Chris Maples Interview

Chris Maples is Executive Director of Dads Inc, which is a not-for-profit organization, dedicated to advancing fatherhood in Central Indiana.  Chris was nice enough to answer some tough questions about his experiences with being a new father, being a expectant dad all over again, and why he started Dads Inc. 

You are a recent dad and have a new one on the way.  Can you explain your experiences with being a new dad?

 I have a son who is 2 years, 5 months.  My second child is due in September.  I’m not as scared this time as I was the first time around.  I didn’t know what to expect, I freaked out every day over every little pain my wife was having.  The first bit was tough for me.  I’m not really a “baby person,” nor do I like getting up in the middle of the night.  But I adjusted.  Now I think it’s the most awesome thing in the whole world.  It’s like getting to be a kid again myself.  I play with superheroes, I play Chase and Hide & Seek, I read children’s books (Green Eggs & Ham is my hands down favorite), I go to the park and swing and go down the slides – man, what’s not to like about that?!  I still hate to change poopy diapers, but I learned early on to use a clothespin to keep from gagging.  I’m sure having two is going to be much more difficult than just one, but at least I know what to expect this time.  That’s the biggest difference.

Preparing for your first child I think is the toughest thing to prepare for.  If you had a chance to tell expectant dads what to expect and what to plan for what would that be?

 I don’t know that you can prepare if you’ve never gone through it before.  It’s something you just really have to experience to understand it.  Your friends can tell you what to expect, but you don’t really “get it” until you go through it yourself.  But I recommend you get a clothespin for changing poopy diapers (see above), get ready to have everyone in the world tell you how they think you should raise your child, and stay away from The Wiggles at all costs! 

 Do you feel you are more prepared for the expected child than you was for the first child?

 Without a doubt.  As I said, I know what to expect this time.  It won’t be the same experience as it was with my son, but I’m not scared of holding the baby or how to change diapers.

You started the not-for-profit organization on father's day 2005 with a group of friends.  Can you describe the reason why you started it, what you were planning to achieve, and how it has changed you as a father?

 This is a really long answer.  I’ve blogged about this exact thing before, so I’m just going to cut and paste it.

“It all started about 5 years or so ago. I had just gotten married to the wonderful women who I want to grow into old people with. We were talking about having babies and all that fun stuff that, and while I wanted babies, I was scared to death of the thought of becoming a father myself. Why, you ask? I mean, such a classy, confident guy as me shouldn’t have cute little butterflies in his stomach or be afraid of a little thing like fatherhood, right?

But yet I was, and for the same reason that so many other guys are – we didn’t have the best role models on how to be good dads because our dads (while we love them) weren’t the most loving or involved in our lives, and so we didn’t really know how to do it for our kids. Hell, I wasn’t even a good father to the two puppies I had adopted, and eventually gave them away to good homes with people that could take better care of them and be better fathers to them than I knew how to. I knew, however, that my friends and I wanted desperately to be better fathers than those that we had. We just needed the skills and support to get it done. And never wanted to appear inept at a chore as simple as child-rearing, I knew men would jump at the chance to get these skills without looking like a wussy.

I figured that there was surely an organization out there that would have some classes for me to take to get my daddy skills on. I looked far and wide. The only organization I could find (while a very good & worthwhile organization) was one that only catered to a more “traditional” non-profit client – young, uneducated, unemployed, poor, and irresponsible dads. While I was young, the other four didn’t really fit (ok, well, I could be irresponsible at times, but not like to the point of just cutting out of my family’s life). I couldn’t find a single class for a guy like me.

At the same time, I was becoming more aware of and tuned into the negative portrayal of men, and fathers specifically, in mass media. For example, other than Cliff Huxtable, name me one television father of our generation that is portrayed as something other than moronic and completely and utterly inept at parenting. If you can actually name me one, I will name you 15 others that aren’t.

