TY - JOUR
AU - Randles,, Jennifer
AB - Abstract Drawing on in-depth interviews and focus groups with 64 poor men of color, this article analyzes how a U.S. federally funded “responsible fatherhood” program transmitted a discourse of paternal essentiality, claiming that fathers as masculine role models uniquely contribute to child development. It reveals how, despite lack of evidence that fathers make indispensable gendered contributions to parenting, the focus on male role modeling resonated for marginalized fathers because it characterized them as essential for children’s well-being in their capacity as men, not economic providers. Using an intersectional lens, the promotion of paternal essentiality can be understood as a response to the way gender ideologies and race and class inequalities interact to shape norms of responsible fatherhood that discount men of color living in poverty. This strategy relies, however, on an empirically unsupported rationale for fathers’ involvement that individualizes the social problems attributed to “fatherlessness.” This case reveals how racism, class exploitation, and patriarchy reciprocally shape government-sponsored fatherhood programming and its impact on marginalized men’s parenting identities. Family, Inequality, Public Policy, Qualitative Methodology, Race, Class, and Gender The United States government has funded numerous “responsible fatherhood” programs that provide education, job training, and parenting skills classes in an effort to increase paternal involvement among marginalized men (Knox et al. 2011). Responsible fatherhood policy is a response to concerns about “fatherlessness” as a growing social problem that causes poverty, crime, and other negative outcomes, due to the presumed lack of male role models in low-income families (Blankenhorn 1995; Popenoe 1996). Yet little is known about how state-sponsored programs seek to shape fathers’ views of themselves as responsible parents. To address this gap, I conducted a qualitative study of a U.S. federally funded responsible fatherhood program that served poor men of color; I pseudonymously call the program “DADS.” Drawing on data from the curriculum, staff, fathers, and from observations of program activities, I answer three questions central to understanding the implementation of responsible fatherhood policy: 1) What script of fatherhood was transmitted to men in the context of responsible fatherhood programming? 2) How did participating fathers respond to this message? 3) What are the implications for understanding social problems that are attributed to a lack of paternal involvement? I found that DADS emphasized a script of paternal essentiality—what I call the “essential father discourse” (Silverstein and Auerbach 1999)—a script which taught that fathers are necessary male role models for children’s proper development. This message deeply resonated with participants because it characterized them as valuable and irreplaceable parents while challenging the idea that economic provisioning is necessary for successful fatherhood and manhood. This analysis reveals how the moral discourse of fatherhood absence is infused with gender, race, and class assumptions. The promotion of paternal essentiality can be understood as a political response to the social and economic marginalization of poor fathers of color; this response has paradoxical implications for addressing social problems through fatherhood policy. While the essential father discourse empowers marginalized men to identify as responsible fathers based on their gender, it simultaneously ascribes social problems to low parental involvement as a specifically gendered phenomenon. In valorizing poor fathers of color as essential parents due to their maleness and presumed masculinity, responsible fatherhood policy capitalizes on patriarchal privilege to individualize and obscure racism and class exploitation, including the ways in which both undermine paternal involvement in low-income families of color. I use this case to show how ideologies embedded in family policy, including causal explanations for social problems, reflect overlapping and interdependent systems of power, privilege, and oppression. BACKGROUND: RACE, CLASS, GENDER, AND PATERNAL ESSENTIALITY Race-based forms of discrimination, such as targeting by the criminal justice system, and declining educational and labor market opportunities, have undermined paternal involvement among poor men of color in recent decades (Edin and Nelson 2013; Haney 2018; Smeeding, Garfinkel, and Mincy 2011). These socioeconomic constraints greatly challenge marginalized men’s abilities to live up to government definitions of responsible fathering that assume good fathers are caregiving wage earners who live with their children and co-parent in marital relationships with children’s mothers (Doherty, Kouneski, and Erickson 1998). Poor fathers of color are often stigmatized as “deadbeat” dads who are not only failed fathers, but also insufficiently masculine men who refuse to live up to gendered norms of breadwinning (Collins 2000). Though rhetorically race-neutral, characterizations of “deadbeat” parents in political discourses have always been racialized and gendered, reinforcing the belief that negligent black fathers are promiscuous, predatory, and violent—and therefore to blame for the social ills of communities of color (Battle 2018). The “controlling image” of the deadbeat father makes intersecting inequalities of racism, sexism, and poverty appear to be natural, inevitable, and the results of bad personal parenting choices (Collins 2000). This stereotype has deeply informed policies designed to address social problems presumably posed by poor fathers of color who deliberately reject parenting responsibilities and leave “fatherless” homes in their wake. Anxieties over perceived crises of “fatherlessness” first emerged in the early twentieth century when industrialization and urbanization reshaped fathers’ responsibilities to focus on breadwinning (LaRossa 1997). From the 1940 s–60 s, sex-role socialization theories proliferated, promoting the idea that paternal involvement was necessary to counteract the feminization of childrearing (Griswold 1993). Ideas ranging from Freud’s ([1905] 2011) psychoanalytic theory of gender to Bandura and Walters’ (1963) social learning theory predicted that the absence of a same-gender parent prevented a child from developing a stable gender identity, knowledge of gender norms, and the ability to navigate and enact gender difference (Goldberg and Allen 2007). Social problems such as crime and poverty have been attributed since to insecure forms of masculinity among boys overly identified with mothers (LaRossa 1997). Belief in the value of fathers specifically as male role models shaped policy and academic debates about families, poverty, and welfare use among single mothers during the latter part of the twentieth century when the government began to fund responsible fatherhood programming (Gavanas 2004). Blankenhorn (1995:15) argued that, without a male parent at home, boys look to less positive role models for the “meaning of their maleness” and overcompensate by turning to violent hyper or protest forms of masculinity. Similarly, Popenoe (1996:159) claimed that boys need fathers to develop a stable masculine identity and self-control, while girls need them to provide physical and emotional security to avoid “inappropriate sexual contacts . . . in a desperate search for substitute forms of male affection.” According to Gallagher (1998:165), male parents prevent “father