It doesn't get much better than this; The Masters Tournament starts today and it's Throwback Thursday! Can you believe it?! Today we go back to 1997. It was Tiger Wood's first major tournament. Tiger had won three consecutive U.S. Amateur titles and a NIKE endorsement. But winning The Masters was his stamp on a new generation of golfer.
If you recall, Tiger not only won The Masters, he dominated it. He set several tournament records including the scoring record for shooting an 18-under-par 270. In case you weren't counting, that was 12 shots lower than second place finisher.
In the embedded video, you hear the great CBS announcer Jim Nantz say as Tiger's putt lands in the cup, "There it is...a win for the ages!" Tiger didn't misstep—he walked directly to his father.
Tiger would say later in an interview that they didn't think his dad would attend the tournament due to health issues. What a great moment in sports history! Our video ends by saying, "A father can change the world. One child at a time."
Tiger's father influenced Tiger's golf game. Tiger's dad studied the game of golf and taught it to his son. With the involvement of his father, Tiger has changed the game of golf.
Remember dads, as our video says, "It takes a man to be a dad." As you watch The Masters Tournament today and through this weekend, know that you can change the world by being an involved father.
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photo credit: rich_w
NFI's Vince DiCaro was interviewed today on Fox News Live about our new Dads Club™ and our partnership with Dove® Men+Care™.
Jonathan Hunt of the "On the Hunt" program discussed how NFI's partnership with Dove® Men+Care™ will strengthen fatherhood by helping fathers be better dads.
Learn how you can connect with other dads and share parenting tips today!
New Club Will Be Place for Fathers Who Care for What Matters to Support Each Other and the Cause of Responsible Fatherhood
In a national press release posted this morning, National Fatherhood Initiative and Dove® Men+Care™ have partnered to launch the Dads Club™, a membership club where dads can come together to support each other and bolster efforts to strengthen fatherhood.
Today’s dads are finding that social media and the Internet are providing unprecedented opportunities to network, share stories, and support each other in their fathering journeys. However, there is no “hub” where fathers can come together to not only help each other become better dads, but to also make a meaningful contribution to the cause of strengthening the institution of fatherhood in America.
A corporate-nonprofit partnership is an ideal mechanism to meet this need, and Dove® Men+Care™ and National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI) are the ideal partners. NFI has worked since 1994 to strengthen the institution of fatherhood through public education campaigns, research, and the distribution of fatherhood skill-building materials to individuals and organizations around the country. Dove® Men+Care™ has demonstrated a true commitment to creating a more positive and inspirational image of men and fathers through its “Real Moments” campaign (www.dovemencare.com)
“NFI is delighted to have a committed partner like Dove® Men+Care™ to not only help us provide a safe place for dads to help each other, but to become a partner in our work to ensure that every child has an involved, responsible, and committed father,” said Vincent DiCaro, NFI’s vice president of development and communication.
Members of the new Dads Club™ will receive various benefits upon joining, including:
- samples of Dove® Men+Care™ products
- Exclusive monthly e-newsletter with expert fathering advice or funny stories and encouragement for dads plus special messages from Dove® Men+Care™
- a co-logoed Dads Club™ t-shirt
- a Dads Club™ photo magnet
- and a copy of NFI’s “Dad’s Pocket Guide”
“Dove® Men+Care™ is proud to partner with National Fatherhood Initiative to launch Dads Club™ in our continued effort to help men care for what matters most,” said Rob Candelino, vice president marketing for Unilever Skincare. “Research shows that men today are prioritizing taking care of their families, and as a dad, I understand the importance of having dedicated resources and tools on which men can rely as they continue to embrace fatherhood. This program is one important way Dove® Men+Care™ aims to support the dedicated, caring, dad community.”
Through the partners’ Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, web properties, a members-only e-newsletter, and use of the hashtag #dadsclub, Dads Club™ members will have various spaces in which to come together as fathers, receive advice, and support the cause. Over time, NFI and Dove® Men+Care™ will engage notable dads to become inspirational figures for fathers and ambassadors for the cause of strengthening fatherhood. Dads Club™ membership will be available for a one-time $35 contribution to NFI, a portion of which will be a tax-deductible, charitable donation to support NFI’s work. This one-time contribution entitles dads to a lifetime membership in the Dads Club™. Fathers can join at http://www.fatherhood.org/dadsclub.
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The NCAA Championship game is finally here! You know your team isn't playing...but you can still salvage something good from all the college basketball over the last month! If you've followed us on social media or here at the blog at all, you know we've been working hard to provide you with real-life tips throughout the madness.
Throughout March Dadness, we've given you the following tips:
Sweet 16) 16 Phrases Your Child Needs to Hear
Elite 8) 8 Amazingly Easy Activities You Can Do With Your Child
Final 4) The 4 Magical Steps to Making Your Child a Winner in Life
We hope you have not only enjoyed the games, but have enjoyed getting tips and tools for your role as "Coach" in your family.
