Online resources for fathers
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Have you ever sat in a public place—say a bus—and had somebody sit near you and start giving advice? Maybe you gave him a lead (maybe not; this sage certainly doesn’t need one), but for some reason, he feels qualified to lay out the map for your life, complete with a compass and mileposts along the way. Damned annoying! And as likely or not, rather than take his advice to heart, you’re thinking, “This guy’s either stoned or nuts,” and you want to punch him or get off off before your stop just to get out of earshot. Looking for fathering tips online is kind of like that. You’re making an awfully big roll of the die when, with childlike trust and hope, you submit your fondest questions and fears to the Google gods. Any windbag could intercept your search and tell you exactly what to do.
If you have ever gone to the internets looking for answers to your parenting questions, and you’re a normal human and not a cyborg, you probably became quickly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information available, to say nothing of assessing the quality of that info. A simple search for “resources for fathers” returns almost 10,000 hits, while a broader term, advice fathers, delivers almost 2 million. Sifting through it can be a little like swimming through oatmeal: lots of work, little forward motion. (And while I’m on the subject, why are so many fatherhood websites so completely ugly, like this? Is it that we bring to our websites the same sense of fashion we display around the house? And why are they often so completely out of date, like this—the current #1 site for a Google advice fathers search—not updated since 2002, and which displays all the zip and flash of Web 0.1? Is it that we’re still wearing our 1980s haircuts and figure what’s good for hair is good for our website? It’s a mystery.)
That’s where Fathered Five can help. This is the first in a series of posts meant to be your guide through the cybermaze. I read and evaluate fatherhood and parenting sites regularly and will bring you the best of what I find. When you see me recommend a site or article, you know it meets at least one of the following criteria:
1. It presents new information or helped me look at known information in a fresh way.
2. It motivates me to change something about myself or to act on information.
3. The site is well written, up to date, and easy to navigate.
4. Its offerings have practical value, such as downloadable forms, coupon codes, or other things (not just ideas or info) I can use.
With those demanding standards in mind, here’s today’s recommendation: Fathers.com, sponsored and maintained by the National Center for Fathering. The Center describes its mission this way:
The mission of the National Center for Fathering is to improve the well-being of children by inspiring and equipping men to be more effectively involved in the lives of children. In response to a dramatic trend towards fatherlessness in America, the Center was founded in 1990 by Dr. Ken Canfield to conduct research on fathers and fathering, and to develop practical resources to prepare dads for nearly every fathering situation.
Ambitious and laudable! (”Every” fathering situation?? Fathers.com hasn’t met Luke!) The information the site presents falls short of the vision, but it makes a very impressive effort and may yet achieve the goal. Look for articles from the main page handily sorted by your kids’ ages, your situation (divorced, step-dad, etc.), or by topic.
One of the things that most appeals to me about the site and its founder/mission is that it is uncluttered by religious rhetoric. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with religion-based parenting, but I like that Fathers.com tries to appeal to the widest possible audience by presenting good information without a religious lens. Click on over and have a look.
