On My Shoulders: Breaking Stereotypes and Building Confidence
There are very few programs that specifically aim to help men navigate the challenges of fatherhood, but the On My Shoulders Fatherhood Support Group, a partnership between the Stanislaus County Department of Child Support and Center for Human Services (CHS) is one of them.
On My Shoulders is part of the Pathways to Self Sufficiency Project which is a federal case study to evaluate the benefits of fatherhood training and how unemployment affects fathers as they struggle to make child support payments. The group meets weekly for fourteen weeks and each session has a different focus ranging from what it means to be happy, to stress management, to how one’s personality influences their parenting style. There are normally five to ten parents at each session and in the four years the group has been at CHS, thirty-one fathers have graduated from the program.
Keith Amador, facilitator of the On My Shoulders group, explained that the group operates using three principles:
- Make it safe- Makes it safe to connect with others
- Decide, don’t slide- Encourages dads to be proactive, not just coast through life and their challenges
- Do your part- Shows dads that their role as father is irreplaceable. No one can do the same thing that they can for for their child
Keith discussed that many of the challenges these men face can be traced back to cultural definitions of masculinity that men learn through socialization their entire lives. Many of these men have only encountered negative expectations of their parenting and have been taught that their role as a father is not important. As Keith said, many men are faced with “dehumanizing stereotypes that reduce their role to just a paycheck, or a dead beat dad.”
In popular culture, masculinity and stoicism are synonymous. Men are constantly bombarded with the message that they should be tough, shouldn’t cry and really shouldn’t show any emotion at all, unless it is anger or some other form of aggressive behavior. This is damaging because this prevents men not only from being comfortable expressing emotion, but prevents them from being able to identify and regulate emotions that they feel in a healthy way.
The On My Shoulders group addresses these challenges in a safe space. “It’s ok to get help for past wounds,” Keith said, “you don’t have to carry that weight alone.”
Once these men feel more comfortable recognizing their emotions, lessons in communication come next to help them express their emotions. One session of the group is all about how to speak to be understood and how to listen to understand.
An interesting activity that the group does is personal road mapping. This is an activity that encourages fathers to map out in a visual way the positive and negative milestones from their birth to the time they became a father. This helps them to actually see the highs and lows of their lives and how those events got them to where they are today. This exercise is useful because it gives parents awareness and “awareness is key to help parents make better choices,” Keith said.
With raised awareness, fathers will learn more about their rights as dads, move beyond negative stereotypes and feel empowered. “We want them to be aware of how important they are,” Keith said. Because they truly are important.
