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A new report examines child support “pass-through,” a policy that determines whether child support collected from a noncustodial parent actually reaches a family receiving TANF. 

Federal law generally requires custodial parents receiving TANF to cooperate with the child support program and assign certain rights to those funds to the state. The state can then retain collections (sharing a portion with the federal government) to recover the cost of public assistance. The technical term is “cost recovery.”

The language sounds almost clinical. Cooperation. Assignment. Distribution. Cost recovery. Pass-through. But underneath those words is a fairly simple question: When a parent pays money intended to support a child, who should get it?

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

For more than two decades of working with fathers, I’ve heard several variations of the same question from men who are navigating the child support system: “If the money came out of my check, why does the mother of my child say she didn’t get it?”

There are many possible answers. Sometimes there are arrears. Sometimes there are multiple obligations. Sometimes there are administrative complications a father doesn’t understand. But another answer gets far less public attention: In some families who receive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the government may have received the child support payment and kept some or all of it.

That’s what makes a newly released report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) consequential. The CBPP report examines child support “pass-through,” a policy that determines whether child support collected from a noncustodial parent actually reaches a family receiving TANF. 

Federal law generally requires custodial parents receiving TANF to cooperate with the child support program and assign certain rights to those funds to the state. The state can then retain collections (sharing a portion with the federal government) to recover the cost of public assistance. The technical term is “cost recovery.”

The language sounds almost clinical. Cooperation. Assignment. Distribution. Cost recovery. Pass-through. But underneath those words is a fairly simple question: When a parent pays money intended to support a child, who should get it?

The September CBPP report shows how inconsistent and complex the answer remains:

  • Twenty-one states still provide no pass-through for current TANF families. 
  • Others provide $50, $75, $100, or $200, use a “fill-the-gap” formula, or enact more generous policies.(Illinois, for example, now sends all support and arrears to current and former TANF families.) 
  • Other states have begun moving toward broader pass-through policies, although some changes won’t be implemented for years. (Georgia, where I live and where Fathers Incorporated works directly with families, still relies on a fill-the-gap approach rather than a full pass-through.)

There has been progress, and we should acknowledge it. Nationally, the amount passed through to families more than doubled from $99.6 million in 2022 to more than $219 million in 2025. But the other side of that number deserves at least as much attention. In 2025, state and federal governments retained 77% of assigned child support collections connected to current and former TANF participants. States kept about $320 million and sent another $406 million to the federal government.

These reports can feel strangely familiar to those of us who’ve been watching this issue for years.

Several years ago, a Fatherhood Research and Practice Network-supported state-by-state examination* of policies affecting fathers devoted an entire section to pass-through. Using the policies in effect at the time, researchers Jessica Pearson and Rachel Wildfeuer found that 24 states kept all child support collected for families receiving TANF rather than passing any of it to those families. 

We’ve moved from 24 states retaining everything to 21 states providing no current-assistance pass-through. Several additional states have strengthened their policies, and more have legislation pending.

That’s movement, but it isn’t transformation.

To understand why, we have to go back further than TANF. The federal-state child support program under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act was established in 1975. One of its central original purposes was cost recovery: locate noncustodial parents, establish obligations, collect support, and use some of those collections to reimburse the government for cash assistance it provided to families. Over the following five decades, the child support program expanded well beyond that original purpose and today serves millions of families who’ve never received cash assistance. (Congressional Research Service testimony presented earlier this year describes that evolution clearly.)

We share that history because systems can outlive the circumstances that created them.

The defense of cost recovery isn’t difficult to understand. The government provided financial assistance when a family needed it. A noncustodial parent had a financial obligation. If the government later collects that obligation, taxpayers should be reimbursed for some of what they provided. There’s a logic to that argument.

But there’s another question that should carry even greater weight: What produces the greatest benefit for the child right now?

If the family is poor enough to qualify for TANF, and a father or other noncustodial parent has paid support, taking those dollars away from the household to reimburse the government may satisfy an accounting principle while frustrating the underlying purpose of child support. Rent doesn’t become less expensive because the government wants reimbursement. Groceries don’t cost less. School clothes, transportation, diapers, and electricity still have to be paid for.

And there’s an important piece of evidence here that should disrupt the usual assumptions about fathers: When Colorado began passing through all current support and disregarding those payments in calculating TANF benefits, state administrative data showed a 76% increase in current collections for TANF families during the first year. 

In addition, research continues to find that parents are more likely to pay, and may pay more, when they know the money reaches their children. Think about what that suggests: Sometimes the policy designed to enforce responsibility may actually work better when parents can see responsibility producing a direct benefit for their children.

That brings me to the part of this conversation that worries me most as someone who has spent most of my professional life in responsible fatherhood.

Reporting on child support pass-through policies shouldn’t be an indictment of fathers. In fact, the CBPP explicitly argues that pass-through policies recognize the contributions noncustodial parents make. But once reports like this enter the broader public conversation, nuance disappears quickly. “Child support” becomes synonymous with “deadbeat dad.” A household headed by a mother becomes evidence that the father has disappeared. A child receiving public assistance becomes evidence that a man refused his responsibility.

This particular data is especially revealing because the money under discussion has already been collected. This isn’t fundamentally about unpaid child support. It’s about paid child support — and who gets to keep it.

In my forthcoming paper, Deconstructing “Fatherless,” I’m examining this distinction. Systems have a way of turning administrative classifications into narratives about human behavior:

  • “Nonresident” becomes “absent.” 
  • “Unmarried” becomes “uninvolved.” 
  • “Child support case” becomes “irresponsible fathers.” 
  • “TANF recipient” becomes “unsupported mother.”

Those things may overlap in individual families, but they aren’t synonyms. And we shouldn’t allow them to stand in for one another in any of our narratives about fathers and families. 

None of this absolves fathers of financial responsibility. A father who has the means to support his child and deliberately refuses to do so should be held accountable. The responsible fatherhood field has never argued otherwise. Mothers raising children deserve support. Children deserve support. Fathers have obligations that don’t disappear when relationships end, parents live apart, or adults disagree.

But accountability requires us to distinguish unwillingness from inability, just as fairness requires us to distinguish payment from nonpayment.

An earlier fatherhood policy report documented the economic circumstances of more than 10,000 disadvantaged noncustodial parents in a federal demonstration. Nearly half hadn’t worked in the previous 30 days. Among those working, average monthly earnings were about $765, while average child support orders were about $401. Fifty-eight percent of participants with earnings owed at least half of those earnings in child support.

Those figures don’t describe men free of responsibility. They describe men for whom responsibility and economic capacity sometimes collide.

The distinction is consequential to the Title IV-D policy and to the responsible fatherhood movement.

We’ve spent years teaching fathers how to navigate child support: 

  • Pay what you can. 
  • Show up for court. 
  • Request modifications when income changes. 
  • Keep records. 
  • Communicate with the agency. 
  • Don’t ignore notices. 
  • Find employment. 
  • Meet your obligations.

All of that remains necessary, but I increasingly believe our field must become just as knowledgeable about the machinery surrounding the father as we expect the father to become about his responsibilities inside it.

Title IV-D should be as familiar to responsible fatherhood leaders as TANF is to anti-poverty advocates.

We should understand assignment rules, distribution priorities, tax refund intercepts, state-owed arrears, federal reimbursement, performance incentives, and pass-through policy. We should know that the federal government generally reimburses states for 66% of allowable child support program expenditures and that the federal incentive system continues to measure states on paternity establishment, establishment of support orders, current collections, arrears collections, and cost-effectiveness.

Look closely at what these measures reward. They tell us a great deal about whether the child support machine is functioning. They tell us much less about whether the family is functioning better because of it.

There are no comparable core federal incentive measures asking:

  • Did the father-child relationship improve?
  • Did parental conflict decrease? 
  • Did parenting time become more consistent?
  • Did parents become better economic partners around their child? 
  • Did the child experience greater overall well-being?

What gets measured has a remarkable way of becoming what institutions learn to protect.

This doesn’t mean there’s some secret conspiracy inside child support agencies. Thousands of people inside those agencies are deeply committed to families and have advocated for reform themselves. (The National Child Support Enforcement Association has supported expanding pass-through policies and family-centered approaches.)

But large systems develop institutional gravity. They have budgets. They have performance measures. They have revenue arrangements. They have contractors. They have decades of regulation. They have computer systems built around old rules.

The current pass-through reporting offers small but revealing examples. Washington enacted a broader pass-through but delayed full implementation until 2029. The District of Columbia plans an additional arrears pass-through in 2027, pending reprogramming of its computer systems.

In systems this large, budgets, software systems, and performance metrics can create institutional inertia.

That’s precisely why this moment is critical for fathers and families. Congress held a hearing in January on modernizing the child support program, which turned 50 last year. This September, the House Ways and Means Work and Welfare Subcommittee held another hearing marking 30 years since welfare reforms created TANF in 1996. 

Washington is reconsidering both child support and TANF, but it shouldn’t do so in separate rooms.

Congress should seriously consider ending TANF cost recovery and making full family-first distribution the national standard. 

Short of that, Congress can: 

  • Remove the federal $100/$200 pass-through limitation
  • Help states replace lost revenue
  • Pay for the technology required to change their systems
  • Make family-first distribution of tax-intercepted arrears the rule 

States don’t have to wait for Washington. They can expand pass-through and disregard policies now.

The responsible fatherhood field should have a seat in these state and federal conversations, not because we want less child support collected, but because we want child support to accomplish more of what its name promises:

  • Support the child.
  • Support the custodial parent who carries the daily expense of raising that child.
  • Help the noncustodial parent become economically capable of contributing consistently.
  • Build policy that recognizes financial responsibility as one part of a larger parental relationship rather than treating collection as the entire definition of responsible fatherhood.

Better data should lead to better support.

So the next time another child support pass-through report appears, perhaps we should resist the familiar question about what fathers are failing to do.

A harder question sits right in front of us: When a parent has paid money for his child, why are we still debating whether the child should receive it?

