The Success Pathway: A Model for Moving Forward From Wherever You Are

By Dr. Matisa Wilbon, Co-Chair, Moynihan Institute for Fatherhood Research and Policy

In my last blog, I raised a question that has stayed with me: What do we offer people whose lives don’t fit neatly into the Success Sequence?

The traditional Success Sequence gives young people a roadmap: finish school, get a job, get married, then have children. The research associated with this framework is compelling. People who achieve those milestones in sequence are significantly more likely to avoid poverty and achieve economic stability.

That’s important, but so is this: Millions are already living lives in which the sequence has been disrupted, rearranged, delayed, or never available to them in the first place.

They already have children. They may be divorced. They may have left school before graduating. They may be returning home from incarceration. They may be unemployed or underemployed. They may be trying to repair a damaged relationship with their children. They may be raising children with someone they no longer love, trust, or even like.

In other words, they’re trying to recover from decisions they made before they had the wisdom, resources, or support they have today.

The Success Sequence is largely about prevention, but an alternative — a Success Pathway — is about progression. It asks, “Where are you now, where do you want to go, and what’s the next responsible step that moves you closer to stability?”

That kind of model deserves a place alongside the Success Sequence.

The Success Pathway Isn’t a Substitute for Responsibility

Let me be clear: A Success Pathway isn’t about lowering expectations. It’s not about pretending that decisions don’t have consequences. It’s not about avoiding accountability.

In fact, the model requires accountability. It asks people to stop focusing only on what happened to them or what they wish they had done differently and begin asking, instead, “What can I do now?”

The Success Pathway recognizes that we can’t rewrite yesterday, but we can make decisions today that change tomorrow. This idea is especially important in fatherhood and family-strengthening work. 

A father can’t undo the years he was absent, but he can decide whether he will be present today. A parent can’t change the fact that a relationship ended badly, but that parent can decide whether or not conflict shapes the child’s life. A person can’t change the fact that they dropped out of school at 17, but they can decide at 27, 37, or 47 to pursue a credential, apprenticeship, certification, or degree.

The question isn’t whether the original Success Sequence was followed perfectly but whether someone is moving toward healthier conditions now. 

The Success Pathway: An Alternative to the Success Sequence

In the original piece, I suggested six conditions that could form the basis of a Success Pathway:

• Stability
• Responsibility
• Healthy Relationships
• Responsible Parenting
• Strong Co-Parenting
• Growth

And these ideas deserve more than a passing mention. Together, they create a practical model for helping individuals and families move forward. 

1. STABILITY

The first goal is stability. Before people can think about thriving, they often need to reduce the instability surrounding their everyday lives. That can mean addressing:

• Employment
• Education
• Housing
• Transportation
• Financial management
• Child care
• Legal barriers
• Health and well-being
• Basic household routines

Stability doesn’t mean everything is perfect. It means your life is becoming more predictable and sustainable. For a father, stability might mean moving from inconsistent gig work into reliable employment. For another person, it might mean completing a GED. For someone else, it might mean creating a monthly budget for the first time.

The Success Pathway asks, “What would make your life 10 percent more stable six months from now?” Then we begin there. 

2. RESPONSIBILITY

Responsibility is the point at which the pathway becomes personal.

We can acknowledge structural barriers, difficult childhoods, discrimination, poor opportunities, relationship trauma, and other realities without pretending that people have no agency. 

Two things can be true: A person can have experienced significant barriers, and that person can still ask, “What am I responsible for now?”

Responsibility means examining:

• The commitments you keep
• The decisions you make
• The way you manage money
• Whether you show up when you say you will
• How you communicate
• How you respond to conflict
• Whether your children can depend on you
• Whether you are taking steps toward the future you say you want

This is about ownership, not shame. One of the most empowering things we can tell someone is, “You may not control everything affecting your life, but you still have decisions you can make.” 

3. HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS

Economic stability alone doesn’t create healthy families. Relationships matter, too, so people need skills for:

• Communicating clearly
• Listening
• Resolving conflict
• Setting boundaries
• Expressing needs
• Managing emotions
• Recognizing unhealthy patterns
• Repairing relationships when possible
• Knowing when a relationship should change

Many adults were never taught these skills.

We sometimes tell people to “build healthy relationships” as though they should automatically know how, but relationships require practice. For fathers, this can be particularly important.

A man may deeply love his children and still struggle with communication. He may want a strong relationship with his child’s mother but not know how to navigate conflict. He may have grown up without seeing healthy partnership modeled.

The Success Pathway doesn’t simply tell him to have better relationships. It asks, “What skills do you need in order to build them?” 

4. RESPONSIBLE PARENTING

Being a parent isn’t simply a status; it’s a practice. Responsible parenting means consistently asking, “What does my child need from me now?”

That may include financial support, but it also includes:

• Emotional presence
• Reliability
• Affection
• Discipline
• Encouragement
• Listening
• Protection
• Time
• Guidance
• Accountability

For fathers in particular, we have to move beyond measuring fatherhood only by whether a man lives in the same household as his child. A nonresident father can still be deeply involved. A married father can still be emotionally absent.

The Success Pathway asks us to evaluate fatherhood based on engagement and responsibility, not simply family structure. It asks the father, “Can your child count on you?”

If the answer is “no” today, the next question isn’t, “Why didn’t you do better before?” but “What would becoming more dependable look like starting now?” 

5. STRONG CO-PARENTING

Although not every romantic relationship survives, parenthood never stops. That means we need to talk much more seriously about co-parenting. When adults separate, children shouldn’t become the battleground for unresolved relationship conflict.

