Episode #4 with Kenny Braswell - Founder of Fathers Incorporated

Episode # 4 is with Kenny Braswell, Founder & CEO of Fathers Incorporated, as well as host of the I AM DAD Podcast. Kenny’s work has appeared in the New York Times & Washington Post, and he’s been featured on numerous media outlets: Good Morning America, Ebony, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, NPR & the Today Show and he is also an accomplished author.

Kenny is an incredible and highly insightful person and his mission to help fathers is making a huge difference.

Fathers Incorporated, which is located in Atlanta, provides comprehensive services as it relates to any and all needs for fathers - whether that’s legitimization, housing, child support and/or parenting issues, domestic violence, anger management - they provide whatever is needed to help fathers become better dads. On a national level they are seeing significant progress in their campaign to change the perception of how dads are viewed in society as well as the MSM.

Sit back and listen - Kenny is an incredible and highly insightful person and his mission to help fathers is making a huge difference.

Transcript

robert_poirier (00:01.3)
hey everyone and welcome to dad to dad's podcast i'm robert and today i get the pleasure of speaking with kinnybrasweller kenneth bras well the founder of father's incorporated as well as host of the i m dad podcast his work has appeared in the new york times in washington post and he's been featured in and on numerous media outlets good morning america ebony c n n m s n b c p b s in pr today's show as well as several others and you're all

so an accomplished arthur and makes me feel kind of worthless there kenny look thanks thanks for the show welcome

kenneth_braswell (00:36.538)
please so all part of the work is you know nothing was planned for me it just came when it came and i just dove into it and did what i do so i think

robert_poirier (00:41.1)
uh uh

robert_poirier (00:49.38)
man i'm reading that and i'm just like oh my gosh like what do i do you know i mean he's he's done all this stuff and i'll just look at everything you've been on it's it's amazing but again welcome the show and i'm excited to talk to you and i thank you for being on dad dad's podcast so jumping in father's incorporated looking on the internet it states that you guys work to change the societal and cultural definition a family to be inclusive of fathers

kenneth_braswell (00:54.258)
yeah

kenneth_braswell (01:18.958)
m hm

robert_poirier (01:19.36)
but from our past conversations i know there's so much more can you give me an overview of father's incorporated

kenneth_braswell (01:25.138)
hm

you know that was the initial mission of what i set out to do i mean like many people who get into not for profit work we get into it at our paying point what that means is if you were homeless you are more likely to be and not for profit space as it relates to homelessness if you are dealing with substance abuse you're probably going to advocate for individuals who are suffering suffering from substance abuse if you are a domestic violet

um victim you're probably going to want to help domestic violence victims and for me it was you know at a time in my life where i was really struggling with defining my relationship with the mother of my youngest child and finding ourselves and family court and seeing what it looked like for men and family court now some twenty years ago and already being in the noo profit world wanting to do more and stabilized in the environment for fathers to be

they so desperately desired just in the lives of their children and so when i first started out you know my eye was towards exactly what my ye was on which was to really provide assistance for fathers in the areas of child support custody and parenting time and you ll hear me use the word parenting time most people will use the word visitation i am attempting to eradicate that word because dad don't visit we parents and so but in do

in doing so realized very quickly that i could not help as many fathers as i wanted to at one time and decided to scale up you know from doing that kind of basement support group kind of work right and so decided that i wanted to do technical assistance and i really wanted to help the social work field understand the importance of providing services specifically to dads around the country got into that work and became the director of the new york state fatherhood initiative for about

five years and in that role spent much of my time within what woman with describe as the belly of the beast within the new york state child support enforcement bureau that's where my fatherhood program was located and if you can imagine how difficult it was to convince fathers that i wanted to help them having child supporting enforcement under my name it wasn't easy to do um left there came back to father's incorporated in tin within a year of lee

robert_poirier (03:52.16)
yeah

kenneth_braswell (03:58.058)
being new york state put in a bid for the national responsible fatherhood claiming house under the u s department a health and human services we were successful in receiving that contract in two thousand and ten and we still hold that contract today and so rounding rounding out we are now here out of new york we moved to atlanta georgia eight years ago we applied for a grant also from the office of family assistance within

jes received that grant and now we're actually providing direct services here on the ground and at lant specifically to fall the providing comprehensive services as relates to any and all of them needs whether as housing child support parenting issues domestic violence anger management you naming whatever they need to help them be better dash we provide that for them here in atlanta

robert_poirier (04:54.24)
so that's mental emotional support is it also financial support as well

kenneth_braswell (04:58.978)
so no we don't do any financial support that's a to me that's a different space right and doing that for one most organizations for first of all it's very difficult to finance the work of responsible fatherhood like there's no charitable heart for working with fathers and therefore the money doesn't follow that work and so you always have to justifa the work that you're doing up against that being a support for mom's

robert_poirier (05:03.96)
yeah

kenneth_braswell (05:28.718)
children and so you have to be innovative you have to you know i often tell people you know while father's incorporated is a charity while now while fathers incorporated is charity bowl we're not a charity i run father in corporate like a business because i know that we have to be mindful of the versification of funds we have to make sure that our funds are coming from different mechanisms and we always got to sell the product and the product is dads and that's not an easy product to sell

robert_poirier (05:42.28)
yeah

kenneth_braswell (05:59.098)
um to folks who are supporting you know philaphilanthropic work in any community not just african american la no and other people of colored communities but that's dad's across the board we just do not have a heart america doesn't have a true heart for fathers and we're trying to change that paradox

robert_poirier (06:19.2)
that's beautiful so fathers incorporated you might have said it has been around for how you guys just celebrated anniversary didn't you

kenneth_braswell (06:27.018)
now we got in next year twenty twenty four we celebrate twenty years and so we are excited about that and it's been a long i actually want to write a book i wanted to when i get and i want to write it about this work i want to write it about really m then the loose name of the book is the business of fatherhood and really kind of talk about how this work has evolved though

robert_poirier (06:32.82)
congratulations that's great

robert_poirier (06:38.98)
oh just more to your resume that's what you should you definitely should

robert_poirier (06:52.74)
yeah

kenneth_braswell (06:56.478)
the last twenty years and how america has changed how it looks at fathers how we view fathers how we define fathers how fathers are re defining themselves how were re organizing and restructuring families how the changing demographics of america's impacting families across the board and the importance of this work and the critical importance and and the necessity of this work and so that's what i want my book i want to kind of talk about

