Jonathan Bedloe, MRT.
Men’s Resources Tasmania (MRT) is collaborating with TasDads to grow new support for fathers in Tasmania.
The Dad’s Book offers valuable information for new dads, including contacts and links to Tasmanian parenting, health and wellbeing services for fathers.
The Dad’s Book is an initiative of MRT, designed to support men in their new role as fathers. TasDads is an informal dad’s group that enables men to meet regularly, share experiences, and create mutual support.
“Growing support for dads benefits everyone,” said MRT Executive Officer Jonathan Bedloe at the launch of the publication.
“When fathers are engaged with their children, the result is better support for mums, and healthier babies. Dads also benefit from being committed in their role as parents—experiencing reduced isolation and increased social connection, confidence and self-esteem. Ensuring that dads get the support they need is an important priority for MRT.”
He said that despite there still being gaps in services and supports for dads, the book showed that there was already a significant array of support available.
“We’re pleased to be able to provide a resource that offers positive encouragement and support to dads, and helps all of us see how we can support the vital role that dads play in creating healthy lives for children,” Bedloe said.
“When they’re engaged and playing an active role in the lives of their children, it actually improves the cognitive functioning of children, improves their resilience, their moral judgments, and helps them to create supportive social networks into their futures,” he explained.
Benefits of such child-parent engagement also flowed to the fathers.
“We know that they also have less substance abuse,” Bedloe said. “They also have improved social connections, they contribute more to their community, and less mental illness as well.”
For Bedloe, a recent statistic that stood out was that in Quebec in Canada, four out of five fathers take their share of parental leaves whilst in Australia only 1% of parental leave taken is taken by dads. “So we’ve got a lot of work to do both as dads to say, ‘Yep, I’m going to take my leave and I hope you did’. But also, as workplaces and as community organisation saying, ‘Yep, we actually we need dads to take that leap’.”
This week also saw the debut of TasDads — a group of young dads working to extend opportunities for fathers across Tasmania to connect. Sam Grachan, a founding member of the group, assisted with the development of The Dad’s Book.
“The role of a dad is more hands-on than ever in today’s society, and with it comes a need for support,” he said. “There’s no doubt that the overwhelming joy of parenthood can also bring challenges.”
He said TasDads had been going for a while but had relaunched. “We went back to where we began with my idea of creating an opportunity for dads to come together and connect, feel supported in a safe place…very informal, very much just come have a coffee, we take the kids to the park and and that’s kind of where it’s grown.”
Sam Grachan, TasDads.
Grachan was enthusiastic about the publication as being part of the kind of support that is needed.
“This resource is set to be a priceless tool that enables fathers to feel confident in being more involved in their children’s development, in enriching the lives of their children, themselves and their families, and positively affecting the community,” he said.
The book contains service and support contacts, parenting information, plus a few tips and hints and problem solving suggestions.
Hydro Tasmania provided major sponsorship of The Dad’s Book, which was also supported by Hobart Friendly Care Pharmacies and TasTAFE.
The digital version of The Dad’s Book is available here.
