Thirty Years of Fatherhood Leadership: A Conversation with Steven Pascal

From Brown Bag Lunches to Statewide Impact

An Interview with Steven Pascal, Director of Home Visiting, explores how the Children’s Trust Fatherhood Initiative grew from informal conversations among practitioners into a statewide effort that continues to strengthen father engagement, family support, and public policy.

When the Children’s Trust first started focusing on father engagement, this wasn’t mainstream family support work. What led the Children’s Trust to take that step of intentionally focusing on father engagement?

Steven Pascal: My understanding is that this work started back in 1996, with what was explained to me as little lunch meetings between Children’s Trust staff and local community partners. People would bring brown bag lunches and meet at the Children’s Trust office to have conversations about how they were providing supports to families — particularly about how they could get more dads involved in services and ensure they were receiving the supports they needed.

As the Children’s Trust began to grow, they were able to put more resources behind keeping those meetings going. They recognized these conversations were happening primarily in Boston, but realized they could support similar meetings throughout the state in different regions. So they put funding behind the creation of the Fathers & Family Network meetings, which eventually grew to seven different regions. Professionals came together regularly to discuss how their individual programs were supporting fathers and how they could partner to maximize resources.

What were some of the early conversations like? What was the tone and feedback from organizations? Were they enthusiastic, or was there hesitancy?

Steven: The early conversations were focused on understanding what each professional’s individual programs were doing and how fathers were involved in those different services. There was a recognition that in the family support field, fathers are often ignored or not focused on.

That became the consensus opinion. These professionals came together to think about how they could better engage fathers, to examine whether their services actually served dads or were primarily tailored to moms and children, and how they could work together to better support fathers in their particular regions.

How have you seen the field change over time, from those initial meetings to where the family support field is now?

Steven: There’s definitely been more focus on the importance of engaging fathers in services. Even though there are still challenges in execution at ground level, at planning and implementation levels — even at federal and state levels — there’s more emphasis on the question: “How are we engaging dads?” It’s great that these conversations are now happening at multiple levels.

In Massachusetts, we have the Massachusetts Fatherhood Collaborative, an interagency collaborative of state staff that meet monthly to discuss how the state can better support fathers. Other home visiting initiatives like Healthy Families have always focused on supporting dads. And now federal initiatives are putting money toward supporting fathers and healthy co-parenting, recognizing that when fathers are involved in a healthy way with their families, children thrive.

One challenge that continues is that family support is a female-dominated field. When men don’t see other men in the field, that can be a barrier. That said, women can be extremely effective in supporting fathers when they have the commitment, understanding, and passion for the work.

But there’s still a tendency for people to orient toward moms and children, with dads as a secondary or afterthought. We’re starting to see that change, which is encouraging, but we need to continue building fatherhood engagement into all family support programming as a focal point.

Strength-based framing is really important to the Children’s Trust. How has that philosophy shaped programming and the approach to the fatherhood initiative?

Steven: Strength-based framing is an approach the Children’s Trust has always leaned into because we recognize that everyone brings strengths to the table. Despite whatever challenges families are facing, they also have strengths we can use and leverage to overcome those challenges. When you focus on family strengths and engage them in that conversation, it builds trust and shows them you’re supporting them comprehensively. It also shows them they have skills and tools they can lean into to help themselves overcome challenges, which supports their self-advocacy and self-efficacy.

This doesn’t mean we ignore challenges. We partner with families on effective strategies that help them see they have tools to overcome obstacles. When you translate this to fathers, the same applies. All dads have strengths they can lean into despite their challenges. We take the same approach because research shows that when fathers are involved in their families, children do significantly better. To ignore fathers and treat them as separate from family would be doing families a disservice.

The data around increases in Nurturing Fathers graduates and Fathers & Family Network participants is remarkable. What’s driving that growth? What are you hearing from professionals and dads about what’s driving this increased focus on fatherhood engagement?

Steven: There’s recognition across the family support field that fathers are important when supporting families. Fathers are present in families’ lives, and professionals’ ability to engage them in ways that resonate is critical. But there haven’t been many discussions or trainings on how to specifically work with fathers.

Our ability to bring people together for these conversations is something professionals have been looking for. People register in strong numbers for our trainings because they want to learn how to engage dads, support positive co-parenting, understand fathers’ mental health and its impact on the family, and learn how to support dads in engaging with children during early childhood and preparing them to be school-ready.