Today, we have one more idea to leave you with as you gear up for the Championship game.
Our mission at NFI is to improve the well-being of children by increasing the proportion of children who grow up with involved, responsible, and committed fathers. Involved, Responsible, and Committed are qualities that we think are essential for fathers, and they make up the foundations of the legacy you pass on to your children and generations to come. Leave a legacy of a champion by living out these qualities every day.
The Championship Legacy You Leave Your Kids
- Involved: Be involved in your child's life - change diapers, read bedtime stories, discipline with gentleness, go to sporting events and extracurricular activities, talk to your teens about important topics. Here's a thought: get to know their friends. Or how about the parents of your child? Do you know them. Have you ever talked to them? Two of our favorite sayings at NFI are "The smallest moments make the biggest impact in the life of a child" and "Kids spell love T-I-M-E." Your mission as father is to be involved in the big and small moments of your child's life.
- Responsible: We like to say that responsible dads do three things for their children: provide, nurture, and guide. Provide for your children's needs (this is more than putting food on the table; make sure they are safe, healthy, and loved). Nurture your children by calling out their best qualities, encouraging them to reach their potential, and demonstrating your love by words and actions. Guide your child by teaching them values, coaching them when they make mistakes, and helping them find their own direction in life.
- Committed: Be committed to lifelong fathering. Your job as a dad doesn't start when you get home from work and it doesn't end when your kids graduate from high school. You are a dad 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of your child's life. When you're 80 and your child is 50, you will still be a dad. Also, be committed to the institution of fatherhood. In a time when 24 million children in America are growing up without their fathers, good dads like you need to be shining examples of fatherhood by mentoring other dads and children who don't have fathers.
As you strive be an involved, responsible, and committed father every day, you will create a Championship Legacy that will have generational impact in the lives of your children and their families.
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The Final Four is upon us! As you're gearing up for this weekend, review these four values and see which you can work on with your child. Below are four values we think your child should learn from you. Bring it home to the championship, coach!
Roland Warren, NFI's former president and now board member, is fond of saying:
While there are a lot of values that are important for you to pass to your child, we came up with a helpful acronym to help you remember the four values.
To stick with Roland's quote, help your kids become R-I-C-H in life by modeling and teaching these values.
Responsibility
Take ownership for your actions. This isn't easy. Believe me, I'm the guy who likes to say "freaking" a lot. But I'm also the guy who would rather my six-year-old daughter not go to school and say "freaking." Therefore, on the occasion that I insert "freaking" into a sentence, I need to show responsibility and say, "You know, daddy shouldn't have used that word. Daddy makes mistakes too sometimes..." Does it sound like I've done this before? Yeah. I have. And you know that kids are the best at pulling out EVERY word they hear! The point is, when you make a mistake—and you will—apologize and fix it. Just as your child hears—and probably repeats everything she hears—she can also spot a phoney. If you don't model responsibility, who will?
Integrity
This goes well with the first point. But, it's important to stress, always do what is right and tell the truth, even if it costs you personally. When you child sees this modeled in you, he will learn more from the example than the speech! Know what your values are and stand by them. Be reliable and trustworthy. How does this work in a father-child relationship? For starters, don't say, "I'll be home in time to take you to the park." Then you either a) don't show up in time to go to the park or b) you show up but let something fall through so you don't end up going to the park. Your word is your word. It means something—and it should. You start with a clean slate with your child. Be trustworthy and you will be great in your child's eyes. Making promises you don't keep is a sure-fire way to have you child not trust you—and even worse—have your child not feel loved.
Compassion
As your child's leader, be sure you are treating others with respect, even if you disagree with them or don't really like them. Reminder: your child is listening and watching you! Listen and seek to understand others. Be willing to sacrifice to help someone else. As you are helping, explain to your child the "why" behind the help. As your child ages, you can discuss with him or her why you care so deeply about helping take food to the neighbor, volunteer at church or donate money to certain causes. Look for opportunities to explain to your child the motivation behind your sacrifice.
Humility
Give credit to others when it's due. Show appreciation for praise and compliments. You can model humility to your child by teaching them to point out other people's good that they see. Humility is another value that must be taught by word, but also by action.
Dad, talk about what these values look like in real life to help your children understand why these traits are important. Praise your child when they show these qualities or when you see them displayed in their siblings or friends. When your child makes a mistake, talk with them about how their actions violated these character traits and what they can do differently next time. Most importantly, model these character qualities consistently. Your children will learn more from what you do than from what you say. With these character traits, your children will be truly R-I-C-H in life.
What do you find works for teaching these four values to your child? Experienced dads, please share your wisdom in the comments.
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There are 1.8 million children and families of military dads are affected by the unique stress of military life, particularly during deployment. Help us support them!
