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Home › Dad of the Month

Greg Bishop

By Kelly Burgess

Each month, iParenting.com spotlights a father who inspires and moves us, who embodies the qualities that we all admire in a person, a man and a father. Above all, the Dad of the Month is dedicated to his children. Rich or poor, famous or not, he shines as an example of what fathering is all about.

Greg Bishop, of Irvine, Calif., says he just loves babies. And he wants other men not just to love babies, but to be hands-on fathers and good examples to other fathers. He's achieved his dream of teaching fatherhood by example through the program he founded, Boot Camp for New Dads, a tough but tender approach to the challenges of new fatherhood.

First started in 1990 in one of Bishop's local community hospitals, Boot Camp for New Dads now operates in more than 200 locations across the country as well as two locations in Japan for American servicemen stationed there. In some communities, the program is offered in both English and Spanish, and the Web site has both an English and Spanish version. As Bishop likes to say, the program "hit the ground crawling" and it hasn't slowed down.

Big Brother

Greg Bishop got his training as a father long before he had his own children. As the No. 4 child in a family with 13 siblings, it was just understood that he would help out with his younger brothers and sisters.

"My own father had 13 babies and took care of them and loved them, and he's still one of our best babysitters," Bishop says. "My brothers and I were just raised with the expectation that we would love babies."

Bishop's role as big brother was very hands on, including a lot of diaper changing back in the days when diapers were cloth and it wasn't just a question of taking them off, rolling them up and tossing them out. Neither he nor his other siblings thought anything of it, and, in fact, when he and his wife, Alison, had their first child, Bishop's 14-year-old brother was the family member who came out and helped them with their newborn.

Bishop found he adored his babies as much as his father had adored him and all his siblings, but, even then, nearly a decade before he founded Boot Camp for New Dads, he noticed that many of his friends weren't nearly as comfortable with their new babies. This is when he first started getting the germ of an idea for a program to help them learn how to really enjoy fatherhood and become more involved with their newborns.

But that was still in the future and may never even have come to pass if it hadn't been for his job as president of the National Foundation for Trauma Care. In that job, he saw the results of too many fathers who were overwhelmed by, and unprepared for, fatherhood. "You'd see kids coming into trauma centers that should not, and a lot of it was guys who just don't know better," Bishop says. "There are some slime bags out there, but there are others my heart just goes out to because I know how easy it is to get frustrated. That's why injury prevention has always been a part of Boot Camp."

Head "Drool" Sergeant

Meanwhile, back in the trenches of home, Bishop and his wife had three more children. He was as taken with fatherhood his second, third and fourth times around and enjoyed nothing more than just being a day-in, day-out presence and caretaker of his little ones.

He still hadn't given up his idea of passing on his enthusiasm for other fathers, either. Bishop approached several hospitals with ideas for fatherhood courses but none bit. Finally, a local hospital decided it was interested in trying out the program. Bishop wanted to do it as a hands-on workshop, using new fathers as the coaches and their babies as "stunt babies."

"I had spoken to the [woman in the] marketing department of the hospital and explained what I wanted to do, so she got some guys together and I got some of my friends together, and we brought our babies to this first session," Bishop says. "We sit down with these expectant fathers and start talking. It was obvious from the beginning that they were all ears. Finally, when we were talking about how we felt about having our babies, one guy spoke up and said he'd never even held a baby. So we started handing out our babies for the other guys to hold. It completely changed the nature of the class. All of a sudden they were completely and totally engaged in the process."

Thus Boot Camp for New Dads was born. Bishop credits its success, where many other programs have failed, to its self-perpetuating nature. Fathers come to the classes as "rookies" when their wives are nearly ready to deliver and then return several months later with their babies as "veterans" and teach the next wave of expectant fathers.

For the next six years or so, Bishop ran Boot Camp pretty much by himself, assisted by his self-perpetuating network of new fathers. It wasn't always easy because he remained a hands-on father even as his children got older and laughingly says he worked at the program between soccer games and other kid stuff.

After that, the media began to spread the word of Boot Camp and the program began to spread as well. Now the program has a staff and Bishop's kids are nearly old enough to have their own children. And, he says, his boys will be good fathers.

"Yes, this program's success is due to me to a certain extent, but to me I'm just another veteran," Bishop says. "The most important thing is what I've learned from the program. People talk about what they do well, but they also talk about their mistakes, and I've been able to learn from other's mistakes without making them myself. After sitting down with new fathers once a month for a couple of years, it finally dawned on me that I was a better father from having those experiences. It's paid me back tenfold."



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