Month: August 2026
Where Does the Success Sequence Leave Everyone Else?
The traditional Success Sequence is largely prospective. It tells someone standing at the beginning of adulthood: Here are decisions that may increase your likelihood of economic stability.
Fatherhood and family-strengthening work is often responsive. We meet people after some of those decisions have already been made. The question is no longer simply: “What sequence should you follow?” It becomes: “Given where you are today, what decisions can move you toward greater stability tomorrow?”
Success can’t simply be a reward for people who made every decision in the right order. It must also be something people can move toward from wherever they are.
AI Can Write a Legal Motion, But Can’t Guarantee a Father Gets to See His Child
Today, a father with a smartphone can ask an AI system to explain a child support order, translate legal language into plain English, organize a timeline, identify questions to ask an attorney, or produce something that looks remarkably like a legal motion. What once required hours of research, a knowledgeable advocate, or hundreds or thousands of dollars in legal assistance can sometimes appear on a screen in seconds.
That can sound like access to justice, but a fascinating new paper suggests we should be more careful about what we call access.
Passion Isn’t a Business Plan: What 36 Years in Nonprofits Taught Me About Serving
Over the years, Fathers Incorporated has operated through economic downturns, COVID-19, changing administrations, shifting federal priorities, fleeting philanthropic interests, the loss of key personnel, new technology, and evolving public conversations about fathers, families, race, gender, marriage, parenting, and social policy.
Our survival has never meant that we predicted every disruption. It meant that we built enough organizational muscle to adapt when disruption came.
That’s business. And business, in this context, isn’t a dirty word.
Maybe Fatherhood Should Feel Good, Too
We study dysfunction relentlessly. Conflict, absence, depression, arrears, poverty, trauma, violence, and disengagement all deserve our attention. But perhaps we should become equally curious about joy. What makes fathers feel alive?
Maybe flourishing should become something we measure. Maybe gratitude belongs in fatherhood programming. Maybe hope belongs in co-parenting education. Maybe one of the first questions we ask a father when he enters the room shouldn’t only be, “What problem brought you here?” Perhaps we should also ask him what is going right, what gave him joy this week, what his child did that made him smile. These questions won’t erase poverty, fix a court order, or eliminate conflict, but they do something just as necessary. They remind a man that his life is larger than the problem currently occupying it.