HARTFORD, CT — State Comptroller Sean Scanlon opened Thursday’s roundtable discussion on fatherhood by addressing an obvious question.
“Why the heck is the comptroller doing a roundtable on fatherhood?” he said in his opening comment. “The most basic answer is because I’m a dad, and I care about fatherhood.”
The discussion in the Legislative Office Building, set three days before Fathers Day, featured about two dozen men and a few women discussing the roles fathers play in the lives of children, the challenges they face, and the shared experiences they had either with their fathers or as fathers of children.
Scanlon said he had not had the best relationship with his father, who divorced from his mother when he was 6 and died when Scanlon was college aged.
“When I was younger, I had a lot of anger toward him,” he said. “And right before he passed away, we ended up getting to the best place we had ever been in in my life, which was an amazing gift for me, but left me wishing that he was still around.”
When Scanlon had children of his own, he said, the experience left him fearful of his own abilities as a father. But then a friend set him straight, saying, “Let me spoil this for you right now. There’s no such thing as a perfect dad.”
One problem, the group agreed, is that although services exist to help men who are struggling with resources, those who need them most are unaware they exist. And it may be a stereotype, but they also are reluctant to reach out for the help they need.
Anthony Judkins, program manager at the Office of Child Support Services, said one key would be for fathers to call for help when they find themselves in difficult situations. The discussion had previously noted that many men lack close friends that they feel comfortable speaking with.
“We can always call 211, and they have a huge data library of all programs around the state,” he said. “We’ve been doing this work for a very long time, and we’re making a lot of progress. But it just can’t be … state agencies saying, ‘Hey this is what we do.’ We need you in the community saying ‘I got help.’ Go and check them out. They can help you.”
Sometimes it falls to the state contact person to initiate the process of getting fathers the help they need, said Diana DiTunno, senior educational program administrator for the state Department of Social Services. She said the 211 information system had changed its questions to better serve parents in need.
Formerly the contact specialist would ask how many people were in the household.
“But when you’re a dad, and your kids don’t live with you full time, I’m going to say I live alone,” she said. “But if you ask … ‘Are you a parent?’ Then we’re getting to different answers, different resources. Now I can say, ‘Are there things I can help you with?’ in the parenting world.”
East Hartford School Supt. Thomas Anderson said he had held a kindergarten forum earlier in the week that had been well attended by males.
“My thing is, who’s absent from the meetings,” he said. “And lots of times it is a male, something, but it’s always a male.”
The key, Anderson said, is making that first connection and creating the feeling of obligation in the minds of men attending a school function.
“They want to do right by their child,” he said. “And they will, but you’ve got to get them in there.”