my journey over the last twenty years but i really want to kind of hit these points to help people understand that this is a discipline of work within the social work field economic field or any other field of work that's going to be critical to insuring that our families are stabilized in this country

robert_poirier (07:44.66)
it's great so kinney almont step away from that for a minute we're definitely going to go back to father corporated but what were you like as a kid where i mean were you so ambitious as a kid and you know i have this in my head of how you were i mean tell me what was what was it like for you as a kid growing up all of that

kenneth_braswell (08:03.078)
you know what the interesting thing robert is like i think i was i think i was and i knew what i think i know what my nuances were right and so i was not a follower absolutely not a follower but at the same time i didn't command leadership i would i was alone i wasn't a loner i was that kid robert who could come this cool

robert_poirier (08:05.5)
don't tell me you were just a normal kid don't don't tell me just

robert_poirier (08:14.58)
okay

robert_poirier (08:19.84)
obviously yeah

robert_poirier (08:25.54)
okay

kenneth_braswell (08:33.098)
when i went to school on monday i can hang out with the thugs on the corner and not engaged in what they were engaging with and hang out with the book nerves in the afternoon and off between the two of them and and not have issue that was that that has always been my mentality i can wherever in whatever circle i'm in i'm able to be comfortable in that circle and so you know i grew up a single a single in a household with a single mom

robert_poirier (08:44.92)
yeah

kenneth_braswell (09:03.418)
when my brother and my sister who worked seven and eight years younger than i were in brooklyn new york so by no means that we have a lot of means you know we were poor my mother was a working mom she worked very hard you know in the banking industry we were latch key kids and if you can imagine with me being seven years you know older than my siblings you know i really was raised almost as as an only child because at seven at seven seven to zero there is no

robert_poirier (09:29.28)
yeah

kenneth_braswell (09:32.898)
lationship at fourteen to seven i'm a teen ager their little kids you know but seventeen years old i was out of the house and on my own so i never really established a relationship with my seven so i was brought up almost like a single kid it wasn't until i got into my like twenty seven twenty eight twenty nine when i started looking at the world and started believing in myself that i could actually do something to make a change for people and that's why i got into the

robert_poirier (09:37.2)
right

kenneth_braswell (10:02.938)
the profit work in nineteen ninety and so that's now thirty three years ago really doing not for profit work and then realizing that even when i was doing that work for the most part i was working with the same community that i'm working with today and so you know and the beautiful thing about all of that in my evolution and trajectory and who i am today is that i was able to allow my children to make of them

what they want to be in their lives based on how they've seen me function and how they've seen me where they've seen me at my absolute worst and they've seen me at my absolute best and for my children what i love about them so is that they all remember the worst like they all remember it they don't they don't they don't marinate on it they don't use it as an excuse but like if you talk to them they will say i remember that when i rememb

robert_poirier (10:43.undefined)
yeah

robert_poirier (10:56.96)
right

kenneth_braswell (11:03.038)
when you you know when that christmas when we only got one toy you know i remember when we couldn't do this i remember when we couldn't do that and like all of my children are entremenur in spirit like none of them want to work for anybody all of them want to sign that check and so and i just you know attribute that more to my heart work than the work that i'm doing it was just the way that i took on the work that i was trying to accomplish

robert_poirier (11:18.4)
it's great

robert_poirier (11:30.74)
it's amazing with kids it's you can tell them whatever but it's showing them right it's leading by example

kenneth_braswell (11:34.878)
yeah yeah absolutely absolutely and i'm looking at your pictures in the back and any time i see that boy i haven't you know we have a surprise blessing so i have five children and so i have four girls and i have one boy and so the boy came as a man my wife and i call him our surprise blessing like we weren't expecting him to come but you know god had another idea about my work and i think personally it was about

you know if i'm you know speaking from how god might have been talking to me with saying you understand what it means to be a boy and you understand what it means to raise girls but what you don't understand is what it means to raise a boy and he gave me a boy and so i'm so glad because that perspective he was absolutely right i did not have and so there's these moments and i'm not sure if you ever have these moments and not sure if i was interviewing you which i will at some point and be ready for this question

robert_poirier (12:19.4)
yeah

kenneth_braswell (12:35.258)
i always thought my podcast off with tell me your daddy's story because once i know your daddy story it frames everything else that you do and for me it was i didn't have a fall i didn't meet him until i was twenty three years old and then when i met him about a year and a half after i met him with no little interaction with him he passed away and so i never really knew him knew him i know of him but i don't know i know him but there has always been these moments with my son he's

robert_poirier (12:44.38)
that's great

robert_poirier (12:59.6)
right

kenneth_braswell (13:04.818)
fourteen years old and bitious as all get out he wants to be on the cover of two k u n b a thirty one you know he's that's how he he thinks what but there's these moments when i'm being a dad to him that i'm vicariously connect with him based on wondering what it feels like for him having me in his life and so is some always conscious about that

robert_poirier (13:14.1)
yeah yeah

robert_poirier (13:33.38)
gosh now yea it's so true and i just i never realized how tough it was to be a dad and when you you know there's that pressure but then when you see how they look up to you how they emulate you and it's like oh my gosh just put more pressure on on me and you know but but then you know you'll see times when they'll do something like why did you approach it that way or what was your thought through that well dad i've seen you do that i'm like really i did

kenneth_braswell (13:50.058)
yeah

robert_poirier (14:03.84)
i must have done something right okay good good

kenneth_braswell (14:08.878)
yeah so i love i love my girls too i love my girls too but but my son just i think you know with the girls i knew what i wanted the kind of parent i wanted to be for them but for him it is very intimate and critically slow like

parent him but i parent him mentally slow i always slow down and make sure that every moment that i put something in him that i'm very intentional about what i put what i put into him and i've been able to see that come out of him on the other side

robert_poirier (14:48.88)
and i just i think it's so important now so much and maybe it's just you know maybe i'm one of those old guys that says this but now more than ever i think with young men it's so important of how we parent them and the outlook that we give them that we plant in them how they are to approach life everything and the goals the morals the values that we instill in them

kenneth_braswell (15:03.298)
hm

kenneth_braswell (15:17.558)
m hm

robert_poirier (15:18.78)
think now more than ever you know when we see that where as you touched on how society is a rating you know mascularity uh manhood fatherhood definitely and you know what what it takes to be a strong man what it takes to be a strong and godly father as well so so i want to jump back into

