Tag: Fatherhood
Census Data on Unmarried Births Excludes Fathers
A child born outside of marriage isn’t automatically a child born outside of fatherhood. A mother giving birth while unmarried doesn’t mean the father is absent, unwilling, irresponsible, or irrelevant. It simply means the parents weren’t married at the time of birth.
A child isn’t fatherless when the parents are unmarried. A child isn’t fatherless when the father lives in another home. A child isn’t fatherless when the parents are no longer romantically connected. Father absence is real, the pain of abandonment is real, and the consequences of disengagement are real. However, we can’t keep confusing living arrangements with love, legal status with commitment, or marital status with fatherhood.
Black Fathers as Freedom Builders: Juneteenth, Protection, and the Power of Presence
As we celebrate Juneteenth, we’re reminded that freedom isn’t only a historical event. It’s a daily practice. It’s found in the ways families love, teach, guide, correct, affirm, and prepare children for the world. Black fathers have always been part of that freedom work.
In the face of harmful stereotypes, social barriers, and systems that have too often tried to separate Black families or diminish Black fatherhood, research suggests that Black fathers continue to show up as protectors, nurturers, teachers, advocates, and builders of legacy.
We Declare June National Fatherhood Month
It is about the father who is living in the home and the father who is fighting to stay connected from outside the home. It is about the father who has custody and the father who is trying to understand his rights. It is about the father who is married, unmarried, divorced, separated, widowed, young, aging, healing, returning home, starting over, or finally finding his voice. It is about the father who is celebrated and the father who has never heard anyone say, “We see you.”
New York Is Building More Than a Fatherhood Committee
Success is not just more fatherhood programs. Success is creating conditions where fathers, families, children, and communities thrive.
Maternal Health Policy Must Continue to Name Black Mothers
Black maternal health must be named because Black mothers must be seen. And when Black mothers are seen, families are better protected.
A recent article reminds us that language shapes priorities. Priorities shape funding. Funding shapes programs. And programs shape whether families receive the care, support, and protection they deserve.
Dads belong in the maternal health conversation, not to speak over mothers, but to stand with them. Not to replace their voices, but to amplify the urgency of their safety.
A Father-Inclusive Reading of Family Stability Data
Fatherhood isn’t a sentimental add-on to family policy. It’s part of the structure.
For too long, America has built family policy around the most visible household and not enough around the full parenting ecosystem, which includes fathers. The data already knows this. Our policy language needs to catch up.
If we only know how to talk about fathers when they are missing, owing, incarcerated, estranged, or in conflict, then we have built a field of vision that is too narrow to see the truth.
The next step is not just better counting. It’s better seeing. Because once we see fathers clearly in the data, we can no longer justify leaving them out of the solution.
Responsible Fatherhood Isn’t Sustainable When Funded Like a Side Project
Across this country, we say we want fathers to be more engaged. We say children need their fathers. We say family stability matters. We say responsible fatherhood is connected to child well-being, school readiness, emotional security, economic mobility, public safety, child support compliance, maternal health, and healthy co-parenting.
But too often, we fund fatherhood as though it only belongs to one agency, one grant category, one department, or one short-term initiative.
That’s the contradiction we must confront.
What Griff’s New Book Reveals About Mothers, Sons, and the Journey from Boyhood to Manhood
At the center of the book is a simple but provocative idea: Mothers can raise sons, but mothers are not men. That statement will make some readers uncomfortable, but Griff leans into the discomfort with humor, compassion, and honesty.
Instead of attacking mothers, Griff honors mothers. His book is a love letter to his own mother, a woman who raised him with toughness, wisdom, sarcasm, resilience, and survival instincts after navigating life without the protection of a present father herself.
Griff reminds readers that many mothers are not trying to replace fathers because they want to. Many are trying because they feel they have no other option.
Paternal Mortality Is a Family Health Crisis. Georgia’s Legitimation Law Makes It Worse.
The argument against Georgia’s legitimation structure has often been framed around access: Fathers need the ability to parent, visit, make decisions, and participate. That remains true. But a recent JAMA Pediatrics paper forces us to add another layer.
In the event of paternal death, legitimation is a child protection issue. It’s about what remains legally intact when a father is no longer alive to argue, petition, explain, prove, or correct the record.
A child shouldn’t have to lose a father twice: once to death and a second time to an outdated law.
A Passport Policy Won’t Fix Child Support’s Poverty Problem
The question isn’t whether child support should be paid. It should.
The better question is whether our policies are designed to produce payment, presence, and child well-being or debt, disconnection, and punishment.
This isn’t an argument against child support. It is an argument for a smarter child support system.
Fatherhood Is a Protective Factor, But Only When Safety Leads
Children have to be the anchor. Not adult pride. Not program numbers. Not public relations. Not whether dad feels validated or mom feels vindicated. The child’s well-being is the outcome. If the child is not safe, a healthy family cannot exist. But when the child is safe and there is a father who can be engaged responsibly, supported properly, and held accountable consistently, then fatherhood can become one of the strongest protective factors in that child’s life.
Advertisers Are Still Selling the Myth of the Missing Black Father
Television commercials have often depicted fathers in Black families as “missing,” failed to highlight their daily contributions, and reinforced the damaging perception that Black fathers are absent and disengaged. This falsehood doesn’t stay on the screen. It follows Black fathers into schools, hospitals, courtrooms, child welfare systems, social service agencies, workplaces, and even into their own homes, where children are still trying to understand how the world sees the men who love them.
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.
A Father’s Second Chance Is Often A Child’s First Real Chance
“Second Chance Month” can’t be reduced to conversations about individual redemption alone. We also need to talk about family restoration. A father’s second chance is often a child’s first real chance to recover stability, structure, and hope.
This is where the country must be more honest with itself.
We say we believe in fatherhood. We tell men to be present, provide, protect, lead, and be accountable. Then many of those same men return home from incarceration to a wall of barriers that make accountability harder. We call it reentry, but for many men it feels more like rejection.
You Can’t Close the Minority Health Gap While Ignoring Fathers
If father presence matters, then father health matters.
Father involvement has long been associated with positive child outcomes. If we celebrate engaged fathers when children thrive, then we must also care whether those fathers are healthy enough to stay engaged.
And if we want stronger families, then fathers must be included in minority health — not as an afterthought but as part of its strategy, its urgency, and its promise.