In the coming year a multitude of dads will get the opportunity for unprecedented involvement with their newborn children. NICK THORPE offers a primer on Shared Parental Leave and its exciting implications.

Are you a dad working in the Public Sector with a child aged 5 or younger and a working partner?

If so, please get in touch: we’d love to hear your story for an exciting new research project with Edinburgh University – and we have exactly a month to do it!

In a rare visit to Greenock prison, NICK THORPE talks to inmates and facilitators on a Mellow Dads pilot project – about their struggles, strategies and parenting breakthroughs.

PAUL Cowan will never forget the first time his daughter came to visit him in prison: the sadness of it is with him still.

COLM BLACK talks honestly about the effect of burnout – and the everyday struggles of being a dad at home.

Exile, says the writer Eugene Peterson, is the experience of being where we do not wish to be. It can experienced at many levels: missing the last bus home, a dip in a relationship, the loss of a job, not being picked for a team. It is an experience of emotional and/or physical dislocation: I am where I do not wish to be. In exile.

Researching fatherhood in the context of social disadvantage, KAREN MAXWELL expected to be coaxing emotionally-repressed men out of their shells. But her “hard to reach” dads proved nothing of the kind…

Isn’t it time we rewarded employers for flexibility around working parents? NIKKI SLOWEY, co-ordinator of Family Friendly Working Scotland, unveils some exciting new awards for good practice.

Does your organisation take fatherhood seriously? Are you a family friendly employer?

In National Adoption Week, NICK THORPE reflects on adoptive fatherhood – the most challenging and fulfilling experience of his life…

The phenomenon that is Dads Rock this week took another giant stride with the announcement of three years’ Big Lottery funding. NICK THORPE faced the music for our Focus on Fatherswork series – and liked what he heard.

Why are Scottish dads still stereotyped as unfeeling ‘hard men’ or simply absent? Research by our guest blogger AIMEE McCULLOUGH shows a fuller picture has often been ‘hidden in history’ – but as fathers volunteer to tell their stories, the truth is beginning to emerge.

Fathers Network Scotland founder DAVID DRYSDALE sees huge potential – and an invigorating challenge – for dads in the wake of Scotland’s independence vote.

Whatever result you wanted from the recent referendum, it’s hard to deny the electrifying change it has brought to the way we engage with our country.