Tristen Hurt was just 15 when his girlfriend became pregnant. After his son was born, he started attending a program called "Young Men in Transition" that teaches teenage boys how to be dads.

"Since 1994 it has helped about 450 very young fathers - more than 90 percent of whom started in the program - complete high school, get jobs and establish relationships with their children."

Tristen and his girlfriend were married two years ago, and Tristen in on the road to becoming a surgical technician. He has great relationships with his kids and credits "Young Men in Transition" with teaching him what it means to be a dad. Source: Star-Tribune, Minneapolis, MN

Youth Care offers a residential treatment program for pregnant teens.

Labels: fathers, pregnancy, role_models

Girls in all 48 states are attending "purity dances" with their fathers. The dances can be elaborate affairs with prom dresses, big dinners and orchestras, but a common feature is having the girls pledge to remain virgins until they marry. At some purity balls, fathers give their daughters gold purity bands to wear as reminders. Daughters give their fathers gold keys to hold until their wedding days, when fathers give the keys to their new sons-in-law.

Some oppose the dances as a form of abstinence-only education, which several recent academic studies concluded were ineffective. Other objections are coming from feminists.

"These events represent an idea that there is something about female sexuality that needs to be controlled by dominant men in the household," Professor Mary Zeiss Stange of Skidmore College told the Chicago Tribune. "That relates to a patriarchal position in the evangelical movement that not only defines female sexuality but females themselves as property. ... The daughter becomes her father's property until he hands her off to her husband."

Proponents of purity dances argue that other studies prove that girls who spend time with their fathers are more likely to complete college and have higher self-esteem and less likely to seek approval from boyfriends.

The first purity ball began in 1997 at a Christian ministry in Colorado, Generations of Light. Randy Carlson, father of five daughters and two sons, said he never expected to start a trend.

"It was birthed out of our home, not the abstinence movement," he said. "It is a fatherhood event, not a virginity or abstinence event."

At an all girls school like Copper Canyon Academy in Arizona teenage girls are free of common distractions like boys and sex which allows them the opportunity for personal growth and academic achievement.

Labels: fathers, girls, virginity

The new movie 'Daddy's Little Girls' tells the story of a father who fights for shared custody of his daughters with his ex-wife. The movie brings to the forefront an important fact that's often overlooked - a father's involvement has dramatic effects in his kids' lives.

"A just-released Boston College study found that when nonresident fathers are involved in their adolescent children's lives, the incidence of substance abuse, violence, crime, and truancy decreases markedly... The study also found that when teens begin to slide towards delinquency, nonresident fathers increase their involvement in response. The researchers found such involvement to be effective - the impact of father involvement was the greatest on the kids who had previously been the most troubled."

Studies have also determined that father involvement is a greater predictor of juvenile crime than the family's socio-economic status. Read more at PostChronicle.com.

Labels: fathers, influences, parental_involvement