hunger,” the “longing for a man, not just a woman, who will care for you, protect you, . . . [and present] an image of maleness that is not at odds with love.” Fathers are essential, these authors advocated, because they model heterosexual intimacy, enforce rules using male authority, and promote children’s self-esteem by teaching that they are worthy of male affection. Silverstein and Auerbach (1999) famously critiqued this “essential father discourse” by disputing the premises that mothers and fathers parent differently as a result of essential gender differences and that men are essential for child development due to their exclusive ability to model healthy masculine behavior. The political appeal of the essentialist position, they argued, reflects social anxiety about changes in gender and family life, specifically about gay rights and feminist movements that have challenged the power and privilege of heterosexual men. Gender essentialism in parenting has also been the focus of much empirical research. Overall, evidence does not support the claim that fathers are essential because they make indispensable and uniquely male contributions to childrearing due to their masculinity (Fagan, Lamb, and Cabrera 2014; Pleck 2010). Parents’ gender is only one factor among many—including cultural context, parents’ personal history, economic resources, and child characteristics—that shape parent-child relationships (Cabrera et al. 2014). Heterosexual parents typically perform complementary tasks in line with gender ideologies of parental responsibility; as mothers and fathers become increasingly similar in how and how much they engage with children, parents’ gender is even less salient for children’s outcomes (Cabrera et al. 2011; Pleck 2010). Though women still perform a disproportionate share of childcare (Raley, Bianchi, and Wang 2012), men’s contributions are rising as the “new father ideal” emphasizes paternal caregiving (Griswold 1993). Average overall gender differences do exist in some dimensions of parenting, but they are not large; within-gender variation is substantial; and any influences fathers have on children “appear to be equivalent to and interchangeable with those of mothers” (Pleck 2010:45). Moreover, there are no overall differences between children raised in two-parent lesbian families and those in two-parent families with a resident father (Patterson 2006; Wainright, Russell, and Patterson 2004). Adolescents with and without male role models have similar outcomes in terms of psychological adjustment and gender role traits, suggesting that gendered behaviors are not imparted only from mothers to daughters and fathers to sons (Bos et al. 2012). There is even less evidence for the link between father-child interaction and better childhood outcomes among low-income families (Carlson and Magnuson 2011). On average, children who live apart from their biological fathers have worse outcomes, including lower graduation rates and lower levels of social-emotional adjustment (McLanahan, Tach, and Schneider 2013). Yet few studies have directly examined whether the gender of nonresidential parents is responsible for different outcomes between one- and two-parent families (Biblarz and Stacey 2010). It is still unknown how much parents’ gender matters independently of related variables, such as number of parents, experiences of family disruption and complexity, and the reduction of resources associated with parental disconnection. Parenting is, nevertheless, a gendered experience, as the conceptual and structural dimensions of parenting differ according to gender (Fagan et al. 2014; Palkovitz, Trask, and Adamsons 2014). Women’s and men’s overall different social, political, and economic positions shape distinct lived experiences of parenting in terms of meanings, processes, and resources, which, in turn, influence parenting capacities (Palkovitz et al. 2014). Patterned differences in women’s and men’s parenting result from these gendered power dynamics and performative expectations, not essential differences between males and females (Doucet and Lee 2014). For example, Eggebeen (2013) argued that fathers tend to benefit children because men possess more social and human capital. This reflects occupational gender segregation, not that parenting abilities are dichotomous and biologically determined (Biblarz and Stacey 2010). Still, adults and children are socialized to recognize, anticipate, and respond to gender differences and specifically to understand mothering and fathering as distinct. That many individuals deem paternal masculinity to be a salient feature of family life is a reflection of these socially constructed differences between “mothering” and “fathering” (Lamb 2010). Findings that fathers are not essential due to their maleness or masculinity do not negate that fathers are important, largely because parents and children believe they are. Lesbian (Clarke and Kitzinger 2005; Goldberg and Allen 2007) and single mothers (Roy and Burton 2007) deliberately recruit men as role models for their children through extended family and support networks. Boys themselves turn to other influential men in their lives, including grandfathers and coaches, as positive role models of good parenting (Forste, Bartkowski, and Jackson 2009; Masciadrelli, Pleck, and Stueve 2006). Previous studies of fathering programs found that many participants who grew up without positive role models of fathering enroll in programs in order to develop the parenting skills they believe they consequently lack (Holcomb et al. 2015; Leap 2015). Men in a program studied by Leap (2015:70) experienced collective healing around experiences of poverty, incarceration, and “father wound”—“a deep and abiding sense of sadness” from not having grown up with fathers. Fatherhood programs have also helped marginalized men redefine responsible fatherhood to emphasize the emotional and relational aspects of parenting (Anderson, Kohler, and Letiecq 2002; Roy and Dyson 2010). Programs that teach about the importance of role modeling could be a source of motivation for economically vulnerable men who strive to justify this non-financial involvement (Pleck 2010). Yet the focus on men as male role models of parenting obscures how not all fathers are male and that “father” is not a static gender “role” that singularly exists in the institution of the family. Fathering cuts across multiple spheres of social life, namely the state and the market, and numerous axes of inequality, especially race and class (Ferree 2010). Fathers’ gendered subjectivities operate in relation to their race and class circumstances, which shape their micro-level parenting experiences. At the macro level, this intersectional lens reveals how relations of social and political power—including family policies—are the result of overlapping and interdependent systems of oppression and privilege (Collins 2000, 2015; McCall 2005). Understanding fatherhood policies requires an intersectional accounting for the ways that racism, class exploitation, and patriarchy reciprocally influence fatherhood program messages and their impact on marginalized men’s paternal identities. Thus, I argue that the essential father discourse may be understood, not just as a backlash to feminism, same-sex families, and increasing gender equality (Silverstein and Auerbach 1999), but as a response to how race and class inequalities intersect to shape gendered norms of responsible fatherhood that discount poor men of color. By analyzing the ways that this discourse infused a responsible fatherhood program, I show