Dadvengers

If you have young children you will know all about CBeebies. What you may not know, is that one of the presenters on the channel is on a mission to change the amount of support there is for dads on their parenting journey. Nigel Clarke host of the hugely successful show The Baby Club, dubbed ‘A TV godsend for frazzled parents’ set up Dadvengers back in 2020, and since then it has grown into one of the countries leading dad focused parenting organisations. We managed to grab a few minutes with Nigel to fi nd out more.

What is Dadvengers?

When I fi rst had the idea for Dadvengers it was meant to just be a podcast where people could listen to men talking about their fatherhood experiences, but in a weird twist of fate the pandemic put a stop to all that I ended up taking to Instagram and doing live chats as a form of research for the podcast. Here I am nearly three years later and now it’s a community of parents (that’s not just dads), geared towards supporting dads on their parenting journey. With resources ranging from blog posts and digital content, to podcasts, face to face opportunities, and our brand new course for new dads, we have become one of the fastest growing dad inclusive parenting organisations in the UK.

What I think makes us diff erent is our tone. We want to empower dads through knowledge and support. As opposed to teaching dads because they don’t know what they’re doing. This has lead to engaging content that both men and women enjoy.

Can you tell us a bit more about the resources and services you provide?

The resources we provide have grown lots since we started. I’m a fi rm believer in the fact that people engage and take information on in diff erent ways. So we provide a selection of ways for people to engage. Some of which are purely for fun. Nobody wants to think they are in a lesson or being taught all the time. Learning and growing through fun in an unforced way is a much better way to get people engaged. Below and on the opposite page are summaries of our four most popular resources.

The Dadvengers Podcast

In each episode of our podcast, well known dads like Joe Wicks, Andy Day (CBeebies), Russel Kane, Paul Brunson and Matt Willis give us an insight into their experiences as a father. We have men talk about all aspects of parenting from labour experiences, to how they felt scared becoming a dad, to how it aff ected relationships. Nothing is off limits and hearing men talk about these subjects is not common place. This provides both men and women with a window to the male parenting perspective, which can change our views and the way we tackle situations as parents.

Blog Posts

Our website is probably our largest and most accessed resource. Thousands of people every month browse through our pages looking for all sorts of fatherhood help. What’s really good is that the search engine on our site will point you in the direction of many things surrounding your query. So say, for example, you typed in mental health, you would be given a selection of blog posts, podcast episodes and Instagram live chats that are all related to the subject. Giving visitors that all important choice of ways to consume the information.

Dad Walks

During the pandemic most of our resources were online, and the natural progression once the world opened up again was to have something in person. A place where people could meet face-to-face. With one in North London and one in Norfolk, they’re a great opportunity for dads to talk about parenting. Or work, or music, or sports anything they feel like. There is no pressure to talk about anything in particular which is part of why the dads love them. But what they don’t realise is that these sessions go a long way to supporting their mental health, developing their solo parenting skills and providing a community of other dads going through similar things. Mums do meet-ups at the local cafe, we do this.

Course for New Dads

Our newest resource is the Dadvengers course for new dads that we launched in October this year. There are so many courses new parents sign up for, but a lot of men who’ve been on them will tell you that they didn’t feel much of it was focused on them. That’s why we developed a course that tackles the things men should be thinking about when becoming parents. It’s a four-week online course that is a safe space for men to get their heads around the introduction to parenting. We’re quite excited about it because there isn’t really anything else out there like it. Plus we know it’s needed because mums have started buying them as gifts for their partners.

As a community we have loads more that we get involved in including Instagram live chats, in person meet ups, online quizzes, Spotify playlists, and more is planned for 2023. The best way to keep up with all we are doing is to head to our website and subscribe to our mailing list.