With Father's Day approaching, we asked Takeaway listeners a few dad-related questions: what's the best or worst bit of fatherly advice you've ever received? Who are some of your favorite fathers in fiction books? We combed through a week's worth of listener responses to share what our listeners had to say. Joining us is Takeaway listener Diane Findlen Garrow, to talk about how she remembers her dad and the best lesson he passed on to her.

Father’s Day is this weekend, and in honor of the big day, we’re looking at some of our favorite fathers in fiction. Patrik Henry Bass, Takeaway contributor and senior editor at Essence magazine, says there are lessons to be learned from dads in novels like "Shoeless Joe" and "About a Boy," which tells the story of a man who learns how to grow up from a young boy.

Father’s Day is this weekend, and in honor of the big day, we’re looking at a kind of father that doesn’t always get a lot of attention: single dads. One recent calculation using 2010 Census data found the number of single father families nationwide jumped 27 percent in the past decade and nearly doubled since 1990.

When an unmarried woman places her child up for adoption, how much say should the reputed father — or putative father, as they’re referred to legally — have?

Courts across the country have been grappling with this question. In Ohio, a man has been fighting to stop the finalization of his child’s adoption for more than a year. Several men in states across the country have been trying to stop the adoptions of their children in Utah, which is widely regarded as the most complicated state for putative fathers who want to claim parental rights. And two other cases have just been settled in Ohio, which gave the putative fathers more leeway than previously existed to stop adoptions.

Last month, prior to Mother’s Day, we did a special movie segment focusing on our favorite movie moms, and the conversation was one of our liveliest. Rafer Guzman of Newsday and Emily Rems of Bust Magazine told us why they loved everyone from Mia Farrow in “Rosemary’s Baby” to Faye Dunaway in “Mommy Dearest,” and many of you wrote in with your own picks. 

With Father's Day coming up on Sunday, we thought it was worth giving all the on-screen dads out there the same honor. Rafer and Emily return with their favorite dads, which range from the heartbreaking (Roberto Benigni in "Life is Beautiful") to horrific (Jack Nicholson in "The Shining")

 

Everyone knows that it's better for families if dads are involved in the parenting process, but some researchers say moms might be making it harder for them to get involved and stay involved. We're joined by Takeaway contributor Lisa Belkin, who writes The New York Times family and parenting blog Motherlode, and psychologists Marsha Pruett and Kyle Pruett. They say recent research shows that women could be more supportive of how their husbands act as parents.

You might think that the image of the bumbling father is as old as parenthood itself, but just in time for Father’s Day, The Takeaway talks to one father who says differently. Jeremy Adam Smith is the author of The Daddy Shift: How Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms, and Shared Parenting AreTransforming the American Family. Jeremy also writes the blog Daddy Dialectic. Also joining the conversation is one very important Dad, Don Lanpher, father of our very own Katherine.