If you can help NFI achieve its target of $1,000 we can provide fatherhood resources to Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune!
The dads of military kids will benefit from National Fatherhood Initiative's unique educational materials for dads - to help them stay involved with their kids, and be there for them, even while deployed.
Unfortunately, research shows that the kids of military dads can experience similar unfortunate outcomes as children in father-absent homes - such as doing poorly in school, emotional/social issues, maltreatment, and more. Your support means a military child gets the dad they need to be prosperous and successful.
Watch this video for more information on our work with military families:
- Approximately 593,000 active-duty service members and nearly 300,000 U.S. reservists are dads.
- 150,000 military fathers are currently deployed, with deployments ranging from 30 days to 15 months.
This campaign ends today. Please consider giving today if you wish to help us support deployed dads and their families.
Here are four ways you can help today:
- Visit the Campaign Page.
- Donate to NFI's campaign.
- Share NFI's campaign on your social media accounts.
- Invite your friends and contacts to support NFI's campaign.
Thank you for understanding the importance of connecting military fathers with their families. We want all kids to have an involved, responsible and committed dad—your support helps make this happen.
This is a guest post by Claire M. Fraser, PhD. Claire is a Professor of Medicine and Director, Institute for Genome Sciences, University of Maryland School of Medicine. If you are interested in guest blogging, send us an email.
As a successful professional woman who has risen to the top of the ranks in the male-dominated field of academic science, I have been on the receiving end of many questions in the past couple of weeks asking my opinion about Sheryl Sandberg’s advice to women to “lean in” more in the workplace - to speak up, to self-promote, and to move outside a perceived comfort zone in order to climb the professional ladder.
“Leaning in” has been essential to my career success, and for many years I did it reluctantly, feeling like I was a fraud whenever I dared to express my thoughts and opinions. Today, I encourage my junior female faculty members to “lean in” every chance they get, no matter how awkward or uncomfortable it may feel. This is not an option – it is essential if we are to realize our full career potential.
While this seems like straightforward advice, we should also consider what it means to “lean in” outside of the workplace. I was fortunate to hear Vince DiCaro’s Fox News interview on March 28, in which he encouraged moms to “lean in” to fatherhood. This is indeed good advice.
From my own experience, and in speaking with many colleagues over the past 20 years, I have come to believe that a healthy work-life balance - which taps into the best that we and our partners have to offer to ourselves, each other, and our families - must be a goal. From what I‘ve observed, professional women often take on an enormous burden when they try to do it all at work and at home, and end up feeling that they do nothing well. I’ve had many tearful conversations with talented and accomplished young women in academia who think that they must assume the lion’s share of responsibility for their children because this is what’s expected of them as women, while at the same time they know that they must secure as many grants and publish as many research papers as their male colleagues in order to be successful.
I’ve also had a more limited number of conversations with male colleagues who would like nothing more than to spend additional time with their children, but fear that their value as a parent is not fully appreciated by their wives or partners, and their reputation as a hard-working, committed professional will suffer if they work anything less than a 60-hour week.
Just as women have demanded equal consideration in the workplace, it is time to make sure that men are afforded equal consideration in areas that have traditionally been “owned” by women. Collectively, we must do more to frame discussions about work-life balance in terms of a broader, gender-inclusive context.
Seeking a more balanced life is not just a women’s issue. Balance is good for all of us, most of all our children, who will then hopefully grow up to be committed and caring members of society.
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NFI's Vince DiCaro was interviewed yesterday on Fox News Live's "On the Hunt" with Jonathan Hunt to discuss mothers and "leaning in" to fatherhood.
DiCaro points out that culture seems to tell mothers that they have to pick between career and motherhood. However, it's a good idea to consider a third option, and "lean in" to fatherhood.
Too often, mothers do most of the share of work in the home and fathers go to work—end of story. Perhaps mothers should consider supporting and encouraging, not discouraging, more father involvement. Several real-life examples are pointed out in this interview between DiCaro and Hunt. There are several ideas worth considering.
For instance, in some cases, moms simply do not trust the father to be involved. DiCaro says moms and dads need to "work together as parents." Moms can sometimes have a way of "knowing and doing all" when it comes to kids and the home. Therefore, in a sense, they set up a situation where they make the father feel he isn't needed. Then, he checks out, only focuses on his career, and does less at home and with the children.
DiCaro says, "If moms recommit themselves, in a sense, to strengthen the institution of fatherhood, it's only going to help them be better at their careers and be better moms."
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The following is a post from Christopher A. Brown, Executive Vice President of National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI). Interested in blogging for us? Email here.
A dangerous crossover has occurred in marriage and childbearing in the U.S.