kenneth_braswell (15:22.078)
yeah

kenneth_braswell (15:37.318)
m

kenneth_braswell (15:44.338)
why

robert_poirier (15:49.16)
father incorporated let's talk about who you guys serve and why like specifically

kenneth_braswell (15:57.498)
so we would have two basis one would be from the national work that we do with the clearing house an the other one would be from the more specific work that we do here in metro atlanta from the clearing house lens we are national and scope and so everything is about make you sure that messages is reaching all four corners of the earth no matter what kind of father you are no matter where you live

of what your financial situation is what your social economics space is what your sexual preference is all that stuff doesn't matter you know the only thing that matters to us is that you realize your responsibility of being a father and that you understand what that looks like from your own perspective and that they are resources out there to help you understand those things to help you become the father that you want to be for your child and we do that in a lot of different ways that

primarily through the website fatherhood dot go that is the repository of all things father under that contrat we also have a relationship with the ad council so you see our d throughout the year we do a new campaign every year right now the campaigners dedication we did documentary this past summer and before that we did you know dance like a dad dad jokes you know take time to be a dam and so if you watch a lot of

sports you're more than likely you've more than likely seen one of our p s on if you watch a lot of sports and so we're very proud of that because that work has allowed us to really impact you know how america sees fatherhood because you're beginning to see the matcaging in fultrate into other things like a few years ago we were watching the super bowl and i don't know if you remember you even watched the super bowl but anyway during the super bowl there were about four

robert_poirier (17:28.94)
yeah

kenneth_braswell (17:56.038)
fatherhood focused commercials doing the super bones to oda dove is about for them father folk and we truly believe that that was as a result of our impact on helping corporations understand the importance of using fathers as central characters to sell their products and to move their business and so we've been seeing more and more of that we've seen you know as we work with folks like son pictures and pick

robert_poirier (18:02.06)
yeah yeah

kenneth_braswell (18:25.378)
are you've seen more father focused animation coming out now with father themes in them and everything from hotel transylvania to fatherhood to despicable me all of those movies were father centric and so we're seeing more of that you're seeing more cable television shows that have fathers as their thing the one that i'm like deeply engaged in right now with yellowstone

like fatherhood messaging in yellowstone is so rich and so thick it's ridiculous and so that's the work that we've done on the national side on the local side we are much more specific and working with what is the primary umdemographical fathers here in metratlantic metro atlanta which happens to be african american dads and so probably ninety eight percent of the fathers that we serve on african american

robert_poirier (18:55.54)
yeah

robert_poirier (19:01.22)
it is yeah

kenneth_braswell (19:25.338)
while we're in metro atlanta we do have aspirations of expanding throughout the state of georgia which will change our demographics significantly when we move across the state of georgia and so they are from all walks of life you know they're not just low come they're not just low income unemployed not playing child support there all over the place that there are flirting for these in their own special way one of the things that we're realizing now right on robert as

robert_poirier (19:47.22)
right

kenneth_braswell (19:55.338)
kind of collect their intake data when they come into our space we ask them what are your top three needs and so in georgia the number one need is services for legitimation so georgia is the only state in the union that has a two process um two step process for a non married dad to become the legal father of their child in many states if you're non married in the hospital you can fill out what is

called the paternity acknowledgement form and you can sign that and then the mom signs that and then that makes you the legal father um in georgia that form was eradicated in two thousand sixteen and so it doesn't exist any more and even when it existed it was very loose it wasn't structuralized hospitals did it when they felt like doing it they didn't do it all the way through but be that as it may what that did was it only established paternity which

robert_poirier (20:27.46)
right

kenneth_braswell (20:55.278)
and that if you said that the child was yours child support could come after you so that just established paternity but legality has to be established in the state of georgia by superior court you literally have to go through a legal process to establish the legal rights to your child in the state of georgia if you were unmarried at the birth of your child many fathers don't even know that they don't know until this time

robert_poirier (21:23.3)
right

kenneth_braswell (21:25.398)
and the primary thing that an impact is while they may have a child sport order when they go to court to get custody a parent in time they cannot get custody apparent ing time because they're not the legal father of that child and so that particular piece of um that process costs between five to seventy five hundred dollars with no me with now if they're if the mom is not trying to stop the order

but it cost that amount it cost that amount for each of your children if you have a different mother for each and so in the state of georgia in the last ten years about close to six hundred thousand children have been born in the state of georgia without legal fathers in their lives it's it's a draconian law it's a mess it has some it has some racial foundations and why it was created to protect wealth in the state of georgia and so where

robert_poirier (22:01.08)
for each wow

robert_poirier (22:20.82)
yeah sure it does

kenneth_braswell (22:25.238)
they're working in that space but the second one is housing like housing has always been like number five six or seven but for some reason now housing is a huge issue for dad and one of the reasons that it becomes a huge issue for dances because in order to get visiting time and custody they have to have an established resident and so a lot of them might be living with the new boo they might be living the basement with their mom they might be

robert_poirier (22:52.98)
right

kenneth_braswell (22:55.238)
even with their boys they might be going to have but they might be in all kinds of situations and when they don't have a legal when the when the residence is not stabilized that can keep them from getting access to their children and so those are kind of the two buckets that we work in the national bucket which is much broader but that local bucket is more trying to insure that we're strengthening family is one father at a time as we say

robert_poirier (23:20.36)
yeah going back to the national i'm so happy to hear that the influence you guys are having and you know traditionally looking at whether it's movies it calms whatever it may be usually saw the dad is some you know bumbling idiot he was kind of the butt of the jokes right and kind of clue less occasionally you would see a strong father figure but very rarely i mean he was

kenneth_braswell (23:38.798)
m hm hm

robert_poirier (23:51.04)
he was kind of the m you again the butt of the jokes with that but you're right like with yellowstone and different ones you are starting to see stronger dad figures and i hope that i hope that continues i mean i definitely do definitely do

kenneth_braswell (23:57.018)
m

kenneth_braswell (24:06.658)
m yeah you know i think it does robert i think that we're in a different place now that whatever whatever you and i take whatever our tastes are you and i as individuals we can find something that suits a taste on cable table on cable tele right it's not like it was in nineteen seventy where you had a b b c c b s possibly fox p b s and whatever your local stations were right

