary arrangements, and verbal agreements made in moments of trust or necessity. They stay with family during transitions. They move in with a co-parent, hoping to rebuild. They rent rooms in cash from people trying to survive just like they are. They bounce between couches because a new job hasn’t stabilized yet, child support ate into the month’s rent, or a relationship that felt promising last week fell apart overnight.

Those are the fathers who feel the pressure of Georgia’s Squatters Act the most.

Because once that citation is issued, the clock starts ticking. Three business days to prove you belong. Seven days for a hearing that can determine whether you stay or go. And if the documents look wrong — or weren’t properly executed by someone else — you could face consequences that go far beyond eviction.

That is why this conversation isn’t about politics. It’s about fathers who are doing their best to hold on to their children while navigating a housing landscape that has become harder, faster, and less forgiving. It’s about men who can lose access to their kids, not because they don’t care, but because the law moved quicker than their circumstances could.

Housing remains at the top of Georgia’s challenges, especially in Atlanta, where rents rise faster than wages and where fathers with limited income face shrinking options. The Squatters Act didn’t create this reality, but it did create new urgency. A father who loses his home loses more than shelter. He loses the place where he teaches his child how to tie a shoe, finish homework, or dream bigger than the block they live on. He loses the sense of being rooted. He loses access. He loses dignity.

But here’s the part that keeps me going: None of this is inevitable. We can help fathers understand the documentation they need. We can prepare them for questions the police will ask. We can teach them what “lawful occupancy” actually means. We can guide them before the moment of crisis arrives. And we can make sure they don’t face these challenges alone.

Fathers Incorporated was built for moments like this — moments when laws change faster than lives do and people need someone who understands the emotional and practical realities tucked beneath the legal language. Our role is to help fathers stay steady when the system shifts around them. To keep them close to their children. To make sure the bond between parent and child doesn’t get lost in the shuffle of forms, hearings, citations, and deadlines.

The Squatters Act passed in 2024, but the story didn’t end there. Housing remains a priority, a pressure point, and a crossroads for thousands of fathers across the state. As long as families are navigating these challenges, we will keep speaking into the spaces where policy meets real life.

And we will keep standing beside the men who are trying every day to be present for their children, even when the ground beneath them moves.

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

One Year Later: Still Standing in His Shadow

On December 26, 2024, we lost a giant.

Lawrence Wilbon wasn’t just part of the team at Fathers Incorporated: He was a pillar. A force. A brother.

One year later, we still feel the silence.

But we also feel something else. Movement. Purpose. Echo. Lawrence didn’t just live. He led. And in leading, he left behind more than memories. He left instruction.

The Rhythm of Lawrence Wilbon’s Leadership

Lawrence never chased the spotlight. That wasn’t his style. He was a quiet thunder: steady, dependable, and deeply rooted in purpose. He showed us that leadership wasn’t about being loud. It was about being present. About showing up, over and over again, especially when it was inconvenient. Especially when it was hard.

He loved people through action and served with humility.

He reminded us that love is a verb. Faith, he’d say, was something you walked out with your boots on the ground. And from lifting fathers to strengthening families, from building systems to planting seeds, Lawrence gave everything he had, without asking anything in return.

A Legacy That Walks With Us

There’s a line from the song we wrote in his honor — “We’re Missing the Force of the L” — that captures the depth of our grief and our gratitude:

“Now heaven holds what earth can’t keep, but your legacy still lives in me.”

That legacy is real. It’s visible in our work. It’s alive in the men he mentored, the children he protected, and the systems he helped us build.

His presence still walks through every open door at Fathers Incorporated.

He left fingerprints on every part of this organization, and every time we take a bold step toward healing, justice, and responsible fatherhood, we feel him pushing us forward.

To Fathers: Pick Up the Mantle

To every father reading this — stand up. Be the protector. Be the builder. Be the steady hand your family can count on.

Lawrence showed us what it looks like to hold the line. Now, we carry his torch.

Don’t wait for permission to love loudly. Don’t hold back your presence. Your family doesn’t need perfection. They need you present. They need you committed. They need you there.

And to the brothers in the circle Lawrence left behind — remember the weight we now carry together. Not as a burden, but as a calling. Let’s keep each other lifted. Let’s lead like Lawrence did, not with ego, but with purpose.

To All of Us: Be Bold. Be Unapologetic. Be Right.

Lawrence’s voice still rings in my head. He’d always say, “Bro, you killed it.” And what he meant was, You stood in your purpose today. You didn’t shrink. You used your voice.

So let this be the charge: Be bold. Be unapologetic. And stand for what’s right, not what’s convenient.

That’s how Lawrence lived, that’s how he led, and that’s how we honor him.

Rest Now, Faithful Servant

“You didn’t leave us empty-handed. You left instructions in your walk.”

Lawrence Wilbon finished strong. His watch is done.

But ours is not. We won’t let the work fall. We won’t let the fire fade.

His force still moves through us — every single day.

Rest now, my brother. We’ll carry the force until we meet again.

We’re Missing the Force of the “L” – A Tribute to Lawrence Wilbon