After Preston Duron divorced from his wife, the Las Vegas begetter of 3 mislaid astir of his societal life.
“When you’re married, you person a community, you person friends,” the 36-year-old said. “After my divorce, but for 2 people, everybody ran similar cockroaches. They didn’t privation to pass with maine anymore. My friends were acting similar I was a stranger. No 1 wanted to speech to maine oregon adjacent spell out. I got ostracized.”
Duron’s acquisition is not uncommon. Single parents, on with much evident groups including radical suffering from carnal oregon intelligence health, disabilities and fiscal insecurity, are particularly susceptible to societal disconnection, according to a 2023 U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory connected the American epidemic of loneliness and isolation.
That puts the astir 20,000 azygous fathers successful Las Vegas astatine a crossroads with cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiousness and premature death, which is what the advisory says is much apt to hap to those without meaningful societal transportation successful their lives.
Duron turned to begetter groups connected Facebook for help. He was suffering with isolation and persistent slump adjacent earlier his divorce. He had fixed up his imagination of becoming a firefighter to homeschool his children.
But astir of the groups helium recovered centered connected dating, which is not what Duron was looking for.
What helium was looking for was Dad Tribes.
We felt the request for dads to connect. Dads request friends. And it’s precise hard for a feline to locomotion up to different feline and say, "Hey, I’m Steve." It’s not what we do.
STEVE LITTMAN, CO-FOUNDER OF THE NEVADA CHAPTER OF DAD TRIBES
“It has each fathers of each walks of beingness seeking a connection,” Duron said. “We, arsenic men, request that community.”
Through backing escaped section events, helping fathers successful fiscal crises and creating programs that bring fathers person to their children, Dad Tribes liberates fathers, azygous oregon not, according to Andrew O’Brien, an Army seasoned who founded the enactment successful Texas successful 2020.
“Dads look the satellite successful isolation,” O’Brien said. “We unrecorded successful 2 environments. Work and home. And some environments inquire a batch from us, arsenic they should. Both environments take, but there’s not an situation that gives. So, there’s changeless withdrawals with nary deposits. The intent of Dad Tribes is to go that deposit.”
Dad Tribes has implicit 50,000 members crossed 30 countries and 25 progressive chapters successful America, O’Brien said. The enactment besides operates an app, allowing fathers nationwide to link with 1 different by utilizing a live, interactive representation and filtering users based connected shared involvement and the ages of their children.
In March, Steve Littman and Luke Cunningham launched the Nevada section of Dad Tribes. In conscionable 3 months, the radical has grown to 340 members and converged astatine restaurants, karaoke bars and sports games for father-only and household events. They volition big a cook-off astatine Vegas Springs Studios successful Spring Valley from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday , unfastened to each fathers and their families.
“We felt the request for dads to connect,” Littman said. “Dads request friends. And it’s precise hard for a feline to locomotion up to different feline and say, ‘Hey, I’m Steve.’ It’s not what we do.”
Vaughn Allen poses for a representation with photographs of his daughters, Jerri-Rae (8) and Tessa-Marie (5), astatine Heritage Park Thursday, June 4, 2026, successful Henderson. (Madeline Carter/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @madelinepcarter
Vaughn Allen, 39, is different azygous begetter who is simply a subordinate of the Nevada section of Dad Tribes. In 2023, aft splitting from the parent of his 2 children and 3 stepchildren and being separated from them, helium fell down a acheronian path. Allen got into occupation with the instrumentality and relapsed into intoxicant and methamphetamine usage aft 18 years of sobriety.
“I was isolated from the radical who mattered astir to me, struggling emotionally and wholly without a enactment system,” Allen said. “I support reasoning however antithetic mightiness things person been if [Dad Tribes] existed for maine a fewer years ago.”
Allen has since turned things astir for the better, and Dad Tribes has helped him stabilize. He has been cleanable for implicit a twelvemonth and focused connected being the champion begetter to his children, with the assistance of the assemblage helium desperately needed 3 years ago.
What Dad Tribes offers is thing astir men don’t recognize they request until they’re already successful a hard place. Real connection.
VAUGHN ALLEN, SINGLE FATHER
“What Dad Tribes offers is thing astir men don’t recognize they request until they’re already successful a hard place,” Allen said. “Real connection. A spot to talk, to larn from different fathers, to stock what you’re carrying and to cognize you don’t person to transportation it alone. Sometimes 1 idiosyncratic who genuinely understands the value you’re nether changes everything.”
While the surgeon general’s advisory specifically identified azygous parents arsenic being astatine heightened hazard of loneliness and isolation, each parents, peculiarly successful today’s environment, look an accrued risk, according to Jessica Borelli, a objective scientist and prof astatine the University of California, Irvine’s School of Social Ecology.
“Parenting these days is specified an immersive experience,” Borelli said. “So overmuch of parents’ clip is spent reasoning astir their children, doing things for their children, supporting their children’s interests and world success. It doesn’t permission a batch of clip for the different types of pursuits that assistance parents link with their ain interests and identities.”
Matthew Fitzgerald, right, poses for a representation with his wife, Melissa Fitzgerald, left, and their daughters, Karsyn (9), Chloe (7) and Kyla (5) astatine Dundee Jones Park Friday, June 5, 2026, successful Henderson. (Madeline Carter/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @madelinepcarter
Married fathers besides payment from Dad Tribes. Las Vegan Matthew Fitzgerald, 34, longed for the benignant of assemblage his woman recovered done ma groups.
In Dad Tribes, the begetter of 3 discovered 1 that understood the pressures fathers look to beryllium providers and examples.
“Even being a joined father, I person felt isolation sometimes due to the fact that determination are struggles I person of trying to unrecorded up to the supporting, relation model, breadwinner stereotype that goes retired there,” Fitzgerald said.
Dad Tribes is built connected the content that fatherhood is profoundly rewarding. But the challenges that often travel it, which, alongside isolation chiefly see stress, slump and burnout, are vivid. Organizations similar Dad Tribes bespeak a increasing designation that fathers look these struggles and merit a abstraction to remedy them, Littman said.
“It’s absorbing that determination are much organizations for fathers retired determination these days,” Borelli said. “I judge it’s reflective of an expanding consciousness of fatherhood arsenic an identity, and besides the expanding engagement of fathers successful children’s lives. Organizations that explicitly service the relation of connecting fathers to 1 different are truly beneficial. It’s fantastic to supply radical a spot wherever they tin link with different radical with that shared identity.”
Contact Alex Streinger astatine astreinger@reviewjournal.com oregon (702) 224-5505. Follow @AlexPStreinger connected X.
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