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July 6, 2010

Honoring Community Fathers

Filed under: Fatherhood, Male Socialization — admin @ 9:41 am

By Lowell Johnson

Who is your father? When most people hear this question, they answer with the name of their biological father, or sometimes their step dad. I contend that as important as primary fathers are in a child’s life, there are many unnamed men who are equally important to the healthy development of children in our community. These men are the community fathers.

What is a community father? Community fathers are all the men who show up for children at the variety of activities that kids participate in as they grow up. Some of these activities are organized, but other activities are spontaneous or informal, such as playing ball with neighborhood kids or taking a child fishing. Children are constantly learning and during these activities children watch how men interact with other people. They use this information to learn what it means to be a man, and hopefully a respectful human being.

Who are the community fathers? In one sense all men are community fathers since children watch all of us. This implies that men should be constantly aware of the model they unavoidably provide to kids. However, this does not mean that men need to be perfect individuals, because none of us are perfect. We only need to be ourselves, and try at all times to show respect for others.

Some men are very intentional about their community fathering, and it is these men who I would like to specially honor this Father’s Day. These are the men who researchers label as generative fathers. Generative fathers are men whose own personal development has brought them to the point where they believe they should “give back” to their community. Generative fathers have learned that they also personally benefit from showing up for the children.

These are some of the organized groups where you can see community fathers in action; Lakes Area Guys Network, Kinship Partners, all sports coaches, 4H, church activities, Timber Bay, Scouting, PTO/PTA activities, and a range of community service organizations.

Men who are ready to give back to our community can contact any of these groups to volunteer their time. Our children and our community need your help.

Lowell Johnson is a member of the Brainerd Lakes Area Early Childhood Coalition and a board member of the Minnesota Fathers & Families Network. This article is reprinted with permission by the author (June 2010).

June 30, 2010

A message about “father absence” – let’s be intentional in our language

Filed under: Fatherhood, Messaging, Language and Discourse — admin @ 3:01 pm

“Father absence” is a term you hear often. Usually it refers to the father being absent from the same household where the child lives. For example, “Children in father-absent homes are five times more likely to be poor. In 2002, 7.8 percent of children in married-couple families were living in poverty, compared with 38.4 percent of children in female-householder families.”

But a father not living in the same household as the child does not mean the father is absent from the child’s life. In fact, much of our work at MFFN and in the fatherhood field is to say loud and clear, that a father not living in the home does not make him an “absent father”, invisible, or unimportant, even though our society often treats him that way.

Drawing attention to the importance of fathers by using “father-absent” terms can do a disservice to both fathers AND mothers. It fails to recognize the important role that fathers can play when they aren’t living in the home, and it often leads to blaming or shaming of single-female headed households. And we know that is not what many intend.

What most of us intend is to support fathers, no matter where they live or their family form. We want fathers to be supported in being healthy, active and involved fathers because they raise healthy children, build healthy families and contribute to healthy communities. We can recognize that it is usually easier to be a healthy, active presence in a child’s life when you are able to live in the same home every day as your child while simultaneously trying to make it easier to support fathers who don’t live with their children every day. Finally, we can–and should– support better systems, services and public policies for both types of fathers.

So, next time you hear the term “father absence” think: absent from what? A physical structure? Or a child’s life? Let’s not perpetuate the idea that the only way a father matters is by living in the same home as his child.

June 21, 2010

Shared parenting - A silver bullet?

Filed under: Co-parenting, Fatherhood, Public Policy — admin @ 1:19 pm

For unmarried and divorcing parents, determing how to divide a child’s time between the two parents is often a gut-wrenching decision. Recently, MFFN made a policy decision to endorse a number of tools that would support parents in making this decision. We cite a variety of tools that could support the child, lower animosity between the parents, and enable both parents to be involved with their children in a healthy and active way (see more here).

MFFN does not support a legal presumption of joint physical custody because it has not been found to be the “silver bullet” to support the involvement of fathers in the lives of their children. For example, in Australia, parents that engaged in a child inclusive mediation often agreed to split time unevenly (with fathers often agreeing on less than 35% of the child’s time). Yet, these fathers expressed more satisfaction than fathers who didn’t have a child inclusive intervention (more here). We believe that families should be presented with various options and resources to facilitate positive parenting time decisions.

Currently, Minnesota does require a 25% minimum parenting time standard for most families. We believe this is a good start toward increasing healthy father-child involvement. And we think there are other effective tools that could be implemented to continue supporting families to make good decisions about co-parenting after divorce or separation.

