The United States has become a kinder, gentler nation of fathers over the past 30 years, thanks, in part, to hundreds of men's organizations, says a UC Davis gender scholar. "There have been many movements to transform masculinity since the late '60s," says Judith Newton, professor and director of women and gender studies. "A number have included the goal of allowing men to be more expressive of tenderness and nurturing." Newton, who studies men's movements, says the area in which men have most expanded those nurturing capacities has been in fathering. "Children have benefited and men have benefited," she says, pointing to the more than 200 organizations dedicated to fatherhood that now exist. "At the same time, some of the language around fathering, such as insistence that fatherlessness is the cause of every social ill, has been used to reinstate traditional forms of masculinity and control," Newton says. For some men, feminism has provided incentive to improve relationships with their children. For others, the shift was triggered by dissatisfaction with a male identity that suppressed tenderness. "Since women's attention is not centered on men in the way it had been before feminism, many men find it more rewarding to develop intimacy and closeness with children," Newton says. "A real investment of fathering on the part of men has allowed them to become more whole human beings," Newton says. "And some men feel their new capacities are transferable to their relations with women and with communities."