An accidental maverick!

Working in the area of disability management and inclusion, role of family in child development was too basic a point for me to have missed. In fact, it was highlighted as a key action point for rehabilitation professionals from theory to practice. Hence, parenting had always been a core area of concern for me for the last 40 years. For my Fulbright post doctorate scholarship, I chose to narrow down the spotlight on family’s concerns, resources and challenges with reference to Individualized Family Service Plan as a part of US law. When I was researching on it in Washington DC as my post doc assignment for a year, I got to travel extensively to observe and interview families across the sections in terms of ethnic background and financial strata. During the process there and during my long inning in India, one thing I noticed that led me to deep dive into the socio-cultural dynamics revolving around it is: (not surprisingly), in parenting space, it is always by default, a mothers who is in forefront. One has to run extra mile or may I say, deliberately bypass them to be able to get fathers open up on parenting. Most importantly, in spite of the ever-increasing involvement of fathers in child raising generation by generation, all the three significant components – mothers themselves, fathers and the society look at mothers to be on the driving seat when it comes to raising the children. Ironically, when one does reach out to the fathers on the topic, it is evident that they do have a mindset, a lot of potentials and yes, a bandwidth to play a far better role in parenting than what they actually end up doing.

Coupled with this line of thinking, I continued reading rigorously on the child raising literature with specific focus on gender roles in parenting. This theme was always at the back of my mind during developing resources for the parents and also during the research projects I undertook. Simultaneously, my extensive reading and association with cross cutting issues like gender equity, rational thinking and anti-superstition facilitated the journey towards SeaHorse.

Knowing my retirement was due in June 2026, I started playing with the idea of what I would be doing for intellectual survival and legacy after that. From salad business to senior citizens’ creche, I enjoyed dreaming about each of the options. But what did not allow me to sleep was the mission FATHERING. For the last 2 /3 years I underwent several short-term and long-term courses to equip myself to become a coach. I started with general relationship management area and soon bumped into my mission – changing parenting spotlight from mothers to fathers. I gradually narrowed down the nitty-gritties of my coaching services keeping fathers at the center stage. It was like the love at first sight when I realized what I want to do. Then the romance flourished within no time. Upon presenting my blue print, the responses from people around me were amazing. The most common is - the proposed services are unheard of and out of the box, yet services for fathers on fathering fell within the realm of common sense! It was like – how did we miss this gap! In case if you think how a women can lead the guidance meant for the men… well objectivity and third person perspective are the foundation of rationalism. It is about talking deep emotions rationally.

Fortunately, a lot of literature is available in western countries on fathering which motivated me to fill this gap in my own small way in Indian context. Here, I almost had to start from the scratch – there is no Marathi or Hindi word for fathering! The magic word – babagiri then emerged out of a lot of brainstorming with like minded people. Thus emerged our tag line FOR fathers, ON fathering, transliterated in Marathi to be - बाबागिरीवर बोलू काही… (Opening conversations on fathering.) This sets the realistic tone of the services which aims at shaping the beginning with no over- commitment about the end. And here we are, celebrating the beginning!

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