*The report also reviewed research indicating that noncustodial parents were more likely to pay child support (and to pay more of it) when their payments actually reached their children.

The 2026 Million Fathers March isn’t asking fathers merely to appear for a single event. It’s asking schools and communities to open doors, and it’s asking fathers to keep walking through them.

Forty-two hosts have already registered. Fifteen states and 34 cities are already represented. Thousands of fathers and father figures are projected to participate, and there is still room for hundreds of schools, organizations, districts, churches, community groups, and families to become part of what September 18 can represent.

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

There is something unmistakably powerful about seeing a father walk beside a child toward a school building. Before the first bell rings, before a teacher begins a lesson, before a principal makes an announcement, that father has already communicated something important to his child: Your education matters enough for me to be here. 

For more than two decades, the Million Fathers March (MFM) has transformed that simple act of presence into a public expression of responsibility, love, expectation, and community. This year, on Friday, September 18, 2026, fathers and father figures across the country will do it again and accept an invitation that carries an even larger challenge. Beyond walking through the school doors, this year’s march asks men to engage in another way.

The 2026 theme, “Civic Dads in Action: Engaged, Educated, Empowering Communities,” reflects where the Million Fathers March must go next. 

Phillip Jackson’s original vision for the Million Fathers March (through The Black Star Project) was never simply about creating a compelling photograph on the first day of school. The larger idea was that fathers, particularly Black fathers and other men too often portrayed as disconnected from their children’s education, should be visible, valued, informed, and active inside the institutions shaping their children’s futures. 

Fathers Incorporated (FI) has carried that vision forward by increasingly connecting the March to literacy, volunteering, parent-teacher engagement, school governance, mentoring, community service, and civic leadership.

The MFM movement has demonstrated considerable reach over the years: 

  • In 2019, national campaign registration represented 77,768 fathers, more than 446,000 students, 81 cities, and 26 states. 
  • The pandemic temporarily changed how the March could gather, but it didn’t end the tradition. And when communities returned to in-person activity, the footprint began rebuilding. 
  • In 2022, 22 schools across 20 cities and 11 states participated. By 2023, the reported footprint had grown to 95 schools, 71 cities, and 24 states.
  • The 2024 campaign demonstrated another important development. More than 350 schools and organizations in over 40 cities hosted Million Fathers March events, with more than 45,000 fathers and male role models participating in person. The campaign also generated more than 1.2 million social media impressions during September. The more meaningful story came after the photographs were taken. Among schools responding to post-event surveys, 93% reported that father engagement extended beyond the event itself, while 76% of responding fathers expressed interest in continued involvement with their child’s school.

That’s precisely the direction the 2026 campaign is trying to accelerate.

Already, the early 2026 registration picture suggests that momentum is building. The current registration snapshot includes 42 registered hosts representing 34 cities across 15 states. Those hosts presently project engaging approximately 11,785 fathers and father figures. 

These figures are registration estimates rather than verified attendance, and FI is intentionally strengthening its data process this year so that projected reach, confirmed participation, actual attendance, and broader community exposure are reported separately. These distinctions may sound technical, but they’re critical for credibility: A national movement should be able to tell its story with both passion and precision.

There’s also a substantial body of educational research that explains why this work matters beyond symbolism. William Jeynes conducted a meta-analysis of 66 studies examining father involvement and the educational outcomes of urban schoolchildren. The analysis found a statistically significant positive association between father involvement and educational outcomes, with this relationship evident for both white students and students of color. 

In other words, the idea that fathers matter educationally isn’t simply a motivational slogan created for a campaign. It has empirical support across a broad body of research.

The relationship begins early. A separate meta-analysis led by Christine McWayne examined 21 studies representing 22 independent samples of young children. Researchers found that positive father engagement and positive parenting were associated with cognitive and academic skills, prosocial development, and self-regulation, capacities that educators recognize as foundational to school readiness and later learning. The study also argued that early childhood programs should deliberately create father-friendly environments rather than treating fathers as peripheral participants in education.

That point about father engagement deserves attention. Schools and institutions also communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, whether fathers belong. FI’s own fatherhood research and educational work emphasize the need to equip fathers to navigate educational systems and to encourage schools and family-serving institutions to be more intentional in welcoming fathers. Findings indicate that: 

  • Children benefit academically when fathers are involved in school, including when fathers live apart from their children.
  • Children whose fathers participate in school activities and meetings tend to enjoy school more, experience fewer behavioral difficulties, and participate more often in extracurricular activities.

Fatherhood research collected by the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse (NRFC) also links positive father involvement to educational attainment, social development, and behavioral well-being. The NRFC cites research linking engaged fatherhood to higher high school graduation rates and stronger social-emotional adjustment. These findings shouldn’t be interpreted to suggest that mothers are somehow less important, nor should they be used to stigmatize children whose fathers are unavailable. Instead, they tell us something much more useful: When a safe, caring father or father figure is willing to engage, schools and communities shouldn’t waste that resource.

That’s also why the MFM intentionally welcomes grandfathers, stepfathers, foster fathers, uncles, adult brothers, mentors, coaches, clergy, family friends, and other significant male caregivers. A child should never be excluded from this experience because a biological father is unavailable. What matters is that children encounter caring adults who reinforce the message that education deserves attention, effort, expectation, and support.

The 2026 campaign is designed to turn that principle into continuing action:

  • The new Million Fathers March Planning Toolkit (available during the registration process) encourages participating communities to move beyond the traditional walk-in by creating father-child learning workshops, school volunteering campaigns, mentoring and service days, fatherhood seminars, civic engagement activities, and a 30-day post-March Civic Action Challenge. 
  • And through the Civic Dads in Action framework and the L-FORCE Civic Engagement model, fathers are encouraged to participate in PTAs and parent councils, attend school board meetings, support school improvement projects, mentor young people, volunteer, and become informed advocates for children and families.

This evolution is significant because one morning can’t carry the full weight of educational engagement. A father can walk a child into school on September 18, but the deeper opportunity is what happens in October when a parent-teacher conference is scheduled, in November when volunteers are needed, in January when a student begins struggling academically, or in March when a school board is considering an issue affecting children. Presence becomes most powerful when it develops into relationship, knowledge, consistency, and service.

For schools, the invitation is equally direct. Don’t wait until there is a disciplinary problem, an unpaid fee, a custody dispute, or an academic crisis to contact fathers. Invite fathers when things are going well. Ask them to read. Ask them to volunteer. Ask them to attend. Give them useful information about curriculum, attendance, testing, special education, graduation requirements, tutoring, extracurricular activities, and school governance. Create opportunities for fathers to contribute something more meaningful than a signature on a form.

For fathers, the challenge is just as clear. Walking through the door is valuable, but knowing what happens behind that door is even more powerful. Know your child’s teacher. Understand how your child is performing. Ask what they’re reading. Know when assignments are due. Attend the conference. Learn the school calendar. Understand the systems that affect your child. When something is unclear, ask. When help is needed, seek it. When an opportunity to serve presents itself, take it.

That’s the spirit behind Civic Dads in Action. A Civic Dad understands that fatherhood is deeply personal but exists within a larger community. His child attends a school governed by policies, funded by public decisions, influenced by neighborhoods, supported by volunteers, and shaped by adults willing to take responsibility for more than what happens inside their own homes. He recognizes that being a good father may sometimes mean reading a bedtime story and at other times sitting through a PTA meeting, mentoring another child, volunteering at a school event, attending a public meeting, or helping another dad find his way into the building.

The 2026 Million Fathers March, therefore, isn’t asking fathers merely to appear for a single event. It’s asking schools and communities to open doors, and it’s asking fathers to keep walking through them. Forty-two hosts have already registered. Fifteen states and 34 cities are already represented. Thousands of fathers and father figures are projected to participate, and there is still room for hundreds of schools, organizations, districts, churches, community groups, and families to become part of what September 18 can represent.

Phillip Jackson gave the country a visible action that communities could understand immediately: fathers walking children to school. The enduring power of that idea is that the walk doesn’t require a complicated explanation. A father beside a child says enough.

What we do after the walk is where the next chapter will be written.

Register your school, organization, community, or family for the 2026 Million Fathers March at www.millionfathersmarch.com. The national March takes place Friday, September 18, 2026.

Show up. Stand up. Stay engaged.

We’re living through a time when public life seems increasingly organized around accusation. We attack, cancel, blame, expose, and condemn. Loyalty has become conditional, disagreement is often treated as betrayal, and people are sometimes reduced to the worst thing they’ve ever said or done.

That spirit doesn’t remain confined to politics or social media. It follows us home. And family has always been one of the hardest places to practice forgiveness.

We’re living through a time when public life seems increasingly organized around accusation. We attack, cancel, blame, expose, and condemn. Loyalty has become conditional, disagreement is often treated as betrayal, and people are sometimes reduced to the worst thing they’ve ever said or done.

That spirit doesn’t remain confined to politics or social media. It follows us home. And family has always been one of the hardest places to practice forgiveness.

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

For much of my life, I believed my father had chosen not to be present, and his absence became part of the story I carried about myself. 

Like many boys who grow into men without answers, I filled the empty spaces with assumptions. I believed my father had taken something from me by failing to give me what I needed from him. I blamed him for the years of not knowing, for the questions I couldn’t ask, and for the parts of myself I had to assemble without his help.

It took me nearly 50 years to understand that the story was more complicated.

I eventually learned that members of my mother’s family had played a significant role in keeping my father away. By the time I understood what had happened, he was already dead and buried. There would be no conversation between us. I would never have the chance to ask why he hadn’t tried harder. I couldn’t tell him that I was sorry for judging his entire life through the narrow window of what I experienced as a child.

That new information didn’t compensate for the years we lost. It didn’t suddenly provide the guidance, affection, or relationship I’d needed. What it did was force me to confront an uncomfortable truth: I had spent decades withholding forgiveness from a man without knowing his whole story.

