Dad...I'm watching you

From the moment he walks her down the aisle to the tears that may fall during the father-daughter dance, dear old Dad is a very important part of a woman’s wedding day.

It’s never easy for a Dad or a woman’s father figure to give away his “little girl” to the man she loves, but it’s such an extraordinary gesture that means the world to both of you. One Dad wasn’t sure how to tell his daughter how much she meant to him on her special day, so he decided to do something extra special to let her know he will always love her.

An At-Home Parent Finds His Non-Parenting Niche

Kevin McKeever at NYC Dads Group - *By Dave Lesser, NYC Dads Group Guest Contributor* "It is the best job I've ever had ... but the pay sucks." That’s what I tell people when they ask how I like being a stay-at-home dad to two kids. And it's true. I love so many things about doing what I do. I get to laugh and play for a living. And there's important work to be done. I mold minds, for crying out loud! I nurture bruised knees and bruised feelings. I hear the lessons I teach and the words I say repeated back to me in the world's most adorable voices. Some of the words are not totally age-appropriate, but that makes the... more »

Nurturing Dads

Kevin Roy, an associate professor at the University of Maryland,  is an expert on fatherhood and social policy. His new book, Nurturing Dads, challenges ideas about mainstream fatherhood and discusses ways to encourage meaningful engagement among different kinds of dads and their kids. His conversation with Center Director Julie Drizin follows:

DRIZIN: Why did you and Bill Marsiglio decide to write Nurturing Dads?

ROY: Bill was approached by the Russell Sage Foundation to think about a book on fatherhood and social policy. We’ve been working together for probably about 10 years and we really have been working on this idea of nurturance as being pretty important for fathering. Typically when anyone in social policy or even popular media talks about fathers, its’ a very traditional stereotype. It’s guys who are providing for their kids and residing and married to their partner-- you see that a lot with Father’s Day. You get these very typical images of ties and blah blah. But we know through the work I’ve been doing that men and families and their interaction with kids and family members is so diverse, and really has been changing a lot in the past couple decades.

So what we focus on is nurturance, and that’s the relationship of men with children and families… Providing and residing in marriage and the relationships with mothers and the kids are still important, they don’t go away, but we really thought, here’s a policy book that shows what men are thinking, what they want out of policy and law, which is a way to support their efforts to be nurturing providers or nurturing caregivers really…