how program staff and participants understood messages about paternal essentiality as an antidote to disadvantaged men’s marginalization in family life. Emphasizing men’s masculine contributions to parenting is part of a growing cultural and political narrative that fathers’ non-financial contributions are important. Though this strategy characterizes poor fathers as necessary for children’s well-being in ways that do not equate successful fathering with economic provisioning, it relies on an empirically unsupported rationale for fathers’ involvement that individualizes social problems. METHODS Between December 2013 and November 2015, I studied “DADS,” a 2012 federal responsible fatherhood grantee, which was administered by a non-profit agency that I call the Workforce and Education Program (WEP). Located in a Western U.S. city, DADS served low-income fathers ages 16–45 through an on-site WEP charter high school, paid vocational training, and parenting and relationship education. Fathering classes were also available through a former gang member employment program, a homeless shelter, and a residential addiction treatment facility. I conducted 50 hours of observation, including attendance at monthly DADS staff meetings and five hours of fathering classes, in-depth interviews with 10 staff and 50 participating fathers, and four focus groups with a total of 21 fathers, seven of whom were prior interviewees. Staff interviewees included the program director, program managers, and instructors, and interview themes focused on program goals, curricular messages, and experiences working with fathers. Interviews and focus groups with fathers focused on reasons for participation, responses to program messages, and family relationships. I recruited fathers by distributing flyers via program staff and through participant word of mouth. Interviews and focus groups lasted between 60 and 90 minutes and took place in private rooms located at DADS sites where staff were not present. Fathers received $25 each directly from me funded by an external grant to recognize the value of their time and to offset any costs—childcare, lost wages, transportation—associated with participating. I followed standard consent, voluntary participation, and confidentiality procedures. All names are pseudonyms. I also conducted a textual analysis of the program’s fathering curriculum, 24/7 Dad, the one most commonly used by federal fatherhood program grantees. 24/7 Dad was produced by the National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI), which was founded in 1994 to “end father absence” based on the platform that “underlying many of society’s most pressing challenges is a lack of father involvement in their children’s lives” (National Fatherhood Initiative 2018). Authored by NFI president Christopher Brown, 24/7 Dad promises to teach “men the characteristics they need to be good fathers” and “[change] fathers’ attitudes, knowledge, and skills” (National Fatherhood Initiative 2018). The NFI also received a 2006 federal grant to develop the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse, an official government website for responsible fatherhood programming. I wrote fieldnotes after each observation, interview, and focus group, and all interviews and focus groups were digitally recorded and fully transcribed with respondents’ permission. Data analysis proceeded in three iterative stages. First, using grounded theory inductive coding techniques (Charmaz 2006; Strauss and Corbin 1998), I developed a coding scheme through initial open coding of all fieldnotes, transcripts, and the curriculum text. Emergent themes included: messages and beliefs about fathers’ contributions to children’s well-being; how fathers’ and mothers’ parenting responsibilities converge and differ; and participants’ past and current relationships with their own caregivers. Next, I used axial coding to compare respondents’ references to these themes across the combined 64 interview and focus group transcripts. This focused coding process allowed me to identify: how the program promoted ideas about paternal essentiality; how fathers responded to messages that they played a unique role in their children’s well-being; and whether this framing of fatherhood aligned with fathers’ own upbringings and experiences as parents. Finally, I wrote memos documenting inclusive integration of emergent categories and concepts. Participant Characteristics Participating fathers were significantly disadvantaged. One had an associate’s degree, 16 had high school diplomas, and 47 had not yet completed high school. Forty-four fathers were pursuing their diplomas at the WEP, five were attending community college or non-WEP vocational programs, and 16 were not enrolled in any formal education. Thirty-eight were employed by the WEP, four had non-WEP jobs, and 22 were unemployed. Employed fathers earned $200 to $600 a month. Participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 44. Thirty-two participants self-identified as black or African American; 23 identified as Hispanic, Latino, or Mexican; eight as multiracial or multiethnic; and one as Native American. Most respondents had one child (26); 19 had two; and 10 had three children. Seven had four or more, and two were expecting their first child. Twenty-one fathers lived at least part-time with all their children, and 12 lived with some of their children. Thirty-one fathers did not reside with any of their children at the time of the research. FINDINGS Challenging the view that low-income men of color are peripheral to family life, DADS emphasized that fathers are essential as male role models of responsibility. I first illustrate how the program taught about paternal essentiality. Next, I reveal how, though staff and participants assumed that fathers demonstrate masculinity, program messages about male role modeling were not prescriptive of parenting styles deemed masculine. Both groups struggled to explain why fathers are essential for children’s well-being other than noting that they are men. Finally, I show how fathers’ own experiences and motivations for participation only partially aligned with program messages about male role modeling and the essential father. Of the 50 participant interviewees, 27 described having either no or only intermittent contact with their fathers during childhood. Twenty-one interviewees described their fathers as being highly involved. The fathers of the remaining two had died when the respondents were very young. Fathers were just as likely to attribute their motivations to be good parents and enroll in DADS to missing fathers as to involved fathers. Many were inspired to be involved based on the belief that children need a male parental figure to demonstrate the nurturing parental behaviors they learned from women. I analyze how these experiences simultaneously challenge fundamental assumptions of the essential father discourse and underscore its importance as a narrative framework justifying parental involvement for disadvantaged men. Teaching the Essential Father DADS taught that, without male role models, children’s socialization is incomplete and their life chances are diminished. The first lesson in 24/7 Dad asked fathers to identify the “roles of Dad and Mom,” which roles they share, and how their roles diverge: The 24/7 Dad knows his role in the family. He knows he is a model for his sons on how to be a good man and father and for his daughters on what they should look for in a husband and father for their children. . . . The 24/7 Dad uses his knowledge of the unique skills