Kevin O’Shea is one of the most energetic and inspirational parenting advocates in the country. As a columnist, speaker, author, and parent coach he has helped countless fathers (and mothers) become more involved in the lives of their children.

Kevin was born in Detroit, Michigan on July 24, 1962. He was raised in Dearborn, Michigan (a suburb of Detroit), where he attended parochial schools. Kevin graduated from the University of Detroit Jesuit High School in 1980, where he led the school’s debate team to its first national championship, won two state speech championships, and won the John S. Knight Memorial Scholarship Competition in 1980. He attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where he helped pay his tuition by coaching a local high school debate team to another national championship. During college, Kevin spent his summers teaching at the National Forensics Institute at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Kevin graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Northwestern in 1984 with a double major in History and Political Science. He attended Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During the summer of 1985 Kevin served as an associate at Lord, Bissell & Brook in Chicago, Illinois. Kevin earned his J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School in 1987. He immediately moved back to the Detroit area and took a position as a corporate litigator with one of Michigan’s oldest and largest law firms. In 1990 Kevin married Molly Doherty, a pediatrician in private practice. He later served as head of litigation at a boutique law firm in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan for two years.

In 1994 Kevin began publishing his own legal reporter, First Amendment Rights in Education. During the eight years that he served as Editor and Publisher, Kevin was quoted in many national publications and was recognized as one of the country’s leading experts on issues freedom of speech and religion in the classroom.

In 1996 Kevin gave up his career as a corporate litigator to become a full-time father to his newborn daughter. In 2000 he started Beyond Mr. Mom, a support group for stay-at-home fathers in the metropolitan Detroit area. Since 2000 Kevin has served as an officer and multiple committee chair for the PTA at his children’s school and is currently leading a district-wide Dads In School program in the Birmingham Public Schools.

Kevin stopped publishing First Amendment Rights in Education in 2003 to found Partnership for Dads, a nonprofit organization that works with existing institutions to help fathers become more involved parents. Through Partnership for Dads, Kevin has created dozens of programs to educate fathers and promote active fatherhood. Those programs include Fathers First, a workshop for new fathers presented through Michigan’s largest hospital, and Dads In School, an effort to help fathers become more involved in their children’s schools.

Since 2003 Kevin has served as one of the primary organizers of the Annual Michigan Fathers Conference, a day-long event featuring keynote speakers, workshops, and panel discussions on topics of interest to fathers.

In 2004 Partnership for Dads was selected as the sole Michigan affiliate of the National Fatherhood Initiative, the country’s premiere fatherhood organization. Dozens of groups have heard Kevin speak about the importance of involved fathering. He has twice served as a workshop presenter at the Annual Michigan Fathers Conference. In March 2004 he led a presentation for Birmingham Bloomfield Families in Action on the Dads In School program. In the fall of 2004 Kevin presented Fatherstyle, an interactive, four-part fathering course, at The Birmingham Community House. He addressed the Annual Convention of the Michigan PTA in April 2005.

Kevin’s experiences as a stay-at-home dad have been featured in The New York Times, Nick Jr. Family Magazine (where he has served as a member of the magazine’s National Parenting Advisory Panel since 2004), The Detroit News, The Birmingham Eccentric, and on WDIV-TV Channel 4 in Detroit.

Kevin writes the Fatherhood column for Metro Parent Magazine, the only monthly parenting publication in Michigan, and the Dads Corner column for Parent Talk, the quarterly newsletter of the Parenting Program at William Beaumont Hospital (the largest hospital in Michigan).

In addition to his efforts on behalf of fathers, Kevin has become a recognized authority on parenting. In 2004 he was selected to serve on the National Parenting Advisory Panel for Nick, Jr. Family Magazine. Kevin also offers private counseling as a parent coach, working with parents to identify and overcome challenges from tantrums and misbehavior to poor school performance.

Kevin has appeared before mothers groups, including chapters of Mothers and More and Mothers of Preschoolers, helping mothers understand how they can help their husbands become more involved fathers.

Kevin and his wife, Dr. Molly Doherty O’Shea, have developed a parenting education program for couples that they will begin offering in the spring of 2006. The program, which emphasizes the importance of team parenting, is based on the material that appears in the final chapter of The Fatherstyle Advantage. Dr. O’Shea has served as an officer in the Michigan Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and as an active member of several national committees of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dr. O’Shea has served on the committee that plans the Academy’s Annual Meeting and was recently selected to serve on the Editorial Review Board of the Academy.

Kevin has traveled extensively throughout the United States, South America (his mother is from Peru and his parents keep a home there) and Europe. He is an amateur painter who is interested in reading, especially British and American history, and hands-on home improvement projects. The O’Sheas live in Birmingham, Michigan in a rambling 1936 home with their three children, Mairen (age 9), Declan (age 7), and Conall (age 5).