And what about the Robitussin commercials where mom is sick and the whole house goes into chaos because dad doesn’t know how to cook, clean up after himself, dress his kids, or provide for them in any way other than doing his job outside of the house (you know, like what it means to be a grown up)? Approved by Dr. Mom, huh? When was the last time you saw a laundry or house cleaning detergent or grocery store commercial that didn’t have a woman starring in it? I don’t know about you all, but the last time I checked my house, I do a significant amount of laundry, almost all of the grocery shopping, and even a good bit of cleaning the house. Now with a son and another child on the way, I change his diapers and get him ready for day care every morning, and I know how to get him ready for bed every night, and how to calm him when he’s upset. Hell, my wife even makes a lot more money than I do (thank God for that!).

What I’m trying to say is that the traditional gender roles have been shot all to hell, but media hasn’t caught up with that. How is this line of thinking helping to provide young boys with any sense of what it means to be a good man in today’s society? So I also wanted to see an outlet that would set the record straight on modern gender roles and the abilities of fathers and men, and to provide an accurate and balanced picture of today’s man. But again, there was nothing out there.

One of my better traits, I must admit, is that when I see something I don’t like, instead of just bitching about it, I try to change it (note, I’m not saying I don’t bitch about it, too, though). It helped that I was already working in non-profits, so I was used to being poor and living with the pressure that relying on other people’s donations for your salary so wonderfully provides. But I still hadn’t found my calling. Does that make sense? I was passionate about many things, and very socially aware of the problems the less-fortunate face. But I hadn’t found the one thing that I wanted to dedicate the rest of the productive years of my life to. It finally dawned on me one day in late April of 2005 what I needed and wanted to do – start my own non-profit that would help any man, regardless of his income level or his zip code, to be a good dad. I wanted an organization that my friends and I could go to and be welcomed at. After all, the bad stuff about not having an active and involved father in one’s life is the same regardless if you’re rich or poor, black or white. There are drugs, pregnant teenagers, and high school dropouts in Carmel just like there is in Haughville. The environment is different, but the end results are the same – generations of broken lives. And that has to change now.

And that’s exactly what Dads Inc. does. We take fathers who want to provide more for their children than just a rough over their heads, and give them the skills, support, and opportunities they need to be active and positively engaged in the lives of their children. Last year, in our very first year of offering our services, 196 dads took advantage of the opportunities we presented to get better at parenting. That’s double the amount of dads that the experts we consulted with while planning said we could expect in our wildest dreams for our first year. And we’re on track this year to blow that number out of the water. Men want and need this service we provide, and they’re proving it by showing up in herds to things we offer.

Over the last three years, I think Dads Inc. has been able to raise awareness of and promote a good civic conversation on the importance of fathers and the state of fatherhood in our community. Through our Fatherhood Hall of Fame, we highlight and celebrate men who dedicate themselves to being the ideal father – or at least coming as close as possible. We want to raise these men and offer them as examples of what is right and good about dads to our boys and girls so that they have a high standard to strive to meet when becoming adults. This work that Dads Inc. does is not just about changing today, but also about preventing bad tomorrows. We see the work we do today as having a positive impact on generations of families. After all, boys get their example of fathering from their own fathers and girls get their example of what to look for in a man from their fathers. If we make sure they have the right example, then they will model the right example for their kids, who will model the right example for their kids, etc.

As an aside, through my work and study in the field of the fatherhood movement, I started to work much harder at understanding and changing my relationship with my own father. He lives in Kentucky, and so we only see each other a couple of times a year. He’s 65 now, and certainly isn’t getting any younger. I didn’t want to regret not getting to know and understand him better after he passed away when I had the chance to before that horrible day comes. So I decided that during the few times we do get to spend together, I was going to make a very serious effort to learn about his childhood (something he rarely, if ever, spoke to me about), what he was like before I was born, what he was afraid of as a father, what his regrets were, etc. What I’ve learned so far over the last couple of years has dramatically changed the way I view him as a father and our relationship – for the better.

Again highlighting the generational impact of fathering, I discovered that his father, who I only met a handful of times, had untreated and very serious psychological problems and ferociously beat his wife and children regularly. At one point, when my dad was still very young, his father (who was in one of his bouts with his problems) lined very one of his children up outside of their house and threatened to shoot them all with his shotgun. Thankfully, a neighbor came along and stopped it, but I can’t even imagine the scars something like that leaves behind on a little boy’s mind. His father was institutionalized when he was 14, and he left home at 16 to try to better himself, never returning home.

