Starting Earlier: Boys, Respect & the Path to Better Fatherhood
By David Mandel, CEO and Founder, Safe & Together Institute
In my book, Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence, I explore a critical blind spot in how we approach family well-being: our tendency to ignore fathers and their impact on families. This systemic oversight doesn’t just affect current fathers—it starts much earlier, with how we fail to prepare boys for fatherhood.
Just as we often overlook fathers in family services, child welfare, and mental health settings, we’re similarly ignoring the development of future fathers. When we talk about preparing young people for parenthood, our focus overwhelmingly falls on girls and young women. Meanwhile, boys receive virtually no guidance about fatherhood beyond basic sex education focused on pregnancy and disease prevention.
Unprepared Boys
This oversight perpetuates a cycle: We don’t prepare boys for fatherhood, then express frustration when men struggle as fathers, yet continue to provide minimal support or engagement. The message boys receive is that fatherhood isn’t something they need to think about or prepare for—it’s something that just happens to them.
Think about it: What messages do boys typically receive about fatherhood? Most learn by watching their fathers, uncles, and other male role models, for better or worse. There’s rarely any structured conversation about what it means to be a good father and, crucially, how treating your partner with respect is fundamental to effective fatherhood.
Breaking the Cycle
We need to break this cycle of ignoring fathers by starting earlier—much earlier. Boys need explicit conversations about:
What kind of father they might want to be
Why they might choose to become a father
The importance of emotional connection and support to healthy child development
How their treatment of partners impacts their children
What it means to be a supportive co-parent
Preparing Boys for Fatherhood
Just as we've recognized that engaging fathers is crucial for family well-being, we must recognize that preparing boys for fatherhood is equally important. We can’t continue to ignore male parental development and then wonder why some men struggle to be the fathers their families need.
The path forward requires us to fill this educational gap. We need to develop ways to engage boys in conversations about fatherhood that go beyond biological facts to explore the emotional and relational aspects of being a father. This includes understanding that their future role as fathers is inextricably linked to how they view and treat their partners.
Breaking the cycle of ignoring fathers starts with stopping the cycle of ignoring future fathers. It’s time to start having these conversations with boys, to develop programs that prepare them for fatherhood, and to place respect for partners at the center of these discussions. The future of family well-being depends on our ability to stop ignoring this crucial aspect of male development.