robert_poirier (24:25.2)
right

robert_poirier (24:36.22)
right all right all right we like well we had two channels at first what i first remember and then i think yeah then a few years later we ended up having three

kenneth_braswell (24:36.978)
and so you are force fed whatever they

kenneth_braswell (24:46.098)
right right and then the national anthem at about twelve thirty at night right and that was you were yeah you were done so it's very different now and then you know if you noticed the other thing because we've done some work one of my board members does some extensive work and father hood perceptions and the media where she really looks at the messaging that's in the media right now and what that looks like for fathers and how its changing and expanding but the part of it that always intrigues me

robert_poirier (24:48.42)
you yeah yeah you were stuck right

kenneth_braswell (25:15.838)
when we kind of go back and we think a bout things like his up his a nugget that most people don't know when the nelson raidings began i believe it was early fifties i believe when it was might have it might have been early fifties when the nelson raidings began um in the first few years of the nelson raidings that six of the top ten shows were single father led guns

smoke raw hit bananza a not real hot gun smoke

robert_poirier (25:46.98)
yeah

kenneth_braswell (25:54.158)
gun smoke banana andy griffin show yeah yeah andy griffin show um but they but they were all single father led now the interesting thing about that is that in all of those shows when you rightflmen all single das which means that america understood at one point in our history that dads were capable of

robert_poirier (25:58.6)
that's the one with opilright that's the one i was yeah yeah

robert_poirier (26:08.4)
huh

robert_poirier (26:14.3)
rifleman yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

robert_poirier (26:22.96)
at that time right

kenneth_braswell (26:23.958)
being parents right now the nuance and that the small nuance in that is if you asked the question where where was mom she was always dead so on one hand right so in order for dad to get the kids mom got to be dead like there's no other way that that could happen so if you watch the side in how we look and how we took and then the other thing that is always interesting

robert_poirier (26:36.62)
that's true even like brady bunch you know i mean

robert_poirier (26:47.88)
yeah yeah

kenneth_braswell (26:54.098)
i always bring up like um um i always bring up all in the family i think the jeffersons i love lucy the flint stones and a cup and and dick vandyke show and even bob new heart i believe in in the beginning of the series even tough they didn't have children whenever they show the bedroom there was always separate beds

robert_poirier (27:20.14)
yeah

kenneth_braswell (27:21.978)
like america was conscious about not showing children what was going on in the bedroom by separating by separating the beds um and so if you look at the evolution of media and how we have kind of framed what family looks like and then more so to your point about where we kind of slid off with dad because we went from the seriousness of showing dad with the cape

robert_poirier (27:30.02)
in the bedroom

robert_poirier (27:34.48)
yeah

kenneth_braswell (27:51.698)
bility of being able to take care of their children to a bundy to home simpson to ra ra mano right that's that weren't so serious anymore but the butt of all jokes in the family right and then that deteriated everything and now we're kind of building those things back up the show are more complete that and one of those one of the reasons that that's taking place because the demand and the expectations of fathers are greater today

robert_poirier (27:58.02)
true yep

robert_poirier (28:06.64)
right

kenneth_braswell (28:21.778)
then they were back there right and so where you're hearing folks talk about now paternity leave right where father back in the sixties and seventies what i'm never going to their boss in the car manufacturing plant and said hey boss i need two weeks off because my child is being born like that that just but now we understand the importance of father's being

robert_poirier (28:24.undefined)
totally agree

robert_poirier (28:44.5)
right

kenneth_braswell (28:51.758)
gaged in the lives of their children at those early ages and the understanding early childhood development and what that looks like so there's this evolution that's taken place and then lastly i'm gonna cause you i told you before you'll ask me a question it will string me down a couple of different spaces but well in here and that is the courts are actually changing they haven't changed but they're changing and so the number and there's some new research and data that's going to come out from

robert_poirier (29:07.66)
that's great

kenneth_braswell (29:21.758)
since is my research s now looking at it but we're not ready to put it out there yet until we get more data on where that data came from um over the last ten years single father households have quitedroopled in the last decade um and so yeah but they quadrupled in the decade prior to us prior to that and so the number of single

robert_poirier (29:43.06)
really

kenneth_braswell (29:51.798)
all the household now that we are nowhere near the same numbers of single mother households but the fact that the numbers of single father households are beginning to expand says that society particularly the judicial part of society is beginning to change how they look at the value of fathers and allied to their children

robert_poirier (29:56.2)
no no no

robert_poirier (30:13.28)
yeah because i was that's interesting patrick patrick bet david i'm not sure if you know who he is he's got podcast i think it's valuetainment very successful was in the insurance business think still is but i follow him and he talked about that the u s has the highest rate of children living and single parent homes higher than i think it's

three percent of with one parent with just one parent in the home not a step or a bonus or any of that just one parent you know and it's significantly higher than any other country in the in the world and at the same time you're looking there's i think it was that ninety percent of single parent homes or single mother homes do you feel that's pretty accurate

kenneth_braswell (31:06.058)
m yeah so there's some digging that you have to do when you start looking at those states right because you have to look at how the senses defines those numbers right so when they say a household is female led it doesn't necessarily mean that is female only it just means that its female led and so we got to be very conscious

robert_poirier (31:31.66)
right

kenneth_braswell (31:36.178)
about and the only reason i could tell you that from a real time perspective during two thousand and twenty we were called upon from the u s cinches bureau that helped particularly engage hard to locate communities which had here in georgia was african american communities and filling out their senses forms and so what was happening here in georgia was the numerators were having difficulty going into communities and getting black families too

um fill out the senses for a whole bunch of different reasons historical and everythin else that goes with it and so what they were doing is they were looking at not for profits that were on the ground to actually go with them instead of them into communities to encourage them to do that so part of that work was farther incorporated working with other partners on the ground and going into communities and talk with them about the benefits of filling out the senses for them and what we learned when we were going

robert_poirier (32:11.46)
sure

kenneth_braswell (32:36.138)
to these small housing complexes in these projects and lowing come communities throughout gdoeorgia was that when we walked up to the door robin and knocked on the door nine times out of ten the person who answered the door was the woman of the household and if you never asked her the question is there a man in the house she would never tell you and part of that is because there's a piece of her that's pret