Data can tell the truth without telling enough of the truth. So can memory. That’s one reason I find myself asking a difficult question on this observance of forgiveness: Is fatherhood and family forgiveness dead?

We’re living through a time when public life seems increasingly organized around accusation. We attack, cancel, blame, expose, and condemn. Loyalty has become conditional, disagreement is often treated as betrayal, and people are sometimes reduced to the worst thing they’ve ever said or done. That spirit doesn’t remain confined to politics or social media. It follows us home.

Family has always been one of the hardest places to practice forgiveness. 

We can choose our friends, but we don’t choose the people connected to us through blood, marriage, parenthood, or history. Families carry long memories. A sentence spoken carelessly can live within a relative for decades. A confidence shared in vulnerability can become a weapon. A promise broken by a parent can shape how a child understands love, trust, and personal worth.

Some injuries are even deeper. There are families living with abandonment, betrayal, abuse, addiction, violence, infidelity, and years of unresolved conflict. Forgiveness can’t be discussed honestly if we pretend every wound is small or every relationship should be restored.

Forgiveness doesn’t require forgetting. It doesn’t excuse harmful behavior, erase accountability, eliminate consequences, or automatically restore access to your life. Reconciliation requires participation from more than one person. Trust must often be rebuilt through truth, changed conduct, and time. Where violence, abuse, or serious danger exists, forgiveness must never be used to pressure someone into surrendering a necessary boundary.

Forgiveness and reconciliation are related, but they’re not the same.

Forgiveness is an active and conscious decision to release resentment, anger, and the desire for revenge. That decision may eventually make reconciliation possible, but it may also allow a person to move forward without resuming the relationship. You can forgive someone and still refuse to return to the conditions in which the harm occurred.

In more than two decades of working with fathers, I’ve learned that forgiveness isn’t a side issue in fatherhood. It’s often at the center of the work.

Many men enter fatherhood carrying unresolved feelings about their own fathers. They’re trying to forgive their fathers’ absence, disappointment, emotional distance, harsh discipline, broken promises, or the loss of a relationship they never had. Some are angry because their fathers weren’t present. Others had fathers in the home who remained emotionally unavailable. Residence and relationship aren’t the same thing.

These injuries don’t remain neatly contained in childhood. They shape how men see themselves, how they handle conflict, how they communicate, and what they expect from the people they love. A man may swear that he’ll never become his father, only to discover that pain can reproduce itself in unfamiliar forms.

The child who needed to forgive eventually becomes the father who needs forgiveness.

That’s one of the humbling truths of parenthood. We begin by examining what was done to us, but maturity eventually requires us to consider what we may have done to others. Some of our mistakes were made out of ignorance. Others came from fear, pride, anger, immaturity, or selfishness. A few may have been intentional in the moment and regretted for years afterward.

Regardless of the origin of these mistakes, there may come a day when we need forgiveness from our children, spouses, co-parents, siblings, or friends. The desire to receive grace should make us more thoughtful about our willingness to extend it.

A good friend of mine, Darryl Green, has spent much of his life speaking about forgiveness. His understanding didn’t come from theory alone. Darryl forgave the man who murdered his brother. Watching his journey taught me that forgiveness is deeply personal. No one can force it, schedule it, or manufacture it on another person’s behalf.

The person who caused the harm may apologize, deny it, minimize it, or never acknowledge it at all. Forgiveness remains an internal decision. It belongs to the person carrying the wound.

Unforgiveness can feel like power because it allows us to hold the offending person permanently indebted to us. We imagine that if we remain angry enough, withdraw long enough, or inflict enough pain, the other person may finally hurt as much as we do. Yet resentment rarely confines its poison to its intended target.

Holding on to pain guarantees that pain will continue to have something to hold on to.

I once described unforgiveness as trying to inhale polluted air while believing we can keep its toxicity out of our bodies. We can’t remain continuously connected to an injury without allowing some part of it to live within us. The offense becomes a daily companion. It influences our decisions, enters new relationships, and consumes emotional space long after the original moment has passed.

Forgiveness interrupts that connection. It allows us to stop organizing our lives around what someone else did. It isn’t surrendering our power. It’s reclaiming it.

Still, I don’t write any of this from a mountaintop. I write as a man who continues to wrestle with forgiveness. There are people I know I should forgive. There are actions for which I hope others will forgive me. There are relationships in which forgiveness may never produce the restoration I want.

Perhaps that’s where many of us are. We understand forgiveness intellectually while struggling to practice it emotionally. We want freedom, but we’re uncertain about releasing the debt. We fear that forgiving someone will make the harm appear less real or suggest that what happened no longer matters.

The harm mattered. The loss mattered. The years mattered. Forgiveness doesn’t change these facts, but it does change what authority these facts exercise over the remainder of our lives.

So, is fatherhood and family forgiveness dead? I don’t believe it’s dead, but I fear we’re losing confidence in its value. We’ve become skilled at identifying offenses and less practiced at creating pathways toward accountability, repair, and grace. Families can’t survive indefinitely if every failure becomes a permanent identity and every injury becomes an inherited conflict.

On this day, I’m not asking anyone to pretend. I’m asking us to begin. Tell the truth about what happened. Establish the boundaries you need. Seek accountability where it’s possible. Release the desire to make another person suffer as payment for your suffering.

You may not be ready to forgive completely today. Perhaps you can become willing to consider it. Perhaps you can loosen your grip on one memory, one offense, or one unpaid emotional debt.

I never had the opportunity to speak with my father after learning the fuller truth about his absence. I can’t recover that conversation. What I can do is refuse to let the conversation we never had imprison the life I still have.

Forgiveness deserves that chance. So do our fathers. So do our families.

And so do we.

Over the years, Fathers Incorporated has operated through economic downturns, COVID-19, changing administrations, shifting federal priorities, fleeting philanthropic interests, the loss of key personnel, new technology, and evolving public conversations about fathers, families, race, gender, marriage, parenting, and social policy.

Our survival has never meant that we predicted every disruption. It meant that we built enough organizational muscle to adapt when disruption came.

That’s business. And business, in this context, isn’t a dirty word.

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

In 1990, I didn’t know anything about organizational sustainability. I didn’t know how to read a financial statement, develop a revenue strategy, manage cash flow, satisfy government reporting requirements, build a board, supervise employees, negotiate a contract, or think about succession. I only knew I wanted to serve.

That was enough to get me started, but it wouldn’t have been enough to keep me going.

Thirty-six years later, as National Nonprofit Day is observed (August 17), I find myself thinking less about celebrating nonprofit organizations and more about what we should be asking of them, and, perhaps more importantly, what we should be teaching the people who feel called to create them.

My journey began as a young man volunteering with the Empire State Black Arts and Cultural Festival Committee in New York. I was surrounded by people thinking seriously about Black history, culture, poverty, housing, political participation, justice, and community. Something awakened in me there. Service stopped being an occasional activity and became part of how I understood my responsibility in the world. In the proposed book I am writing, The Business of Serving, I describe this awakening as the moment when I began understanding that service could become a life’s work.

What I didn’t understand then was what it would cost to keep serving. I mean that literally. Passion has expenses.

The father who needs legal assistance doesn’t need your passion alone. He may need an attorney. The family facing eviction may need emergency financial assistance. The child who struggles in school needs a qualified tutor with sufficient stability in their own life to show up every Tuesday afternoon. A community program needs insurance, technology, accounting, payroll, evaluation, transportation, facilities, data systems, background checks, communications, training, supervision, and someone who understands what happens when funding does not arrive on the day everyone expected it.

Every mission eventually meets a spreadsheet.

That doesn’t make the mission less sacred. It makes stewardship more serious.

One of the central arguments in the current draft of The Business of Serving is that there is a common misconception that authentic service must somehow be accompanied by suffering. We romanticize the struggling nonprofit founder who takes no salary, works from the kitchen table, maxes out personal credit cards, convinces friends to volunteer, and keeps everything together through force of personality. We sometimes treat organizational poverty as evidence of moral purity.

I have never believed that.

I’ve seen too many good people with extraordinary ideas run out of money before they ran out of need. I’ve watched organizations begin with fire and disappear because nobody built the fireplace. Passion can ignite an organization, but infrastructure sustains that energy long enough for it to become useful.

That’s why I call it the business of serving.

What’s Behind the Process of Securing Nonprofit Status

The distinction matters even more today because becoming a federally recognized charitable organization has become substantially easier for many small organizations in recent years. In July 2014, the IRS introduced Form 1023-EZ as a streamlined route for qualifying smaller organizations seeking recognition under Section 501(c)(3). The IRS described the new form as a two-page alternative to the much longer traditional Form 1023. Today, eligibility generally includes organizations expecting no more than $50,000 in annual gross receipts and holding no more than $250,000 in assets, along with other restrictions.

There was good reason for reform. The IRS was dealing with a backlog of more than 75,000 exemption applications in 2014, some of which had been waiting more than a year. Streamlining reduced burdens on small organizations and allowed the government to focus more attention on complicated applications.

But something else happened that also deserves reflection.

The old process was cumbersome. Anybody who completed the long Form 1023 years ago remembers that it made you think. You had to explain what you were going to do, how you were going to do it, how the organization would be governed, where the money would come from, what the money would pay for, and how the organization’s activities were connected to its charitable purpose.

Many people sought legal or accounting assistance simply because the process demanded a level of sophistication they didn’t yet possess. These services could be expensive and frustrating, but there was an unintended education built into the difficulty: You learned that becoming a nonprofit wasn’t the same thing as having a good idea.

When Form 1023-EZ first appeared, the National Taxpayer Advocate raised concerns that the application relied heavily on applicants’ attestation of their eligibility rather than requiring substantial supporting documentation. The form has been revised since then, and the current version requires, among other things, a brief description of an organization’s mission or most significant activities. Still, its fundamental purpose remains what its name says: streamlining.

I’m not arguing that we should return to bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake. I’m arguing that when we remove a learning barrier, we should replace the education that barrier accidentally provided.

