To help parents and practitioners sort through the overwhelming number of websites, blogs, and other fatherhood-related media in the search for useful resources and important research, The Fatherhood Project features an ongoing, curated selection of high quality, downloadable Videos, Audio Clips, Articles & Books, Research, and Links. Our focus for selecting feature content is on providing practical activities, useable knowledge, and powerful stories about modern fatherhood and family life.

Recommended Books

  • The Modern Dad’s Dilemma: How to Stay Connected With your Kids in a Rapidly Changing World
    By John Badalament, EdM

    Practical information, road-tested activities and key skills to help dads meet the everyday challenges of modern fatherhood.

  • Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked
    By Paul Raeburn

    Overturning the myths and stereotypes of fatherhood using the latest scientific research on dads.

  • The Good Father
    By Mark O’Connell, PhD

    A Clinical Psychologist shines a light on clinical examples of what interferes with a man becoming an effective and authoritative father.

  • Fatherneed
    By Kyle Pruett, MD

    Perhaps the iconic book in the field by one of the pioneers of serious interest in fathering. Much discussion about the need of son for father and father for son.

  • The Good Father
    By Noah Hawley

    A novel that focuses on the consequences of a boy’s life gone astray and the father’s sense of responsibility for his contribution.

  • Becoming a Dad: The First Three Years
    By John C. Carr, LCSW

    Down to earth advice and tips about fathering for your child’s first three years by a long-time professional in the field.

  • Parenting from the Inside Out
    By Dan Siegel, MD and Mary Hartzell, EdM

    Parenting advice developed from recent discoveries about the brain.

  • Fathers & Sons & Sports: Essays
    By Multiple Authors

    Essays by athletes and sports figures about how sports has connected fathers to their sons.

  • Fathers & Daughters & Sports: Essays
    By Multiple Authors

    Essays by athletes and sports figures about how sports has connected fathers to their daughters.

  • The Whole Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture your Child’s Developing Mind
    By Dan Siegel, MD

    Clear, concise strategies for child development for parents based

  • When I First Held You

    22 critically acclaimed writers talk about the triumphs, challenges, and transformative experience of fatherhood.

  • Home Before Dark
    By Susan Cheever

    A biographical memoir of John Cheever by his daughter.

  • Saturday Nights with Daddy at the Opry
    By Libby Leverett-Crew

    The daughter of Les Leverett celebrates music and family as she remembers Saturday nights with her father, who was the official photographer for the Grand Ole Opry.

  • Daughters of Men: Portraits of African-American Women and Their Fathers
    By Rachel Vassel

    Author Rachel Vassel’s compilation of dozens of stunning photographs and compelling personal essays about African-American women and their fathers.

Recommended Movies

  • Bicycle Thieves (1948)

    Unemployed Antonio Ricci is elated when he finally finds work hanging posters around war-torn Rome. His wife, Maria, sells the family's bed linens to retrieve Antonio's bicycle from the pawnshop so he can take the job. However, disaster strikes when Antonio's bicycle is stolen, and his new job is doomed unless he can find the thief. With the help of his lively son, Bruno, Antonio combs the city, growing increasingly desperate for justice.

  • Boyz in the Hood (1991)

    Tre is sent to live with his father, Furious Styles, in tough South Central Los Angeles. Although his hard-nosed father instills proper values and respect in him, Tre's friends Doughboy and Ricky don't have the same kind of support and are drawn into the neighborhood's booming drug and gang culture, with increasingly tragic results.

  • Finding Nemo (2003)

    Marlin, a clown fish, is overly cautious with his son, Nemo. When Nemo swims too close to the surface to prove himself, he is caught by a diver, and horrified Marlin must set out to find him.

  • Foxcatcher (2014)

    When wealthy John du Pont invites Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz to move to his estate and help form a wrestling team for the 1988 Olympics, Mark sees a way to step out of the shadow of his charismatic brother, Dave. The relationship among the three men gives the movie a smoldering undertone that touches on sibling rivalry and absent fatherhood.

  • Houseboat (1958)

    Tom Winston is struggling to raise his three children on his own after his wife's death. They all end up living in an old houseboat, and he hires a beautiful Italian woman as their housekeeper and nanny. The new nanny, however, has run away from her own father and knows no more about housekeeping than Tom does.

  • Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

    On the same day Manhattan advertising executive Ted Kramer lands the biggest account of his career, he learns that his wife, Joanna, is leaving him and their young son, Billy. Forced to raise his son alone, Ted loses his job but gains a stronger relationship with the child. When Joanna returns to claim custody of Billy, the ensuing court battle takes a toll on everyone concerned.

  • Life is Beautiful (1997)

    A gentle Jewish-Italian waiter, Guido Orefice, and his wife Dora, a pretty schoolteacher, lead a happy life with their son, Giosue. Their happiness is abruptly halted, however, when Guido and Giosue are separated from Dora and taken to a concentration camp. Determined to shelter his son from the horrors of his surroundings, Guido convinces Giosue that their time in the camp is merely a game.

  • The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)

    Evicted from their apartment, Chris Gardner and his young son find themselves alone with no place to go. Even though Chris eventually lands a job as an intern at a prestigious brokerage firm, the position pays no money. The pair must live in shelters and endure many hardships, but Chris refuses to give in to despair as he struggles to create a better life for himself and his son.

  • The Sound of Music (1965)

    A heartwarming story based on the real life story of the Von Trapp Family singers, one of the world's best-known concert groups in the era immediately preceding World War II. Maria becomes a governess in the home of seven children and helps their widowed father reconnect with his children.

  • To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

    Scout Finch and her older brother, Jem, live in sleepy Maycomb, Alabama. When Atticus, their widowed father and a respected lawyer, defends a black man named Tom Robinson against fabricated rape charges, the trial and tangential events expose the children to evils of racism and stereotyping.

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