tecting him because she doesn't know who you are and why you're asking for him even if he hasn't done anything he doesn't has that he doesn't have to be a crime be anything but she's not going to reveal that he is in the house and so because we were who we were we were can we speak to him and almost ninety percent of the time he came to the door now he was probably watching t v he could have been playing with kids he could have bent he could have been doing a thousand different things but he came because we

robert_poirier (33:09.74)
got you got you

robert_poirier (33:24.18)
right

robert_poirier (33:29.3)
okay

kenneth_braswell (33:36.418)
asked him to come out to us and so whenever i hear those steps you talk about i always think about that experience that the data only speaks to the surface definition of what they're looking for but doesn't dig enough into households to find out really where men and women are in the lives of their families whether they happen to be married or not married so i'm always it's an indicator but i'm always suspect not of how they were

robert_poirier (33:38.74)
right

kenneth_braswell (34:06.178)
obtain but more specifically how they're used because someone would use that for instance and then in here if you look at the non married birth across the country they say two thirds i think two thirds of births that are taking place today happening not married non married households the numbers of non married african american children are much higher than

latino um and much higher than whites however over the last thirty years numbers of white non married chilon parents latino and black have risen so we're all going up it's not like it's not like somebody's doing better than the rest were all going up from from where we are but the state is seventy nine percent of of no lower now seventy two per cent of all african american children are born into autoweb

robert_poirier (34:49.719)
right

robert_poirier (34:54.46)
right

kenneth_braswell (35:06.098)
lock households right that's what the stat is but some people will say will re interpret that state and say seventy nine percent of african american children are born to single mothers

robert_poirier (35:10.58)
right

robert_poirier (35:22.32)
got you got you got you yep

kenneth_braswell (35:22.778)
that's not what the stat says all the stat says is that they're not married and here's what i always hit our folks on when i'm doing training around the country because i have these five foundational things around dad that they have to agree to in order to for me to continue my train and the number one robert is for every single mom in this country there is a single dad why is that it is be

robert_poirier (35:34.6)
got ya

robert_poirier (35:49.9)
true

kenneth_braswell (35:52.578)
cause the term single mom does not denote parenting status it denotes marital status and if it denotes marital status for every non married mom there is a non married dad which means for every single mom there is a single dad and once you open your mind to that then you start thinking deeper about really where parents are

robert_poirier (36:13.02)
to that

robert_poirier (36:19.18)
yeah that's good that's really good that's really good um so i want to i want to talk more about i noticed that you guys recently had i think it was a graduation class that came through tell me about that process the training the you know what are you preparing them for when they're going through that

kenneth_braswell (36:41.358)
so our classes our graduations are part of what we call our gentle warriors academy our gentle warriors academy is our direct service arm it is where we provide all of our direct services our catesmanagement our facilitations our classes our workshops our trainings our support groups all of those things but for the fire grant that grant specifically that we have with the federal government it is to provide thirty hours of

fatherhood corriccuum for these dads um over the course of eight weeks i believe six or eight weeks we do this and then at the end of that we have a graduation for them and the reason that we have a graduation for them robert is because it's important that we allow fathers to slow down and marina in their accomplishments as being a father right and so it's not back in the day when we used to do these things you could do a corictumum

they come complete correclum we give them a piece of paper and we'll send them on their way and so what we've learned is that this is not just an accontccomplishment of the father this is an accomplishment of the family and so we're going to slow it down and have a celebration where family comes out and celebrate the work that you've done and helping them understand that you're serious about you being a dad and one of the so so that's why the gradu

ation takes place to slow that down but what we in our curriculum so we have two corriculums our next level fatherhood and our next level life scale they receive our next level of life skill before they receive our next level of fatherhood and the reason that they do that is because for us it is more important that we established that they understand the things that help them through life before we start talking specifically a bout the things that they need to know about being a dad so in our next level life scales

on to see modules in their like responsibility and i remember when we wrote that when i wrote this correct now some seven years ago one of my staff member asked why do we need to teach our guds about responsibility and my response was you make the assumption that everybody has been taught to be responsible they have not been taught to be responsible they have not been taught to be to have integrity they have not been taught to understand personal

robert_poirier (39:02.96)
it's true

kenneth_braswell (39:11.478)
they have not been taught to understand the portant stuff consistency they have not been taught how to be self aware and mindful they have not been taught those things and so on the flip hand side you can't tell a man to man up or pull yourself up by your boot straps who's never been taught the life scale of what that means right and so in our life scales we start there first and then we move to the fatherhood stuff which is commun

robert_poirier (39:32.46)
it's true

kenneth_braswell (39:41.298)
a cation understanding emotions early childhood development and all of those other things because if you understand the life skill just going to help yew navigate your fatherhood skills better and it has turned out great for us we have moms who actually you know they do it quietly they don't tell us they're doing it when they do it because everything we're doing now is virtual but at every graduation i have at least two or three mobs that come up to me and say you know i sat there and i did all the classes with him how come you

have these classes for mobs i have all the time all the time and so because the classes are although the conversation is more far the focus the concept is more parental in nature it is all parents should understand these things not just fathers now we're gonna talk about father hood but what we're trying to ingrain in them is really what you should understand as relates to being a parent and so it is our hope in the next

robert_poirier (40:12.3)
yeah

robert_poirier (40:26.28)
right

robert_poirier (40:31.5)
right

kenneth_braswell (40:41.258)
round the funding two years from now to apply for what of has which is called there um uh marriage and marriage and relationship grants and so what we want to do is we want to apply for one of those grams to attach to a fire gram so that when we have our fathers come through and we work with them on their life skills and we help them with their fatherhood and help them with all other services that we have a transition program that allows us to be able to work with them and their families

and that could be their wives that could be that significant others the mothers of their children their grandparents well in order to begin to start building and strengthening their family so that's my hope within the next couple of years or so

robert_poirier (41:25.5)
that's great i mean i think you know the work you're doing is beautiful i feel like over the and we touched on this the last several years or last few decades that the image of the society the image of fatherhood through society has just become so fragmented right and you know fatherhood is yeah it's biological but it's also i'm thinking about these guys that have gone through the

or so i think ah that's it's not only with their own biological children but i'm also thinking about the reach the maybe not all but some will have two other children to other kids that don't have an act of father figure in their life and what you know what they're teaching their children but also whether it's volunteering to coach whether it's volunteering in their church you know boys and girls club whatever that may be of the you know

