Tag: Co-Parenting
The Work Beneath the Surface: What We Heard at Our Fatherhood Program Graduation
What made these conversations at our Dad & Company graduation compelling wasn’t the difficulty of the experiences being described. It was the willingness of the people in the room to acknowledge that growth begins when we accept responsibility for how we respond.
The patience a father learns today may become the patience his child extends to someone decades from now. The emotional maturity demonstrated during a difficult parenting exchange may eventually become the model that child carries into adulthood.
Co-Parenting Through Breast Cancer: How Fathers Can Show Up
A mother receives a breast cancer diagnosis. But the school bus still comes in the morning. Homework still needs to be checked. Children still need dinner, clean clothes, and someone to listen to how their day went. Life doesn’t pause because she needs treatment.
For parents who are no longer together, that reality raises an important question: How do we show up for each other when the relationship has changed, but the responsibility of parenting remains?
What We Honor, Grows: Why Fathers Need Appreciation, Too
For years, conversations about fatherhood have understandably focused on getting fathers to step up. Stay. Provide. Engage. Participate. Parent. These expectations matter, but perhaps the next phase of the conversation also needs to ask, What happens when fathers do those things?
Do we notice? Do we acknowledge them? Do we encourage them? Do our children hear us affirm the good their fathers bring into their lives? Maybe sometimes fathers need somebody to notice what they are doing, instead of another conversation about what they aren’t doing.
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.
The Moments Matter: When Co-Parenting Teamwork Makes the Dream Work
The inaugural Dad & Company class helped us move this idea from paper into practice, and participants came even before we had outcomes to show them. They trusted a vision while we were still learning how to fully explain it. That’s why I told them they weren’t simply the first graduates. They were the first standard.
History remembers firsts because firsts become reference points. They establish direction. They create tradition. They shape identity. Being first, however, isn’t only an honor. It’s a responsibility.
Family Synergy Begins When Fathers Stop Being Treated as Optional
We regularly use the language of family while designing research, programs, clinics, schools, and policies exclusively around the mother-child relationship. The father is then added as an outreach strategy, a special population, or optional participant. We invite him into a structure that was never designed with him in mind. Then, when he doesn’t immediately feel that he belongs, we describe him as difficult to engage.
The work ahead isn’t simply to place more fathers inside existing family programs. It’s to reconsider the architecture of those programs.
Healthy Fathers: Dad’s Physical Health Matters to the Whole Family, Including His Co-Parent
Fathers, your children need your love. They need your guidance. They need your presence. They need your voice. They need your hugs, your laughter, your protection, your wisdom, and your example.
Make the appointment. Take the walk. Check your blood pressure. Follow up on the pain. Drink the water. Get some rest. Move your body. Talk to someone. Ask the questions. Don’t wait until something is wrong to start caring for yourself.
Why Mother’s Day Matters for Fathers Who Live Apart From Their Children
Fathers who live apart from their children still have influence. Their words, choices, and actions shape how children understand relationships, conflict, respect, and love.
Mother’s Day offers a meaningful way for fathers to use this influence to strengthen the emotional world their children live in.
Forgive the Past And Make Room for the Future: An Invitation for Co-Parents
When a relationship ends, there are usually real reasons. Pain. Disappointment. Betrayal. Injury. Forgiving does not mean ignoring those things. It doesn’t even mean friendship is required.
But when children are involved, some level of forgiveness is often necessary for the family to heal. Why? Because the lack of forgiveness between parents never stays neatly between parents. Children feel it. They hear it in the tone, and they see it in body language. They pick up on tension, delayed responses, and sharp comments, and understand that their peace is always fragile.
How to Ensure Georgia’s “Responsible Fathers Act” Helps Dads Without Creating Unintended Harm
If you read headlines on HB 1343, you may think this bill settles the question of fatherhood for unmarried dads in Georgia, but it does not. If you read the talking points, you may think HB 1343 creates equal parenting time, but it does not. And if you read social media arguments, you may think it either saves the day or destroys the system. It does neither.
Fathers Incorporated welcomes HB 1343 as a meaningful step in the right direction. However, serious risks exist in its current language. As written, it has the potential to be very helpful for some fathers and very harmful for others — unless we fine-tune it now.
The Top Five Traits of Successful Co-Parenting Relationships
Co-parenting is one of the most significant tests of maturity, love, and patience that two adults can undertake. It requires shifting the focus from what ended between the parents to what must continue for the child.
Over time, through thousands of conversations with fathers and families, we’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. The five elements detailed here consistently stand out as markers of successful co-parenting relationships.
The Oneness of Co-Parenting
Here’s the truth I want every father and mother to hear: Your child doesn’t care about who was right. They don’t measure your love by how much you win the argument but by how well you work together for their well-being. They remember the tone of your voice when you speak about their other parent. They remember if they felt safe enough to love you both without guilt.
The oneness of co-parenting asks us to evolve — to put aside the “me” and embrace the “we.” It’s an act of maturity, faith, and courage. It requires both parents to look beyond themselves and see the divine assignment they share. You are co-creators of a life. And that life deserves wholeness, not division.
Parenting Is a Team Sport: Why Fathers Incorporated Is Strengthening the Co-Parenting Circle
As we’ve evolved in fatherhood work — listening to the voices of fathers, mothers, partners, and families — we’ve learned that supporting dads alone is only part of the equation.
The next chapter of our journey demands that we strengthen the team surrounding the father, as well. That’s why we are introducing Dad & Company: Building an Effective Co-Parenting Team — a new initiative grounded in the principles of responsible fatherhood but expanded to include everyone who plays a role in raising healthy, resilient children.
Child Support Without a Villain: Rebuilding the Narrative and the System (Part II)
Reforming the child support system, which affects millions of families across all 50 states and costs billions of dollars annually to administer, is not a matter of political preference. It’s a matter of social responsibility.
The Maze of Fatherhood: Why Georgia Must Reform Legitimation Now
In Georgia, a child born to unmarried parents is not automatically granted the legal right to both parents. While this may come as a surprise to many, to the thousands of fathers served by Fathers Incorporated, it’s a harsh and often heartbreaking reality.