New York Is Building More Than a Fatherhood Committee

by Kenneth Braswell

The room in Albany did not feel like a meeting.

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

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

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

That is why what New York is doing matters.

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

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

What I heard in Albany was different.

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

That is not small.

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

That question matters.

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

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

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

New York has an opportunity to do something different.

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

That is why data matters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Safety must lead this work. Always.

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

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

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

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

New York can model that deeper work.

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

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

The country needs that model.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And do not apologize for fatherhood.

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

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

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

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

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

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