he and his wife/the mother of his children bring to raising his children. . . . [H]e knows the difference between “fathering” and “mothering.” (Brown 2010:2) This lesson implied that “fathering” and “mothering” involve gender-exclusive capacities and that successful parenting depends on complementary gendered parental roles. Boys presumably need fathers to develop healthy masculine identities, while girls need them to develop proper heterosexual femininity. Subsequent sessions focused on role modeling in relation to masculinity. The lesson entitled “What It Means to Be a Man” invited participants to define “manhood,” question stereotypical definitions of masculinity focused on control and authority, and distinguish the traits they most and least admire about being men. Exercises such as asking fathers to “Write up to 7 traits you would like to pass on to your son(s) or to model for your daughter(s)” (Brown 2010:7) indicated that boys develop masculine traits by modeling fathers, while girls learn to recognize healthy masculinity through gendered features of fathering. The session on “The Father’s Role” focused on the “7 Benefits of Marriage for Men,” including healthier children and greater paternal involvement. The “Getting Involved” lesson noted that “Research shows that when Dads are more involved their children get better grades, have fewer behavior problems in school, and are less likely to drop out” (Brown 2010:48). Though the curriculum once noted that the benefits of paternal involvement derive in part from having more than one parent to help, the overarching message was that fathers confer specific benefits to children because of men’s masculine orientation to parenting. This message was also dominant in the classes I observed. Manesh, a 39-year-old Asian-American DADS case manager and instructor, taught a class with five fathers—two African American, two Latino, and one Native American, all in their 20 s or 30 s. He began by explaining that the program was about “striving to be better fathers than we had” and learning how to model positive behaviors by being men who “walk the talk.” Much of the two-hour class focused on encouraging participants to think about and recount experiences with their own fathers or father figures, including stories of how they disciplined, their level of involvement, and if and how they modeled being good dads and men. Only once did Manesh ask fathers about what they learned from mothers and women about being good parents and moral people, implying that men learn to parent almost exclusively from same-gender role models. Staff believed most men enrolled because they lacked positive role models of fatherhood and masculinity. The executive director, Samuel, 50 years old and African American, explained: We have a lot of young men who have been in the system who are gang related. Since they don’t have fathers in their lives, they look to other young men to bond with. . . . The young ladies who don’t have that role model of what a man should be kind of latch on to the first man who shows them some attention. . . . They’re trying to overcome 18–20 years of bad influence where they did not see their father get up every day and go to work because their father’s in jail, where they didn’t see how a man acts toward a woman. We surround them with people who exhibit what it is to be a man. Without a consistent paternal presence in the home, Samuel reasoned, both boys and girls seek negative masculine influences that lead to gangs, incarceration, unemployment, and abusive relationships. He described how the purpose of DADS was not just to offer educational and job opportunities, but also to provide positive male role models from whom participants could learn responsible work, relationship, and parenting behaviors. Other staff similarly claimed that participants struggled socially and economically because they did not have engaged fathers to model responsibility. Amber, a 28-year-old African-American program director, explained that most of the men lacked confidence in their parenting abilities and believed they were irrelevant because their own fathers had been absent: Fathers do have a unique role as they present one side of modeling. . . . A lot of [participants] didn’t have that. It also has to do with a large amount of our participants coming from households dealing with poverty. . . . If this is all you ever know, then you pass it on to your kids. Unless somebody says, “Hey, was your daddy in your life, or what kind of influence did you have?” they may not see the importance of being there. Melanie, a 41-year-old African-American program manager, similarly explained: “I share with them, ‘Did you know that if the father is involved the kids are less likely to be obese? They are more confident, more likely not just to attend college but actually complete college. . . . The father brings stability, the ability to break cycles and change by your presence.’” Staff believed that fathers need male role models specifically to validate parenting as a masculine activity that can halt the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Tellingly, the program did not emphasize the breadwinning aspects of parenting traditionally associated with men and fathers. Rather, it advocated that any type of involvement, including economic provisioning and especially caretaking, is uniquely valuable when men perform it. Darren, an 85-year-old, African-American relationship class instructor, explained that fathers alone teach children they are worthy of male love, which is an antidote to incarceration and prostitution: “How do we avoid our children from being in jail or keep that young girl from being out in the street hustling? . . . We model for that child how to risk love. All men want fathers because that’s who you feel comfortable with. ‘He cares about me. It legitimates me.’ It takes a man to recognize a man, to validate him.” It is beneficial when men model nurturance, Darren and other staff noted, because it masculinizes care as a valuable aspect of parenting. In claiming that children’s self-worth and socioeconomic success depend on love and recognition from parents of the same gender, the program subverted gendered norms of stoic fathering by promoting care as central to responsible fatherhood. Participants also described role modeling as a dominant program theme, especially the importance of learning to be a good father after experiencing paternal absence. Martin, a 40-year-old Latino father of five, explained that the program addressed how: “If we’re raised by our mom, how do we, as a man, learn to be that father that wasn’t there for us. . . . We want to be that father to our kids, playing sports, getting up at 4:30 in the morning to do the paper route.” This focus on masculine role modeling deeply resonated with participants like Martin who could point to their fathers’ absence as a compelling reason for their socioeconomic challenges and their own low paternal involvement. It was an appealing narrative that reduced self-blame and men’s tendencies to fault themselves for their poverty, minimal job prospects, and unplanned routes to fatherhood. Many men thus described the program as motivating and empowering. Tomas, a 33-year-old Latino father of three, described having a great relationship with his stepfather, despite seeing his biological father for the first time when he was 14 while serving as a pallbearer at his father’s funeral. DADS inspired Tomas because it taught him “how to be a role model, how to set the bar, set the example. It shows you how to live in a structured