Strong co-parenting doesn’t require former partners to become friends. Instead, it requires them to recognize that they still share responsibility for a child.

The goal becomes:

• Communicating about the child’s needs
• Reducing unnecessary conflict
• Establishing clear expectations
• Respecting the other parent’s role
• Keeping children out of adult disputes
• Creating consistency where possible
• Making decisions with the child’s well-being at the center

The Success Pathway recognizes that family success isn’t reserved for one single structure. Sometimes success means strengthening a marriage, and sometimes success means creating a healthier co-parenting partnership after the romantic relationship has ended.

The question here is, “What family environment gives this child the greatest opportunity to feel safe, loved, supported, and connected?” 

6. GROWTH

Growth is what makes the Success Pathway a pathway rather than a destination. You aren’t finished. None of us are.

Success shouldn’t be measured only by whether someone has reached a predetermined milestone. Sometimes it should be measured by direction.

Compared with last year, are you:

• More stable?
• More responsible?
• More emotionally available?
• More employable?
• More financially prepared?
• More connected to your children?
• Better at communicating?
• Better equipped to resolve conflict?
• Making healthier decisions?

Growth means refusing to let your current circumstances become your permanent identity. 

A person may be unemployed today without being destined to remain unemployed. A father may be disconnected from his child today without remaining disconnected forever. Someone may have made destructive choices in the past without being permanently defined by them.

Growth keeps possibility alive. 

This Model Begins With Assessment, Not Judgment

If we’re serious about implementing a Success Pathway, then fatherhood programs should begin by asking people where they are rather than assuming where they should be.

Imagine sitting with a father and assessing six areas:

• Stability: How secure are your employment, housing, finances, and daily routines?
• Responsibility: How consistently are you following through on your obligations?
• Healthy Relationships: How effectively do you communicate and manage conflict?
• Responsible Parenting: How present and engaged are you with your children?
• Co-Parenting: How well are you working with the other parent?
• Growth: What are you actively doing to improve your circumstances?

Now the conversation is practical.

Perhaps one father is doing well in four areas but struggling in two. Maybe he has stable employment and a good relationship with his child but constant conflict with the child’s mother. His pathway should focus on co-parenting and communication.

Another father might have an excellent relationship with his children but unstable employment and housing. His pathway may begin with workforce development.

A third father may have employment and housing but has been absent from his child’s life. His pathway may center on rebuilding trust and becoming consistently present.

The Success Pathway doesn’t assume everyone needs the same intervention; it meets people where they are without leaving them there. 

Success Requires a Dashboard, Not a Sequence

One way to think about the difference is this: The Success Sequence is a roadmap, while the Success Pathway is a dashboard. 

A roadmap tells you the preferred route before you begin the journey, and a dashboard tells you what is happening while you are already driving: Are you running low on fuel? Are you moving in the right direction? Is something requiring immediate attention? Do you need to slow down? Do you need to change course?

The Success Pathway acknowledges that many people enter our fatherhood programs when the journey is already underway and, quite often, it’s already been disrupted. Our job isn’t to stand beside the road telling fathers and families they should have taken a different exit 10 years ago. Our job is to help them determine the best route forward now. 

What Does Success Really Look Like?

This model also requires us to rethink how we measure success.

For someone who has followed the traditional Success Sequence, success is completing school, entering stable employment, marrying, and raising children within a financially secure two-parent household. That’s worth celebrating.

But there are other outcomes worth celebrating, too. Success may also be:

• A formerly incarcerated father securing stable employment and reconnecting with his children
• A young mother completing a credential while raising her child
• Two parents who can barely speak to one another but learn to co-parent effectively
• A father establishing consistent visitation after years of irregular contact
• A couple learning communication skills that prevent their relationship from deteriorating further
• A parent paying off debt and beginning to save
• A high school dropout earning a trade credential at 35
• A father learning to apologize to his child

These outcomes aren’t consolation prizes. They’re evidence of movement and success. 

What the Success Pathway Means for Fatherhood Programs

For fatherhood practitioners, the Success Pathway offers a more comprehensive way to organize our work. Instead of simply asking whether a participant is employed or married, we can ask whether he is becoming:

• More stable
• More responsible
• More relationally healthy
• More engaged as a parent
• More effective as a co-parent
• More capable of continued growth

Programs can assess these areas when fathers enter, develop individualized goals, and revisit them over time.

This allows us to measure something important: progress.

We should still care about employment. We should still care about education. We should still care about healthy marriage and relationship formation. 

We should still teach young people about decisions that can make adulthood easier, but fatherhood programs also need a framework for fathers who walk through our doors today with a life already in progress. He doesn’t need us to explain the road he should have taken; he needs help determining the road available to him now. 

Prevention and Possibility Can Coexist

The Success Sequence and the Success Pathway don’t have to compete. One can focus on prevention. The other can focus on progression.

For a 16-year-old, we can say, “Think carefully about education, employment, relationships, and when you become a parent. These decisions matter.”

And for a 36-year-old father whose life did not unfold in that order, we can say, “Your decisions still matter.”

That may be one of the most important messages family-strengthening programs can offer. Your life isn’t over because the sequence wasn’t followed. 

The Success Pathway Question

Perhaps every person entering a fatherhood, workforce, family-strengthening, or community-development program should be asked three questions:

• Where are you now?
• Where do you want to go?
• What is the next responsible step that moves you closer?

These simple questions fundamentally change the conversation. They move us from judgment to assessment. From regret to responsibility. From perfection to progress. From what should have happened to what can happen next.

And perhaps that is the real promise of a Success Pathway:

No matter where your story begins, there’s still a way forward.