by Dan Hart As the US celebrated Father’s Day recently, two recent studies confirm that fathers play a central role in the mental health and behaviour of their children. In a report that compared dozens of studies conducted between 1987 and 2022, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) found “clear correlations between children raised in fatherless homes and developmental challenges ranging from bad grades, anxiety, and suicide to violent behaviour, drug ...

Larry Stockstill is a world-recognised multi-talented leadership coach, with over twelve books to his credit. He has six children, five sons and a daughter, and fifteen grandchildren, and he lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Larry Stockstill is passionate about encouraging fathers and families, and he writes on integrity, purity, example, pace, purpose, marriage, children, and legacy. He believes in modelling his message and helping leaders develop “from integrity to legacy.” Father’s ...

Welcome to the marriage before carriage dads matter revolution! This was the brilliant bottom line in a series of posts written by Delano Squires this week. Marking USA’s Father’s Day, the dad of four and Heritage Foundation Fellow declared, “There’s no greater vocation than being a dad.” Dependency, power, plunder, and control are reasons why they don’t want men to be men. “There are a lot of people who want men ...

A number of years ago, I spent five round-the-world trips on a lawyer to represent my case to be a present dad in my children’s growing up. I could sensibly calculate that separation would force the divvying up of my children’s time between parents, but I was determined to protect as much of it as I could, because I believe my children and I need time to maintain our strong, wholehearted ...

It was Christmas Day 2008, a significant milestone for my wife Jodi and me. Earlier that year, we had been thrown into the proverbial deep end as first-time parents of beautiful twin daughters, so this would be a Christmas like no other. The decorations were divine, we had food with all the trimmings, and the precious presents were beautifully wrapped (by my wife, of course) all ready to go. It was ...

Thanks to a group of West Australian dads, Currambine Primary School is now host to a unique library. Painted red, and watertight, the renovated Telstra phone booth is an outdoor add-on to the school’s existing book-borrowing service. The dads from LADDs birthed the idea. Loving and Devoted Dads are an offshoot of father engagement, The Father Project. LADDs exists to ‘improve child development by inspiring dads to engage with their kids.’ ...

Channing Tatum might be a lot of things on screen. Off-screen he’s a single dad, and the best-selling author of three children’s books. All three kids’ books were inspired by Tatum’s relationship with his own daughter, Everly. Central to the storyline is Ella (aka Sparkella), who, with the help of her dad, learns the value of acts like how to combat peer pressure, having patience, and telling the truth. Life Lessons ...

“We may have found a cure for most evils; but we have found no remedy for the worst of them all, the apathy of human beings.” Fighting Against Apathy The above quote is from Helen Keller, making it all the more pertinent. Helen Keller was both deaf and blind but somehow broke through her massive impediments in communication. Helen Keller was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor ...

Ron DeSantis doubling down on his fatherhood initiative gives further life to Florida’s fight for fathers. Speaking to a pro-life group on Saturday, the governor recommitted to the pro-dad program aimed at ending the fatherless epidemic. Dubbed House Bill 7065, 2022, the Responsible Fatherhood Initiative was unanimously signed into law last May. One year on and DeSantis is adamant that help for dads is hope for their kids.   If dad ...

Once upon a not-so-long-ago-time, I wasn’t a single dad. I was just a dad. Well, not “just”. For a just-starting-out dad, I had set some parenting goals. I quite deliberately set out to be anything but “just a dad.” I had a profound sense of parenting purpose. I was pounding with pride at the prospect of crafting a wonderful little person and was underway with nurturing and nursing my – our ...

Learning from conflict will make any dad a better one. “A joyful heart is good medicine”, wrote Solomon, “but a crushed spirit dries up the bones” (Prov 17:22). In his context, Solomon understood ‘joyful’ to mean delight, celebration, a form of cheerfulness, the shining of something bright. There’s a reason he speaks of joy and being crushed with a slight pause between two breaths. A joyful heart and a crushed spirit ...

For Hollywood dad, Kirk Cameron, modelling manhood is dad-life proper. Get past the Americana exterior, and the former atheist’s down-to-earth grasp of back-to-basics parenting has gravitas. Known for his role as Mike Seaver in the seven-season sitcom, Growing Pains, Cameron is also a father of six. Four of whom he and his wife of 31 years adopted not long after getting married. Two of whom, arrived later on. He recently shared ...

Recently I caught a Diamond Python on my daily prayer walk in the rainforest at Mt Kembla, near where I live in Wollongong, Australia. Someone asked me, “Why did you catch it?” That is a good question. If the truth is to be known, I cannot help myself. I love snakes. Think of it as an unusual addiction. It is part of our Marsh family heritage. It must be embedded in ...

A South Australian dad has put himself between danger and his daughter, after the curious toddler encountered a deadly Eastern Brown Snake. Noticing she’d become distracted by something in the hallway, Jake Coombe used his body to shield her. The father who lives with his family on an acreage told The Advertiser they’d just returned from holiday. “Alba was carrying a fishing reel, and I saw her drop it, to run for ...

Sometimes on the other side of a wonderful parenting weekend, there is a sense that single parenting is a clock-on-clock-off thing. A full parenting weekend involves the tumble and fun and out of sorts and homework and silliness and around-the-house helping out. Then, it goes quiet when I mentally punch off my dad timecard after wrapping up the school drop-off, knowing that the mum shift starts that afternoon. And, while I ...

“Something’s wrong,” my wife said. “What’s the matter?” I asked nonchalantly. “I think I am having a miscarriage,” my wife replied, with a touch of panic in her voice. Trying to sound like I was in control, I said, “We had better get you to the hospital.” Together we whisked our four children under 9 years of age to our family babysitter. From there the short 8-minute drive to the hospital ...

Daggy-dad films are somewhat of a rare breed. This is despite the sub-genre’s classics being among some of the most rewatchable films ever made. A popular pejorative, the word ‘dag’ is uniquely Australian, meaning untidy, dishevelled, and eccentric. Expanding on this, Urban Dictionary describes a ‘dag’ as someone who has no style, or sense of fashion. A daggy dad is not particularly trendy, or avant-garde. He’s often portrayed as aloof, believing ...

Sometimes my weekends are a maddening tussle to make the one-after-the-other events that seem to start flooding our Friday and spill into our Saturday and Sunday. Sport, birthday parties, youth group, housework, homework, school socials all back up, one against the other, to make our dad and daughters time fairly frenetic. Leading into my last weekend with Miss 7 and Miss 12, I knew that my Friday to Monday was going ...

Ludwig van Beethoven said, “Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.” Ronnie James Dio, a former member of Black Sabbath, said, “Music, rock & roll music especially, is such a generational thing. Each generation must have its own music. I had my own in my generation, you have yours, everyone I know has their own ...