Another great day ...

I thought it was a bit crowded. 26 of us met up in the Large Meeting Room at the Link Centre yesterday morning – including dads, mums, babes, film maker, and researcher. Gareth and John had epic journeys from Salisbury and Warminster, yet another reminder, if one was needed, about the problems of public transport in rural counties.

After a lot of chat we got down to the main business of the morning – agreeing the film's content. The main message the dads want to get over is that young fathers "are not all the same" and they want to challenge the stereotypical view of them as people who are not prepared to face up to their responsibilities. The group discussed their feelings when their babies arrived and went on to discuss housing and benefits issues. Jackie filmed all this and went on to film some more personal material with several dads. At least six of the them want to be filmed at their own places some time in the New Year.

Steve talked about the research he has been doing – looking at how young men change as they become fathers. He has already carried out 5 interviews with U-Too dads-to-be and is waiting for them all to become fathers before carrying out a further set of interviews. His initial findings are that people don’t expect expectant young dads to be interested in what’s happening to their partners and that they therefore tend to be invisible to health service professionals.

We didn’t find it too surprising that he had found it difficult to locate young dads-to-be to interview. He said that it was relatively easy to find older guys, in their thirties, more settled in life, to interview. But to find younger guys was more of a challenge. He said he’d tried handing out 1000 leaflets outside cinemas and shopping centres but got no response. It was only when he approached U-Too that he was able to find young men to interview.

Partners and children joined us for lunch. Afterwards we all made our way, by various means, to The Oasis, for some more filming. Jackie has already posted stills elsewhere on the blog, as well as shots Marcus took in the morning. Another very worthwhile day, and a tribute to everyone who contributed to make it so.