A recent report called Knot Yet documents the rise in the historic and still-climbing average age of first marriage at nearly 27 for women and 29 for men. This trend has benefitted women in helping them to reach their life goals and, for couples, reduced the risk of divorce. By delaying marriage, many women have had the opportunity to complete college and establish themselves in their careers before marching down the aisle. Research shows that couples who marry after their mid-twenties are less likely to divorce than are people who marry earlier.
While that trend has benefits, there is another trend interacting with it that should put a scare into us all. The age at which men and women have their first child hasn’t kept pace with the average age of first marriage. Women give birth nearly a year, on average, before they marry (25.7 vs. 26.5). It is twentysomethings that have driven the increase in out-of-wedlock births to an all-time high of 48 percent of all births.
As a father of two girls (ages 18 and 15), this is a scary confluence of trends. It increases the risk that my daughters will have children out of wedlock, that my grandchildren won’t have involved, responsible, committed fathers in their lives, and that my grandchildren will be at increased risk for a host of poor outcomes.
According to a 2009 report by the non-partisan Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans don’t see anything wrong with unmarried childbearing despite their belief that it is bad for society (i.e. it has negative economic consequences). This disconnect between what is right and wrong and evidence is one of the major problems I have seen in my 13 years of work with NFI. As you’ve undoubtedly read many times in this blog and in publications from NFI, there are reams of evidence that having children out of wedlock is, on average, bad for children, mothers, fathers, and our society. And yet, we continue to see more and more children born without the benefit of marriage between their parents, the primary connection that societies have used for thousands of years to connect fathers to their children.
So why does the disconnect persist? A primary reason, as noted in Knot Yet, is the decoupling of marriage and childbearing as most Americans have come to view marriage as a means to satisfy their desire for meaningful, life-long connection instead of as an institution for raising children and what children need to thrive. To be clear, my problem with this view is not that marriage should not satisfy someone’s desire for life-long connection—I can’t think of a better way to create such a connection. But focusing on that aspect of marriage to the detriment of marriage’s primary function of raising healthy children has become a recipe for disaster.
The problem with this view is that it ignores the evidence that human biology, specifically the drive in humans to procreate, has not changed along with that view. As an anthropologist, I’ve learned that the interplay between culture change and human biology is not straightforward. In some cases, it can be positive or, at the very least, innocuous. Take the average height of humans, for example. As humans moved from living in nomadic tribes, where food was scarce and humans lacked knowledge of proper nutrition, to post-industrial societies, with 24/7 access to food and improved nutrition (particularly childhood nutrition), the average size for humans increased. (Much of this increase in height occurred in only the past 150 years.) On the other hand, as humans became more sedentary in post-industrial societies, obesity rates increased as did rates of type 1 and type 2 diabetes and other diseases related to a sedentary lifestyle.
As long as people ignore the simple, indisputable fact that men and women have a biological drive to procreate that does not change—the oil in the water of the new view of marriage’s role in our lives—mothers, fathers, children, and our society will continue to pay a hefty price. Unless the age of puberty miraculously increases, we will continue to see an ever-widening gap between the time men and women start to feel their drive to procreate and the time they put the pieces in place that their children need to thrive—a gap that now spans more than a decade. The sad fact is that girls and boys are more driven to act on that drive when they grow up in homes without their fathers.
What do I tell my girls? I will continue to tell them to delay sex until marriage for the simple reason that it is the right thing to do not only for them, but for everyone else. I want them to know that their actions have consequences for them and for us all.
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- "The hardest part...when you're gone for six months, your family grows without you...you come home to strangers. And then after you get home, if there aren't resources it makes it that much harder." —US Navy Chief Quartermaster John Lehnen.
Approximately 1.8 million children and families of military dads are affected by the unique stress of military life, particularly during deployment. Help us support them!
If you can help NFI achieve its target, together we can provide a complete Fatherhood Resource Center for a military base in need!
The dads of military kids will benefit from National Fatherhood Initiative's unique educational materials for dads - to help them stay involved with their kids, and be there for them, even while deployed.
Unfortunately, research shows that the kids of military dads can experience similar unfortunate outcomes as children in father-absent homes - such as doing poorly in school, emotional/social issues, maltreatment, and more. Your support means a military child gets the dad they need to be prosperous and successful.
- Approximately 593,000 active-duty service members and nearly 300,000 U.S. reservists are dads.
- 150,000 military fathers are currently deployed, with deployments ranging from 30 days to 15 months.
NFI is running this 10-day campaign ending next Thursday April 4 to help support deployed dads and their families.
You can help. Here's how:
- Visit the Campaign Page and follow the instructions.
- Donate to NFI's campaign.
- Share NFI's campaign on your social media accounts.
- Invite your friends and contacts to support NFI's campaign.
- Create a personal fundraising page for NFI's campaign.
Thank you for understanding the importance of connecting military fathers with their families. We want all kids to have an involved, responsible and committed dad—your support helps make this happen.