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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.

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

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

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

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

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

Our Latest Fatherhood Research and Its Findings

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

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

Here’s what we learned:

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

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

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

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

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

What This Research Means for Fathers Incorporated

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

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

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

Research as Guidance for the Responsible Fatherhood and Human Services Fields

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

by Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Consider what we are seeing across sports today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that choice carries responsibility.

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

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

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

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

Where do we draw our lines?

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

At the very least, somebody should say something.

This is the moment to treat fatherhood as a national, not niche, strategy. A father’s presence is a protective factor, not a slogan. A father’s stability is both personal triumph and public good. A father’s ability to co-parent peacefully is bigger than a relationship win; it’s child development work.
America can keep debating fatherhood like a moral argument, or we can finally treat it like what it is: a practical, urgent, solvable challenge that requires real investment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our data tells a different story.

Fathers Seeking Support Report Three Main Obstacles 

The stories our dads share are about constraints:

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

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

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

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

When the Legal System Stands in the Way of Father Involvement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lessons for the National Responsible Fatherhood Field

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

And life does hit hard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

They’e also telling us what works.

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

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

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

The Urgent Need to Fund Well-Built Fatherhood Programs 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Researching Young Black Fathers in Atlanta

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

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

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

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

Young Black Fathers Face Fear, Stigma, and Service Gaps

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

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

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

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

How Research Impacts the Work of Fathers Incorporated

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

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

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

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

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

Fatherhood research informs how we design entry points. 

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

Fatherhood research informs how we talk about fatherhood. 

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

Fatherhood research informs local partnerships. 

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

Fatherhood research informs advocacy and policy reform.

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

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

Research-Informed Action Steps for Fatherhood Programs

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

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

From there, the actionable takeaways are straightforward:

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

Final Thoughts

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

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

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

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

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Architecture of a Successful Super Bowl Halftime Show

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

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

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

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

A Fatherhood Moment at Super Bowl LX

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Romantic love is celebrated for how it makes us feel. Fatherhood love is measured by what it asks us to do. It requires endurance when affirmation is absent, consistency when relationships are strained, and restraint when emotions run hot. It is love that shows up in consistency, sacrifice, and presence. And yet, despite its power, fatherhood is rarely centered in public conversations about love.
Many fathers learn early that their love is expected to be practical rather than expressive. Provide. Protect. Pay. Perform. As a result, many men carry deep affection for their children without ever being taught how to articulate it, nurture it, or receive it in return.

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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