There are so many topics we discuss in relation to dads that we only typically discuss regarding moms. People want that more comprehensive balance because it makes them better professionals and better equipped to meet families where they are.

What’s changed over 30 years? When this started, there wasn’t as much interest. Was it lack of awareness, or has society changed — moms working more, dads having to be more engaged?

Steven: There’s definitely a generational and cultural shift. The “traditional” two-parent household, where one parent went out as the breadwinner and the other stayed home, is no longer the norm. In many cases, both parents work and require more partnership in parenting. From a generational standpoint, men are more focused on being active participants in their children’s upbringing than in the past.

Historically, fathers were portrayed stereotypically as breadwinners and disciplinarians—that was the extent of their role. The newer generation doesn’t see themselves that way. They see themselves as nurturers. They want to be active in their children’s upbringing from the beginning, connected to their lives in ways their own fathers may not have been.

When we engage younger dads in these conversations, it resonates because they want to be present and provide that balance for their children. Culturally, this is interesting because while some cultures have traditional views of men not being nurturing caregivers, newer generations within those cultures who come to America are trying to break away from that stereotype.

There’s an internal cultural struggle that cuts across all cultures—the newer generation versus the older generation. The older generation saw dads in a certain way; this new generation doesn’t look at it that way. That’s a great opportunity for us to support younger fathers so they can maximize their potential to be nurturing fathers.

Where is the Children’s Trust pushing the field in fatherhood right now, in terms of innovations?

Steven: We’ve evolved significantly from 1996 when the Fathers & Family Network started as informal meetings among professionals to where we are now — using a more strategic, focused four-part approach to supporting practitioners in helping families and fathers.

First, we continue to create space for professionals to come together and have conversations about their work. We want to expand these communities of practice throughout the state regionally, because every region has distinct strengths and challenges. Professionals in each region need to have conversations about how they’re supporting dads in their area.

Second, we provide ongoing training to family support professionals on topics like how to engage fathers, support co-parenting, address fathers’ mental health, and support fathers in helping children’s social-emotional development.

Third, the Children’s Trust receives state funding to support programming for families. We provide technical assistance and quality assurance to our partner programs on how they’re engaging dads — tracking how many fathers we’re engaging in services, how many children are associated with those dads, and getting their feedback on programming to ensure we’re capturing fathers’ voices.

Fourth, we’re focused on advocacy at the state level. The Massachusetts Fatherhood Collaborative brings together different state agencies to discuss how we can improve services and coordinate them to support fathers, understand the landscape across the commonwealth, identify gaps in services, and partner resources to support dads. We’re now much more strategic about where we can be impactful as the Children’s Trust in fatherhood work than we were when the network started organically.

What does success look like over the next five to ten years for the Fatherhood Initiative?

Steven: We want to meet all fathers throughout the commonwealth where they are. We don’t want dads to feel like there’s nothing out there for them. Whether it’s support groups, programming to help them engage with their children, or help with specific challenges, we want something available to every father in Massachusetts.

This is why we want to expand the Fathers & Family Network to more regions, provide more father-specific programming across the state, engage more professionals in training, and have more conversations as a state about whether our policies and practices across agencies are supporting dads or hindering their involvement and ability to thrive.

We want to see more training, greater access for fathers to support services, and increased focus on supporting dads through state-level policy and practice.

What should family support professionals — home visitors, social workers, practitioners — take away from this discussion and your work?

Steven: The thing that keeps me focused on this work is understanding that if we want families to thrive, research shows that when children have supportive fathers in their lives — whether those fathers are in romantic relationships or co-parenting relationships — children do better. If that’s our ultimate goal as professionals, then ignoring fathers won’t help us meet it. We have to be better at engaging fathers, talking to them about the importance of their role as parents, and ensuring they have the supports they need to meet their challenges so they can support their families.

I’d also say it would be great if we could have more men in the field considering family support as a viable profession. But for all professionals, the key is to continue focusing on fathers and asking within your programming: Are we meeting the needs of all family members, not just moms and children, but fathers as well?

Steven Pascal is the Director of Home Visiting at the Children’s Trust, where he leads the Fatherhood Initiative and works to advance father engagement across the Commonwealth of 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.