Russell – developing resources for fathers

I think a lot of men are looking for resources that actually speak their language. And so, for example, one of the resources that we’ve developed at Dad Central is what’s called the 24-hour crib side assistance for new dads and it’s written like a car manual.  It’s all about the birth of the baby and kind of what happens bringing baby home and that kind of thing.  So it talks about oil changes and it talks about fuel consumption and looking under the hood and troubleshooting.  It uses that language to talk about interacting with the baby.  And so, I think dads appreciate having something that speaks to them.  Not every guy is a car guy but that’s ok.  I think most men appreciate that there’s something that… that there’s an effort being made to provide information for them that’s actually relevant, helpful, a little humorous but that shows that they matter and that their role is important.   

For the most part, the resources we have are really well received by dads.  We run things by dads.  We do pilot testing and things like that so it’s not just an idea that somebody gets and ok let’s just put it out there.  So we do hear from time to time the guys will say things about how the car manual is stereotypical or how we’re thinking about and talking about fatherhood is stereotypical and I get that.  And in some ways it is but at the same time the majority of what we’re hearing is, “Hey it’s neat to have something for dads.  All these other things are for moms.”  There’s booklets and there’s pamphlets and there’s stuff mailed to them and who knows what else and there’s a car manual for dads that looks like – for the babies.  I mean, so there’ something there for them and that’s helpful for them. 

My Dad Matters is  a tool kit that we developed to help people have a process to go through that would give them an opportunity to plan for how they’re going to engage dads.  So it’s starts with an assessment of what’s your present practice.  It talks about best practices.  It lets people look at some guiding principles like what does it mean to be father-friendly and sort of set some just some expectations around what that might look like.  It looks at how to market to men.  So how do you attract men to programs?  How do you do a good flyer?   

The tool kit also looks at trying to, helping you understand who the men are in your community.  But the whole goal is to walk through that with coming out with an action plan to say here’s five or six things we want to work on over the next six months or a year that we can then put some things in to practice.  We plan for all that and then we can reassess where we’re at.  So it’s really designed as a document to help people go from initial planning to implementation and reassessment of how that’s gone.