June 11, 2010

A Good Opportunity To “Get Along”

Filed under: Co-parenting, Fatherhood, Public Policy — admin @ 12:27 pm

With that title, you might have thought I’m talking about our work around coparenting for parents. Actually, I’m talking about the fatherhood and marriage field. The President’s budget plan that calls for using $500 million dollars in fiscal year 2011 in a new Fatherhood, Marriage and Family Innovation Fund is a good opportunity for the fatherhood and marriage fields to assess their relationship to each other, and work to get along for the betterment of both. (For a nice explanation of the proposed Fund, see the posting by the Center for Family Policy and Practice, here.)

As a graduate student in public policy in the late 1990s, I remember the clear divisions between the “fatherhood” folks and the “marriage” folks. Unfortunately, despite a lot of good work, there are still some who want to divide along these lines, rather than unite to support a broader vision of healthy fatherhood and healthy couple relationships.

At MFFN, we subscribe to the notion that supporting fatherhood and marriage (and we would say, much more broadly, supporting healthy relationships, whether it directly leads to marriage or not) are not opposing priorities. Rather, in the words of pre-eminent researchers, “responsible fatherhood and couples’ relationship quality are closely linked rather than opposing priorities.” To quote: “qualitative, longitudinal, and now intervention research findings indicate that a man’s capacity to fulfill his role(s) as father is embedded in his relationship with the child’s mother.” In turn, for parents who live together, strengthening the parents’ relationship has been found to increase the father’s involvement in parenting. (For the full article, read “Policies that Strengthen Fatherhood and Family Relationships,” Knox, Cowans and Bildner, MDRC, here).

The President’s proposed Fatherhood, Marriage and Family Innovation Fund allows support for both fatherhood and healthy relationship support and education. Healthy relationship support and education supports healthy marriages. Like any relationship or marriage, the fatherhood field and marriage field may have points of disagreements. But let’s use this opportunity to find our points of agreement. Let’s show that we can get along, and support passage of the President’s budget plan.

Melissa Froehle
Policy and Program Director

May 23, 2010

Dads’ home activities proportionate to moms’

Filed under: Co-parenting, Economy, Fatherhood — admin @ 7:14 pm

A new study, based on 800 hours of video footage of dual-earner middle-income families, has been released by UCLA’s “Center on Everyday Lives of Families”. Among the findings are that moms still do more at home than fathers — but much of the difference is based on the fact that mothers return home first after work. The study finds that “during the time that fathers are home, they spend a proportionately equal amount of time involved in activities as mothers.”

The study also finds that fathers and mothers spend nearly-equal amounts of time talking with family members or on the phone (19% of time for mothers and 20% of time for fathers). This may help debunk a myth that men tend to be more silent or less expressive than women. However, the study shows that women still do most of the housework, according to the New York Times. Mothers spend 27% of their time on housework; dads spend 18%; and children spend just 3%.

The study reveals some fascinating information about stress levels in families, the benefits (or lack thereof) of providing allowances to children, and various other facets of modern middle-class American families.

May 3, 2010

Daddy Phone

Filed under: Co-parenting, Fatherhood — admin @ 9:21 am

This new country music video, here, provides a moving and powerful glimpse into the relationship between a nonresidential dad and his young son. The accompanying page from the National Center for Fathering provides some good discussion questions for groups of dads or professionals who work with parents.

The video portrays a father who gives his son a cellphone as a way to stay connected. During their time together, the father and son enjoy playing in a park and bonding closely. The video reminds us that children need their parents to be available to them. And it shows that the emotional bond is a two-way street.

The subtext of the video includes an image of a healthy co-parenting relationship — with the father, the mother, and the mother’s new husband. All three adults show maturity and love for this young boy.

Thanks to country singer Marty Raybon for this loving image of family life.

April 6, 2010

Simple, direct messages help to improve parenting behaviors

Filed under: Fatherhood, Health, Messaging, Language and Discourse, Violence Prevention — admin @ 9:35 am

Last month I attended a conference where one of the authors of the book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, spoke about the challenges of changing everyday behaviors related to public health. Dan Heath spoke about big issues like changing the way we eat and exercise. His underlying message was that we (health and human service professionals) often make our jobs too hard for ourselves.

When we’re trying to impact community-wide social changes we often forget, or ignore, a few key lessons about human nature.

One of these lessons about human nature is the idea that we are more likely to change our behaviors if we have specific instructions about how to change our behaviors. Dan Heath explained, for example, that a food drive can be more successful if we tell people what kind of food to donate or if we give people a map to show them the location of the food drive. These specific instructions make it easier for people to make the change that we seek.