house.” Aaron, a 21-year-old, black/Latino father of three, explained that the biggest revelation for a lot of men in DADS was seeing other men who were highly involved in their children’s lives. Many participants, including himself, had “been raised in an environment where they really didn’t see any other fathers around their kids, just dads leaving all the time. Here they will get that experience from one of the dads telling them, ‘Ok, I’ve been there for my son and daughter.’” Like Aaron, by watching other participants they respected demonstrate their paternal commitments, fathers came to see parenting as a legitimately masculine activity that could influence children’s life chances. Explaining the Essential Father Though staff and participants believed that children without involved fathers miss a necessary parental influence, their explanations for this belief revealed circular reasoning justifying that men are valuable parents simply because they are male or men. They also vaguely described that men exhibit a masculine parenting style distinct from that of mothers. When respondents articulated specific reasons why children benefit from having male parents, they attributed the importance of fathers to men’s greater power to enforce socially desirable behaviors. Many respondents believed that children are more likely to obey parenting directives from men because they view fathers as more authoritative than mothers. Others credited the unique value of fathers to their ability to make children feel loved in masculine ways that enable them to develop the self-confidence presumably needed to avoid negative outcomes, such as incarceration and prostitution. Thus, respondents whose explanations went beyond essentialist and tautological claims that men are valuable parents because they are men explained fathers’ necessity as a consequence of gender inequality. Amber, a program coordinator, said: “We talk a lot about how many outcomes fathers affect that mothers don’t statistically in terms of being involved in their children’s lives. Just being there and having that presence, fathers are going to help kids be more successful in life.” These explanations assumed that children develop self-assurance and access opportunities via fathers’ male authority and power. This idea was especially significant for fathers given that they lacked other forms of authority and power rooted in race and class privilege. Their claims about paternal essentiality implicitly drew on notions of gender advantages as straight cisgender men who saw themselves as valuable parents because of some essential—and largely ineffable—masculine quality. Fathers described this quality as inherent to all men and as one that enables children to adhere to heteronormative ideas of family and sexuality. Despite their struggles to articulate what about men uniquely qualified them to teach boys how to be appropriately masculine and girls how to recognize healthy masculinity, almost all fathers agreed they were essential for these reasons. However, when asked follow-up questions, many struggled to clarify why or how. Jeremiah, a 24-year-old, African-American father of one, explained: A woman can’t teach a girl what a man can. What I mean by that, as far as boys, a female can’t really teach her daughter, a girl, about boys because she’s not a boy to know the things that boys think about. Maybe they can give them ideas, but they can’t really necessarily break it down like, “Okay this is what men do. This is what to expect from boys.” Just like a man can’t teach a woman how to be a woman. I can’t explain that part because I’m a man. Like most fathers, Jeremiah believed that same-gender parents were essential for children’s gender socialization and that opposite-gender parents were necessary for learning how to relate in romantic and sexual relationships. These binary views signaled how individuals learn to anticipate and respond to socially constructed gender differences. Respondents’ claims that fathers are more authoritative and uniquely offer children insight about lived experiences of manhood reflect social, political, and economic inequalities between women and men that underlie conceptual distinctions between mothering and fathering (Doucet and Lee 2014; Palkovitz et al. 2014). It is especially noteworthy that most fathers talked about paternal essentiality in terms of gendered forms of love, care, and role modeling, while few noted that fathers were uniquely important as economic providers. They emphasized that their parental value derived from their gendered abilities to model responsible masculine behavior, describe the male point of view, and offer masculine forms of affection—all things fathers could “provide” simply by being present and being men, irrespective of their employment status or earning potential. Monty, a 34-year-old Latino father of six, explained: “They taught us in the [DADS] classes that dads are there to do certain things with the kids, and a boy needs his father in his life, just like the girl needs her father in life. Both need two different parts and a manly type of love.” In describing key differences between “manly” forms of parental love and motherly love, fathers emphasized physicality, protection, play, and presence. Curtis, an 18-year-old Latino father of one, told me: “I think the dad’s more of the loving protector, the physical one. I don’t really know how to explain it, except that he’s always playing with or loving the baby. He’s there, the one that’s sitting there watching television with the baby.” Gendered parental love also came up in discussions of what children lacked without fathers. Reuben, a 19-year-old Latino/Native American expectant father, described how DADS taught him that a father’s love “is not the same as from a mother. The baby needs their dad, the man, to be there, to get safety and protection. It makes them a better person to grow up feeling love and affection from both parents.” Race and class also figured in many fathers’ explanations for why mothers alone were insufficient to raise children with the values and skills needed to thrive, but not in ways that accounted for the effects of race and class inequalities on children’s life chances. According to Justin, a 34-year-old African-American father of three: As a kid and a young man, and certainly a young black man, if Dad’s not around, we tend to miss something. . . . My girls, I’ll have to stay on top of them because they can be judged. What’s the typical stereotype—black women are loud and ghetto? This is not true, and it won’t hold for my daughters. . . . What fathers like myself give is time and so, so, so much love. When girls have this in childhood, they don’t look for that in a man. . . . I know several women who weren’t raised by their fathers, and now they’re prostitutes searching for that love they missed in childhood. Facundo, a 19-year-old Latino father of one, similarly described how mothers and fathers complement one another to meet children’s needs for affection, discipline, and security. Without both, he noted, children suffer, and specifically without fathers, they are less likely to be successful in school and life. He described his experience growing up in a low-income household after his father left: “I wasn’t paying attention or going to school. I didn’t give a shit because my dad wasn’t there. My mom was the loving one, and my dad was the strict one. When they were together it blended perfectly, but one goes missing, and it all went bad. I was out in the streets with my friends, just doing bad stuff. Then I got