A determination letter from the IRS does not mean you know how to run an organization. It only means you received a determination letter from the IRS.

It doesn’t guarantee that donors will believe in your cause, that foundations will fund it, or that government will contract with you. It doesn’t guarantee that your board will govern effectively, that your programs will produce results, that your books will be accurate, that your employees will remain, that your communications will reach anyone, or that the community you intend to serve actually wants what you have decided to provide.

Tax-exempt status isn’t a business plan.

Similarly, nonprofit status isn’t a certificate of virtue.

That distinction may be harder to see because social purpose is no longer confined to the nonprofit sector. Businesses, entrepreneurs, corporations, social enterprises, philanthropic foundations, faith institutions, community networks, and individual citizens can all organize to solve social problems. The question for a founder shouldn’t be, “Which structure makes me look most committed to the cause?” The question should be, “Which structure gives this work the greatest opportunity to accomplish what I am trying to accomplish?”

Nonprofit and for-profit organizations are legally different. Their rules around ownership, governance, taxes, charitable purpose, and distribution of earnings are distinct. But they share an unforgiving operating truth: Both must acquire more resources than they consume if they expect to remain alive.

A for-profit calls much of that revenue. A nonprofit may refer to these resources as grants, contracts, contributions, sponsorships, earned income, individual giving, or philanthropy. The vocabulary changes. The electricity company does not care. Neither does payroll.

This becomes particularly difficult when the people you’re committed to serving aren’t considered especially attractive to funders.

I know something about that.

The Economics of Serving Unpopular Causes

For more than two decades, Fathers Incorporated (FI) has worked specifically with fathers, including Black fathers, fathers of color, nonresident fathers, unmarried fathers, fathers returning from incarceration, fathers navigating child support, and men trying to repair complicated relationships with their children and co-parents. This work sits inside what The Business of Serving calls “Serving the Overlooked: The Challenge of Unpopular Causes.” Not every cause receives equal philanthropic enthusiasm. 

Fatherhood engagement has often required us to convince people not only that our approach works, but that the people themselves are worth the investment. This changes the economics of serving.

When the public doesn’t immediately recognize your constituency as sympathetic, your storytelling has to be stronger. Your evidence has to be credible. Your relationships have to be deeper. Your financial strategy has to be more disciplined. Your organization must sometimes survive long enough for society to catch up with the problem you’ve been describing all along.

That’s why sustainability is not separate from equity. If organizations serving overlooked populations are perpetually fragile, then the people those organizations serve are perpetually one funding decision away from losing support.

Over the years, FI has operated through economic downturns, COVID-19, changing administrations, shifting federal priorities, fleeting philanthropic interests, the loss of key personnel, new technology, and evolving public conversations about fathers, families, race, gender, marriage, parenting, and social policy. Our survival has never meant that we predicted every disruption. It meant that we built enough organizational muscle to adapt when disruption came.

That’s business. And business, in this context, isn’t a dirty word.

Every Mission Also Has a Bottom Line

I sometimes make this point through the ministry of Jesus. I don’t mean that the Gospels provide us with a modern organizational chart, but they do show us something about assembling people with different backgrounds, skills, temperaments, and networks around a common mission. There were fishermen who understood work and trade, a tax collector who understood money and government systems, a zealot with political intensity, and very different personalities who had to learn how to function together.

Even sacred work had an operating reality.

Someone had to manage resources. Someone had to secure places to gather. People had to travel. Food had to be acquired. Messages had to move from one community to another. Relationships had to be maintained. The mission didn’t become less spiritual because it required logistics. Why should we believe our missions do?

The person considering starting a nonprofit today should spend at least as much time thinking about infrastructure as thinking about inspiration:

  • Who will govern when the founder makes a bad decision? 
  • Who understands the finances? 
  • What happens if the largest grant disappears next year? 
  • What does it actually cost to deliver the service? 
  • Can employees be paid competitively? 
  • Is there enough unrestricted revenue to keep the organization functioning? 
  • How will outcomes be measured? 
  • What legal and regulatory responsibilities come with the work? 
  • Who handles the things the founder doesn’t know how to do? 
  • What happens during the next recession? 
  • What happens if another pandemic arrives? 
  • What happens when the political administration changes? 
  • What happens when the founder gets sick, gets tired, retires, or dies?

And perhaps the hardest question of all: Does this mission require creation of a new organization, or would the cause be better served by joining, strengthening, partnering with, or funding one that already exists? The nonprofit sector could always use more people with a heart to serve; it does not necessarily need more organizations. Sometimes the most responsible expression of your passion isn’t incorporation. Sometimes it’s collaboration.

For those who do build organizations, we have to stop treating the administrative side of service as separate from the mission. Your accountant is part of the mission. Your data manager is part of the mission. Your human resources policies are part of the mission. Your board development is part of the mission. Your insurance is part of the mission. Your fundraising strategy is part of the mission. Your reserves are part of the mission. Your succession plan is part of the mission.

Because every one of those things determines whether you will be there when somebody needs you.

The nonprofit world often celebrates beginnings. The launch. The ribbon cutting. The announcement. The first grant. The beautiful website. The social media post declaring that a new organization has been born. But after 36 years in this work, I am increasingly interested in the organizations that are still standing.

Still serving after the founder’s excitement wears off.

Still paying employees when the funding environment gets tight.

Still answering the phone when the issue has fallen out of political fashion.

Still protecting the integrity of the work when money comes with pressure.

Still capable of saying no to funding that would pull the organization away from its mission.

Still learning.

Still adapting.

Still useful.

The measure of service isn’t simply how passionately we begin. It’s whether we build something strong enough to remain present when the people we promised to serve need us most.

Celebrating National Nonprofit Day

On National Nonprofit Day, I celebrate every person who has felt that tug in the heart that says something in this world needs to change, and I’m willing to help change it.

But I also want to offer the lesson I wish someone had placed in my hands in 1990: Honor the calling enough to build the infrastructure around it.

Learn governance. Learn finance. Learn fundraising. Learn compliance. Learn leadership. Learn evaluation. Learn how to hire people who know what you don’t know. Learn how to preserve cash. Learn how to build relationships before you need something from them. Learn how to survive an economic winter. Learn how to hand the work to somebody else one day.

Your passion deserves that level of preparation.

More importantly, the people you intend to serve deserve it.

There’s something noble about wanting to ride in and save the day, but communities don’t need another knight whose horse dies halfway to the village.

They need institutions capable of making the entire journey.

That’s the business of serving.

Because of my fatherhood work, I’m always looking for public images that tell boys and men the truth about healthy masculinity. We need those images. We need to see men compete without cruelty, win without arrogance, and cry without apology. We need to see men love their children in full view of the world. We need to see brotherhood that doesn’t collapse into performance, domination, or silence.

The Knicks gave us that.

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

I was a boy in New York the last time the Knicks won it all.

I was old enough to remember the feeling, even if I wasn’t yet old enough to understand everything it meant. In 1973, I was 12 or 13 years old, still becoming myself in a city that had a way of making boys grow up quickly. 

I remember the names: Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, Earl Monroe, Dave DeBusschere. I remember the sound of New York feeling proud of itself and the way the championship traveled through neighborhoods, barbershops, schoolyards, apartment buildings, parks, and street corners. The Knicks weren’t just a basketball team. They were part of the city’s pulse.

I didn’t know then that more than five decades would pass before that feeling returned.

For those who didn’t grow up carrying the ache of being a Knicks fan, it may be hard to understand what this championship released in New York. It wasn’t just the end of a drought but the lifting of something that had settled into the body of the city. 

Year after year, generation after generation, we watched other teams rise and other cities celebrate. We watched our own hopes become jokes, then memories, then something we almost stopped saying out loud. And yet we stayed. That’s what fans do. That’s what New Yorkers do. We complain, we doubt, we argue, we suffer, and somehow, we still believe.

So when the Knicks finally broke through, I felt what much of New York felt. Relief. Joy. Disbelief. Gratitude. A strange and beautiful release.

But as Father’s Day approached, I found myself feeling something beyond fandom. I found myself watching the celebration not simply as a New Yorker or a long-standing Knicks fan, but as a father. I found myself watching as a man raised in Brooklyn without my father in my life and as someone who has spent much of his life trying to understand where my own masculinity came from and what kind of manhood I wanted to pass on to my children.

That’s why this championship moved me differently.

I’ve spent decades working with fathers and families: sitting with men trying to repair relationships with their children and listening to fathers talk about courtrooms, child support, co-parenting conflict, grief, shame, anger, unemployment, trauma, and the quiet fear that they may not know how to be the kind of man their children need. I have also listened to men speak with tenderness so deep it could rearrange a room. Men who loved their children fiercely. Men who weren’t absent in their hearts, even when systems, circumstances, or their own mistakes placed distance between them and the people they loved most.

Because of this fatherhood work, I’m always looking for public images that tell boys and men the truth about healthy masculinity. We need those images. We need to see men compete without cruelty, win without arrogance, and cry without apology. We need to see men love their children in full view of the world. We need to see brotherhood that doesn’t collapse into performance, domination, or silence.

The Knicks gave us that.

New York Knicks Offer Examples of Healthy Masculinity

In a sports culture that often rewards volume, swagger, and spectacle, OG Anunoby gave us calm. Throughout the playoffs, he carried himself with a quiet steadiness that could easily be misunderstood. The running joke is that he doesn’t smile, but that’s too simple. Some men don’t show joy the way people expect them to. Some men carry their intensity in stillness. Some men don’t need to perform emotion in order to feel deeply.

OG Anunoby’s tip-in during the playoff run, in a game that looked all but lost, was more than an athletic play. It was a lesson in staying ready when the outcome appears beyond reach. It was the discipline of a man who understood the moment and didn’t shrink from it. There’s a kind of fatherhood in that. A child doesn’t need a father who panics at every hard turn. A child needs a father who can remain present when the room is loud, when the odds are bad, and when everybody else thinks the chance has passed.

