Dads and their children have a chance to take a little off the top for free this weekend.

Our longtime partner Dove Men+Care is partnering with 22 Bishops Cuts/Color barber shops across the country on Saturday, Dec. 8, to offer complimentary haircuts, washes and styling using Dove Men+Care products to guys and their offspring as part of a promotion. Our City Dads Group members and their children have been asked be special guests at the “Holiday Shear” events being held in 13 cities.

“To help families spend more time together while preparing for the holiday season, Dove Men+Care is giving the gift of free washes and haircuts to men and the children in their lives by spreading #HolidayShear,” the men’s grooming products company wrote in a news release.

City Dads Group chapters have been asked by DM+C to be special guests at these events. Meetups have been arranged by our organizers in the following cities (click the link then check out the group’s scheduled meetups for location and time details):

• Atlanta
• Charlotte
• Chicago
• Cincinnati
• Columbus, Ohio
• Denver
• Houston
• Los Angeles
• Phoenix
• Portland, Ore.
• Sacramento
• San Diego
• San Francisco 

In addition to the free haircuts, Dove Men+Care will have activity cards to encourage some father-child bonding through drawing, playing and conversation. Photo opportunities will also be held so the dads and kids can show off their new holiday haircuts.

Bishops Cuts/Color is a national chain, founded in Portland, Ore, that is predominately minority owned, that offers affordable haircuts and gives back to each of its communities, according to its website.

For a list of all the participating Bishops Cuts/Colors locations, visit bishops.co.

If you’re unable to attend one of these events, you can check out photos on our Twitter and Instagram social media feeds or by searching #HolidayShear.

Over the years, City Dads Group and its many chapters have partnered with Dove Men+Care for many events and promotions such as March Madness parties and tickets.

DISCLOSURE: City Dads Group chapters have been compensated by Dove Men+Care to participate and promote this free event. The event will begin at 9 a.m., local time, for City Dads Group members and run until 9 p.m., or until Dove Men+Care supplies are depleted, whichever occurs first.  Gratuities are not included, and any other services obtained that day will be charged at regular prices.  No substitutions allowed, and walk-ins (no appointments) only.  You must be present to reserve a spot in line.  No rain checks for any services unable to be completed by the end of the event.

Photo: Andi Whiskey on Unsplash

Josh Bellish of Beaverton, Ore., hit the internet shortly after the birth of his son three years ago in search of others in a similar situation to his own — an at-home father looking for a way to combat the isolation that sometimes comes with full-time parenting.

Just three years later Bellish has become a leader in two of those groups he found online: co-organizer of our 550-member Portland (PDX) Dads Group and, as of this month, the president of the nonprofit National At-Home Dad Network.

That latest title is of significant note.

Bellish’s election a few weeks ago at the HomeDadCon 2018, the at-home dad network’s annual conference, makes him the first gay father to lead the 15-year-old organization which provides advocacy, community, education and support for families where fathers are the primary caregivers of their children.

“It’s incredible,” said Bellish, 36, a father of a son with his husband, Matt Claeys. “But what’s most incredible is that my being gay didn’t have anything to be with my being elected to the board or president. I wasn’t elected as a gay man, I was elected because people thought I was the right man to run the organization.”

Al Watts, who served as the At-Home Dad Network’s president from 2011 to 2015, backed Bellish’s assessment.

“The membership really looks at finding people with the qualifications to be a leader, and Josh has them,” Watts said. “I’ve talked to Josh extensively in the past few years about the issues we have a stay-at-home fathers and they are much the same as any other father with the exception of the gender of his partner.”

Bellish said his being a gay father has been easily accepted by members of City Dads and the At-Home Dads Network, a point he hopes to capitalize on in promoting the works of both groups.

It was a quick rise to the top for Bellish, who only attended his first HomeDadCon two years earlier. He did support work for the 2017 convention held in Portland, where he was elected to the board of directors, and did extensive planning for the most recent event in Orlando.

Those two experiences will help shape one of the platforms of his tenure: streamlining and simplifying the conference planning so “every future volunteer has a clear path to follow,” he said.

The other platform is increasing the network’s membership both in general numbers and in overall diversity in terms of race, sexual orientation and socioeconomic background — something the organization has focused on the past few years.

“It doesn’t matter whether you are straight, gay, white, black or what have you. This is the place for you,” Bellish said. “We are here for all dads, not just straight white middle class dads.”

While he underplays his own pioneering status as a gay father leading the organization, he does hope it might garner enough attention to bring to light the network’s values and mission.

“Being an at-home dad still isn’t widely accepted, so legitimizing dads as competent and caring full-time parents is still a priority,” he said. Depending on the data source, somewhere between 160,000 and 2 million of us exist in the United States – a number steadily on the rise in the past few decades as attitudes and gender roles in the workplace and the home have evolved.

In addition to being a full-time father, Bellish is a Realtor and helps run a real estate group with his husband in the Portland area.

DISCLOSURE: City Dads Group has been a longtime sponsor of the HomeDadCon and a frequent partner of the National At-Home Dad Network.

