Fatherhood
Fatherhood
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT OF THE ISSUES
Issues of fatherhood have received considerable attention since the 1990s in academic, practice, and policy discussions as well as in the public domain. This focus on fatherhood, which subsequently came to address responsible fathering, reflects an assumption: that the meaning and enactment of responsible parenting are at the heart of social and cultural debates about the individual and combined roles of families and society in ensuring the health and well-being of children. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s most of the cultural debate about mothers highlighted the question: What, if anything, should mothers do outside the family? By the end of 1990s the debate about fathers had refocused the question to: What should fathers do inside the family (see Doherty, Kouneski, and Erickson 1998)? Several related questions were posed: What role should fathers play in the everyday lives of their children, that is, beyond the traditional breadwinner role? How much should they emulate the traditional nurturing activities of mothers, and how much should they represent a masculine sex-role model to their children? Advocacy organizations and those in the public domain asked: Is fatherhood in a unique crisis? The discussion that follows provides an overview of the background and context of these questions, the resulting effort, and the current status of discussions in the field.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT OF THE ISSUES
Prior to the 1960s research and policy on family development were dominated by intact or nuclear family models. The role of fathers was framed within a decidedly Euro-American interpretation of family functioning in which fathers provided for the economic well-being of their children and mothers ensured their children’s developmental progress (see Coltrane and Parke 1998; Gottman and Katz 1989; Parke 1996; Pruett and Pruett 1998). Much of family research through the 1970s also focused on the degree to which ethnically diverse families, particularly African American families, adhered to this model (see Coleman et al. 1966; Katz 1993; McDaniel 1994; Moynihan 1965, 1987). Not until the resurgence of interest in family studies in the 1990s did research or policy highlight the diversity of family functioning, interactions, and expectations embedded in the cultural and ethnic histories of families and communities in the United States (see Anderson 1990, 1999; McDaniel 1994; Zuberi 1998).
Much of the visibility of fatherhood can be traced to the passage of the 1988 Family Support Act, which called attention to the failure of many nonresidential, noncustodial parents, mostly fathers, to contribute to the financial support of their children. However, the act did not distinguish among different types of fathers and appeared to assume that all fathers shared a common experience in terms of their marital status at the birth of their children, employment and employability, ability to contribute financially, reasons for absence, and the quality of their relationship with their children, families, and communities. Divorced, middle-class, educated, nonresidential fathers were grouped alongside low-income, unemployed, poorly educated fathers. Issues of class, race, and cultural practices were relatively unexamined except in noting the disproportionate numbers of single, African American, low-income mothers raising their children as well as low-income fathers who neither had custody of their children (noncustodial) nor resided with them (nonresidential).
Despite its limitations, the act was effective in generating interest about nonresidential fathers and acknowledging the growing numbers of fathers who lived apart from their children. It also prompted researchers and practitioners to raise critical issues about the failure of policies in general to address the diversity of fathers and the disparities in their circumstances. The complexity of a changing society was evident in the struggles being experienced by large numbers of children and families. However, it was clear that to understand the causes and effects of father absence, the field also needed to address the causes and effects of father presence, expanding the apparent urgency to examine all types of fathers, irrespective of their coresidence with their children and families, social class, race, and family ties. The discussions that ensued positioned, as a priority, the common problems of father absence; its effects on children, families, communities, and society; and the downward spiraling of two-parent families, father presence, and marriage. They pointed to the need to uncover and understand how men enact their roles as fathers, (re)negotiate gendered and social expectations, and (re)engage with their children and families over the short and long term.
RESPONSIBLE FATHERING
Since the mid-1990s researchers have distinguished various types of father involvement; however, the resulting literature defines and describes father-child presence with increased, though still inexact, precision. The use of the concept responsible fathering reflects a relatively recent shift among academics and professionals away from value-free language toward a more explicit value-advocacy approach (see Doherty et al. 1998; Gadsden 2002; Gadsden and Hall, 1996). Responsible suggests an ought, a set of desired norms for evaluating fathers’ behavior. The term also conveys a moral meaning (right and wrong), since it suggests that some fathering could be judged irresponsible or nonresponsible. Michael Lamb and his colleagues (1985) offered the most influential scheme to organize the concept: (1) responsibility, the role that fathers take in ascertaining that their children are cared for and arranging for the availability of resources; (2) availability, fathers’ potential for interaction by virtue of being present or being accessible to their children (whether or not direct interaction is occurring); and (3) engagement, fathers’ direct interaction or contact with their children through caregiving and shared activities.
Several categorizing frameworks and measurement tools have been created since the mid-1990s, among them Vivian Gadsden and colleagues’ (1999) Fathering Indicators Framework (National Center on Fathers and Families), Rob Palkovitz’s (1997) list of 119 ways to be involved in parenting, Alan Hawkins and colleagues’ (2002) Inventory of Father Involvement, and the Lewin Group’s Evaluability Assessment of Responsible Fatherhood Programs (1997).
THE CURRENT STATUS
The study of fatherhood has progressed significantly as a field from the early 1990s to the early twenty-first century. In 1994 the National Center on Fathers and Families (NCOFF) was established at the University of Pennsylvania to create and implement a research agenda that took seriously the issues of practice, including a research database, the Fatherlit Research Database. The center and the resulting activities in the field demonstrated a consistent shift. For example, in fields such as developmental psychology, once characterized by a singular focus on mother–child relationships, the significance of the father in the daily routines of child support and nurturance was increasingly discussed. The implication of this work was that the role of fathers, and the family itself, was seen as contributing to the affective development of children; to the shaping of personality; and eventually to a sense of belonging, meaning, and socioemotional stability.