kenneth_braswell (42:12.558)
m hm

robert_poirier (42:25.04)
learning how to be that upstanding father figure and how they'll be able to reach others through that and i think that's so important because when you look it

kenneth_braswell (42:29.798)
hm hm

robert_poirier (42:36.92)
you know when you look at children if there's not i'm just going to talk about boys if there's i guess this could go with girls too if there's not if there's not that father figure in their life then they're looking for that masculinity somewhere and you know unfortunately it seems at times they go to the wrong place not all the time but they do and that

kenneth_braswell (42:55.838)
right

kenneth_braswell (43:04.778)
hm

robert_poirier (43:07.24)
you know where they see masculinity and whether that's gangs whatever it may be you know which is the absolute worst place for them to go um but you see that and you know you probably you probably don't realize the impact you're having you know you see it with just this group but i imagine that that reach is even broader than just their home and just the children you know that they're actually their biological children that they're parenting

kenneth_braswell (43:16.018)
hm

kenneth_braswell (43:29.798)
hm

kenneth_braswell (43:37.038)
yeah we actually see it in our recruitment and so our recruitment has changed over the last two and a half years where when we first started the program we were heavy and you know the flyer in the barber shop and you know going and knocking on doors and the bill boards and the radio adds and all of those kinds of things and as we continued through providing these services for for these fathers we're having graduations now of close to between forty and fifty guy

every quarter and so up to now in the last two and a half in last two and now quarter we've graduated close to three hundred and fifty dads here in mettoatlanta um and as you kind of talk about what's happening with them um expanding into their spaces um we are now beginning to see that in our recruitment mechanisms because all of those things we did in the beginning we don't have to do any more because most of the guys that are coming to us are coming from word of mouth

they come because the dad who came through the program is talking to his brothers and his cousins and people in their community s in there and it's a beautiful thing to see i saw um last week we were parting with an organization that was going to advocate on the at the georgia capital for children's rights and we were called to see if we could bring some dads to talk about issues as it relates to fathers and so we had a few fathers we went up into the cab

robert_poirier (44:37.4)
right

kenneth_braswell (45:06.838)
but they actually recognize father's incorporated on the floor of the house of represent house of representatives which was really cool but to empower these dads to understand that you know there is more to just you know picking the picking your child up from school feeding them doing home work you know that the advocate part of you is just as important as all the other aspects and so it is important that you join the p t

robert_poirier (45:10.52)
all right

kenneth_braswell (45:36.898)
it's important that you attend the school board meeting every now and then it's important that you vote it's important that you fill out your senses it's important you know that your upborne what's happening with children's with your schools reading and math school it's important that pyou know your schools children's teachers that you know your child's physician that you understand that they know you and you know them and so you know it is that level of empironment for them that's real

robert_poirier (45:53.1)
right

kenneth_braswell (46:06.918)
expanding who they are and so you can see it in the number of we had a great event we have a program called real dad read where we have a program in schools once a month and that bring their children and they engage in some literal literary activity but as a result of doing real dad read and having these dads come to gether one of the things that they're doing is many of those dads and now joining the p t a so we're seeing numbers of men fathers who are joining in the p t a

um which has all kinds of benefits educationally not only for our children before the school itself because when men are in the building discipline issues reduce because there's a there's there's there's a feeling of safety ness you know when there are a lot of guys in the building or the out front of the school as as kids are less kids all are getting bullied less kids you know feeling that they don't fit in because folks are giving them space

robert_poirier (46:44.66)
absolutely

robert_poirier (46:53.42)
sure

robert_poirier (47:01.9)
right

kenneth_braswell (47:06.918)
and so you know at the core of this it is building these fathers and giving them skills to be the best fathers that can be in the lives of their children but ultimately is so much more it is stabilizing our communities our families our congregations you know social circles you know teams by making sure that fathers and particularly are more consciousness of the essentialness and the power that they have to strengthen those

not

robert_poirier (47:38.7)
no i think that's great i mean we've got a long way to go i mean we really do which is

kenneth_braswell (47:41.498)
yeah

robert_poirier (47:46.3)
you know part of the reason why i started the podcast is seeing the lack of fatherhood and also the way fathers reviewed and i love i love the work you're doing you know going back to the paternity issue i think so many people miss out or miss the fact that you know you talked about it being seventy five hundred dollars just for the process for father to establish paternity that's if the mother doesn't fight it

kenneth_braswell (48:15.458)
hm

robert_poirier (48:17.44)
i think so many times we might look if there's uh a youth that doesn't have a father and there actively involved in their life

and society immediately goes to he's got a dead beat dad well you don't know what's behind that i mean you don't know you don't know if that father has you know kicked and screamed and you know i want to be involved i want to be involved and how the mother i'm not i'm you know i was raised my father died when i was ten and so it was my mom and my sister and i um so i'm not i'm definitely not bashing mom's at all but there

kenneth_braswell (48:34.038)
right

right

uh huh

kenneth_braswell (48:52.418)
m

robert_poirier (48:59.6)
there is that out there and where the father wants to and i was talking to one a couple of years ago and he was telling me he said look i have i've done everything and i can't and i'm trying to be involved she has fault and you know there's a lot of times where i just feel like giving up i just feel like what's the use you know he does you know she doesn't want me in the child's life

kenneth_braswell (49:01.578)
hm

kenneth_braswell (49:20.498)
yeah yeah yeah

robert_poirier (49:29.8)
he doesn't see me at these things or has time with me to get to know me she's talked about me this way and unfortunately there's times when that happens and fathers are faced with that and i think you know for society just to step back it's kind of that you know assume innocent until proven guilty it's almost the same thing right you know you might see look i've seen it with one of my sons with one of their friends who's

kenneth_braswell (49:39.338)
why

kenneth_braswell (49:52.578)
hm

robert_poirier (49:59.46)
there was held from them in another state he recently spent time with him pretty much the first time since he was like three and did everything they could to pull him away from his dad after spending a summer with him just had a fantastic time getting to know him so we've got a long way to go i mean we as society everything

kenneth_braswell (50:10.298)
what

kenneth_braswell (50:18.818)
m

robert_poirier (50:29.64)
um but i love the love the work that you're doing there you definitely do

kenneth_braswell (50:34.198)
right but one it's why it's so important for things like what you're attempting to do with the podcast and that is giving fathers the ability to hear voices that sound like theirs so that they don't feel like they're alone and the more you know it used to be i used to think man its way to many of these fatherhood podcast and seems like everybody is talking about the same thing but and then i thought to myself yeah that's what we need like

