Our learning
The Following Young Fathers Further team have been researching with young dads, aged 25 and under, since 2020.
Eleven of the young fathers we have interviewed have been involved in young fatherhood research for over 10 years!
Young dads like you have told us:
- what it is like to be a father at a young age,
- what it is like to share parenting with others (i.e. partners and family members),
- what challenges young dads might face and how they overcome them,
- experiences of education, employment and training,
- experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic and mental health,
- the value of supportive professionals.
We share what we learn with others to show how important young dads are and to create a more positive parenting experience for all.
Your experience of being a young father really matters.
Want to share your story or find out more about being involved? Click here.
A dynamic perspective of young fathers’ well-being
Predictive and protective factors across their mental health pathways
This briefing paper explores the dynamic mental health pathways of young fathers in their transition to fatherhood. We argue that they navigate a well-being spectrum over time as they adapt to their new identities and responsibilities where young fatherhood can be source of joy and pride. However, the struggles associated with young parenthood may tip some young men into periods of mental ill-health.
Download Briefing Paper
DigiDAD Evaluation
One Year On
The Following Young Fathers Further team conducted an evaluation of the North East Young Dads and Lads' new digital offer for young fathers called DigiDAD.
DigiDAD is a unique, pioneering e-learning parenting platform made by and for young fathers. First created during the COVID-19 pandemic, DigiDAD features evidence-informed content designed to support the informational requirements of young fathers.
Diverse Dads reports
The Diverse Dads team launched two open access reports based on the outcomes of the research as the ‘Diverse Dads Collaborative. These include key research findings and recommendations for good practice, as informed by the young fathers and professionals who participated in the study.
Final report series 2023
Co-creating with young fathers
This eight-part report series reports on our findings and the innovations from the Following Young Fathers Further study between January 2020 and December 2023. These have been launched at the final conference, which took place in Lincoln on Thursday 7th December 2023.
We intend to develop further outputs from the study, supported by an additional three years of funding that will extend our work again to January 2027. So watch this space!
NCRM Telephone Methods Toolkit
The pandemic has prompted many social scientists to rethink their research methods and adapt to researching in ways that accommodate social distancing rules. Telephone interviews offer a remote route to fieldwork but their value for researchers extends beyond the pandemic. This toolkit considers the role of telephone interviewing in qualitative research and the advantages and challenges of this method and attendant practical and ethical questions. We provide practical reflections around how to address the challenges associated with telephone interviews and draw on examples from current research.
Responding to young dads in a different way
Two open access reports were developed from this Leeds Social Science Institute funded project, which was led by Dr Anna Tarrant between April 2016 and April 2017. The first is an evidence review of existing research about practice support for young fathers. The second reports on the Responding to Young Dads in a Different Way project and its key findings.
Think Dad!
The Think Dad! Toolkit, co-created with young fathers and developed with professionals and services in mind who want to improve how they work with young fathers.
Wave One: Exploring the impacts of Covid-19 on young fathers
Early analyses of our findings from Wave One of interviews from the study. We explore the impacts of the Covid-19 crisis on young fathers and the professionals who supported them.
Briefing Paper One: Negotiating ‘earning’ and ‘caring’ through the COVID-19 crisis: change and continuities in the parenting and employment trajectories of young fathers
Briefing Paper Two: From social isolation to local support: Relational change and continuities for young fathers in the context of the COVID-19 crisis
Briefing Paper Three: Supporting at a distance: the challenges and opportunities of supporting young fathers through the COVID-19 pandemic
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
