What kids really need from their dads, according to science.
Father’s Day is a time to celebrate dads, but for millions of children in America, the day is a little more complicated with a parent behind bars or without a stable place to live. These are the families rarely featured in Father’s Day stories, and yet two new studies cut through common assumptions about what makes a good father, and the findings might surprise you.
Dr. Junior Dillion, President and CEO of Volunteers of America Upstate New York, and Michael Chen, adjunct professor of Public Health at Nazareth University, recently collaborated on two studies examining how fathers can positively impact their children even while navigating incarceration or housing instability. The research has been shared with the National Fatherhood Initiative.
Why the father-child relationships matters more than the same address
Around 1 in 17 children have had a parent incarcerated.
Dillion and Chen analyzed 2,400 school-age children from the 2024 National Survey of Children’s Health report who had a parent incarcerated. The results showed that children with a parent in jail or prison were about three times more likely to experience mental health and behavioral difficulties. Simply having a father return to the home did not significantly improve outcomes. The gap between these children and their peers remained large even when father was physically present. What actually moved the needle was relationship quality and how meaningfully they connect and communicate.
For a typical 11-year-old with an incarcerated parent, the probability of a behavioral diagnosis dropped from 66% to 24% when they had warm, open communication with a caregiver. That’s a massive difference in a child’s life outcomes, driven not by whether the father lives at home, but by how meaningfully adults engage with the child.
How emergency housing can strengthen fatherhood wellbeing and engagement
When a father doesn’t have stable housing, it doesn’t just affect him, it affects his whole family. Interviews with fathers living in a family shelter revealed that most were deeply committed to their children and wanted to remain involved despite difficult circumstances.
One in four fathers will face housing instability before their child turns nine. Yet this population are often overlooked by research, policy, and social services.
The barriers keeping them from their children weren’t personal failures or lack of motivation. Instead, they encountered structural challenges such as restrictive shelter policies, limited space, and visitation rules that made it harder to maintain family bonds. Systems that were never designed with fathers specifically in mind.
The study suggests that with the right approach that includes case management and father-friendly program design, those same shelters can become places where dads rebuild their confidence as parents, strengthen relationships with their children, and improve their overall well-being rather than a place to handle a crisis.
Fathers that had good support services said it made a real difference in their ability to function as parents. When fathers stay connected to their children through periods of instability, kids do better, families grow stronger, and communities get more out of the resources they’re already investing. When fathers are supported, children benefit.
The takeaway for Father’s Day, and every day.
These studies together tell us what children need from their fathers isn’t a perfect situation. And the systems designed to support fathers facing incarceration, homelessness, and other challenges, like shelters and reentry programs, can play a role in nurturing those connections.
Volunteers of America Upstate New York is already putting these principles into practice. Unlike many traditional shelter models, VOA provides families with private rooms so that fathers, mothers, and children don’t have to be separated during a housing crisis. This approach recognizes that preserving family relationships is not a secondary goal. It is a critical part of helping families regain stability and hope.
This Father’s Day, we have an opportunity to reframe the conversation. Instead of celebrating an idealized version of fatherhood, we can shine a light on the fathers who stay connected, communicate with love, and continue showing up even during life’s most difficult moments.