In a similar way, the authors of Switch talk about the challenges of parenting. In particular, in one chapter of the book, they talk about parents who engage in acts of child abuse. The authors cite a fascinating intervention that works one-on-one with parents to change their abusive behaviors. The key to the intervention is to script the parents’ responses to their children – to essentially teach parents how to interact with their own kids.

The program achieves amazing results amongst many of these abusive parents. The message, according to the authors, is that for many parents “child abuse…may be partly the result of a lack of understanding, a lack of clear instruction or guidance on what to do. This is not to excuse the parents’ behavior, of course. It is simply to point out that simple scripting has power beyond what any of us could have predicted.”

In many ways, the simplicity of the intervention makes perfect sense. We know that most parents have too few role models of positive parenting behaviors. We know that too many media images of parenting involve extreme behaviors of permissiveness vs harsh discipline. We know that blurred gender roles leave many parents grasping to figure out how fathering and mothering can be complementary parenting styles.

During this April – Child Abuse Prevention Month – scripting for parents is an achievable goal. As professionals across Minnesota, we have a duty to craft messages that are simple, direct, and specific. We can achieve change if we, first, are willing to change the way we approach the massive challenges of public health.

-Paul Masiarchin

March 22, 2010

A Spiritual Perspective on Family Courts

Filed under: Co-parenting, Fatherhood, Messaging, Language and Discourse, Public Policy — admin @ 9:58 pm

Many of our colleagues across Minnesota are familiar with the compassionate and thoughtful voice of Hennepin County’s Judge Bruce Peterson. In a March 2010 article in Tikkun Magazine he describes a cooperative approach to family court – an approach that would attempt to remove the conflict, anger, and winner-loser and replace those elements with cooperation, compassion, and mutual decision making.

As Peterson states, “Given the raw emotional power generated in family court and the sheer number of Americans experiencing this public institution firsthand, I have become convinced that it is a logical place to start building a workable spiritual agenda for families.” Peterson explains a spiritual agenda as one that offers opportunities for growth and healing. He continues, “What’s needed is to do away with the adversary nature of family proceedings and instead offer opportunities for deeper communication.”

Peterson describes family court as anathema to the needs to co-parents who need to find ways to cooperate in raising their child. He states, “The problem, of course, is that if the litigants are parents, for the next fifty years they will still be interacting and making decisions about their children. Courtroom combat may be fine for people who never have to see each other again, but for families, destroying whatever remains of a parenting relationship is the worst possible outcome. After seeing what some people do to each other in court, I am amazed they can bear to lay eyes on each other again, much less cooperate in parenting.” Thus, family court’s adversarial approach needs to be replaced. He concludes, “By replacing adversary proceedings with processes that encourage mutual concern, healing can become an increasingly important function of the courts.”

The full article offers a deeper exploration into the ways that family courts could change to encourage cooperation, healing, and growth for families that are divorcing or for never-married parents who are deciding the outcome of child custody and other issues. His premise is one of hope. It would require massive shifts in expectations, policies, and funding in the nation’s court systems. The benefits for families and children could be equally massive.

January 20, 2010

Parental and Child Health

Filed under: Early Childhood, Fatherhood, Health — admin @ 12:10 pm

The interconnectedness of family health is an issue that mothers and fathers have long understood. A child doesn’t grow up in a vacuum — her parents, family, home, and community all impact the child in diverse ways. However, until recently, the impact of a father’s presence (and his own health) on a child’s development has been under-emphasized in public policy and not well researched.

We’re proud to share the nascent work taking place at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health where a research study will help to expand our knowledge of these parental-child health connections. The National Children’s Study is exploring children’s health through a lens that explores not just “maternal and child health” but also “paternal and child health”. It’s an important step toward advancing early childhood development and toward making stronger public connections between young children and healthy men.

January 5, 2010

Breaking old stereotypes

Filed under: Fatherhood, Male Socialization, Messaging, Language and Discourse — admin @ 11:42 am

For years, we’ve known that notions about healthy fatherhood are evolving. Men who are actively involved fathers tend to cite their role as a nurturer and caregiver as the most important aspect of fatherhood. This is in sharp contrast to notions of fatherhood in the middle of the last century, when fathers tended to cite their role as a breadwinner as the most important aspect of fatherhood.

Yet, stereotypes are slow to change. The character of the uninvolved father (who is either a strict disciplinarian or an uninformed and out-of-touch adult) persists.

That’s why we’re so pleased to share these public service announcements that show wonderful images of healthy fatherhood. Available in both Spanish and English, these videos present one small step in the move to make fatherhood fashionable and realistic to the lives of American men.

Happy New Year.

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