[kaylacat]

Please tell me why men / fathers/ dads/ husbands are not involved in pto and should they be?

[CrewChief]

Second question first ~ YES, they absolutely should be. Just ask Shawn, President Jim, CapeDad, Rockne and the many other men who frequent these boards.

First question ~ Um, a million different reasons. But several of them have been addressed here on the boards. Involving men is an entirely different process than involving women as they are motivated in vastly different ways.

I think Tim even has a few articles in the archives about this very subject.

[KTMom2000]

We are really lucky at our school to have invovlement on the Board. There are 4 positions and 2 are held by women and 2 are held by men. I really think having the men on the board help get dads to attend our events.

[PresidentJim]

One major issue is that most men think of the PTO as they would the Girl Scouts. Meaning a group that is specifically for women.

When I stepped up to be Vice President 3 years ago, only to find out that the group didn't have a President (meaning that my aspirations to be V.P. quickly became President), there were no other dads actively involved.

Now though we have 4 or 5 very active dads. In fact my Treasurer is a dad, so half of our Exective Committee are males...

For our group I think me being the President (meaning a father and not a mom) is a big reason why other Dads think about getting involved. It's hard for a group to be thought of as a clique or a "women only" group when the President of the group is a man.

So the point there is that getting men involved is a steamrolling thing. Get one actively involved and others will come.

Next is the meetings. As much as others talk about how the meetings aren't that important, I personally disagree. Our monthy meetings is where we discuss our upcoming events, form committees, ask for committee chairs, etc. The problem for most guys here is that while mom is at the meeting, dad has to be at home with the kids. What we started doing at the meetings is providing age appropriate childcare. Truth is that every single one of the very active dads has a wife that is also actively involved, but that's great because it becomes aa family thing, a way of life if you will...

Lastly, and possibly most importantly, we have added numerous activities that seem to be enjoyed by the dads. Some of the ones that I have pushed to add are...

- Golf Tournament Fundraiser - four active dads involved
- Poker Tournament Fundrasiers - three active dads involved
- Harvest Hoopla - One dad acted as our Mad Scientist, another as the Wizard

And this year we just purchased our own DJ equipment (speakers, mixing system, stands, etc.). I have already had two of the active dads approach me about running the system at our first event.

So as CrewChief mentioned, the men seem interested in certain things, but if these things are available they will want to get involved.

One good place where you can try to start is handywork around the school. For example, if you paint the map of the U.S. on the playground, like we did last year, the men like to get involved. I actually had 7 men there, and that was during the Pats game!

PresidentJim