Jose Alvarado gave us another kind of lesson. He wasn’t the biggest man on the court. He wasn’t supposed to intimidate anyone by appearance alone. Yet there he was, playing with a fearlessness that every boy could see. Life will place our sons in front of giants. Some of those giants will be people. Some will be institutions. Some will be poverty, racism, grief, rejection, or doubt. The lesson isn’t that size doesn’t matter because sometimes it does. The lesson is that spirit matters, too. Tenacity matters. Preparation matters. Refusing to disappear matters.

Mikal Bridges showed a quieter form of courage. There were moments in the season when he had to find his way. A gifted man in a new environment still has to ask himself hard questions. Where do I fit? What does this team need from me? How do I contribute to something bigger than my own reputation? For many men, that’s the hardest work. Not the work of proving we’re talented, but the work of adjusting, listening, sacrificing, and still bringing value without resentment. This kind of humility isn’t weakness. It’s maturity.

Karl-Anthony Towns gave us the image of family and survival. He came to New York under bright lights and heavy scrutiny. Every mistake was examined. Every question about his fit became part of the season’s noise. Yet when the championship came, what stood out to me wasn’t only his play. It was the embrace of family. It was the way private love entered a public victory. It was also the way he honored Anthony Edwards, a former teammate, reminding us that brotherhood doesn’t have to end when competition begins. Men can compete and still love one another. Men can move on and still honor where they have been. Men can win and still remember the people who helped shape them.

Coach Mike Brown offered a lesson in leadership under pressure. New York doesn’t give coaches much room to breathe. The city questions everything. The media magnifies everything. Fans carry history in one hand and impatience in the other. Yet there he was, guiding this team through the noise and into history. And then, in one of the most lasting images of the celebration, he stood with his young son in his arms.

That image stayed with me. That child may not understand the championship now. He may not understand the pressure his father carried. He may not understand what it meant for the Knicks, for the city, for the men on that team, or for all the fans who had waited 53 years to exhale. But one day, he will see the footage. One day, he will see that in the middle of one of his father’s greatest professional moments, he wasn’t off to the side. He was held. That’s fatherhood at its best. Not children as accessories. Not family as an afterthought. Children held inside the moment.

Josh Hart gave us the gift of brotherhood with humor, grit, and heart. Every great team needs someone who connects the room. Hart’s relationship with Brunson and Bridges, stretching back to Villanova, reminded us that male friendship can be sacred and sustaining. Men need other men who know them before the applause. Men need brothers who can laugh with them, challenge them, steady them, and remind them who they are when the world gets loud. Sports can do that. So can barbershops, fatherhood programs, churches, community centers, and living rooms where men finally tell the truth.

Then there was Jalen Brunson. It’s hard to think of this Knicks championship without thinking of doubt. Doubt followed Brunson. Doubt questioned his size, his ceiling, his value, his ability to lead a franchise, and his capacity to be the best player on a championship team. Men know something about doubt. Fathers know something about doubt. Black men know something about having to prove themselves over and over again in rooms where their gifts are questioned before they are recognized.

But Brunson didn’t answer with bitterness. He answered with work and leadership. He answered by becoming the kind of man a team could trust. When he won Finals MVP, it felt like more than an award. It felt like a public affirmation of private discipline. 

A Father-Son Moment for the Ages

But the moment that brought me back to Father’s Day wasn’t only Brunson lifting a trophy. It was seeing him with his father, Rick Brunson, who stood there not just as a former player or assistant coach, but as a dad. Their embrace held something that numbers can’t measure. A father and son sharing a moment. A son achieving what so many had doubted. A father witnessing not only success, but the fulfillment of years of guidance, sacrifice, correction, and belief.

For me, as a man who grew up without my father, that image wasn’t casual or decorative. It touched something old.

Boys who grow up without fathers can spend years searching for manhood in fragments. We find pieces of it in coaches, uncles, teachers, older boys on the block, athletes, ministers, music, movies, and sometimes in the wrong men because they appear strong when what they really are is wounded. We learn by watching. Sometimes we learn what to become. Sometimes we learn what not to repeat. But the search is real. 

That’s why public images of men matter:

  • When boys see men celebrate one another without shame, that matters. 
  • When they see fathers kiss their children, that matters. 
  • When they see teammates playing with each other’s kids, as if the children already belong to the team’s extended family, that matters. 
  • When they see a captain embrace his father, that matters. 
  • When they see a coach hold his son instead of hiding him from the stage, that matters. 
  • When they see strength joined with tenderness, that matters.

We talk a great deal in this country about what’s wrong with men. Sometimes we must. Violence is real. Absence is real. Emotional neglect is real. The wounds caused by unhealthy masculinity are real. 

But we can’t build healthier men only by naming what they shouldn’t be. We also have to show them what they can become.

That’s what I saw in the Knicks. I saw men who had been doubted but didn’t become cruel. I saw men who competed but didn’t lose their humanity. I saw men who won but still honored family. I saw brothers who held each other up. I saw children welcomed into joy. I saw a city release 53 years of longing. And I saw, in the glow of that championship, a picture of masculinity that our sons deserve to inherit.

Fatherhood isn’t a championship parade. Most fathers will never be handed a trophy. Most will never hear an arena chant their names. Their victories are quieter: showing up to the school meeting, keeping a promise, apologizing first, choosing not to yell, going to therapy, paying what they can, fighting through a court process to be recognized, sitting beside a child who is hurting, learning to co-parent with maturity, staying when leaving would be easier, and loving when nobody applauds.

That’s the work.

And yet, every now and then, sports gives us a public mirror for private truth. The Knicks gave New York a championship. But for those of us who believe in fathers, families, and the possibility of men becoming whole, they gave us something more. They gave us a Father’s Day image worth holding.

They reminded us that healthy masculinity isn’t soft. It’s strong enough to love in public. It’s disciplined enough to serve a team. It’s humble enough to adjust. It’s brave enough to be tender. It’s mature enough to honor family, brotherhood, and community while still chasing excellence.

New York waited 53 years for this championship. I waited, too.

But when it finally came, I didn’t just see my Knicks win.

I saw men showing boys another way to be men.

*

Kenneth Braswell is a nationally recognized leader in the responsible fatherhood movement, storyteller, and visionary advocate for fathers and families. As CEO of Fathers Incorporated (www.fathersincorporated.com) and director of the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse, he has spent over 30 years changing narratives, shaping policy, and empowering fathers across the country. His award-winning work spans media, federal engagement, grassroots mobilization, and national thought leadership—amplifying the voices of men, building bridges between systems and communities, and centering the transformative power of fatherhood in the pursuit of family well-being.

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

Juneteenth invites us to remember that freedom was never simply announced; it had to be claimed, protected, practiced, and passed forward. For Black families, that work continues in homes, schools, neighborhoods, churches, barbershops, playgrounds, and dinner tables across the country. At the center of that work are Black fathers.

Black fathers are freedom builders. They are freedom builders not only because they provide, but because they protect identity, create emotional safety, open doors of opportunity, and help heal generations. Their presence is more than meaningful; it is protective.

As we celebrate Juneteenth, we are reminded that freedom is not only a historical event. It is a daily practice. It is found in the ways families love, teach, guide, correct, affirm, and prepare children for the world. Black fathers have always been part of that freedom work. In the face of harmful stereotypes, social barriers, and systems that have too often tried to separate Black families or diminish Black fatherhood, research suggests that Black fathers continue to show up as protectors, nurturers, teachers, advocates, and builders of legacy.

Black Fathers Protect Identity

One of the most powerful ways Black fathers build freedom is by helping children know who they are.

A father’s voice can help shape a child’s understanding of their name, their history, their culture, and their worth. Around Juneteenth, that role becomes especially important. Juneteenth gives fathers an opportunity to teach children that their story did not begin with struggle alone. It is also a story of strength, faith, resistance, creativity, joy, and survival.

Black fathers protect identity by helping children see themselves through a lens of dignity rather than deficit. In a world that too often misnames or misunderstands Black children, a father’s affirmation can become a shield.

When a Black father tells his child, “You come from people who led, loved, and overcame,” he is doing more than teaching history. He is building confidence. He is giving that child a foundation. He is helping them stand in a world that may not always recognize their full humanity.

That is freedom work.

Black Fathers Create Emotional Safety

Fatherhood is a protective factor because it surrounds children with presence, guidance, affirmation, and accountability. Protection is not only physical. It is also emotional.

Children need to know they are safe to ask questions, safe to make mistakes, safe to feel, safe to grow, and safe to be loved even when life is difficult. Black fathers help create that safety through consistency, patience, listening, encouragement, and care.

A father’s presence can become a child’s first experience of safety. When Black fathers listen, and remain emotionally available, they help children develop confidence, emotional strength, and resilience.

This kind of fatherhood matters deeply. A child who feels seen and valued at home is better prepared to face the pressures outside of it. A child who hears words of affirmation from their father is better equipped to reject messages that question their worth. A child who experiences steady love learns that they are not alone.

In this way, Black fatherhood becomes a buffer. It helps protect children against the emotional weight of racism, instability, fear, and social messages that attempt to limit their sense of possibility.

Black Fathers Build Opportunity

Freedom also means access to opportunity. Black fathers help build that opportunity in many ways.

Sometimes it looks like helping with homework, attending school meetings, coaching a team, teaching financial responsibility, encouraging a dream, or making sure a child knows how to advocate for themselves. Sometimes it looks like introducing children to new places and possibilities. Sometimes it looks like discipline rooted in love and expectations rooted in belief.

Opportunity is not only created through money. It is also created through a father’s belief in his child’s future.

When a father says, “You can do this,” “I expect your best,” “I am proud of you,” or “Let me show you how,” he is opening a door. He is helping his child imagine a future beyond limitation. He is making freedom practical.

For many Black families, this kind of fatherhood is an act of resistance. It pushes back against every system, statistic, or stereotype that attempts to define Black children by risk instead of promise.

Black fathers help children see that their future is not already written by the world around them. They have agency. They have gifts. They have choices. They have a legacy to continue and a path to create.

