James Levine believes that our culture is prejudiced against fatherhood, but change is at hand.

Levine, the father of two children, is director of The Fatherhood Project at the Families and Work Institute in New York. His program helps some of the nation's largest and most influential companies (including Apple Computer, Merrill Lynch and American Express) become more family friendly -- and father friendly.

The idea of The Fatherhood Project was born during the late '60s when Levine, an Amherst graduate in English, was teaching preschool in Oakland, Calif.

"I kept getting asked a question that none of the women at the school were ever asked: What do you really do? I had been sympathetic to the women's movement, but this was an epiphany," says Levine. "A light bulb went off. Growing up, I had always cared for kids. I was just one of those guys who helped out children in the lower grades. So why didn't people consider caring for children to be man's work?"

Levine formed the concept of The Fatherhood Project in 1978, but no foundations were particularly interested in fatherhood. But in 1980, the movie "Kramer vs. Kramer" was released. In the film, Dustin Hoffman portrayed a father facing the balancing act of working and single-parenting. Suddenly, foundations were eager to finance Levine's efforts to change company cultures.

To gather research about fatherhood and the workplace, but also to raise the consciousness of the fathers, Levine began conducting company seminars and focus groups. Since 1990, Levine has detected increasing acceptance of fatherhood within corporations and other institutions.

"A decade ago, we were lucky if two or three men showed up at one of our company seminars. But so many men showed up for our focus groups at Apple (75 in 1991) that we had to add groups. If we had gone to Apple 10 years earlier, we wouldn't have gotten the time of day," he says.

When Apple announced its own family care initiative in 1991, the company devoted an entire page of its in-house newsletter to fathers, sending the message that the company's family policies applied to men, not only to women. The article described how the typical corporate culture assumes that women, but not men, should balance work and family. Apple announced that it would now encourage fathers and mothers to share responsibility for rearing children, and the company would offer flexibility to both parents.

Still, workplace resistance to family issues continues. One barrier to allowing more flexibility for children and families is the importance placed on "face time," the assumption that the more hours a worker is visibly present on the job, the more successful the worker is.

"No matter how many hours of face time he puts in at work, a father who is worried about his children at home is unlikely to be fully productive," says Levine. "This is also true of women, but we do not tend to think of fathers as worried working parents."

Levine believes that media should pay more attention to those companies that are father-friendly. In June 1992, he wrote an article for Child magazine called "Thirty Great Companies for Dads." In another article, he profiled the first man to take family leave at Apple; within three months of that man's leave, in 1991, two other men in the division had also requested paternity leave.

Levine challenges companies and other institutions to create ways for fathers to mentor young men and other fathers.

He prefers to use the word "coach" rather than mentor. "The word 'mentor' makes it sound like you're up on a pedestal," he says. "A coach is simply someone who brings out the talent in someone else. The first step to coaching is acknowledgment, to pay attention. There are so many kids who get no attention from anyone, and there is so much father-hunger out there.

"I have a guy who works in my program, a former drug addict who has some talent; but he also suffers from a terrible lack of social skills, particularly around women. One day, I sat him down alone, and later, I asked several women from my staff to join us. We had a tough conversation with this guy about his unacceptable behavior and how he could improve it."

One woman said later that if any boss had talked to her like that, she would have never returned.

"But he came back to the office on the following Monday and thanked me," says Levine. "This boy had lost his father at an early age. He said nobody had ever cared enough to talk to him like that; they had just assumed he was an unsalvageable jerk."

Such confrontations with future or current fathers may not be appropriate in every setting, but male-mentoring programs could make a real difference.

New York City offers the City-as-School program for youngsters who are not succeeding in the traditional school system. As part of the program, young men and women are placed in jobs as interns or apprentices.

"Some of these teen-agers work in our office," says Levine. "This is one way, an important way, for me as a father, a man, and a professional to care for the next generation. I'm convinced that such coaching has powerful results. One boy was being pressured by his family to get married at a young age and start having babies. The Responsible Fathers Program in Philadelphia invited me to a meeting and asked if I had any associates who I would like to bring with me. I said, yes, I've got one.

"I took this young guy with me. We stayed in a fancy hotel. He got to hear other professionals speak, and he got to hear other young men tell their stories. This had a tremendous impact on him. Suddenly he realized; 'I'm not alone. It's not just Jim telling me this stuff about fatherhood; there's a whole world out there.'"

For more information, contact:
The Fatherhood Project
14th Floor
c/o SWI
330 7th Avenue
New York, NY 10001
Phone: (212)268 4846