body needs something to hear something to listen to and you don't necessarily have to listen to mine but you have to have the opportunity to be able to listen to something that resognates with you that speaks your truth right and speaks the ability of you to be able to connect with something and that's gonna not allow you to give up that day that you feel like you want to give up the most like to hang on we got we were honored by open we

robert_poirier (51:15.7)
yeah

kenneth_braswell (51:34.378)
two years ago for the work that we were doing and one of the things she asked me she asked me for a piece of advice

robert_poirier (51:40.32)
so now you're adding opera to the resume as well i mean this goes on and on

kenneth_braswell (51:47.118)
so my my answer to her was was simple it was stay in the game stay in the game don't allow anyone to kick you out the game the game is long and you got to be ready because and then when i say that and then you know i didn't say this to her on the show but i did it's always something that i follow up with i said because you don't want to be the dad

robert_poirier (51:47.2)
uh uh

kenneth_braswell (52:14.178)
who doesn't have an answer for why didn't you fight for me you don't want to be that dad you don't want to be him you want to make sure that your answer for that question is loaded right that you can listen honey for twenty years let's let's go sixteen years i purchase i sent you i sent you a birthday card

robert_poirier (52:20.undefined)
right

robert_poirier (52:38.64)
yeah

kenneth_braswell (52:43.938)
i don't know if you got them or not for sixteen years i purchased your christmas gifts and i put them in this closet because i knew one day you and i would be able to meet and i now want to give you all sixteen years of your presence that i had for you so that you can see that but you don't want to hum and had when your child asked why then you fight for me and so you got to leave your body on the field for your children and i think that podcast like this and podcas

robert_poirier (53:05.24)
yeah

kenneth_braswell (53:14.038)
um that are out there and the messaging and and the changing and societal narrative all has to speak to fathers having a level of resiliency not to allow themselves to give up under the pressure under the pressure negative society narratives

robert_poirier (53:32.64)
yeah and i don't think people realize just how hard it is on fathers when they don't have that time when they're restricted i really don't i think they think he's fine um you know different dads that i speak with that are going through that or have gone through that they're broken i mean it's just i mean you get them talking and it's you know get past their shell it's it's they're wrecked inside

kenneth_braswell (53:52.418)
yeah

kenneth_braswell (53:59.678)
right right right right i was i did in my documentary that i did actually that next year next this year next year i think that this year will be the tenth anniversary of my documentary that they called spitting anger and was able to interview a yanavanzant in new orleans about fatherless this is at the time that she was doing you know fixed my life this is when that fixed my life was really big

big i was able to get her an interview her and one of the things that she said to me robert was when it comes to men she said that at some point men are going to have to establish an acceptable language to explain their emotions she said right now men don't have an acceptable language to explain their emotions once they are able to do that then there

going to be able to speak to what is truly on their hearts and articulate what's on their hearts because the resistance is always if i reveal anything vulnerable about me that makes me weak right and it doesn't it actually makes you strong and so we got to start talking to men in that way that vulnerability is not the weakness of men it's the strength of men but if i keep telling

it's a weakness you'll always act weak

robert_poirier (55:33.52)
right now that's that's that's a great point that's a great point i think

you know you see that i think some cultures you see that more in some cultures you know more than others i think that's a weakness of of men all the way around but i think that's that couldn't be more well said we need to tell me this all this work you do the funding how do you come about and mean you've talked about grants and such i mean do you guys have fun raisers i mean what how else do you

kenneth_braswell (55:53.418)
right

kenneth_braswell (55:58.178)
fine

robert_poirier (56:10.78)
i'm about funding like say there's somebody listening right now like man i'd really love to to donate to to this what how can they do that

kenneth_braswell (56:12.278)
yeah well you know

kenneth_braswell (56:22.238)
you know it's a you never have enough money to do all the things that you need to do or want to do um be if you are someone who wants to really do this work my advice to you is to plan it pick a piece of the elephant to work with don't try to don't try to work with the entire element the work is too big it is i'm telling you it is too big i resist a lot

robert_poirier (56:50.58)
yeah

kenneth_braswell (56:52.138)
our business not to go into every space that someone tries to pull me into as as relevant as it is i have to say no sometimes because i just don't have the capacity of the resources to move into spaces that are really relevant for dad and so i think the best thing for us is to find your niche find your space stay there and then partner up with others who are doing similar work and partner with them to have them and help you in those spaces

and so in doing that when you really focus on what it is you're trying to do it makes fund raising and getting funds much easier because you can focus on on things for us we were fortunate at a time that it wasn't a lot of us out here we had the capacity of being able to apply for that contract and we got that contract and that contract served that day stable element of foes and corporated until we were able to diversify funds and now we're not so

lying on that one particular contract because we now have other grants and other funding mechanisms foundations are still slow to fun fatherhood work work around fatherhood because the primary thing that people talk about when it comes to fathers as child support and no foundation wants to be in the position of of being seen as the foundation that's taking children away from women right and so that's not going to happen so you really got to kind of look at other things like literacy

robert_poirier (58:09.02)
right

robert_poirier (58:16.4)
right

kenneth_braswell (58:22.158)
early childhood development and parenting scales you gotta look at other elements of fathers to kind of work with that foundations are more likely to fun and then there is personal donations you know personal donations people are just slow to donate for the same reason and that is if you look at the charitable priority chart people care about seals trees and whales before they care about men that's just reality right

robert_poirier (58:48.5)
yeah

it's true that

kenneth_braswell (58:57.098)
so it's hard out here trying to get it so you really got to be smart and the game be b b charitable but don't be a charity running your not for profit like a business in the biggest piece of that is plain what it is you're trying to do set your three to five year plan before you jump into this because if you don't people will pulre you all kinds of ways you'll get fruste

robert_poirier (58:58.9)
uh uh

robert_poirier (59:22.04)
i can't imagine

kenneth_braswell (59:22.778)
next thing you know you'll be doing something else

robert_poirier (59:25.42)
i cannot imagine kinney i want to be respectful of your time you're such a wise man give me for father's out there give me like a nugget of wisdom if you're going to drop something on us what's what's something that you know would kind of want to leave with