Black Fathers Heal Generations

Juneteenth is about freedom delayed, but also freedom claimed. It reminds us that the impact of injustice can travel through generations, but so can healing.

Black fathers contribute to generational healing when they choose presence over absence, communication over silence, and connection over distance. Every act of engaged fatherhood is a form of generational repair.

For some fathers, this means giving their children what they did not always receive. For others, it means continuing the love, wisdom, and strength they inherited from fathers, grandfathers, uncles, mentors, and community elders. In both cases, Black fathers are shaping what gets passed down.

They are helping children inherit more than pain. They are passing down things that make families universal: love, discipline, faith, humor, emotional honesty, cultural pride, and family stories. They are showing their children that healing is possible and that manhood can include tenderness, accountability, affection, and growth.

This is one of the quiet but powerful ways Black fathers build freedom. They help families move from survival to wholeness.

Black Fathers Stabilize Communities

The protective role of Black fatherhood does not stop at the front door. When Black fathers are supported, families are strengthened. When families are strengthened, communities are stabilized.

Black fathers serve as so many things. They are  coaches, mentors, neighbors, faith leaders, volunteers, advocates, and role models. Their influence often extends beyond their own children to nieces, nephews, students, young men on the block, and children in the community who are watching how they move through the world.

Fatherhood protects by creating belonging. It tells a child: you are seen, you are valued, you are covered, and you are not alone.

That sense of belonging can change a child’s life. It can also change the life of a community.

This is why conversations about fatherhood must not focus only on individual responsibility. They must also focus on support. Black fathers deserve systems, programs, policies, and communities that recognize their value and remove barriers to their full engagement. Supporting Black fathers is not charity. It is an investment in children, families, neighborhoods, and future generations.

Juneteenth and the Ongoing Work of Freedom

Juneteenth reminds us that freedom must be protected after it is proclaimed. The news of emancipation reached enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, but the struggle for full freedom did not end there. In many ways, Black families have continued the work of defining, defending, and expanding freedom ever since.

Black fathers are part of that ongoing work.

They build freedom when they hold their children close. They build freedom when they teach the truth about history. They build freedom when they model responsibility and love. They build freedom when they protect their children’s dreams. They build freedom when they help their families heal. They build freedom when they show up, even in a world that has not always honored their presence.

This Juneteenth, we honor freedom by honoring the fathers who help build it every day.

Black fathers are protecting more than households; they are protecting dreams, identity, confidence, and legacy. They are helping children know their history without being bound by pain, understand their worth without apology, and imagine futures rooted in strength.

To celebrate Juneteenth is to celebrate liberation. It is also to recognize Black fathers as essential freedom builders in the ongoing story of Black family life.

The question isn’t whether child support should be paid. It should.

The better question is whether our policies are designed to produce payment, presence, and child well-being or debt, disconnection, and punishment.

This isn’t an argument against child support. It is an argument for a smarter child support system.

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

The United States should expect parents to support their children. That statement shouldn’t be controversial. Children need food, housing, clothing, school supplies, medical care, safety, and stability. Mothers who are raising children deserve reliable support. Fathers who owe child support should not be excused from their responsibility simply because the obligation is difficult, inconvenient, or old. 

Responsibility matters. Accountability matters. But when accountability lacks context, it may just be punishment dressed up as policy.

The U.S. Department of State now states plainly that people who owe more than $2,500 in child support cannot be issued a U.S. passport, and that a valid passport may be revoked. If a passport is revoked, the parent must work through the state where the child support debt is owed, and even after payment, the process through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) can take at least two to three weeks. The State Department also notes that someone overseas may only be eligible for a limited-validity passport for direct return to the United States until HHS verifies repayment.

The legal basis is not new. Federal law 42 U.S.C. § 652(k) says that when HHS receives state certification that an individual owes more than $2,500 in child support arrears, HHS transmits that certification to the Secretary of State, who must refuse to issue a passport and may revoke, restrict, or limit a previously issued passport.

What’s new now is the posture of enforcement. According to the Associated Press (AP), the State Department is beginning revocations with approximately 2,700 passport holders who owe $100,000 or more, with plans to expand enforcement to those who owe more than $2,500. The AP also reported that, until now, the penalty was generally triggered when someone applied for or renewed a passport, while the new approach allows proactive revocation based on data from HHS.

For some people, this will sound like common sense. If a person has enough money to travel internationally, the argument goes, he should have enough money to support his child. There are certainly parents who have the ability to pay and refuse to do so. Enforcement tools exist for a reason. A child should not suffer because an adult decides to disappear behind convenience, pride, resentment, or avoidance.

But that’s not the whole story. In fact, it’s not even the most common story.

Noncustodial Parents, Poverty, and Child Support Debt  

The child support debt conversation is often carried by the image of the willfully absent father, the man with money in his pocket, a passport in his drawer, and no intention of doing right by his child. That man exists. 

However, policy shouldn’t be built only around the worst actor, because when we do that, we often punish the poorest father, the struggling father, the formerly incarcerated father, the unemployed father, the father who wants to pay but cannot find steady work, the father whose order was set beyond his actual ability, and the father who owes money to the state rather than directly to the household raising his child.

The Urban Institute’s “Assessing Child Support Arrears in Nine Large States and the Nation” (a report by Elaine Sorensen, Liliana Sousa, and Simone Schaner) found that most arrears are owed by noncustodial parents with no or low reported incomes. The same report noted that child support arrears had reached $107 billion by September 2007 and that interest on arrears was a primary reason arrears had grown.

A report from the Fatherhood Research and Practice Network (FRPN) – “Policies and Programs Affecting Fathers: A State-by-State Report” by Jessica Pearson and Rachel Wildfeuer – puts the matter even more directly: Child support debt had grown to $115 billion by 2020, and 70% of that debt was owed by noncustodial fathers with annual incomes under $10,000. The report also notes that one-fourth of noncustodial fathers are estimated to live in poverty.

This is the part of the conversation that requires compassion, not as softness, but as accuracy.

A father who earns less than $10,000 a year is not refusing a luxury bill. He is living inside an economic emergency. He may be choosing between rent and food, gas and court, work clothes and diapers, child support and survival. If he loses a driver’s license, he may lose a job. If he loses a passport, he loses travel, yes, but perhaps also an employment opportunity, a family obligation, or the ability to repair a life already narrowed by debt.

The FRPN report explains that child support systems were designed around collection from nonresident parents with stable income, yet many current cases involve parents who are unmarried, unemployed, or underemployed. It warns that:

  • Orders may be set too high.
  • Enforcement techniques can be harsh and ineffective.
  • Uncollectible debt can reduce labor force participation, lower child support payment, reduce paternal engagement, and increase conflict between parents.

That’s the paradox. The system can be trying to collect support for a child while weakening the very conditions that make support possible.

Building Fathers’ Capacity to Pay Child Support

Child support must be collected, but if the goal is child well-being, we have to ask a deeper question: What actually increases a father’s ability and willingness to pay?

The research gives us direction. Employment matters. Accurate orders matter. Debt compromise matters. Parenting time matters. Legal rights matter. Human connection matters.

FRPN reports that employment programs for noncustodial parents have demonstrated promise. In Texas, the NCP Choices program increased employment by 21% and the child support collections rate by 47%, relative to the comparison group. Colorado’s Parents to Work program increased employment and earnings and improved the percentage of owed support paid. New York’s Strengthening Families Through Stronger Fathers Initiative showed significant gains in wages, employment, and a 38% increase in child support payments.

These findings should guide us:

  • Fathers who can work are more likely to pay. 
  • Fathers who are supported into employment are more likely to pay. 
  • Fathers whose orders reflect reality are more likely to pay. 
  • Fathers who are treated as parents, not merely paychecks, are more likely to stay engaged.

There is also a relationship between parenting time and payment. The FRPN report notes that child support and parenting time are legally distinct, yet studies confirm they are deeply connected and that lack of parenting time contributes to nonpayment. It also notes that studies integrating parenting time into child support processes increased child support payments, increased contact between nonresident parents and children, and reduced conflict between parents.

This aligns with what Fathers Incorporated (FI) has seen in the lives of fathers. In Georgia, the issue is even more complicated because paternity and legitimation are separate. A man can be established as the biological father and still lack legal rights to make decisions, request custody, or secure parenting time unless he completes legitimation. Dr. Chalonda L. Smith’s dissertation, “The Effect of a State Legitimation Process on Child Support Payments and Father-Child Relationships,” found a statistically significant positive relationship between knowledge of legitimation policy and attitudes toward visitation and child support obligations among unmarried fathers in Georgia’s Fatherhood Program.

The Moynihan Institute for Fatherhood Research and Policy brief, “Georgia State Legitimation, Father Engagement and Youth Academic Outcomes,” states that fathers with joint custody and parenting time are more likely to pay child support, while fathers with no custody and no parenting time are least likely to pay.

This isn’t an argument against child support. It is an argument for a smarter child support system.

When a father sees his child, knows his role, understands his rights, has a workable parenting plan, and believes the system recognizes him as more than a debt holder, he is more likely to stay connected. When he is connected, he is more likely to contribute. When he contributes, the child benefits. When the child benefits, the purpose of child support is fulfilled.

That’s why responsible fatherhood programs matter.

FI’s Gentle Warriors Academy (GWA) is built around the realities that many fathers face at the same time: child support, employment, co-parenting conflict, legitimation, parenting time, housing, mental health, incarceration history, and family legal needs. The 2021-2023 FI Impact Report identifies the top services needed by fathers as legitimation, child support, housing, parenting time, family legal support, and employment. It also reports that 643 dads enrolled from 2021 to 2023, more than 400 completed the full primary workshops, more than 355 attended graduations, and the graduating fathers represented more than 1,400 children.

FI’s 2024 Impact Report explains that GWA’s curriculum includes responsible fatherhood, co-parenting, conflict resolution, communication skills, financial empowerment, emotional intelligence, and child development, while also responding to needs such as child support, housing, parenting time, custody, expungement, incarceration issues, and employment.

