13 June 2024 • Update
Following Young Fathers Further- the journey so far!
In reading this post, you may already be familiar with the Following Young Fathers study or perhaps it may be that you have only recently joined our network (in which case, welcome!). We would like to take this opportunity to (re)introduce the study and the story behind the journey of the research so far.
The below words are from Following Young Fathers Further study Director Professor Anna Tarrant and we hope they will give you a deeper insight into how the study began, the story so far and what comes next.
In October 2018, just two weeks before giving birth to my youngest child, I submitted one of the most exciting and ambitious research proposals of my career; a proposal for a Future Leaders Fellowship. Future Leaders Fellowships are a prestigious research and innovation scheme funded by UK Research & Innovation. They offer substantial investment in budding scientists and social scientists to deliver on a vision for the benefit of society, through their development as research leaders in a key area of expertise. They are also unique as funding schemes in providing a longer-term space through which to address complex societal issues and challenges. My ambition was to develop as an acknowledged leader and expert in fatherhood research and to build a feminist-informed agenda centred around the promotion of the value of father engagement and the instigation of a more father-inclusive practice and policy environment.
The prioritisation of cross disciplinary and sector collaborations and innovation in the scheme also aligned perfectly with these ambitions, which I had come to learn were shared with professionals nationally who are deeply committed to improving recognition of, and support for, father engagement as a key societal imperative. Indeed, the initial idea for the fellowship grew out of previous work conducted in Leeds (Tarrant and Neale, 2017), which sparked new conversations with professionals in Grimsby. There was a local commitment to exploring whether and how they could embed father-inclusive principles through place-based work, in a way that would support fathers in the town regardless of their identities, and their socio-economic and personal circumstances. Through the fellowship we committed to collaborate to test and instigate a new model of the Young Dads Collective in Grimsby, an effective model of good practice that trains young fathers to educate professionals about the importance of father-inclusion through telling them about their parenting journeys and support needs.
To extend the value of the research, I proposed to extend the learning from Following Young Fathers, a study that I had become more closely connected with and that was unique globally, as the first qualitative longitudinal study of young fatherhood. To extend the reach of Following Young Fathers, we committed to following up with some of the young fathers who had participated in that study to capture their longer-term parenting experiences and trajectories. We also sought to compare the experiences of young fathers in the UK with young fathers in Sweden, comparing the extent to which the welfare and family policy systems in the two countries influence young fathers’ experiences and their abilities to be there for their children. We have since published some of our findings and conclusions (Andreasson et al. 2022; Tarrant et al. 2022).
Based on my ongoing conversations with multi-agency professionals, with marginalised and impoverished fathers, and my analyses of existing qualitative data about young fathers through the Following Young Fathers study, I was convinced of the need for more research about how we better support father involvement and engagement, not only for the benefit of men, but also for women, for children and for society as a whole. I was also convinced that this could not be the work of one person alone; but of a coalition of individuals, communities, researchers, professionals and policymakers, perhaps with different perspectives, but with a shared vision and commitment to understanding father-inclusion and to seeing dads in a different way.
The question I had from the outset of the Following Young Fathers Further study was how? How do we create the conditions that enable fathers in all their diversity to ‘be there’ for their children and in the way they want to be? Who do we need on board to promote this vision? What concepts and theories do we need to develop to support this work? What works already and how can this be replicated? and finally; What methods and mechanisms need to be in place to ensure that this happens?
These questions have formed the basis of the Fellowship and have driven our vision for collaborating with champions for fathers to advocate for, and evidence, the value of a more father-inclusive society that works more effectively for all fathers and their families. These questions and this vision have driven much the work of the Following Young Fathers Further team, both planned and serendipitous, since January 2020 when we embarked on this hugely ambitious piece of work. They also drive the recently established Centre for Innovation in Fatherhood and Family Research, based at the University of Lincoln under my leadership. We welcome new members, both in academia and beyond, to continue to build towards a shared vision for a father-inclusive, gender equal society.
This report provides just a sliver of insight into the work of the past four years but is a culmination of our journey so far. We have plans to develop further outputs from the study, supported by an additional three years of funding that will extend our work again to January 2027. Our hopes are to deliver on, and advance our agenda for a father-inclusive society by expanding our multi-disciplinary networks, engaging in continued advocacy and practice training and development, working with others to establish a more cohesive and universal policy commitment to involved fathers, and doing so with and for the very people this affects the most; men who are fathers now and men who will become fathers in the future.
