THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 17, 1996 TAG: 9607170329
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DEBRA GORDON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 71 lines
The television spot opens with the shadow of bars falling upon a young man's face. Prison bars.
``Seventy percent of hard-core criminals grow up without a dad,'' says the announcer.
Then the scene shifts to different bars - the bars of a crib, and the arms of a father lifting out a baby.
``Be there,'' the voice says. ``Dads make a difference.''
For 85 people at a Fatherhood Forum at the Norfolk Waterside Marriott Hotel on Tuesday, that brief public service announcement underscored how crucial it is to get fathers more involved as parents.
The forum, attended mostly by representatives of community groups such as Boys Clubs and local churches, was the last of four held throughout the state as part of the Virginia Fatherhood Campaign. The campaign was organized by The National Fatherhood Initiative, a Pennsylvania-based advocacy organization, which produced the public service announcement, organized the forums and is assisting local efforts.
The organization has been at the forefront of a renewed national focus on fathers and their roles in a society awash in divorces, unwed pregnancies and children growing up with only mothers at home.
``Virginia is clearly a leader in this effort,'' said initiative director Wade F. Horn. ``No other state has as much invested.''
Indeed, Virginia views the issue as so critical to children's health that in March, Gov. George F. Allen committed $260,000 to start the Virginia Fatherhood Campaign. Nearly half of that investment, $100,000, will be distributed as seed money to help grass-roots organizations start or expand fathering programs.
The campaign is run out of the state Health Department. Some might be surprised the program is under that agency's jurisdiction, said Virginia Health Commissioner Dr. Randolph Gordon - until they consider the health risks fatherlessness brings.
Kids with involved fathers or male figures in their lives, Gordon said, are less likely to use drugs and alcohol, to become sexually promiscuous or to get involved with violent behavior.
A national study in the American Journal of Public Health showed that people who grew up in single-parent homes - primarily headed by women - live an average of four years less than those from two-parent families.
The featured speaker at Tuesday's forum was Kay Coles James, former state secretary for health and human resources. James, now dean of Regent University's Robertson School of Government, was raised by a single parent when her father abandoned her mother and five siblings.
James attacked media images that glamorize single mothers and minimize the importance of a father in a child's life.
Even single mothers, she said, can find strong father figures for their children. ``My mother made friends with the football coach and involved her sisters' husbands in our lives.''
That involvement, she said, is even more important than the financial support some fatherhood programs stress.
``Even if he can't pay the money, it's important that (a father) go out and throw a ball to his son. That he sits his daughter on his lap and tells her how cute she is. Because if he doesn't, when she's 16, someone else will.'' MEMO: Want to get involved? Contact the Virginia Fatherhood Campaign,
1-800-790-3237. ILLUSTRATION: HUY NGUYEN
The Virginian-Pilot
Fatherhood Forum participants, above, gather at the Norfolk
Waterside Marriott Hotel near a banner for the Virginia Fatherhood
Campaign. Ron Clark, Fred Watson and Yohance Murray, from left in
photo below, were among 85 people at Tuesday's forum. by CNB