The President’s Advisory council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships met March 9th to present the recommendations of six taskforces representing:

• Economic Recovery and Domestic Poverty;
• Environment and Climate Change;
• Fatherhood and Healthy Families;
• Global Poverty and Development;
• Inter-religious Cooperation; and
• Reform of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Follow this link for a PDF of the full report.

In regards to Fatherhood and Healthy Families the Council was charged to “develop recommendations for partnership and program opportunities that will strengthen the Administration’s commitment to promote fatherhood and the role of fathers in supporting healthy families.” The single overarching conviction that shaped the Taskforce’s deliberations was that: Responsible, engaged fathers are critical to the financial, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual well-being of children, and therefore to the strength and health of American families and communities.

The Taskforce presented the following 9 recommendations (begins on page 26 of the full report):

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A February 23 post by the New York Times highlights a University of Maryland study that finds that today’s fathers seem to play a bigger role in their daughters’ career choices compared to men of previous generations

According to the Times, the researchers “used various data sets to study the career paths of 63,000 women born between 1909 and 1977. About 6 percent of women born in the first decade of the study worked in the same field as their fathers. But about 18 percent of women born in the last decade of the study followed their fathers’ footsteps.”

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The most popular online article at Parenting.com over the last couple weeks was and still is “Mad at Dad: We love our husbands – so why are we so angry at them, so often?” by Martha Brockenbrough. Based on a survey of 1,000 moms from MomConnection, an online opinion panel, Brockenbrough has tapped into the hidden, or not so hidden anger of young moms.

“We love our husbands,” she writes, “but we’re mad that we spend more mental energy on the details of parenting. We’re mad that having children has turned our lives upside down much more than theirs. We’re mad that these guys, who can manage businesses or keep track of thousands of pieces of sports trivia, can be clueless when it comes to what our kids are eating and what supplies they need for school. And more than anything else, we’re mad that they get more time to themselves than we do.”

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12 years ago NBC News produced "Labor Day," an award-winning documentary about the alarming rise of inner city children growing up without fathers. It began with the deliveries of three babies born over a 72-hour period at University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, one of the places where the rate of absentee fathers was especially high. These fathers all made promises to be there with for their child as he or she grew up.

Now, MSNBC has gone back to find out whether these three fathers kept that promise. "A Father's Promise" premieres on Sunday, February 8 at 8 PM ET on MSNBC. Also in the documentary, a cross-section of African-Americans, including NBC's Al Roker and Tiki Barber, come together for a round-table discussion of the situations and issues presented in the program. You can check out some extra clips of the roundtable discussion that you won't get to see in the documentary through this link.

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