You can read the full report here
From our partners and young dads
“[daughter]'s almost two-year-old. She came up the house and she actually really liked it. Preferably my house is the best place for her to, for the contact to be, if I’m honest, 'cause we just buy toys for her all the time. We’ve got a lovely garden that she can play in, lovely, big, and we’ve got a sandpit in there. We’ve been buying loads of things for her to play with to keep her occupied.”
“[Speaking about support of young fathers] We’ve done a lot of kind of advocation and representing them, a lot of the time there’s involvement with statutory services. They don’t have the care of the young person, the care’s provided by the state or the mother, so we’ve attended lots of meetings with the young person to offer additional support and facilitated contact where necessary and offered just general emotional wellbeing, support, improving robustness and resilience, encouraging them to have as amicable relationship as possible.”
“And I suppose it goes back to what we were saying before about behaviours, maybe the education side of stuff and the fact that men aren’t involved in those early conversations, you know, whether it is, I know they’re invited to come along to bumps to babies but I don’t know whether we go into the detail around some of that brain development side of stuff and things like that. Maybe that is the thing that really would change things. You know, if you were given all of that information about what happens to a child as they grow, in a scientific way, as easy to understand as possible, could be the thing that impacted on behaviour in the home.”
“If your child’s with the mother, like your relationship with her depends on your relationship with the child, innit. That’s what I realised a lot, like you can try and be bitter, you can try and be this, be that, but it’s just gonna push you further away from your child, innit.”
“I wanna fight for more stuff for dads. Like I do wanna have that extra support for new dads or even existing dads that we don’t get now 'cause we’re still important too although obviously the mum does need the majority a’ the care because obviously of the after care and the birth. But like the dads take it extremely hard as well. And obviously with having no support I think it increases the rise of mental health.”
“I think both a mother and father combined, it’s communicating and both being on the same page of what’s best for your child or children, and for both, it’s just being there 100% for them and not, like, putting yourself first, it’s, you know, putting the child’s interests first... ”
“We need to be including, we need to not [just] be focusing on mum and child […] That’s a great focus but dad … dad’s not invisible, dad needs to be in the picture as well because there’s research that shows you the effect it has on children and families as a whole when dad isn’t in the picture, so services need to be changing the way in which they work so it’s more inclusive.”
“Cause I think a lot of the time, some of young people who end up having children have been through the care system or support systems and they can feel quite judged or labelled by organisations and it’s breaking the cycle and breaking them out of that to feel empowered to be able to take stuff back, that’s the real interest to me. So, it’s about getting support right, as in being there and giving advice and guidance and all them things that we can do, but also making sure that we are doing with people as opposed to people.”
“One of the most successful projects we ever did was an informal dads’ group, and it used to be on Saturdays […] they did what they wanted, they used to do things like breakfast, and they would have breakfast together and talk about dad stuff and where they were taking their kids. And that group was always really well attended because there was never an agenda. They were never judged. They were just there together.”
“...the whole stay at home dad thing is not something to be ashamed of, you know, if you’re a dad and you wanna take your daughter out for the day, or you wanna take your kid out for the day on your own, well why is that frowned upon, why can’t you take your child out for the day ”
“Oh…patience…compassion…tolerance, a whole boatload a’ that! Honestly, I like a whole lot of life. Sacrifice…compromise, yeah I think, yeah I think they, they would be the, the big, the five, I feel, I think that was five, they would be the main. ”
“We’re currently in touch with social services for two [dads] because they don’t understand why they can’t see their children because they haven’t been informed by social services, their partner. So there’s a massive communication breakdown with those young men, so that’s the main focus of what we’re dealing with at the minute.”
“it’s still…the…sense of judgement I get from other people when they find out that I have a child.And they say, ‘oh how old is she’.I say, ‘oh she’s ten’. And they say, ‘oh how old are you?’. Like you don’t need to know that....I know exactly where that thought process is going, you know. It’s like, ‘oh you look really young and you’ve had a kid’. It’s like, ‘yeah I know, I was there!’”
Partners