a girl pregnant.” Facundo attributed dropping out of high school to not having a father he “took seriously” to enforce discipline. This was a common explanation for why participants did not finish school, got arrested, were unemployed, or became young fathers. Rarely did staff or participants mention how growing up in impoverished families as men of color made these outcomes significantly more likely, regardless of family form. They instead cited paternal absence to account for the reasons why men were in the program, while ignoring how race and class influenced their life chances. The common belief that fathers inspire greater confidence in children and are more effective disciplinarians than mothers signaled respondents’ recognition and acceptance of—or at least acquiescence to—male dominance and men’s patriarchal authority in families. Aaron, a 21-year-old Latino/black father of three, explained: “I love my kids and take care of them. But I also teach them responsibility and give them motivation and the confidence they need to survive in school. It’s something about being a man. It’s in our DNA, I guess.” Like Aaron, respondents frequently referenced biological or innate attributes of men to explain their unique abilities as fathers. Though no one explicitly talked about this as a reflection of gender inequality, many implied that mothers’ parenting abilities were limited by gender stereotypes. Marcus, a 21-year-old African-American father of one, noted that fathers are important for: Discipline because it’s only so far that a mother can do, right? When [his mother] tells [my son] to do something, he might slack a little. When I tell him, he’s going to do it right. He knows Dad don’t play. I was raised by a woman. I came out fine, but I think it means more to have a father there, to see him get up every day and be a role model. These viewpoints reveal something significant about the essential father discourse not previously theorized by advocates (Blankenhorn 1995; Popenoe 1996) or critics (Silverstein and Auerbach 1999), which is that part of the power of paternal essentiality lies in how it accounts for fathers whose patriarchal authority is undermined by race and class marginalization. By emphasizing the essential father discourse, DADS offered poor men of color a framework of involvement focused on paternal presence, not providership. Enabling fathers to explain their unique value to children in these terms allowed them to claim identities as both masculine men and responsible fathers who, despite economic hardships, were committed to being manly role models of attention and affection—two aspects of involvement that do not require financial resources. Ricky, a 22-year-old African-American father of one, described this most pointedly: “To be a good dad, all you need to do is just be around your son. That’s it. You can be the brokest, the dumbest, the ugliest, the cutest, the badest, the goodest, I don’t care, just be around your child.” Though the essential father discourse presumes male dominance, in this context, it also challenged certain gendered expectations of fatherhood. Missing the Essential Father While the essential father script offered marginalized men a powerful rationale for paternal involvement, participants’ explanations of how their own caregivers shaped their parenting motivations and abilities did not always align with this discourse. Some men did fault not having a father to model gendered responsibility for their own economic and personal challenges. Yet few men, even those with the least involved fathers, indicated that they missed positive parenting or opportunities to develop their masculinity, and most described their caregivers as having provided for all their emotional and social needs. Fathers thus had a conflicted understanding of the importance of male role modeling for their gender identities, parenting abilities, and life chances. This influenced every aspect of program participation, beginning with fathers’ decisions to enroll. As found in other studies of fathering programs (Holcomb et al. 2015; Leap 2015), many participants noted that growing up without consistent paternal contact motivated them to be more involved and join DADS. Most of the 29 interviewees who reported little or no contact with their fathers growing up described how this taught them the value of paternal engagement. Owen, a 20-year-old multiracial father of three, explained: My dad went to prison when I was 5 or 6 and didn’t get out until I was 13. I don’t want to be what he is. . . . I’d always see other kids have their dad, and he’d be like, “good job.” Walking to the park, you see a dad playing catch with their son. I didn’t have that. . . . I want [my son] to be able to look up to me and be like, “Yeah, that’s my dad.” Like Owen, many participants viewed their fathers as reverse role models who taught them the importance of fathering through their absence. Darius, a 23-year-old African-American father of one, described why he enrolled: “It was more not having a father and then telling myself I’m going to be the best. I’m not going to let my daughter go through what I did. Without even trying, he is my motivation and my drive because he didn’t motivate nor drive me.” Others described how their own fathers explicitly taught them to be better parents than they were. Keegan, a 21-year-old African-American father of three, said: “When I was younger, my dad wasn’t around. He was in and out of jail. I grew up with my mom and thought, ‘No matter what, I’m going to be different from Dad. I’m going to be there every day for my child.’ . . . When my dad was out, he would always tell me, ‘Be better than me.’” Three of five participants in one focus group also emphasized how paternal absence motivated their involvement. Arturo, a 22-year-old Latino/Native-American father of one, explained: “I don’t want my daughter to grow up not knowing her dad or not having her father there because I went through it, and it sucked.” Jonathan, a 22-year-old Latino father of two, agreed: “Yeah, my dad was never in my life, and that plays a big part in me being a father towards my sons. I’m really dedicated to being there.” Joshua, a 41-year-old multiracial father of two, eagerly added: Most of us here haven’t had our father in our lives the whole time, maybe some of the time, but not the full 24/7 dad we are committed to being to change the cycle we went through growing up. I stepped up and changed because how I grew up. I got in trouble, resorted to drugs, resorted to this or that to cover up my pain for what I went through as a kid. The program taught me I needed to change this around and make it right. These participants readily attributed their economic and social struggles to fathers who left. The other 21 interviewees, however, described having highly involved fathers. Their accounts focused on how, despite having positive paternal role models, they too struggled with the same issues—poverty, not finishing high school, drugs, and incarceration. Monty, a 34-year-old Latino father of six, said: “I steered away from what my dad taught me. He raised me to have manners, to have respect, don’t talk back to people, do good in school. He was all for school, working hard, and having a good life. That’s not what I did. I was doing the exact opposite.” Michael, a 24-year-old Latino father of two, also described the impact his strong relationship with his dad had on his own fathering abilities: “He gave me everything I wanted. He disciplined me when I needed it. If he wasn’t hard on me when I was little, I don’t think I