This is what enforcement alone cannot do. Enforcement can pressure a payment, but it can’t build capacity, heal distrust, or create employment. It can’t teach co-parenting communication, help a father understand the legal difference between paternity and legitimation, or repair a relationship with a child who thinks Dad doesn’t care because the adults never learned how to build a parenting team.

None of this excuses nonpayment. It explains why nonpayment must be addressed with more than penalties.

A passport policy may collect money from some parents who have the means to pay and have chosen not to. That is a legitimate public interest. But when the threshold reaches $2,500, it also sweeps in fathers whose debt may reflect poverty, unemployment, incarceration, interest, court confusion, unrealistic orders, or years of trying to survive below the radar of systems that never fully saw them as fathers.

The question isn’t whether child support should be paid. It should. The better question is whether our policies are designed to produce payment, presence, and child well-being or debt, disconnection, and punishment.

We should enforce support obligations, but we should also:

  • Expand payment plans that account for actual income
  • Improve order modification access
  • Reduce uncollectible state-owed arrears
  • Limit the growth of interest
  • Protect employment
  • Fund fatherhood and workforce programs
  • Connect child support proceedings to parenting time when safe and appropriate
  • Make legal education available before fathers fall into debt they do not understand and cannot escape.

Children need support. Mothers need support. Fathers need capacity. And families need systems that can distinguish between unwillingness and inability.

The myth says fathers in arrears do not care. The research says many are poor. Our work says many are trying. The policy should be strong enough to require responsibility and wise enough to build the conditions that make responsibility possible.

Children have to be the anchor. Not adult pride. Not program numbers. Not public relations. Not whether dad feels validated or mom feels vindicated. The child’s well-being is the outcome. If the child is not safe, a healthy family cannot exist. But when the child is safe and there is a father who can be engaged responsibly, supported properly, and held accountable consistently, then fatherhood can become one of the strongest protective factors in that child’s life.

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

For too long in family-strengthening work, fatherhood has been treated as either the missing piece or the risky piece. And depending on the room, fathers are either lifted up as essential to child well-being or quietly kept at a distance because of concerns about conflict, safety, inconsistency, or harm. 

All of these responses come from real experience and contain truth, but none is complete on its own. This is why it’s critical to bring a nuanced, father-inclusive conversation about protective factors into child and family services spaces, including responsible fatherhood programming. 

We propose that protective factors, defined by the CDC as “characteristics that may decrease the likelihood of adverse childhood experiences,” are incomplete if they do not account for fathers. At the same time, father inclusion must never mean father access without discernment, accountability, and safety. 

Father Involvement As a Protective Factor

The question cannot simply be, “How do we get dad more involved?” The better question is, “What kind of father involvement protects the child, respects safety, strengthens accountability, and supports the parenting team where appropriate?” This question changes everything.

It moves fatherhood work away from slogans and into practice. It keeps us from acting as if every father’s presence is automatically protective. It also keeps us from assuming that every father’s absence is safer. Responsible fatherhood work operates within this tension. It holds two truths at once: Fathers are essential, and safety must lead.

Children have to be the anchor. Not adult pride. Not program numbers. Not public relations. Not whether dad feels validated or mom feels vindicated. The child’s well-being is the outcome. If the child is not safe, a healthy family cannot exist. But when the child is safe and there is a father who can be engaged responsibly, supported properly, and held accountable consistently, then fatherhood can become one of the strongest protective factors in that child’s life.

Father-Inclusive Framework for Protective Factors

“Dad-centered” work doesn’t mean “dad-only” work. It doesn’t mean ignoring mothers. It doesn’t mean excusing fathers. It doesn’t mean taking sides. Dad-centered work means fathers are intentionally seen, heard, considered, and engaged within the larger family system. It means practitioners do not build programs around children while pretending fathers are not part of their emotional, financial, cultural, relational, and developmental world.

Children don’t experience their families in pieces. They do not say, “This is a mother-only issue,” “This is a father-only issue,” “This belongs to the court,” or “This belongs to child support.” Children experience the whole environment. They feel the tension, hear everything adults think is hidden behind closed doors, and carry the full weight of adult conflict. 

This is why any protective factors framework that fails to seriously account for fathers is incomplete:

  • Fatherhood can strengthen family resilience, but only when fathers are given space to develop emotional regulation, responsibility, and support. 
  • Fatherhood can strengthen social connections, but only when fathers are not forced to walk the parenting journey alone. 
  • Fatherhood can increase concrete support in times of need, but only when systems stop reducing fathers to child support orders and start helping them become stable, employable, present, and accountable. 
  • Fatherhood can support knowledge of parenting and child development, but only when fathers are fully invited into learning spaces rather than treated as optional visitors. 
  • Fatherhood can strengthen a child’s emotional security, but only when the father’s presence is safe, consistent, nurturing, and mature.

That last word matters: mature. And we need to talk more about it, especially co-parenting maturity.

Co-Parenting Maturity and Protective Factors

Co-parenting maturity is the ability of adults to manage emotion, conflict, communication, safety, responsibility, and decision-making in ways that keep the child at the center. It doesn’t require parents to be romantically involved. It doesn’t require them to like each other or erase the past. Instead, it requires them to understand that the child should not have to carry what the adults have not healed, organized, or resolved.

For many families, co-parenting breaks down not because a parent doesn’t love the child, but because the adults don’t yet have the tools to manage the pressures around the child. Housing, employment, childcare, school decisions, transportation, child support, new relationships, old wounds, family opinions, court orders, and economic stress begin to stack on top of the parenting relationship. 

What often shows up as anger may be grief, fear, rejection, exhaustion, or shame without language. Good fatherhood work helps create that language, but it must also recognize mothers’ experiences. 

If we are working with fathers without helping them understand what mothers may be carrying, we are not doing deep fatherhood work. Many fathers see the child support order but not the childcare scramble. They see the disagreement but not the daily decision fatigue. They see the boundary but not the fear that may have created it. They see the mother’s anger but not always her overwhelm, loneliness, or lack of support.

Recognizing mom’s experience does not weaken fatherhood work. It strengthens it. A father cannot become a better co-parent if he is never helped to understand the experience of the person co-parenting with him.

The same is true in reverse. Mothers, systems, and practitioners also need to see fathers beyond the narrowest assumptions. Some fathers are struggling. Some are immature. Some are inconsistent. Some need correction. Some need boundaries. Some should not have access without safeguards. Some are trying with everything they have, only to be met by systems that see them as absent, dangerous, delinquent, or disposable.

Protective work requires discernment. Not denial. Not blame. Discernment.

This is especially true when domestic violence concerns are present. Father inclusion cannot become a back door around safety. Programs must be domestic-violence aware in their intake, facilitation, referrals, documentation, supervision, and staff training. Practitioners must understand intimidation, coercive control, threats, emotional abuse, physical harm, and the ways children can be used as leverage in adult conflict. 

Safety cannot be a paragraph in a policy manual. It has to be infused into program culture and protocols. Fatherhood programs need protocols, trained staff, referral partners, and case managers who understand when coaching is appropriate and when clinical, legal, or safety intervention is needed. Programs need to know when to slow down, when to document, when to separate, when to refer, and when to say no. The goal isn’t to connect fathers to children at all costs. The goal is to strengthen the conditions under which children can be safe, loved, and supported.

That’s the difference between father involvement and responsible fatherhood. Responsible fatherhood isn’t just about showing up but showing up in a way that helps. Responsible fatherhood is:

  • Consistency, not performance. 
  • Accountability, not entitlement. 
  • A presence that protects rather than disrupts. 
  • A support that reduces stress rather than creating more of it. 

Responsible fatherhood is also the willingness to move from “What are you going to do?” to “What are we going to do for our child?” This shift from “you” to “we” may be one of the most powerful protective factors a family can develop.

This is why fatherhood programs have to stop confusing outputs with outcomes. Attendance is an output. A completed class is an output. A signed form is an output. A father taking a picture at an event is an output. But outcomes ask deeper questions: 

  • Is the father more consistent? 
  • Is communication safer? 
  • Is the child less exposed to adult conflict? 
  • Are co-parents better able to coordinate? 
  • Does Mom feel more supported? 
  • Is Dad more emotionally regulated? 
  • Is the support circle stronger? 
  • Is the family safer because of program participation?

These are the questions that move the responsible fatherhood field forward.

Protective factors must be more than checklists. They must become a way of seeing the whole family. And seeing the whole family means seeing fathers clearly, not romantically, not fearfully, not carelessly, but clearly:

And the main thing is children.

The sideline is a place where childhood, ambition, community, and family values meet in public. That means it’s also one of the places where leadership is needed most. 

We don’t need louder parents; we need wiser ones. We don’t need more sideline theatrics; we need more sideline maturity.

A father’s presence on the sideline can communicate steadiness, confidence, perspective, and protection. It can also communicate volatility, ego, and misplaced pressure. Sideline Dad will lean into this tension honestly.

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

There was a time when the sideline was just the sideline.

It was a folding chair, a concession stand, a whistle, a few loud cheers, maybe an argument over a call, and then everybody went home. Today, the sideline has become something else. It has become a stage where adult pressure, personal ambition, public performance, and unresolved emotion too often collide in full view of children.

That is one of the reasons Sideline Dad matters.

Created to explore what is happening on the sidelines of our children’s lives, “Sideline Dad with Coach Javin Foreman” is a new series within the I Am Dad Podcast. 

In spaces where many parents show up with love, sacrifice, and deep commitment, there is also a growing need to confront the moments when support turns into spectacle, encouragement becomes interference, and what should remain centered on children is overtaken by adult emotion, pressure, and behavior.

The warning signs are no longer isolated.