kenneth_braswell (59:49.478)
um you know i would have if i didn't already give you the stay in the instead of stay in the game one that's the one i would have it i would have given you but this is a new one this is one that i've been thinking about a lot as i've watched some of the headlines across the country of those dads who do get to a point in their relationships and lives where they lose control and they engage in actions in that art not beneficial to their children

family is certainly not beneficial to them and so it is you cannot hate someone more than you love your children you cannot hate someone more than you love your children loving your children has to be the number one priority in every decision that you make as it relates to your child and you can

i make a decision about your children because you want to engage in an action that penalizes the person that you're hating whether not that is the system of child support whether that is the criminal system where there is the mother of your child with who none of them should trump you loving your child and any time that you get to a point where you're making a decision to do something and you're choosing

decision that allows you to interact with the thing you hate rather than the thing that allows you to love your children you're making the wrong decision

robert_poirier (01:01:28.28)
that is beautiful and should be on bill boards i love that and unfortunately we see that where sometimes decisions are made to hurt the other parents without the children in mind that is that that's beautiful that is that's absolutely beautiful you blew me away with that i knew you would come out with something good but wow i love it

kenneth_braswell (01:01:46.318)
yeah yeah that one is resonated with me yea that one is resonatedme yeah that one you just can't that one is is loaded block this past thanksgiving based on the headline that i saw here in atlanta and the block was around um poor decisions poor decision paraphrase now poor decisions lead to it

con salable consequences

robert_poirier (01:02:19.74)
yeah it's true yeah

kenneth_braswell (01:02:22.198)
you got you got it because i've been toying around this whole notion of which is become a bad word parental alienation and i would even cautioning you robert don't even go down that until you really understand that whole conversation but what i said was as i'm looking at this whole notion of what it looks like what it really is is personal conflict is really the end

robert_poirier (01:02:37.7)
right right

kenneth_braswell (01:02:52.338)
that keeps people from reconciling issues that they can't seem to reconcile that if we can solve personal conflict between people that people can get past those selfish decisions that they make around anything and get to making c making decisions about things that really matter and particularly those things that matter to their children

robert_poirier (01:03:15.26)
that's beautiful that is beautiful so kinney how can people find you you have that i am dad i am dad podcast and that is on i know it's on spotify because that's where i've listened to it it's on everything

kenneth_braswell (01:03:26.838)
yeah it's on everything and so yeah so i like the young people say google me um you know google my name kenneth braswell or google the organization father's incorporated or google gentle warriors academy or i am that podcast i think we've done so well with so on google right now that if you're typing father's incorporated we show up at we show up at least on the first twenty pages on the first five yeah all over the place and so and so but if you go

robert_poirier (01:03:51.52)
yeah yeah yeah

kenneth_braswell (01:03:56.758)
two fathers in corporate dot com you'll see all those little twitter buttons and facebook buttons and instagram buttons to find our platform yeah tik tok we just now begun to start looking at tiktok to get to these younger people out there and start them about the port you know i'm trying to still figure out what the nitches i'm trying to figure out like what is it what's gonna be our nitch in that space and so i'm looking for some people to help me with that so

robert_poirier (01:04:04.66)
yeah you're on all the social media platforms as well

robert_poirier (01:04:12.94)
oh my goodness so you gonna start doing tik tok video

robert_poirier (01:04:20.9)
i can't can't do it i know that i know the kids love that but i just i can't do it i can't do it

kenneth_braswell (01:04:26.558)
uh uh

kenneth_braswell (01:04:30.638)
you gotta you gotta keep telling folks you gotta you can't leave leave no generation behind you got to figure out how to talk to them and because you your boys at what ages those are tiktok boys those are the instagram too but they're tiktok boys and so you got to figure out

robert_poirier (01:04:37.4)
uh uh

robert_poirier (01:04:42.24)
ah they're fourteen and twelve i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know

yeah it's it's all it's all tik tok i just i can't imagine me on tiktok i would actually never hear the end of it from them if i was ever on one

kenneth_braswell (01:05:02.218)
i have a friend of mine if you look up justin justin bat and justin and organization called daddy saturday daddy saturday he's out of tennessee he doesn't have a blog but he does some incredible work and fatherhood and recreational fatherhood engagement with it with his children like every weekend he's like posted videos of some activity that you're looking at

robert_poirier (01:05:08.46)
okay

robert_poirier (01:05:13.3)
okay

kenneth_braswell (01:05:30.558)
him doing it and you're like man i wish i had him as a dad because it's like yes yes he's justin is the coolest guy got to give you his information you will love talking to him he is he's just

robert_poirier (01:05:36.06)
yeah i think i've seen him on instagram does he have an instagram yeah yeah i think i've seen yeah yeah yeah yeah

robert_poirier (01:05:47.54)
yeah i definitely wanted i definitely wanted and but now i've seen that and i've been like oh my gosh like and it is like what kind of dad am i or i wish he was my dad

kenneth_braswell (01:05:59.478)
right he's got game set up i wonder he did a couple of weeks ago he did a casino night at his house with his kids and they add they all had to come to casino night as a character they either poker king or black jack king or something and he filmed the whole like casino night with his kids and i'm looking at him like man that is so freaking cool right there that is so cool

robert_poirier (01:06:04.32)
yeah

robert_poirier (01:06:11.36)
oh my gosh

robert_poirier (01:06:27.88)
yeah that is that is perhaps to him perhaps to him we all need up our game then definitely definitely kenny look thank you again i really can't thank you enough for spending time out of your day i mean obviously you're extremely busy i love what you're doing you know keep keep marching forward and you're obviously making a huge difference and we need that we as society we as fathers

kenneth_braswell (01:06:29.158)
oh yeah yeah right absolutely so

robert_poirier (01:06:57.68)
we need that and we need good uh you know good role models good good leaders good shepherds to to lead us down that path and honestly i can't i can't thank you enough for all that you're doing and also for agreeing to spend time with me today

kenneth_braswell (01:07:13.798)
yes thank you

kenneth_braswell (01:07:18.858)
no absolutely thank you so much and good luck and dad to dad you're gonna do great i can just tell great

robert_poirier (01:07:24.56)
i appreciate it i appreciate kenny thank you so much all right hey and thank you all for listening dad dad's podcast you can find us on spotify or apple podcast as well as on youtube and instagram and don't forget to hit the like buttons so you don't miss any episodes and we'll see you all next week