Pediatric cancer is in the sights of City Dads Group this June as we team with the Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF) to raise money to help find a cure.

City Dads Group chapters in a dozen cities from coast-to-coast will set up stands between June 2 and 10 to sell lemonade and take donations to go to the national nonprofit’s work funding research to find better treatments and cures for childhood cancer.

Details, including times and locations for each group’s event this year, will be made available on the City Dads Group’s ALSF fundraising page or on the group’s Meetup page (see list below).

City Dads Group previously raised funds with Alex’s Lemonade Stand in 2016, but this year’s model should be even sweeter thanks to our ongoing partnership with Plum Organics. The nation’s leading organic baby food brand is helping our chapters out with supplies for their stands, and will provide snacks and samples for patrons.

• Boston – June 8
• Charlotte – June 4
• Chicago – June 9
• Dallas – June 9
• Fresno, Calif. – June 7
• Kansas City – June 2
• Los Angeles- June 10
• Madison, Wisc. – June 8
• New York City – June 5
• Portland, Ore. – June 9
• San Francisco – June 2
• Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul), Minn – June 2

City Dads Group and Plum Organics® will again work together to help nourish children and assist families in need on Giving Tuesday, an international day of helping others that follows Thanksgiving.

On Nov. 28, City Dads in 12 U.S. metropolitan areas will help pack and distribute food donated by Plum Organics, the nation’s leading organic baby food brand. Plum Organics last year for Giving Tuesday donated more than 24,000 meals to charitable organizations chosen by our chapters in Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco and the Minneapolis/St. Paul.

** Watch video of our 2016 Giving Tuesday work **

“We are proud to expand our Giving Tuesday partnership with Plum Organics to support nonprofits that support families in need across the United States,” said Matt Schneider, co-founder of City Dads Group. “Our dads are very proud to be able to provide time and much needed food to our communities.”

Where we are helping on Giving Tuesday

Our members will help pack, stock and distribute the Plum Organics donation and perform other volunteer work to the following organizations:

• Boston/Providence Dads Group have chosen to assist the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, which will distribute the food through its 160 agency partners that reach 57,000 individuals monthly.
• The Charlotte Dads Group plans to work with Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina, which distributed more than 50 million pounds of food and household items throughout its 19 county service region during its most recent fiscal year.
• Chicago Dads Group will assist clients of Palatine Township Food Pantry, an organization that serves an average of 345 families each month.
• Dallas Dads Group has chosen to work with Hope Supply Co. which assists 1,100 homeless children in North Texas every day.
• The Fresno Dads Group will work with Community Food Bank, which serves more than 280,000 people each month through a variety of programs.
• Kansas City Dads Group has chosen to help Harvesters Community Food Network, a regional food bank serving northwestern Missouri and northeastern Kansas that assists more than 620 not-for-profit agencies.
• The Los Angeles and NYC Dads Groups will again help GOOD+ Foundation, a nonprofit group that works with a network of more than 100 community-based organizations across the country to distribute essentials to families in need.
• Madison Dads Group in Wisconsin will assist the Goodman Community Center, which helps income-limited families through a food pantry, before- and after-school programs and other services.
• Our Portland Dads Group will work with the Oregon Food Bank, a central hub for supplying food pantries across the entire Pacific Northwest state.
• San Francisco Dads Group has selected the SF-Marin Food Bank to be its partner. The nonprofit provides more than 100,000 meals a day through 250 area food pantries.
• Twin Cities Dads Group in Minnesota will volunteer with Second Harvest Heartland, one of the nation’s largest food banks.

“At Plum, our mission is to nourish little ones with the very best food from the very first bite. Back in 2013, we founded The Full Effect® program to extend our mission to little ones in need. In America, 1 in 5 children is food insecure. That’s approximately 13 million kids,” Mandy Geisler, senior marketing manager at Plum Organics, said in a written statement. “The global giving movement Giving Tuesday is a great platform to raise awareness about this issue. By partnering with City Dads Group again this year, we’re able to bring organic baby food donations to organizations in twelve of their locations nationwide.”

City Dads Group members and others who are not able to participate in any of these events in person can follow our work on Twitter and Instagram. By using hashtags #PlumParents and #GivingTuesday, you can see pictures of our dads across the country supporting families in need.

Giving Tuesday is a global day of outreach dedicated to helping others. It’s meant to kick-off the holiday season and inspire people to collaborate in improving their local communities. Since its 2012 inception, tens of thousands of organizations worldwide annually participate in the day.

This will be the fourth consecutive year City Dads outposts around the country have participated in Giving Tuesday activities, and the second that Plum Organics has served as our national sponsor.

DISCLOSURE: Plum Organics is partnering with City Dads Group for the Giving Tuesday work mentioned above through a donation of goods and financial compensation.

Portland Dads Group member Aaron Canwell and his then 6-month-old son, Micah, were wandering around their Oregon hometown looking for family-friendly things to do when they stumbled on a group of musicians playing children’s songs with a rock ‘n’ roll beat.