In January 2026, ESPN reported on a national U.S. Center for SafeSport survey showing that “managing parents” is among the top reasons youth coaches have considered leaving or decided to quit. The report, in which coaches described verbal harassment and abuse from parents, tied its findings to a larger pattern already affecting the future of youth sports. To make its point, it cited a 2023 survey from the National Association of Sports Officials in which more than 40% of respondents said unruly parents at youth sporting events were the biggest impediment to officials’ job satisfaction.

This data isn’t floating in the abstract. It’s meeting us in real gyms, real bleachers, and real communities.

In January on Long Island, a high school basketball game erupted into a brawl, and a 36-year-old spectator was accused of punching a 15-year-old player during the chaos. In February, a fight at a Georgia high school girls’ basketball game led to charges against three people. These are not just ugly moments. They are warning flares. They tell us that a youth event can become unsafe in seconds when adults forget why they’re there.

Children do not merely play in front of us. They learn from us.

They learn how to handle disappointment by watching us handle disappointment. They learn how to respond to authority by watching how we speak to referees, coaches, umpires, officials, and event staff. They learn what competition means by watching whether we treat it as growth or warfare. They learn whether their value is rooted in effort and development or in points, rankings, offers, and applause.

That is why this conversation is bigger than sportsmanship. This is a conversation about formation.

A child on the basketball floor may be trying to master footwork, defensive rotations, confidence, and poise. Meanwhile, the parent in the stands may be teaching something far more lasting without saying a word:

  • Every outburst becomes instruction. 
  • Every public humiliation becomes instruction. 
  • Every entitled confrontation becomes instruction. 
  • And every disciplined response becomes instruction, too.

The deeper issue is that youth sports no longer operate in the same cultural climate they did a generation ago.

Families are navigating travel teams, recruiting pressure, private coaching, highlight culture, social media visibility, transfer conversations, performance branding, and now a broader sports economy shaped by Name, Image, Likeness (NIL). 

Even if NIL is most immediately associated with college athletics, it has changed how many families imagine the pathway. The dream feels closer, the stakes feel higher, and the temptation to treat a child’s activity like an investment portfolio is stronger than ever.

These pressures distort parents’ presence. A father or mother may begin with sincere support, but support can quietly become management. Management can become control. Control can become public frustration. Public frustration can become damage — not only damage to a team environment, but damage to the child’s confidence, joy, emotional safety, and sense of identity.

And here is the part many adults miss: The child usually pays twice.

First, they carry the weight of the game itself. Then they carry the weight of the adult reaction to it. The burden is heavy enough when the reaction is a ride home filled with criticism. It becomes worse when the reaction spills into a confrontation at the scorer’s table, a screaming match in the stands, or a fight that gets captured on somebody’s phone and shared before the team even gets back to the locker room.

This is why Sideline Dad is not merely a sports show: it’s a guide for parental presence.

Sideline Dad Podcast: A Guide for Parental Presence

We need a place where fathers, mothers, coaches, and supporters can talk honestly about what it means to show up well. We need room for conversations about 

  • Injury protocol (because too many parents push children back too soon)
  • NIL and the false promises that sometimes swirl around youth development
  • How the behavior of adults at games impacts their child’s development
  • Current events, expert insights, and real-world stories that help families see the bigger picture.

We also need a new definition of what a good sideline parent looks like. A good sideline parent is not silent, passive, or disconnected. A good sideline parent is:

  • Present without becoming possessive
  • Supportive without becoming controlling
  • Proud without becoming performative
  • Engaged without making the event about themselves.

A good sideline parent understands that the role is not to coach from the bleachers, referee from the baseline, or audition for authority in front of a child. The role is to create emotional safety, model restraint, and reinforce the lesson that character matters even when the scoreboard does not cooperate.

This is where fathers, in particular, have a powerful role to play.

A father’s presence on the sideline can communicate steadiness, confidence, perspective, and protection. It can also communicate volatility, ego, and misplaced pressure. Sideline Dad will lean into this tension honestly. The issue isn’t whether fathers should be present but what kind of presence they bring when they show up.

The sideline is one of the places where childhood, ambition, community, and family values meet in public. That means it’s also one of the places where leadership is needed most. 

We don’t need louder parents; we need wiser ones. We don’t need more sideline theatrics; we need more sideline maturity. We don’t need adults fighting over children’s games while children watch their examples fall apart in real time. 

We need mothers and fathers who understand that every game, meet, recital, and performance isn’t only an event for the child. It’s an opportunity for the adult to demonstrate who they are.

That’s the lane Sideline Dad intends to occupy. Not to scold, sensationalize, or pretend every parent gets it wrong. But to say clearly that our children deserve better than chaos from the people who come to support them. 

And they deserve adults who understand that sometimes the most important thing happening on the floor is not the game: It’s what the child is learning from the sideline.

The opportunity in front of the responsible fatherhood field is not only to preserve resources but to clarify relevance. Our field has matured beyond the point where it should be treated as a stand-alone niche. It now has enough research, practice, and systems experience to demonstrate that father engagement affects outcomes across multiple domains: child well-being, co-parenting, family economic stability, system navigation, and community support. 

The more clearly the field can connect this work to family outcomes that other systems already value, the more durable its place becomes.

by The Moynihan Institute for Fatherhood Research and Policy

The FY2027 federal budget presents the responsible fatherhood field with an important analytical challenge. It asks us to think carefully not only about funding levels but also about structure, priorities, and where fathers fit within the nation’s evolving family policy framework.

At the broadest level, the proposed Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) budget reflects both contraction and reorganization. HHS proposes $111.1 billion in discretionary budget authority for FY2027, down from the prior year, while also restructuring several major functions. This includes creation of the “Administration for Children, Families, and Communities” (ACFC) and the “Administration for a Healthy America” (AHA). The administration frames its approach as consolidation, efficiency, prevention, and targeted health investments.

For the responsible fatherhood field, this means it’s not simply a year to ask whether known, familiar line items survive: It’s a year to examine:

  • How are family-serving systems being reorganized?
  • Which supports remain in place? And which adjacent supports are being narrowed or eliminated? 
  • Where are there new opportunities to strengthen outcomes for children and families?

The proposed ACFC is especially important in this regard. In the FY2027 HHS Budget in Brief, ACFC discretionary budget authority falls from $35.535 billion in FY2026 to $28.680 billion in FY2027. At the same time, several of the ACFC’s major child- and family-serving platforms remain level, including Head Start ($12.357 billion), the Child Care and Development Block Grant ($8.831 billion), Family Violence Prevention and Services ($245 million), and the National Domestic Violence Hotline ($21 million). Yet the budget proposes eliminating LIHEAP, Preschool Development Grants, and the Community Services Block Grant.

These changes tell us something important: Even when certain foundational child and family systems remain intact, the broader support environment around families may become thinner. 

For families already navigating economic instability, co-parenting strain, housing insecurity, child care pressure, or system complexity, reductions in adjacent supports can increase stress even when core services remain available. This reality deserves thoughtful attention from everyone committed to healthy families.

The proposal for AHA presents a similar mix of continuity and change. The FY2027 Budget in Brief describes AHA as a consolidated entity that would bring together major public health, behavioral health, and maternal and child health functions to improve coordination and reduce duplication. Its proposed funding emphasizes prevention, maternal and child health, primary care, behavioral health, tribal services, and chronic disease reduction as priority areas. At the same time, AHA’s discretionary budget authority falls from $19.649 billion in FY2026 to $14.673 billion in FY2027, and the FY2027 materials Teen Pregnancy Prevention, Sexual Risk Avoidance, and Family Planning zeroing out in this new structure.

From a research and policy perspective, these are not merely administrative details. They represent a different way of organizing the federal family and health landscape. The question for the field isn’t whether one agrees or disagrees with every element of that approach. 

The more useful question is this: Within this new landscape, where can father engagement contribute to the goals that nearly everyone shares? 

This is where common ground becomes possible. There is broad agreement that:

  • Children benefit from stable, supportive, and healthy family environments. 
  • Early childhood matters.
  • Parental engagement matters.
  • Prevention matters.
  • Communities do better when families are safer and more stable. 

Whatever one’s broader interpretation of the FY2027 budget, it preserves major systems connected to those outcomes. Head Start remains funded. Child care remains funded. Child welfare remains funded. Family violence services remain funded. Tribal child and family services remain funded. Maternal and child health investments remain present.

This matters because fatherhood work is often strongest when it is connect to (not isolated from) these systems:

The responsible fatherhood field also has reason to remember that federal fatherhood work has a long history and a serious policy footprint. For example, the Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood program has operated as a competitive federal grant program for years, supporting work in healthy marriage and couple relationships, responsible parenting, and economic stability, with over $1 billion awarded or committed across multiple grant cohorts through 2025. That legacy should not be viewed as separate from family policy; it is family policy.

In that sense, the opportunity in front of our field is not only to preserve resources but to clarify relevance.

The responsible fatherhood field has matured beyond the point where it should be treated as a stand-alone niche. It now has enough research, practice, and systems experience to demonstrate that father engagement affects outcomes across multiple domains: child well-being, co-parenting, family economic stability, system navigation, and community support. 

The more clearly the field can connect fatherhood work to outcomes that other systems already value, the more durable its place becomes.

This is especially important in a budget environment where not every relevant funding stream remains visible in the same way. The FY2026 appendix explicitly displayed Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood grants within TANF. The FY2027 summary materials currently available do not separately display that line item in the same way. This doesn’t mean fatherhood work is less important. It means it’s more important than ever for the field demonstrate how father engagement contributes to the success of the systems that are clearly present in the budget.

This moment calls for analysis, not alarm, and clarity, not caricature. It calls for the responsible fatherhood field to ask where healthy families can still be advanced, and it calls for practical collaboration, smart design, and stronger integration of fathers into systems that remain central to family life:

Healthy families must remain the shared goal.

If the FY2027 budget reflects a more consolidated and more targeted federal approach, then the responsible fatherhood field has a corresponding opportunity: to show, with discipline and evidence, how father engagement strengthens the very outcomes these systems still seek to improve.

This is a practical, not partisan, proposition, and it is one the responsible fatherhood field must be ready to lead.

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