One might well ask, What has really changed in the field since the 1990s? Any review of data from the field reveals the measured but significant increase in focus and reach to multiple audiences. Through tracking of the FatherLit Database, NCOFF has systematically collected data on the number of refereed research articles and other research publications on fathers, including the creation of a journal, Fathering, in 2003. Although much of the discussion still dichotomizes the issues into father presence and absence and their effects, it also addresses specific questions such as fathers’ relationships with their children, the effect of father presence on young children, the role of fathers in homes, and the effects of father engagement on mothers.
Outside the United States the focus on fatherhood has been equally compelling. However, a persistent problem centers on the degree to which and the way research, practice, and policy are constructed and implemented across cultural and national borders. As is true in the United States, questions about where and how to situate fatherhood and fathering are a critical focus of discussion. For example, should fathering be aligned with child well-being? Is it more appropriately studied as an issue of family development and family functioning? How should it be examined within economic and legal considerations? What is the role of fathers in children’s lives?
In various parts of Africa (most notably South Africa) an increasing body of research and new programs have been initiated. Support for these efforts often began as grassroots initiatives but subsequently have been examined in relationship to family life, economic stressors, and the meaning of father presence and engagement. In Baba: Men and Fatherhood in South Africa (2006), edited by Linda Richter and Robert Morrell, chapters take up several of the concerns, questions, and problems that have been examined in the United States but with particular currency for explicating and understanding the cultural contexts in South Africa, such as migrancy, the experience of gold mine workers, Zulu-speaking men and fatherhood, and HIV/AIDS, to name a few (see also Madhaven et al. 2006 for a discussion of father presence in rural South Africa).
A. Bame Namenang (2000), in addressing related issues in Cameroon, similarly calls attention to the construction of father images, cultural practices, kin networks, and the ways fatherhood is situated within these larger familial and community contexts. Efforts throughout Europe, Australia, and the Caribbean reinforce the need to examine critically the cross-cultural and cross-national domains of fatherhood. Among the most well-known research is that of Margaret O’Brien (2004) in England, in which she takes up research and policy questions and the difficult intersections between programs and policies. Drawing upon work from large datasets in the United States, Alison Smith (2007) has used the European Community Household Panel to identify several trends throughout European countries, for example, cross-national differences in fathers’ participation in child care, in employment and pay for fathers versus nonfathers, and in the amount of time spent working (see also Jaipaul Roopnarine and Janet Brown’s [1997] work on Caribbean families).
At the same time programmatic efforts have increased and become better organized. A range of programs has emerged—from small, grassroots efforts to educational efforts to work affiliated with federally funded organizations. The National Practitioners Network for Fathers and Families; the National Fatherhood Initiative, which houses a federally funded clearinghouse; and the National Center on Fathering represent a few of these efforts, as does a group of experts representing different focuses— research, practice, and advocacy—and the National Fatherhood Leaders Group. Similar work is taking place throughout parts of Africa, Europe, Australia, and the Caribbean, much of it building upon practitioner efforts and cross-collaborations between the United States and groups abroad and supported by a range of foundations and governmental initiatives, including regional meetings in England, Jamaica, South Africa, and Australia. One example from England is Father Direct, the national information center that publishes guides and provides training, conferences, and briefings on fatherhood.
The interest in responsible fatherhood has both heightened and precipitated change. Work on fathers invariably points to the deleterious effects of father absence for children, families, communities, and society, including a focus on “fragile families” (see publications of the Center on Child Wellbeing at Princeton University; Garfinkel and McLanahan 2003; McLanahan 2006; McLanahan and Carlson 2004) and families experiencing hardship absent the supports necessary for optimal healthy development, with children thought to be especially at risk for poor academic achievement, juvenile delinquency and incarceration, victimization by violence and exploitation, and unmarried adolescent parenting (see also Shannon et al. 2002; Cabrera and Garcia-Coll 2004).
Finally, policy efforts have grown at all levels of government, though the question of “what constitutes a good father” persists (see Rosenberg and Wilcox 2006), as do issues related to father absence. For example, in a request for proposals from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2006), the writers noted that in approximately 84 percent of cases where a parent is absent, that parent is the father and that if the trends continue, half of all children born in the early twenty-first century will live apart from one of their parents, usually their father, at some point before they turn eighteen. They also indicate that where families (whether intact or with a parent absent) are living in poverty, a significant factor is the father’s lack of job skills. An estimated 19,400,000 children (27 percent) live apart from their biological fathers. Of children under age eighteen not living with their biological fathers, 40 percent had not seen their fathers even once in the last twelve months.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
It is no surprise that the field of fatherhood and the larger field of family studies grapple with an array of difficult questions and uncharted terrain. What is needed in this still growing field are deepened analyses that reflect the ways fathers, children, and families shape and revise their identities within families and respond to the social and cultural expectations of home and society. Several issues are still relatively unexamined, among them the diversity of fathers, both middle-income and low-income men and families; families of color and immigrant families; the cultural and social factors that influence fathering practices and community expectations; children of incarcerated fathers; the engagement of fathers and mothers as parents and in relationship to their children; the effects of racial stratification on fathers’ engagement; preparation (through schooling and work) to assume the financial and emotional roles of fathering; issues of men’s health; and social vulnerability. In order for change to occur, a conceptual framework is critical—one that reflects a deep understanding of the multifaceted issues and possibilities to effect change in all communities where there are fathers and children.
SEE ALSO Child Development; Family; Family Structure; Masculinity; Men; Motherhood; Moynihan Report; Parent–Child Relationships; Public Policy; Role Theory; Unemployment
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Vivian L. Gadsden