would be the good dad I am to my kids. Ever since I grew up, I’ve always seen my dad work, come home tired, and still have a good time with his kids.” Ricardo, a 22-year-old Latino father of two, was one of several participants whose mothers were uninvolved. He credited his father with his commitment to parenting: “My dad could have left us for anything, but he chose to stay. My mom chose a guy over us when I was a baby. But he worked, he did everything he could for us, put clothes on our back, and got our house. That’s why I’m with my kids.” Participants invoked both involved and missing fathers to explain their parenting motivations either as attempts to emulate positive childhood experiences or as efforts to heal emotional wounds by becoming better fathers than their own. These diverse accounts reveal how paternal presence or absence can be the impetus for fathers to develop a sense of themselves as good men and parents, suggesting that narratives attributing personal failings and social problems to “fatherlessness” obscure the complexity of men’s experiences and parenting commitments. The essential father script promoted by the program was also at odds with the ways that many fathers understood the influence of mothers, grandmothers, and aunts. Numerous participants believed they learned to be good men and fathers from the women who raised them. Christopher, a 22-year-old African-American father of one, explained: My grandmother got me at three months. My dad did a horrible job. . . . He didn’t get my milk. I had rashes. He just didn’t take care of me, so she got me. She was an amazing parent. She made sure I always got anything I wanted and needed. I want to be taking care of my family, to be able to support my family like a man should, to make her proud. . . . I feel like I’m trying to make up for my dad’s flaws in my relationship with my son to make sure he’s not questioning, “What happened to my dad?” I get every bit of this from my grandma. I didn’t get it from my father. Like Christopher who wanted to emulate his grandmother, many men described how someone can miss a father without missing a stable gender identity or the aspiration and aptitude to parent well. They explained how men without a consistent paternal influence can develop immense respect for women, especially those who taught them how to be good parents and people. Even participants who described experiencing deep pain and feelings of inadequacy when their fathers left rarely said they lacked loving caregivers who were effective role models of responsibility. Arturo explained: “My grandmother was the one holding everything down in the family. For me, she was my best role model because she actually did what she had to do. She got us everything. But once my grandma passed, my school was over. I’m working in the fields, bouncing around a lot, and ended up going to the streets.” Arturo predicted that, had his mother or father been there, he would not have dropped out of school to become a farmworker after his grandmother’s death; he did not attribute his situation to lacking a strong role model. Signifying that grief over parental loss is not necessarily gendered, Arturo described the sorrow associated with losing a father, but also that of losing a mother and a grandmother. Though many participants describing experiencing pain over father loss, none described developing a masculine self-image at odds with love or care. Instead, they demonstrated how their experiences and effective parenting by non-father caregivers motivated them to be loving men and dads. Participants’ descriptions of women’s abilities to impart norms of masculinity also contradicted program messages about paternal essentiality. Randall, a 23-year-old African-American father of two, explained: “My mom raised me good. She taught me all the little stuff that my dad was supposed to teach me, to respect a woman, how to be a man. . . . They got to do everything on their own, but an extra strong woman can teach a boy to be a man.” Many respondents described parenting as gendered, such as when Ricky said that his mother “was both my mom and my dad.” Yet participants’ views that mothering and fathering are distinct did not translate into beliefs that children need male caregivers to thrive. Fathers frequently spoke of how women were their primary role models of responsible manhood. Darius, a 23-year-old African-American father of one, said of his mother: She definitely inflicted morals on us. To be able to take care of four boys on a minimum salary, that was big. . . . None of my brothers have been arrested because of how my mom raised us. The odds that four of us, four black men, have never been arrested, you don’t see that. . . . You definitely feel certain things would have and could have went better if Dad was in the picture. Maybe basketball would have been better, but he wasn’t, so I can’t really say. He probably could have pushed me more . . . but I think it doesn’t matter, man, woman, mom, dad. Even if he was there, I don’t know if anything would have changed. The way my mom did it, she put fear into me. She seemed like she was a dad. I don’t know what he could have added to that. Darius’s comment that his mother “seemed like a dad” reflected his perception that fathers have more gender authority to “push” children in the right direction. Yet his explanation, which echoed those of other participants, challenged the core premise of paternal essentiality characterizing fathers as necessary for sons’ well-being and future commitments to parenting. CONCLUSION This analysis reveals how the essential father discourse continues to influence fatherhood policy and social understandings of men’s parenting, despite lack of empirical evidence that fathers make necessary and uniquely masculine contributions to children’s development (Fagan et al. 2014; Pleck 2010). Yet it also shows why this discourse is not merely a backlash to increasing family diversity and gender egalitarianism. A major goal of responsible fatherhood programming is to convince men that they are fundamental, rather than peripheral, to family life. Marginalized men find grounds for paternal self-efficacy in a discourse that characterizes them as worthy fathers—and by implication worthy men—for providing role models rather than money for children. This probably helps explain why evaluations of fatherhood programs using 24/7 Dad have found positive impacts, including increases in parenting skills and confidence (Osborne, Michelsen, and Bobbitt 2018) and greater father-child interaction and paternal involvement (Lewin-Bizan 2015). The promotion of paternal essentiality strategically challenges classist and racist assumptions that poor men of color are irresponsible fathers because they cannot offer children significant financial resources. Understanding the essential father discourse as a way of incorporating marginalized men into definitions of good fathering is, therefore, key for grasping its full salience for fatherhood policy and programs. Though research finds that both women and men make important and equivalent contributions to child development (Pleck 2010), children are taught to identify, expect, and react to socially constructed gender differences among their caregivers. Fathers’ gender is important, not because masculinity is a pathway through which men’s parenting uniquely affects children, but because parents and children learn to see fathering as a gendered practice. In line with program messages, many of the men I studied believed their socioeconomic and parenting challenges were due in part