For anyone looking ahead to giving the fathers in their lives a little something special on Father’s Day this year, here are a few ideas for the sensitive, kind, caring, compassionate, crafty, all-around brilliant and dynamic fathers in your lives.
A bouquet of farm-grown flowers for admiring.
A canvas book tote for hauling around the daily necessities.
A pair of slippers for relaxing in.
A wooden tree swing for being playful with.
A mug for sipping tea from.
A bathrobe for some much-deserved down time.
A cookbook for inspiring family dinners.
A bracelet for a little something fancy.
Action items:
In an effort to ground all of this gift-giving in something a bit more down to earth, here are a few things we can do today to help fathers of all kinds:
For Families with Two Dads: Take a photo. The Family Equality Council connects, supports, and represents LGBTQ parents and their children. Their Snap it and Send it initiative encourages LGBTQ parents to “snap and send” photos of forms that only have a place for a mother and a father. It’s a call to action to acknowledge the diversity of today’s families.
For Families with Incarcerated Fathers: Send children’s books. The DC-based nonprofit Hope House supports families with incarcerated fathers by connecting fathers and children. The Hope House looks for children’s book donations on an ongoing basis for their Father-to-Child Reading Program, which records the voices of incarcerated fathers reading children’s books to send to their children.
For Men Who Have Babies: Support Men Having Babies, a national nonprofit supporting gay men who would like to become biological parents. They educate prospective parents about the process of becoming biological fathers and run an assistance fund to offer financial support to fathers during the surrogacy process.
For Stay-at-Home Dads: Explore the National At Home Dad Network, which provides “advocacy, community, education, support” for stay-at-home dads who are the primary caregivers to their children.
11 Comments
Great ideas here. I’m glad you gave ideas for dads that fall into different categories. This is so important and very inclusive. I love it.
Love the coffee/tea mug!! swoon.
And, of course, the action items are spectacular.
That link for books for incarcerated fathers to read to their kids
Concur – thank you Erin, you prompted me to donate. What an amazingly simple, beautiful program.
The Father to Child Reading Program sounds wonderful! Thank you for this. When my husband was deployed he was able to read my son’s favorite books on tape through the USO (United Services Agency). It was a great way to keep them connected.
These are all such beautiful and thoughtful suggestions, thank you!
Just leaving a comment to say that this was a really great, thorough and thoughtful post. Thumbs up.
Just writing to say that I always excitedly scroll to the bottom of your gift guides to see the philanthropic suggestions 🙂 It’s wonderful, I wish everyone did this. (And I say this as a total junky for a well-curated gift guide, so it’s not like the capitalism monster isn’t strong within me!)
Dear Erin: I am Carol Fennelly, Executive Director of Hope House. Recently we have received a flood of donations from people who we did not know. We are so pleased and grateful, but I couldn’t figure out how they knew about us. Finally one person told me that they had read about us on your blog. I just wanted to write to say thank you for finding us and sharing our work with your readers. Since 1999 we have recorded more than 21,000 books, so getting new books into the mix is so important. Thanks, cf
So glad to hear that, Carol!
This is a late comment but I just want to say thank you for your inclusivity.
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