Giving His Daughter a Childhood That Feels Different

With support from Healthy Families Massachusetts, Damien learned how to care for his daughter, manage the hard moments, and create the kind of childhood he always wanted for her.

“Healthy Families is helping me give my daughter the happy childhood I never had,” said Damien Joppich, a father who was enrolled in Healthy Families Massachusetts in 2020.  

When Damien found out he was going to be a dad, he said he realized he knew nothing about taking care of a baby but knew that he would love his daughter and do everything in his power to make sure she had a better childhood than he did. When he was young, he and his sister bounced from home to home until they were teenagers and finally found stability with their dad. He doesn’t consider himself to have had a happy childhood, so he didn’t have a model for what he wanted his daughter to experience – only that he wanted it to be better than his.   

At first, he said, he felt alone, like he had to figure it out on his own, but then he learned about Healthy Families MA and Liz, his home visitor, “became part of our family.” A single dad, Damien credits his home visitor with helping him learn how to care for a baby and how to rely on others to help when he felt stressed or overwhelmed. Damien says that helped him through every stage in his daughter’s development, from feeding to excessive crying as a newborn to helping her cope with night terrors during her toddler years.  

Damien and his daughter, Star, live in Adams in Western Massachusetts. 

About the 30 for 30 Fatherhood Series 

This story is part of 30 Stories for 30 Years, marking 30 years of the Children’s Trust Fatherhood Initiative. The series highlights how professionals and organizations across Massachusetts support father involvement, healthy co-parenting, and stronger parenting partnerships as part of upstream prevention.