to insufficient fathering and missing male role models. They participated in DADS to overcome what they believed they lacked. Yet they rarely noted that missing fathers deprived them of economic resources. What they reported missing most was the symbolic value of having a consistently present father, specifically, an authoritative male head of household who could model responsible behaviors and encourage them to make personal decisions leading to social and economic success. This gendered symbol of the strong paternal role model embedded in the essential father discourse serves two important purposes for poor men of color: It is an explanatory framework for their marginalization and a parenting aspiration that promises upward mobility for their own children. Though this discourse may resonate with fathers, it derives much of its ideological power from discriminatory and empirically unsupported ideas of family, gender, and sexuality that obscure structural inequality. It can be devastating when a parent-child relationship is severed, but not necessarily because of the parent’s gender. The essential father script explains social problems disproportionately experienced by poor men of color—low education, high unemployment, and incarceration—as outcomes of inadequate fathering while ignoring how race and class differences stratify access to opportunities and resources. The notion that mothering and fathering are distinct roles beyond procreative processes and the assumption that well-developed children believe in dichotomous understandings of gender and heterosexuality are also reflections of inequality. The emphasis on male role modeling mischaracterizes the relationship between parenting and children’s well-being. Instead of claiming that children benefit from multiple loving caregivers, diverse interactions, and additional resources, paternal essentiality assumes that children are disadvantaged when their parents do not exhibit particular gendered qualities and teach their children to do the same. These findings have important implications for fatherhood policy and programming. Emphasizing male role modeling as a rationale for fathers’ involvement challenges financial definitions of paternal responsibility that further marginalize poor fathers of color. Programs like DADS allow participants to engage with similarly disadvantaged men who inspire one another to be the nurturing fathers they had or missed and to confront shared structural and emotional barriers to paternal involvement, including fears of falling short as failed providers. Fathering programs can be springboards of social activism, collective healing, and a greater sense of personal agency and status among economically vulnerable fathers (Leap 2015; Roy and Dyson 2010). Given that men are still beholden to gender ideologies of breadwinning and are more likely to be separated from children due to family complexity or incarceration, programs should address the gendered dynamics of parental involvement. Yet how can we support economically vulnerable fathers and families without rationalizing fathers’ importance in terms of paternal essentiality? The essential father discourse actually diminishes the full significance of fathers’ importance by ascribing value to men’s gender and presumed ability to model masculinity rather than to the numerous ways men meet children’s material, emotional, and relational needs. Though the preponderance of existing research does not justify teaching men that they make uniquely gendered contributions to child development, there is a strong and growing empirical basis for emphasizing how children’s well-being is deeply influenced by fathers, irrespective of gender. Without falling into the trap of paternal essentiality and highlighting masculinity as the rationale for men’s parental involvement, programs could address how gender ideologies shape lived experiences of fathering by taking a cue from DADS participants. They described the value of learning about their importance as parents and being able to connect with others who empathized with their struggles, while also striving to emulate the variety of positive parental role models in their lives—women and men alike. Their perspectives shed new light on studies claiming that fathers make uniquely masculine contributions to parenting (Blankenhorn 1995; Palkovitz 2013; Popenoe 1996). They call into question whether men’s desires for fathers are really a gendered longing for a male parent to teach them about masculinity, or if “father hunger” (Gallagher 1998) comes from social and political narratives that deem sons without involved fathers deficient. It is, therefore, imperative for policymakers and practitioners to ponder whether the essential father discourse is partly responsible for creating the “father wound” (Leap 2015) they strive to prevent. Of the 14 responsible fatherhood curricula listed by the Federal Administration for Children and Families, many address themes similar to those in 24/7 Dad, including developing parenting skills and identifying as men and fathers (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2018). However, these findings specifically apply to the DADS program and may not be representative of language, themes, and strategies used in other programs. Some studies have analyzed how fatherhood programs allow disadvantaged men to construct new care-focused definitions of manhood and paternal responsibility not limited to breadwinning (Anderson et al. 2002; Roy and Dyson 2010), but they did not indicate whether the programs included messages about paternal essentiality. Future research should address whether other programs promote similar messages about the essential father, and if not, what strategies are most effective for teaching fathers that their value to children is as caring parents, not necessarily as men. Subsequent studies could also explore how fathers respond to curricula that more directly address intersecting institutional barriers to involvement. Program themes might include the criminal justice system’s targeting of men of color, child support enforcement policies that trap poor fathers in a cycle of insurmountable debt, and the growing low-wage sector of the labor market that makes earning a living wage nearly impossible for many. Fathers could engage with similarly situated parents around collective experiences with these obstacles and shared commitments to children. This type of connection offers potentially more powerful grounds for the development of a positive paternal identity than one rooted solely in gender. Ultimately, despite the resonance of the essential father discourse as a personal and political narrative, promoting it as a matter of policy will only draw attention away from the structural forces shaping fatherhood that all too often undermine marginalized men’s abilities to be highly involved parents. I am grateful to Daisy Rooks, Jennifer Sherman, Jennifer Utrata, Laurel Westbrook, and Kerry Woodward for their constructive feedback on previous drafts of this manuscript. I thank Craig Bailey for the many conversations that shaped my conceptualization of the research and analysis. 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TI - Role Modeling Responsibility: The Essential Father Discourse in Responsible Fatherhood Programming and Policy
JF - Social Problems
DO - 10.1093/socpro/spy027
DA - 2020-02-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/role-modeling-responsibility-the-essential-father-discourse-in-5hv5EqjaVa
SP - 96
VL - 67
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -