Integrity Ideas are specific actions a leader can consider during the RE-ALIGN step of Integriosity^®—actions that will begin to RE-ALIGN the organization with Biblical beliefs, principles, and priorities.  You can find more Integrity Ideas at Integrous | Integrity Ideas (integriosity.com)

INTEGRITY IDEA: Fortify Fatherhood

“Fortify Fatherhood” is about adopting practices and benefits that are specifically designed to encourage and support employees who are fathers in being present, engaged, and loving parents and, where appropriate, making fatherhood resources available to fathers who are spouses or partners of employees.

It recognizes that children generally flourish more fully when raised in a healthy and intact family with a father who is present and active in their lives, and that the quality of the father-child relationship is strongly associated with whether children carry their faith into adulthood.

Mothers are vital to the flourishing and faith formation of children, and “Fortify Fatherhood” does not diminish their essential role. Rather, it responds to the particular need to strengthen fathers’ presence, involvement, and relationships with their children.

Integrity Ideas are practical actions toward implementing a bigger WHY for the organization.  Some are helpful ideas to consider as a faithful leader prayerfully discerns how best to steward the organization. Others may be important steps in the RENEW/RE-IMAGINE/RE-ALIGN/RESTORE process.

“Fortify Fatherhood” is about employee benefits, and we believe employee benefits usually fall into the “if its a good fit” category.

“Fortify Fatherhood” focuses more closely on one aspect of the Integrity Idea we called “Fortify Family” in post #195 (Integrity Idea 034: Fortify Family), which addressed practices and benefits supporting healthy marriages, informed parenting, and quality family time. “Fortify Fatherhood” narrows the lens to address an obstacle that is often not simply the absence of a benefit, but a mistaken belief about what makes a good father.

In that post, we said that an organization pursuing faithful integrity through business a better way should help each employee prioritize the health of their family over their work.  John Beckett, Chairman and CEO of R.W. Beckett Corporation and author of the book Loving Monday: Succeeding in Business Without Selling Your Soul, wisely wrote:

Our priorities should be ordered like this: First, our relationship with God; then commitment to family; and only then commitment to our work and vocations.

Biblical Principles

The Bible is very clear about the importance of raising children and provides a wealth of guidance for doing so. It calls parents—and specifically fathers—to an active role in raising their children and passing along their faith. Consider these passages:

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. (Deuteronomy 6:6-7)

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4)

Malachi 4:6 reveals that God’s redemptive work includes restoring the relationships between fathers and children:

And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.

By recognizing Imago Dei in fathers, mothers, and children and furthering the commandment to love our neighbor, “Fortify Fatherhood” is also a preemptive and redemptive response to the wreckage of a broken world.

We believe the Bible also gives us a priority structure to help us see what is important and to get a sense of the relative priorities of the aspects of our life, and work comes in at #4 in that priority structure:  God, Spouse, Children, Work. When we hear these priorities, we just know they seem right.  Scripture does not present those commitments as a numbered list, but it points us toward that ordering.

In Mark 12:30-31, it is clear that loving God comes first and then loving others.  Ephesians 5 raises love for a spouse to a special level, and Ephesians 6:4 and Colossians 3:21 address the special attention needed in raising children.  But just because the ordering is Biblically grounded doesn’t mean it is easy to live out.

The Inspiration and the Problem

This post was inspired by two recent publications. The first is an article titled “The Future of America Begins with Fathers” by Anthony Bradley that appeared in The Believe! Journal.  Bradley writes extensively on the topic of men, young men and fatherhood.  The second is a report released in June 2026 by the Institute for Family Studies and Communio titled “Passing the Torch: How Faith Moves Across Generations.”

Bradley observes:

When fathers are involved in the lives of their children, the outcomes are overwhelmingly positive. Children with active fathers perform better in school, exhibit greater emotional stability, develop stronger social skills, and are far less likely to suffer from anxiety or depression. . . In contrast, father absence is one of the strongest predictors of negative life outcomes. . . Decades of rigorous studies have established causal links between father absence and lower academic achievement, increased behavioral problems, early puberty, teen pregnancy, and long-term mental health challenges. In short, when fathers are missing, society suffers. . . The bottom line is this: when fathers show up, families flourish—and when families flourish, communities thrive.

The Passing the Torch report, which draws on four large datasets, made several findings that support the benefits of implementing “Fortify Fatherhood,” particularly if it is implemented overtly to include encouraging and supporting participation by fathers in the faith formation of their children.

•  “The strongest predictor of how religious children become is how religious their parents were during their upbringing.”

• Children who participate with parents in saying grace before meals and praying together as a family “are more likely to go to church, say religion is very important to them, pray regularly, identify as Christian, and report belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ by the time they reach their mid-to-late 20s.”

• “If parents present a united front on the importance of faith as well as the content of theological teachings, children are more likely to internalize these messages. . . The evidence suggests that faith formation is most effective when it is a shared parental responsibility.”

• “In the United States, responsibility for children’s faith formation is disproportionately carried by mothers, even in households where both parents identify as devout.”

• “Among those [teenagers] who only attend [church] with one parent, 79% attend with their mother, compared with 21% who attend with their father. . . 41% of children who attend church weekly with both parents will go on to attend church weekly as an adult. This percentage drops to 29% if children attend with only one parent.”

• “Individuals who grew up with married parents have a higher likelihood of attending church weekly, praying daily, reading sacred texts, believing in God, and having high religious importance in adulthood.” 

• “In order for parents’ faith modeling, practicing, and preaching to be effective, they must form and maintain close and loving relationships with their children.”

• “Compared to those who had a very bad, somewhat bad, or somewhat good relationship with their father growing up, those who had a very good relationship have: 58% higher odds of attending church weekly, 45% higher odds of praying daily, 40% higher odds of reading sacred texts, 64% higher odds of high religious importance, and 73% higher odds of believing in God.”

America faces what is often described as a “father absence crisis,” with approximately one in four children living without a biological, step, or adoptive father in the home.  According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, a child growing up in a father-absent home is, statistically, at greater risk of poverty, more likely to have behavioral problems, at greater risk of infant mortality, more likely to go to prison, more likely to commit crimes, more likely to become pregnant as a teen, more likely to face abuse and neglect, more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, more likely to suffer obesity, and more likely to drop out of school.

It is tempting to read these consequences and think only of a man in a low-income situation who fathers a child and abandons the mother. But father absence crosses socioeconomic and geographic lines, and it can be relational and emotional as well as residential.

A father can live at home and still be functionally absent when he works seven days, works long hours, or is away on business during the week and then spends weekends working around the house, playing golf, or watching sports, leaving his wife to carry most of the parenting and faith-formation responsibility for the children. Business as usual provides a rationale and excuse for what is essentially a priority problem.  The alibi goes like this: if you are a good financial provider, then you are by definition a good husband and a good father.

It is a powerful lie precisely because it contains truth. Providing is a genuine parental duty, and 1 Timothy 5:8 treats the failure to provide with real seriousness.

But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

But business as usual takes a duty and inflates it into a total definition tied to financial provision, so that every additional hour away at work can be accounted a gift to the family rather than a withdrawal from it. The father who is never present for his children because of work has not abandoned his priorities in his own mind. He has satisfied them. Work has become his #1 priority because he believes it is the way to serve the others. Having defined financial provision as his principal parental responsibility, he may then rationalize the remainder of his time as his own.

A related lie can disorder the priorities of those “in ministry” (using this in the traditional and narrow sense of church and nonprofit work rather than the broader sense in which God created all work as sacred ministry). Work becomes the #1 priority ahead of children not because it is a way to provide but because it is confused with prioritizing God as #1.  People believe “doing God’s work” jumps the work ahead of family. Work “in ministry” is still work—#4 in the priority structure.  All work can be done as “God’s work” aimed at glorifying God, but calling work “ministry” does not elevate it above the responsibilities of fatherhood.

The danger is particularly difficult to recognize when the work itself is legitimate, important, and even life-giving to others. But children experience a father’s absence; they do not experience the nobility of his reason for being absent. Worthwhile work can still become a displaced priority.

In a 2010 talk to NCS New Canaan, the founding chapter of the New Canaan Society, the world-renowned evangelist Ravi Zacharias expressed profound regret for the impact of his ministry work on his role as a father.

I say this more to myself than I say it to you, because I’ve been a travelling man. What is the price you pay even in some legitimate pursuits. If I had to do my life all over again I would do it very differently. . . I thank God that all of our three kids are walking with the Lord, but I missed those years when they were little and young, which just vanish and go by so quickly. . . Gentlemen, pour yourself with priority before the years go by and you wished you could get them back. Nothing you and I do in these things is illicit as much as it is a displaced priority. That’s what it is, and the company you serve gets the best of you, and sometimes the worn-out dad comes back at home, and the children want some time and they simply can’t have it.  Don’t make that mistake because the world has its predators out there and you don’t want to be in a salvage operation.

While it would be tempting to omit his reflection on fatherhood because the sexual misconduct revealed after his death profoundly compromises Zacharias as a moral witness, that would be to lose a powerful example of profound regret by a once revered man who put his work “for God” ahead of his responsibilities as a father.

As we explored in post #302 (Does the New 996 = 666?), a faithful worker must be careful to keep work in proper balance with other life priorities.  We devoted post #108 (Work Within Life) to an examination of that balancing.  In God’s design, work is an essential part of life to be balanced with other aspects of our life such as faith, family and wellness.  Because we live in a fallen world, balancing “life” can become difficult.

Why A Father Focus

We addressed employee families broadly in post #195 (Integrity Idea 034: Fortify Family), and nothing here suggests that mothers’ presence matters less or that their work pressures are lighter. We are giving fathers a separate Integrity Idea for three reasons.

First, many fathers face a distinctive cultural script. The provider-equals-father equation can attach to men with particular force and may go unchallenged by peers, by their employer, or by themselves.

Second, the workplace signals can differ. In some organizations, a father’s use of family-related flexibility is read—by him or by others—as reduced commitment. Some organizations offer fathers leave they are quietly understood not to take.

Third, fathers may be reluctant to talk about the problem. A father experiencing difficulty in his relationship with his children may not raise it at work—or anywhere else

“Fortify Fatherhood” acknowledges that an organization pursuing faithful integrity through business a better way should help each employee who is a father understand the importance of healthy fatherhood to the flourishing of children—and provide the practical support and flexibility needed to live it out.

CONTINUUM: Practices

The Integriosity model organizes “heart change” along six Covert-Overt Continuums.  There is nothing inherently magical about these categories, but we believe they are helpful in thinking about practical execution of a Re-Imagined Purpose, Re-Imagined Values, and a Re-Imagined Culture.  The Continuums are Prayer, Proclamation, Policies, Practices, Products, People.

Each Continuum represents an area in which leaders can begin to think about, plan, and institute Re-Alignment changes to the heart of the organization.

“Fortify Fatherhood” is on the Practices Continuum. It involves practices the organization can adopt to affirm its commitment to the importance of family and to the Biblical principles of Imago Dei and loving our neighbors, to reflect and reinforce its purpose and values, and to care for its employees.

COVERT-OVERT RATING: Highly Covert

The Integriosity model breaks the Covert-Overt Continuums into six gradations—from Highly Covert to Highly Overt—that we believe are helpful in beginning to pray and think about what is most appropriate for an organization at a particular moment in time.

Most Integrity Ideas have one place on the scale.  Some can vary depending on how they are implemented.  We identify “Fortify Fatherhood” as Highly Covert (an action that would be taken by a secular company) because every organization could and should strive to promote the well-being of employee families.

“Fortify Fatherhood” can also be Overt (An overtly faith-based action known generally within the organization) if the leaders of the organization choose to explain its importance in terms of the Biblical significance of fatherhood, loving our neighbors, and caring for the “little ones”.  It must also move to the Overt end of the Continuum to the extent faithful leaders emphasize the importance of father involvement in the faith formation of their children.

STAKEHOLDERS SERVED: Employees, Community, Kingdom

When we categorize faith-based actions, we also consider the stakeholders principally impacted by the action: Employees, Customers/Clients, Owners, Suppliers/Vendors, Community, and Kingdom.

“Fortify Fatherhood” serves many stakeholders.  It principally serves Employees by caring for their well-being and the well-being of their families.  It also enriches the Community because the entire community benefits from healthy families and children, and it furthers the Kingdom by supporting the faith formation of children.

IMPLEMENTATION

As we urged in post #195 (Integrity Idea 034: Fortify Family), every faithful leader seeking to lead with faithful integrity through business a better way should be praying and thinking about ways their organization can encourage and support healthy employee families, because doing so can contribute to increased human flourishing through healthier employees and a healthier community. It will also glorify God by Humanizing People and Beautifying the World. “Fortify Fatherhood” is one way to encourage and support healthy employee families.

In thinking about whether and how to implement “Fortify Fatherhood,” it is helpful to think about three areas of execution: awareness, opportunities, and encouragement.

Awareness

Awareness is about helping fathers understand the importance of their presence and engagement in the healthy development of their children.  Consider:

• Providing employees with access to resources on fatherhood. In post #132 (Provide Humanity Resources), we presented various resource ideas, including subscribing to RightNow Media@Work.  RightNow Media@Work is a customizable online library of thousands of faith-centered videos, including parenting material and content specifically for men. Pricing is based on an organization’s size (number of employees).

• Holding an in-house fatherhood workshop or fatherhood information session or paying for employees to attend a fatherhood workshop. The National Fatherhood Initiative offers several fatherhood programs, including training for facilitators.

• Inviting senior leaders share openly about any regrets they have about missing time with their children as they were growing up. It is the regret made famous by Harry Chapin in his song Cat’s in the Cradle (click the link below to be reminded).

• Hiring a chaplain who will be willing to raise fatherhood questions in a safe environment and is equipped to discuss fatherhood appropriately and confidentially.  We talked about the benefits of a chaplain in post #127 (Integrity Idea 001: Hire a Chaplain).

• Making fatherhood resources and programs available to fathers who are spouses or partners of employees, not only to fathers employed by the organization.

Opportunities

Opportunities are about instituting policies and practices designed to help fathers with the challenge of life balance.  Consider:

• Offering paid parental leave to fathers that exceeds the legal requirements.

• Treating family commitments as real commitments that can be protected on a calendar like a work commitment, such as coaching a youth team or serving as a Scoutmaster on certain evenings.

• Creating flexibility to allow fathers to attend important events in their children’s lives (e.g., teacher conferences, school plays) during normal work hours.

• Setting work-week expectations at 35-40 hours, where operationally practicable.

• Strongly encouraging fathers to utilize all of their vacation time.

• Establishing protected periods when employees are not expected or permitted to work, such as a regular evening window reserved for dinner and family time. For example, Bandwidth.com required employees to leave the office from 6:30pm-8:30pm.

• Holding fun family events, such as a picnic, barbecue or day at a circus or amusement park, for all employees, and encouraging fathers to participate with their children.

• Encouraging managers to be aware of family “milestones” in the lives of fathers (e.g., births, first day of school, graduations) so that assignments and travel can be scheduled and staffed to accommodate attendance.

• Putting in place practices and processes to prevent employees from being contacted unnecessarily about work during evenings, weekends, and vacations.

Although we are focused on supporting fatherhood, leave, flexibility, and other family-supportive opportunities should be made equitably available to mothers and other employees with comparable caregiving responsibilities. Father-specific communication and encouragement can address fathers’ reluctance to use those opportunities without making the underlying benefits less available to others.

Encouragement

Encouragement is about ensuring that the “real culture” aligns with the caring culture reflected in the opportunities, and that the opportunities are not empty promises in practice. For example:

• Have managers meet with fathers who are regularly exceeding work-week expectations to understand the situation.

• Have managers meet with fathers who are not utilizing vacation time or paternity leave to understand the situation.

• Encourage leaders to share when they are prioritizing a family commitment as a way of signaling “permission.”

• Encourage managers to create opportunities for fathers to identify important milestones or family commitments that work has caused them to miss or might otherwise cause them to miss.

• Undertake an honest assessment of the organization’s “real culture” to understand whether there is a perception that utilizing vacation time or paternity leave, prioritizing “milestone” events, or keeping family commitments will hurt a person’s chances of advancement or negatively impact compensation.

In considering whether or how to implement “Fortify Fatherhood,” a faithful leader must also consider whether to move toward the Overt end of the Practices Continuum.  For example, providing RightNow Media@Work is overt.  Providing only Biblically based fatherhood resources or paying only for a specified Biblically based fatherhood workshop or retreat is overt.  Explaining the Biblical basis behind “Fortify Fatherhood” initiatives is overt.  Overtly faith-based resources should be made available to all employees on an optional basis, recognizing that some may choose not to utilize them.

If the choice is made to offer overtly Biblical marriage or parenting resources and some employees are uncomfortable with the faith perspective, a faithful leader should prayerfully consider offering secular alternatives. “Fortify Fatherhood” is about creating a culture that values and supports engaged fathers, healthy parenting, and healthy families for all employees.

“Fortify Fatherhood” is one way to lead faithfully through business a better way by curating and reinforcing a caring and compassionate organizational culture that aligns with Biblical beliefs, principles, and priorities.

PERSONAL NOTE (from PM):  I fell victim to the cultural lie that being a good provider made me a good husband and a good father.  Providing for my family mattered, but I allowed provision to stand in for presence. As I have shared before, I was building my “kingdom” for provision.  As I learned through the pain it caused my wife and the near-divorce crisis that followed, our “kingdoms” are illusory and fragile.  (God miraculously restored our relationship, but that is a much longer story that you can read about in the book Miracles by Eric Metaxas.  For those interested, here is a link to a PDF of the chapter called “God and Marriage”.)  At the time I was learning this hard lesson, Casting Crowns had released a song called American Dream.  In many ways, the American dream is about the ability to build your own kingdom.  The song reveals the fragility of that pursuit. Thankfully, our children were young, and my wakeup call came early enough in their lives to make a meaningful course correction.

ESSENCE:  Integrity Ideas are specific practical actions a faithful leader can consider in leading faithfully through business a better way.

INTEGRITY IDEA: Fortify Fatherhood

“Fortify Fatherhood” is about adopting practices and benefits that are specifically designed to encourage and support employees who are fathers in being present, engaged, and loving parents and, where appropriate, making fatherhood resources available to fathers who are spouses or partners of employees. It recognizes that children generally flourish more fully when raised in a healthy and intact family with a father who is present and active in their lives, and that the quality of the father-child relationship is strongly associated with whether children carry their faith into adulthood.  Mothers are vital to the flourishing and faith formation of children, and “Fortify Fatherhood” does not diminish their essential role. Rather, it responds to the particular need to strengthen fathers’ presence, involvement, and relationships with their children. America faces what is often described as a “father absence crisis,” with approximately one in four children living without a biological, step, or adoptive father in the home. “Fortify Fatherhood” acknowledges that an organization pursuing faithful integrity through business a better way should help each employee who is a father understand the importance of healthy fatherhood to the flourishing of children—and provide the practical support and flexibility needed to live it out. By recognizing Imago Dei in fathers, mothers, and children and furthering the commandment to love our neighbor, “Fortify Fatherhood” is also a pre-emptive and redemptive response to the wreckage of a broken world. It is about prioritizing the flourishing of people over profit.  “Fortify Fatherhood” is one way to lead faithfully through business a better way by curating and reinforcing a caring and compassionate organizational culture that aligns with Biblical beliefs, principles, and priorities.

COVERT-OVERT CONTINUUM (six Continuums for action): Practices

COVERT-OVERT RATING (several levels from Highly Covert to Highly Overt): Highly Covert

STAKEHOLDERS SERVED: Employees, Community, Kingdom

Copyright © 2026 Integrous LLC.  Integriosity is a registered Service Mark of Integrous LLC.

Photo credit: Original image by Szilvia Basso on Unsplash
(photo cropped)