You are about to become a father. Whether you chose fatherhood or were surprised by it, we are here to support you. We offer parenting classes to help you navigate this exciting new journey and provide you with the confidence, knowledge, and skills necessary to be a successful father.
The Impact of Fathers
Fathers have a profound impact on their children’s lives, whether they are actively involved or not at all. You can choose to parent or choose not to parent, but you cannot negate the impact you will inevitably have on your child’s life.
The Positive Effect of Involved Fathers
An active and nurturing father can have an incredibly positive impact on their child’s life:
- Father involvement impacts infant health outcomes, including improved weight gain in preterm infants and breastfeeding.
- Children who feel a closeness to their father are twice as likely to enter college or find stable employment, 75% less likely to have a teen birth, 80% less likely to spend time in jail, and half as likely to experience multiple depression symptoms.
- The quality of the father-child relationship matters more than the specific amount of hours spent together.
- High levels of father involvement correlate with children’s sociability, confidence, and self-control.
- Father involvement using authoritative parenting leads to better emotional, academic, social, and behavioral outcomes for children.
- Children with actively involved fathers are 43% more likely to earn A’s in school and 33% less likely to repeat a grade.
- Father engagement reduces the frequency of behavioral problems in boys while also decreasing delinquency and economic disadvantage in low-income families.
- Father engagement reduces psychological problems and rates of depression in young women.
The Effect of Absent Fathers
- A father’s absence hinders development from early childhood through adulthood.
- Children in father-absent homes are almost four times more likely to be poor.
- Children living in female-headed families with no spouse present had a poverty rate of 47.6%, over four times the rate in married-couple families.
- Fatherless children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse.
- Children of single-parent homes are more than twice as likely to commit suicide.
- Seventy-one percent of high school dropouts are fatherless.
- Being raised by a single mother raises the risk of teen pregnancy and marrying with less than a high school degree.
We are Here for You
Whatever the status of your current relationship, circumstances, or how hesitant you are to embark on this parenting journey, we are here to help and support you. We understand the crucial role you play. We offer a parenting program exclusively for dads. Contact us to sign up or with any questions.