When Fatherhood Advocacy Goes to Washington

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

The National Council for Equal Shared Parenting (NCESP) Summit in Washington, D.C., wasn’t simply a gathering of parents frustrated by family court. It was a convening of lived experience, legal strategy, grassroots organizing, research, and public policy. 

Throughout the event, speakers returned to a central truth that has long animated the responsible fatherhood field: Children benefit when safe, capable, loving fathers are meaningfully engaged in their lives, and systems must be designed to support that engagement rather than quietly undermine it. 

The NCESP Summit brought together advocates from across the country who are working to change how lawmakers, courts, agencies, and communities understand shared parenting, child support, child welfare, adoption, domestic violence, parental alienation, and the broader infrastructure needed to support families after separation. 

Josh Bergman, a father from Northwest Wisconsin and a member of the shared parenting advocacy community, opened with a personal account of divorce, litigation, false allegations, court costs, and years of separation from his children. He described spending $180,000 in court, losing significant time with his children, and finding himself financially, physically, and emotionally broken before discovering a community of advocates online. “That night and a Facebook message,” he said, “I found hope for free,” capturing a theme that echoed throughout the summit. People often find the movement only after the system has exhausted them.

Jamie Smith, founder of Women Supporting Equal Parenting Rights, added an important counterweight to the stereotype that shared parenting advocacy is only a fathers’ rights conversation. As a mother and adult child of divorce, she framed equal parenting not as a gender war but as a family stability issue. 

Lauren Corbett, widely known online as “The Dadvocate,” reinforced the role women play in challenging public assumptions about fathers. Lauren’s remarks pushed back against the caricature that fatherhood advocacy is driven only by “angry, belligerent, divorced dads.” Her own entry into the movement came through witnessing a committed father who had moved hundreds of miles to be near his son, only to face severe limits on parenting time. Her story gave voice to the NCESP Summit’s larger argument: When policy and court culture reduce fit parents to visitors, children pay the emotional cost.

Randy Keith, known as “The Present Father,” described how social media advocacy can become public policy engagement. His advocacy started when he spoke into his phone. He wasn’t looking for a following but soon heard from fathers who told him, “I’m so glad I’m not alone.” His remarks focused especially on orders of protection, asking the room how many had experienced one and noting the number of hands raised. His point wasn’t that protective orders are never needed, but that false or misused orders can separate children from parents for months, years, and sometimes permanently. He urged attendees to make “one more phone call to a legislator,” educate “one more attorney,” and educate “one more judge.”

David Bello of Texas showed how grassroots energy can be converted into party platform language and legislative pressure. Drawing on his experience advancing equal shared parenting within the Republican Party of Texas platform, Bello argued that equal parenting should be the starting point in custody cases when both parents are fit, willing, and able. He presented a practical model for how state-level political infrastructure can be used to move family law reform, underscoring that policy change isn’t only about being right — it’s about knowing how systems move. He urged advocates to understand political parties, package issues effectively, and frame shared parenting in language that resonates across ideological lines. For Republicans, he suggested emphasizing family values and the importance of children having both parents. For Democrats, he suggested emphasizing equality and how shared parenting can support both mothers’ and fathers’ opportunities. In doing so, he showed that fatherhood policy doesn’t belong to one political camp. It can be framed instead as a child well-being issue, a family stability issue, a due process issue, and a public systems reform issue.

The Dad’s Resource Center, represented by Executive Director Jeff Steiner and connected to the work of founder Joel Myers, brought attention to fathers as potential victims of domestic violence, coercive systems, and institutional blind spots. He described the trauma of being willing and able to parent but being prevented from doing so “for no good reason.” He also spoke about fathers who reported being victims of domestic violence but didn’t receive services from local domestic violence providers. These remarks were careful in one important way: Steiner didn’t deny the necessity of domestic violence organizations or the reality that some men are dangerous. Instead, he argued for a more accurate, case-specific approach that recognizes that fathers can also be victims and that children can be harmed when systems apply one-directional assumptions. This message is consistent with the responsible fatherhood field’s most mature position: Father inclusion and family safety must be advanced together, not traded against each other.

Christopher Emanuel and his daughter Skylar delivered one of the NCESP Summit’s most affecting moments through their story of adoption, due process, and responsible father registries. Skylar described being adopted at birth through a process she characterized as adoption trafficking and credited her father as “my dad, my hero,” who fought to restore her life and future. Pearson then explained the Responsible Father Registry, describing it as a safeguard that gives unmarried fathers a way to preserve their right to receive notice before an adoption moves forward. “It doesn’t automatically determine custody,” he said. “It simply guarantees that a putative father who is willing to accept responsibility has the opportunity to be heard.” Pearson argued that every expectant father leaving a hospital, military installation, family court, health department, or DMV should know about the registry. His central point was that responsible fathers aren’t asking for special treatment but for notice, transparency, and the chance to be heard before a permanent separation occurs. This is a profound responsible fatherhood issue. If society expects fathers to provide, protect, and be accountable, then it must also ensure that they know the legal steps required to preserve their relationship with their children.