Quickly, two new “kindie” music fans were born.

“This performance engaged children young and old to sing and dance,” Canwell said. “I got hooked. I decided I wanted to take my love of music and movement to share with children just like these people did.”

And soon was born a new band.

Micah and Me, composed of Canwell and three other members of our Portland Dads Group, has become popular playing toddler parties and other kid-centric events for the past four years in and around Portland. This includes a monthly gig at the local children’s museum our Portland Dads Group helps sponsor. As a result, readers of PDX Parent magazine earlier this month selected Micah and Me a Top 5 Best Kindie Musician/Performer in Portland.

Now the band is trying to raise money to finance its first album.

“After almost every show we are asked if we have a CD and the answer is always ‘sorry we don’t!’ So to remedy that we are recording our first album,” the band wrote on its Kickstarter page. They hope to raise $6,000 by Father’s Day, June 18.

Aside from Canwell, who sings and plays ukulele, the band includes: Ryan Chouinard (guitar, bass drum, vocals), Justin Deckert (bass) and, National At-Home Dad Network President, Portland Dads Group organizer and blog contributor Chris Routly (percussion, ukulele, vocals).

** Contribute to the Micah and Me album fund **

A dozen fathers, half of whom are City Dads Group members, will walk 80 miles — sea to sea — across northern England in July to raise money to benefit the children of parents with cancer and in the memory of one of their own.

These fathers will hike along the historic Hadrian’s Wall, a fortification built in the first century A.D. that once marked the northernmost point of the Roman Empire, to support Camp Kesem. Kesem provides free summer camps and other events for the 3 million children nationwide affected by a parent battling cancer. The camp has 70 chapters in 34 states.

The walkers’ goal is collecting $40,000 to start a Camp Kesem chapter on the campus at the University of Maryland, which is near the home of fellow dad blogger Oren Miller. Miller, a University of Maryland grad who died from lung cancer a year ago, chronicled his life as a stay-at-home dad online, using the platform to take on fatherhood stereotypes and pushing for fathers to be included in parental marketing — one issue in particular being to convince online retailer Amazon to change its baby-care subscription club from “Amazon Mom” to “Amazon Family.”

Miller also started a popular Facebook group for dad bloggers that now has more than 1,100 members.

The so-called Dads4Kesem or “Walking Dads” are:

• Chris Routly, Portland Dads Group, of The Full Routly
• Michael Moebes, Atlanta Dads Group, of Dadcation
• Whit Honea, L.A. Dads Group and City Dads Group columnist, of Dads4Change
• Jim Higley, Chicago Dads Group, of Bobblehead Dad. He is also the chief development and marketing officer for Camp Kesem.
• Jason Greene, NYC Dads Group, of One Good Dad
• Jeff Bogle, Philly Dads Group, of Out With the Kids
• Brent Almond of Designer Daddy
• Phil Corless of Idaho Dad
• Doug French of Dad 2.0 Summit
• Josh Misner of Mindful Dad
• John Pacini of Dad 2.0 Summit
• Brian Reasoner of Southern Bella’s Big Daddy

All the participants are paying their own expenses for the July 8-16 trip to England so all donations they collect can go to Camp Kesem.

You can:

• donate to their effort at Dads4Kesem.com
• follow the Dads4Kesem participants on social media at #Dads4Kesem and #TheWalkingDads.

— Jason Greene contributed to this report.

City Dads Group, a diverse community of fathers who are actively involved with their children, recently expanded into its 14th and 15th major metropolitan markets in the United States by adding outposts in Portland, Ore., and St. Louis.

Portland Dads Group

The Portland Dads Group will be headed by Chris Routly, who is in his fifth year as an at-home dad.

Chris also serves on the board of directors of the National At-Home Dad Network. He writes about his thoughts and experiences at The Full Routly, and he has also written and illustrated several children’s books. Chris recently started a Kickstarter campaign to fund his most recent book, “Sometimes You Need a Jellyfish.” Originally from Canada, Chris lives with his wife and two sons in Portland.

Find the Portland Dads Group on:

• Meetup (go here to join)
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram

St. Louis Dads Group

The St. Louis Dads Group will be co-organized by Brian Peters and Chad Welch.

Brian, a full-time working dad, lives with his wife, 2-year-old daughter and dog in St. Louis. He volunteers with the American Red Cross, the Trailnet transit program and the local Pat Tillman Shadow Run.

Chad, an at-home dad for 14 years, has served on the board of directors for the National At-Home Dad Network and currently serves on the board of his local parent-teacher organization. Chad lives with his wife and two sons in St. Charles County.

Find the St. Louis Dads Group on:

• Meetup (go here to join)
• Facebook
• Instagram

City Dads Group is a dynamic and diverse community of fathers dedicated to being active in their children’s lives and, by example, redefining what it means to be a dad in the 21st century. Founded in November 2008 in New York City as a way a handful of fathers could arrange playdates and outings with their children, the organization went national in 2014. City Dads Group has more than 2,500 members who bond over their children and a desire to change the face of modern fatherhood through word, deed, and example.