Will The Young Dads Please Show Up?

William Knox wanted to tell his story to despairing – and maybe deadbeat — young dads from the neighborhood. They didn’t show up. At least not yet.

Knox grew up motherless and fatherless in the Jim Crow South. He came to New Haven, where he made a family and a life for himself as a postman for 40 years, with his first route out at West Rock.

That story — and a commitment to lasso in the elusive young audience of New Haven’s single African-American fathers — emerged at Dad’s Night Out, a recent event organized by Lensley Gay, the director of the Family Resource Center at the Brennan-Rogers School in West Rock.

As about 20 people finished up their pizza, salad, and melon at the school cafeteria and settled in for a discussion about the need to mentor young fathers, one of those few young fathers in the audience, Theodore L. Brooks, Jr., stood up and threw down the first of several gauntlets of the evening: ​“I see three in my age group, one a little younger, several older men, and the rest women. Our problem is the men have not shown up. There should be men here with their children. That’s what I expected.”

No one contested what Brooks said, but they called the gathering last week a good beginning.

Organizer Gay said that she had done extensive outreach, especially with the parents at the K‑8 Brennan-Rogers. Only three, all single dads like Maurice Coleman, had appeared.

You have to start a long journey with a single step, Gay said. ​“We’re going to grow this.”

There is in fact a deep recognition in the African-American community and especially among its social work professionals that young men, especially young fathers, need help simply absorbing the concept of fatherhood as well as help visitation and custody questions, said David Asbery.

Asbery founded a group calledFixing Fathers, Inc, one four heads of father-focused not-for-profits present at the meeting to offer their services.

Asbery offered his kudos to Maurice Coleman, one of of three young single dads at the event with his son, Maurice, who attends Brennan-Rogers.

Young Maurice lives in West Rock with his mother. His dad, who lives in Dixwell, is a recent graduate of yet another father or male-focused initiative, the male-involvement program at STRIVE New Haven

“He’s a young father and he ​‘got it,’” Asbery said of Coleman.

What he got was ​“my responsibility [as a father]. I come through the door [at home], it’s business off, dad on. A lot of these dads don’t get it,” added Asbery, the author of a recent book on single dads, called My Wife, My Kids, My God.

Blannie Bostic runs a new organization called P.R.E.P., which recently received its not-for-profit status, he said. Bostic until recently ran the male involvement network at the New Haven Family Alliance. He said his new organization offers a place for young fathers, especially those recently out of jail and struggling to support themselves and their offspring, to cover the whole range of help for support, including co-parenting skills.

Traditionally agencies focus on the mother-child relationship. His group’s aim is the father-child, he said.

“I’ll be there [tomorrow] in the morning when the dads drop off their kids,” and I’ll tell them what they missed, Gray said afterwards.

“I’m stumped,” Knox added, ​“but I’m not giving up.”