Mark Ludwig, the driving force behind the NCESP, emphasized strategy, infrastructure, and discipline. He repeatedly reminded attendees that passing legislation isn’t as simple as writing a bill. It requires relationships with the White House, federal agencies, members of Congress, state lawmakers, policy influencers, and grassroots advocates. He warned that opposition groups often have money, lobbying relationships, and deep institutional power. In response, he called for state chapters, legislative leadership development, mentoring, branding discipline, and the building of a serious grassroots organization. Ludwig’s strategic language is critical: Movements often fail when they mistake emotional intensity for political power. 

Shared Parenting and Child Support 

One of the shared parenting summit’s policy-specific presentations focused on Title IV-D and the federal child support system. Don Hubin from the National Parents Organization explained that the child support program serves one in five children in America, reaches approximately 12.2 million cases, and collects close to $30 billion annually. Yet he challenged the common assumption that collection totals alone prove the system’s success. He argued that the program’s efficiency should be measured instead by how much additional support it produces compared with what families might have arranged voluntarily. He described the system as one that often fails to distinguish between fathers who won’t pay and fathers who can’t pay, noting that most obligors in default are “dead broke,” not “deadbeats.”

Hubin’s remarks connected shared parenting advocacy to the responsible fatherhood field’s long-standing concern about child support policy, poverty, employment, and father-child contact. He cited problems with guideline calculations, orders based on gross rather than disposable income, weak parenting-time adjustments, and enforcement practices such as driver’s license and professional license suspensions that reduce a father’s ability to work and pay. He called for a National Child Support Commission, corrective legislation to include parenting time in Title IV-D cases, increased Access and Visitation funding, and performance incentives that move away from revenue maximization toward right-sizing child support orders.

This policy roadmap is closely connected to the field of responsible fatherhood. Fathers Incorporated (FI) has long argued that father engagement can’t be separated from the systems fathers must navigate, including child support, employment, incarceration, co-parenting, legal access, and family law. FI’s own work through the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse (NRFC) has positioned the organization as a national resource for fathers, practitioners, researchers, and policymakers, providing research, tools, webinars, a national call center, and convenings that strengthen the field. The summit’s focus on Title IV-D reform wasn’t outside the responsible fatherhood movement; it was directly inside it.

Shared Parenting and Child Welfare 

Connie Reguli, an attorney, citizen lobbyist, and founder of the Family Forward Project, brought Title IV-E, child welfare, and the power of grassroots advocacy into the summit’s conversation. Introduced as someone with deep knowledge of both Title IV-E and Title IV-D, Reguli traced many of today’s family policy conflicts back to 1974, when major child welfare and child support enforcement structures took shape. She spoke sharply about family courts, child welfare removals, and the professional culture of law, but her broader point was strategic: Advocates need numbers, organization, and persistence. 

Reguli urged summit attendees not merely to complain about broken systems, but to become citizen lobbyists capable of changing them, beginning with communicating regularly with their state representatives, state senators, members of Congress, and senators. She reminded the audience that legislators handle thousands of bills, but many of them are shaped by people who simply show up, build relationships, and do the work. Her practical advice — go to county commission meetings, school board meetings, run for office, build small teams, specialize, and support one another — offers advocates a frame for civic organizing.

The child welfare discussion is informed by fatherhood research. A national state-by-state report on policies and programs affecting fathers notes that low-income, nonresident fathers face barriers across child support, child welfare, criminal justice, early childhood, education, employment, family law, food and housing, health and mental health, and responsible fatherhood. The report’s purpose is to create a baseline of policies and programs that support father engagement and to highlight barriers that limit father-child contact. Reguli’s remarks sat squarely in that frame: Fatherhood can’t be advanced through program services alone if the policy structures around families aren’t also examined and reformed.

Shared Parenting and Military Families

The NCESP Summit also focused attention on veterans and military families. Speakers from the Warrior Family Advocacy perspective described how military service can become weaponized in family court, particularly when service members face relocations, deployments, or assumptions about post-traumatic stress. One speaker argued that if the country wants to thank service members for their service, it should “help [them] be the parents [their] children deserve.” Another described how frequent moves, custody orders, and the military’s outdated assumptions about intact households place service members and their children in a gap between federal military policy and state family courts.

For veterans, the question isn’t only whether courts value father-child relationships, but whether the country’s gratitude for service extends into the courtroom when those service members are fighting to remain connected to their children. This connects directly to the responsible fatherhood field’s emphasis on men’s mental health, trauma, resilience, and the systems that shape father engagement. FI’s national work identifies trauma and resilience in fatherhood, men’s mental health, education systems, and the intersection of fatherhood with broader societal issues as core areas of leadership and expertise.

Shared Parenting and “Kayden’s Law”

In a discussion of parental alienation, psychological abuse, and Kayden’s Law, Dr. William Bernet framed parental alienation as a serious trauma affecting children and families. Brian Hart, a forensic consultant with a long-standing interest in parental alienation research, argued that the field is supported by a growing body of published scholarship and pointed to the American Psychological Association’s child custody evaluation guidelines as a reference point. He also spoke about the psychological dynamics of alienation, including enmeshment, parentification, and a child’s loss of self-concept. Dr. Allison Foster, both a psychologist and attorney, examined Kayden’s Law, Title 15 of the Violence Against Women Act, and its potential implications for family court testimony, expert evidence, and reunification remedies. She argued that the law creates a framework that credits certain allegations while excluding or disfavoring testimony about parental alienation and psychological abuse. 

Whether one agrees with every policy interpretation offered at the NCESP Summit or not, the discussion reinforced a critical need: Family policy must be rooted in evidence, protect victims, consider psychological maltreatment, and avoid building gendered assumptions into legal structures that affect children.

This tension is familiar to the responsible fatherhood field. Fatherhood organizations must advocate for the inclusion of fathers while remaining clear that safety is non-negotiable. FI’s work on domestic violence has long argued that responsible fatherhood programs and domestic violence programs must work together to serve all members of the family, with fathers engaged as healthy and nurturing participants and family safety placed at the center. The summit’s challenge is to hold those truths together. We must support fathers, protect children, respect mothers, address harm, and insist that family courts operate from evidence rather than reflex.

Shared Parenting and Fathers Incorporated

My own remarks at the NCESP Summit were offered from the perspective of FI and more than two decades in the responsible fatherhood movement. I reminded the audience that language matters. The term “responsible fatherhood” has been used in the field for years, but I challenged the room to consider why fatherhood so often needs an adjective to be seen as legitimate. We don’t typically say “responsible motherhood” before assuming mothers matter. Fatherhood itself should carry the expectation of responsibility, while still recognizing that even fathers who begin irresponsibly can grow, heal, and become better.

I also shared my own path into the work, founding FI during one of the most painful seasons of my life and later working inside New York’s child support system before leading the NRFC. That experience taught me that culture change inside systems is as important as the protests outside them. I told the audience that policymakers often understand the importance of fatherhood, but advocates must give them the language to express it and the evidence to support it.

The heart of my message was that policy victories won’t eliminate the need for fatherhood services. Even if every state adopted equal shared parenting tomorrow, fathers would still need employment support, mental health services, co-parenting education, legal navigation, reentry support, communication skills, and community. FI’s Gentle Warriors Academy has shown this in practice, with fathers identifying legitimation, child support, housing, parenting time, family legal needs, and employment among their top service priorities. The fatherhood policy fight and fatherhood service infrastructure must grow together.

Shared Parenting and the Responsible Fatherhood Field

This may be the most important lesson of the summit: Equal shared parenting advocacy can’t stand apart from the field of responsible fatherhood. Each shared parenting issue is part of a larger family policy ecosystem:

• The responsible fatherhood field can’t ignore the pain fathers are bringing from family court. 
• Child support reform can’t be separated from employment and poverty. 
• Child welfare reform can’t be separated from father engagement. 
• Domestic violence prevention can’t be separated from accurate assessment and services for the whole family. 
• Adoption law can’t be separated from due process. 
• Veterans’ family court experiences can’t be separated from the nation’s promise to support those who served. 

The NCESP Summit succeeded because it brought these strands into the same room. It didn’t resolve every tension, nor could it. But it made clear that America needs a more mature conversation about fatherhood, one that moves beyond caricatures of men as either heroes or villains and instead asks what children need, what parents deserve, and what systems must change. The responsible fatherhood field has always been at its best when it joins compassion with accountability, research with practice, and personal story with public policy. 

Washington, D.C., heard all of this from the assembled shared parenting advocates, and the question that now sits before us is this: What must we build now that the summit is over? 

The next step is to turn testimony into legislation, pain into disciplined advocacy, and fatherhood into a policy priority that’s understood not as a special interest, but as a foundation of child well-being. If we believe children deserve safe, stable, loving relationships with both parents whenever possible, then shared parenting, child support reform, child welfare reform, adoption due process, domestic violence assessment, and fatherhood services must be treated as connected parts of the same national agenda. 

Fathers aren’t asking to be centered at the expense of mothers or children. They’re asking that children not be forced to lose a loving parent because our systems are too outdated, too adversarial, or too slow to change.