The Importance of Fathers in the Healthy Development of Children

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Dads Make a Difference Program
A School-based Program Led by Teens

The Dads Make a Difference (DMAD) mission is to promote the positive involvement of fathers and to educate youth about responsible parenting, including teaching the practice of abstinence as the only 100 percent way to prevent either pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases. In 1993, four organizations came together to assist teens with understanding the importance of acknowledging paternity and to make well-thought out decisions about becoming parents. These organizations included the University of Minnesota Extension Service—Ramsey County, the Children's Defense Fund of Minnesota, the Family Tree Clinic in St. Paul, and the Ramsey County Attorney's Office—Child Support and Collections Office.

These organizations sought information from teens during the initial needs assessment process. Focus groups of ninth and tenth graders revealed that some teens do not make the connection between sexual activity and potential parenting; that teens lack basic knowledge about the importance of paternity; and that teens want more opportunities to talk about paternity, fathering, and sexual responsibility. In reviewing other prevention curricula and programs about too-early parenting, both a focus on males as nurturing, important parents, and an emphasis on the importance of planning to become prepared, capable parents were missing.

With this information, DMAD was developed in 1994 as a four-lesson, activity-based, middle school curriculum. The curriculum includes an 18-minute video featuring local teens sharing their experiences, thoughts, and feelings about sexual responsibility; how hard it is to be a teen parent; wanting and needing a father; financially supporting a child; and hopes and dreams for the future. The four lessons help youth:

• Examine risky behavior and learn about risk and protective factors;
• Explore legal issues of fatherhood, including child support and the benefits of paternity;
• Discover how involved fathers make a difference in the well-being of children;
• Learn the importance of making responsible decisions about when to have a child.

DMAD uses high school teens teaching as a male/female pair to present the four-lesson curriculum and video to middle school-aged youth. The curriculum gives boys and girls a timely wake-up call by building their awareness of the vital role fathers play in families, of the tremendous challenges of parenting, and of the importance of considering the implications of choices that may result in their becoming parents themselves.

DMAD trains high school teens who are diverse in many ways—race, ethnicity, gender, age, academic status, socioeconomic status, family type, geographic location (urban, suburban, rural), parenting status, and sexual orientation. Two important criteria for participation are that the teens have some general comfort leading a group and that the teens are interested in impacting their community in a positive way. These teens, in groups representing schools and community agencies, attend a 2-day overnight training along with their adult advisor.

At the training, the high school teens participate in team-building exercises and discuss fatherhood, parenting, and sexual responsibility. Learning from adult and teen trainers, the teens go through activities from the DMAD curriculum. Finally, they practice teaching the activities. The adult advisor then makes connections with teachers or other adults working with middle school-aged youth to arrange opportunities for the teens to teach. The curriculum presentations are designed to fit into the health, family life, or social studies courses that are offered in most schools, and it also provides continuing support for schools and community agencies to carry out and sustain teaching of the middle school curriculum.

From October 1994 through May 2003, DMAD trained 2,080 teen teachers in Minnesota from 153 schools and community agencies. These teens in turn taught the curriculum to approximately 38,000 middle school-aged youth in urban, suburban, and rural settings. In addition, about 1,000 youth in juvenile correctional settings participated in the DMAD program since May 2000. A total of 205 teens from other States also have been trained, with some of them traveling to Minnesota to participate in training events.

An evaluation completed in 2002 showed the DMAD program's effectiveness with both middle school and high school youth. Middle school youth showed statistically significant gains in every area related to youth risk behavior, and all gains had been retained or were increased 6 weeks later. The evaluation also shows considerable impact on teen teachers, who gained significantly in all areas measured after the training and continued to gain in knowledge and desirable attitudes in the follow-up surveys 1 and 2 years later.

For more information, contact:

Dads Make a Difference
Jan Hayne, Program Coordinator
Concordia University, School of Human Services
275 Syndicate Street North
St. Paul, MN 55104-5494
Phone: 651.603.6312
Fax: 651.603.6144
Email: hayne@csp.edu
Website: http://www.dadsmakeadifference.org

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