'Dad's The Man' Program Helps Young Man Get Vision of Fatherhood

A frightened young couple from Boston changed their minds about aborting their baby and even got married last summer with the help of a mentoring program called "Dad's The Man!," which is sponsored by the Mass. Family Institute and A Woman's Concern.

After discovering early last year that she was pregnant, Guerlin, 17, was afraid of disappointing her mother and felt she had no choice but to get an abortion. Her boyfriend Ricco, 21, also felt embarrassed and unprepared to be a father.

A Woman's Concern worked with Geurlin but they did not ignore the father. After the couple saw their healthy baby on ultra-sound, they decided to keep it. They then helped Ricco learn about the role of father-hood. After Ricco proudly announced the couple were going to live together, he was told, "You're the Dad! And Dad's the Man, but this means getting married, not living together."

The couple were married last summer after pre-marriage counseling. Geurlin gave birth to a baby boy in early December.

Wedding Day! Guerlin and Ricco flanked
by Leoner Woodson and Rev. John Ensor.

Ron Crews, who heads the Mass Family Institute, told MassNews that when a woman considers an abortion, "We want to find the father who is responsible for that child, to challenge that young man to take responsibility for his actions. We offer mentoring assistance from an established dad who has a good track record, to try to teach him what it means to be a dad."

Crews said he started working on the "Dad's the Man" concept a couple years ago with Rev. John Ensor, who heads A Woman's Concern. The program has been running for the last year, he said. Currently there are about twenty men in a mentoring relationship.

The program is based on the premise that the most effective way to help mothers and children saved from abortion is to help the fathers carry out the duties and privileges of fatherhood.

In a little over a year the program has resulted in eight marriages, said Crews.

The president of A Woman's Concern, Rev.John Ensor, tells MassNews that those eight marriages were just the ones he conducted himself, but there have been additional marriages resulting from the Dad's program that were conducted off-premises.

Ensor tells MassNews they had to lay off the full time director of "Dad's The Man" after a year because of funding problems. The program continues with volunteers, only not on the scale they would like. Of the five Woman's Concern centers, only Dorchester and Hyannis currently implement the Dad's program using volunteers from local churches.

Ensor described the program as one that seeks out Christian men who will volunteer to help young men get a strong and passionate vision to be good fathers. After they get that vision of themselves as providers and protectors of their wives and children, then they look at any practical impediments to that vision such as job issues, etc.

Asked how he would respond to someone who suggests he is pressuring fathers to marry, Ensor said that in today's culture, you can't pressure anyone into marriage because there is no longer a stigma attached to being unmarried. Ensor said that most men are not opposed to the idea of marriage, they're just frightened by it. They often try to show their commitment by living together, he said, but the Dad's program helps them realize that marriage is what they really want. "We don't do weddings without pre-marriage counseling," he stressed.

A Woman's Concern has been encouraging men to marry and meet their commitments to their children for the past ten years, said Ensor, but the formal Dad's program is an attempt to do it on a larger scale.