So after coming to understand the example of fathering my dad had, I began to think he actually did a pretty damn good job of being my dad. I’m not saying he was all of a sudden a perfect dad and I’m not making excuses for some of the shortcoming he did have as a father, but I came to see that he probably did the best he could with what he had. It helped me to see how much he did actually love me, even though he didn’t really put it into words so well. Now on every trip to Kentucky, I uncover and learn something new about my dad. We talk more frequently on the phone, and I think we’ve come to understand each other better. I see the affection he shows my son, and how much he enjoys doing it. I have to admit that the little boy in me gets jealous when I see that, not really ever getting a whole lot of it myself when I was that age, but really I’m so happy that he has learned how to show that affection and is getting the chance to now as a grandfather that he didn’t take advantage of as a father.

What are the main goals Dads Inc. wants to achieve and have you achieved them?

 Well, it’s like our vision statement says: We’re building generations of involved fathers and thriving children.  And no, we’re not there yet.  We’re only beginning to get started in our work.  Our more immediate goal is to become sustainable financially and in the programs we offer.  We’re not there yet either (any readers can feel free to send in a donation to help us get there).  Starting a new non-profit is something everyone says they want to do.  As someone that has done it, I say pick a different dream.  It’s really hard work.  It looks a hell of a lot easier than it really is.  The fact that we’ve made it to the three year point is absolutely amazing.  Most people, either in the for-profit or non-profit world, never make it that far.  But we’ve still got a lot of hurdles to overcome to say we’re around to stay.

Fathers get a bad stigma about not being involved.  Do you feel you have made an impact on the city of Indianapolis and have helped change that stigma?

 Honestly, I’ve got to say not yet.  Again, we’ve only been doing programs for about a year and a half now.  We’re still trying to discover who we are and what we do exactly.  As you know, we’re getting ready to finalize our strategic plan for the next three years.  I hope at the end of that period I can say yes.  However, I think we are making a difference in individual lives and families.  That I know for sure.  But we all have a responsibility to call out the media or other people when they perpetuate that stigma.  Yes, like all stereotypes, it has some basis in reality.  But there are a lot of reasons for that.  I’m not going to go into a history lesson here, but to really understand the state of fatherhood today, you have to understand fatherhood over the last century.  It’s really complicated.  It’s not black and white, but all gray.  But I think we’re slowly building our momentum to make that impact on Indy.

You probably have an amazing board of directors that help with the growth.  I bet you can name one amazing board member.  Would you like to?

 I do have a great Board of Directors.  They are very active and involved in the organization.  They’re workers.  That’s really rare, at least in Indy’s non-profit community.  And yes, I can name an amazing Board member: Christopher Felts.  He sent out 34 personal appeals and sold a table for the Fatherhood Hall of Fame Dinner.  Hint, hint.

What are your future plans for the family and Dads Inc.

 We’re getting ready to move into our new house in Franklin Township.  We’re going to be there for a long time.  I’m not planning on moving again until my kids move me into a nursing home.  I just want to continue to grow as a husband, a father, and as a man.

As for Dads Inc., I have two major long-term plans.  The first is to see us find our own home.  A place and location that reflects who we are and what we do.  And I really want it to have a 60” plasma screen.  The second is to see Dads Inc. become a national organization.  We’ve got some people we work with out in Denver that have been talking to us for a year now about starting a Dads Inc. of Colorado (the legal name of Dads Inc. is Dads Incorporated of Indiana).  I think it’s an idea that can really catch on and grow exponentially.  But we have to get your house in order here first, then I have to get the Board behind it.

If a fellow "Indy Dad" wants to learn more about Dads Inc. and/or wanted to attend an event, what is the best way to do that?

Check out the website.  www.dadsinc.org.  While you’re on there, sign up for our e-newsletter, The Toolbox, and our monthly e-Calendar of Events.  Or hit me up on here.  Or hit you up on here, since you’re another amazing Board member of Dads Inc.