Month: September 2026
5 Ways Co-Parents Can Build Hope in Their Children
Some of us were raised to keep family business in the house. Some were taught to pray about it and keep going. And sometimes, when a child is talking about being depressed, overwhelmed, or not wanting to be here, we think they’re being dramatic or looking for attention.
But silence isn’t safety. Our children need to know they can tell us the truth. Even the hard truth. Even the uncomfortable truth. Even the truth that scares us. Our children need to know there’s nothing they can say that will make us stop loving them, listening to them, or helping them.
Healthy co-parenting is crucial to instilling this comfort and confidence.
When Navigating Social Commentary and Being of Service Collide
You can find thousands of people who agree with almost anything. Once you find them, technology will help you find more of them. Algorithms learn what irritates us, excites us, frightens us, and affirms us. They learn what keeps our thumbs moving.
Before long, what began as an opinion begins to feel like reality — simply because we encounter it repeatedly.
This concerns me because social commentary doesn’t stay on social media. It eventually shows up in our institutions, relationships, organizations, policies, workplaces, churches, schools, and homes. It shows up in the lives of children, in families, and in the work of people trying to serve them.
When Child Support Doesn’t Reach the Child
A new report examines child support “pass-through,” a policy that determines whether child support collected from a noncustodial parent actually reaches a family receiving TANF.
Federal law generally requires custodial parents receiving TANF to cooperate with the child support program and assign certain rights to those funds to the state. The state can then retain collections (sharing a portion with the federal government) to recover the cost of public assistance. The technical term is “cost recovery.”
The language sounds almost clinical. Cooperation. Assignment. Distribution. Cost recovery. Pass-through. But underneath those words is a fairly simple question: When a parent pays money intended to support a child, who should get it?
What Does Cohabitation Data Tell Us About Fathers and the Success Sequence?
The Success Sequence largely focuses on milestones — education, work, marriage, and children. But families live in the gray areas around those milestones. Dating becomes cohabitation. Cohabitation becomes marriage. Cohabitation sometimes becomes parenthood before marriage. Sometimes cohabitation ends. Sometimes marriage ends. Sometimes two people stop being romantic partners but remain parents for the rest of their lives. Sometimes another partner enters the family system.
The work of fatherhood often happens inside those transitions.
The Work Needs You, But It Can’t Consume You
Self-care isn’t limited to vacations, massages, fishing trips, or quiet weekends. Sometimes self-care means scheduling the examination, confronting the diagnosis, taking the medication, changing what you eat, speaking with a therapist, addressing grief, protecting your sleep, or admitting that your body has been asking for help.
And for seasoned leaders, self-care must also include succession. We must learn how to care for the person carrying the vision and prepare the vision to outlive them.
Leaders can’t rest if they leave every decision, relationship, and idea inside their heads. We can’t step away if no one else understands the vision well enough to carry it forward.
AI Is My Parents’ DOS: What Happens When Age Meets Technological Evolution
Some people are asking whether AI should continue developing, as though humanity still has a realistic choice between an AI world and a non-AI world. We don’t. The more useful questions are, What kind of AI world are we going to build? Who will benefit? Who may be harmed? And what responsibility do institutions have to help people adapt?
Here’s why these questions matter to everyone regardless of age and why we all have a responsibility to learn about the powerful technology.
The Walk Is Only the Beginning: Why the 2026 Million Fathers March Matters
The 2026 Million Fathers March isn’t asking fathers merely to appear for a single event. It’s asking schools and communities to open doors, and it’s asking fathers to keep walking through them.
Forty-two hosts have already registered. Fifteen states and 34 cities are already represented. Thousands of fathers and father figures are projected to participate, and there is still room for hundreds of schools, organizations, districts, churches, community groups, and families to become part of what September 18 can represent.
Is Forgiveness in Fatherhood and Family Dead?
We’re living through a time when public life seems increasingly organized around accusation. We attack, cancel, blame, expose, and condemn. Loyalty has become conditional, disagreement is often treated as betrayal, and people are sometimes reduced to the worst thing they’ve ever said or done.
That spirit doesn’t remain confined to politics or social media. It follows us home. And family has always been one of the hardest places to practice forgiveness.