Have Fathers been marginalized by policy makers and human service programs?

As I mentioned yesterday, Kay Humowitz has written an article in the Autumn 2004 issue of the City Journal entitled, "Dads In the Hood". She points out in the article that the social services industry has long been in what she calls "Dad denial". It makes me wonder how the social service discourse has marginalized men from their roles as fathers as if they were irrelevant to the lives of the mothers of their children and the children themselves.

"Fatherhood is also getting a boost from a social-services industry that had long been in dad-denial. For close to half a century, the welfare establishment viewed fatherlessness as poverty's unavoidable collateral damage. Federal and local governments spent billions on Mom's parenting and work skills, day care and Head Start, food stamps, after-school programs, and health care; but they didn't have much to say about—or to—Dad. Starting in the mid-1990s, reams of research began to convince even the most skeptical activists and policymakers of the importance of fathers and the two-parent family to children's life chances, and attention turned toward the missing dad. Today, programs that try to impress young single fathers with their importance in their kids' lives are spreading across the social-services world, with support from the federal and state governments. "There's a lot of buzz about this right now," D. J. Andrews says."

Part of the problem is what Hymowitz calls the "accidental father syndrome.

"People who work closely with the men-who-would-be-fathers describe it this way: a man and woman—or perhaps a boy and girl of 15 and 16—are having a sexual relationship. They're careful at first, but soon get careless. (The rate of contraceptive use at first intercourse has gone up among teen girls from 65 percent in 1988 to 76 percent in 1995, but after that, a third of these girls use contraception erratically.) Sure enough, she's pregnant."

Never having had a father himself, or lived in a family where two parents worked together to raise children, all the role modeling this young father has he got from TV and movies where father's are often portrayed as inept, selfish, and foolish.

"The Accidental Father is trying to build a family without a blueprint. For one thing, he has no idea what, aside from bringing over some Huggies and Similac, he is supposed to do. After all, there weren't any fathers around when he was a child. Some men say that they grew up not even being sure what to call these ghostly figures in their lives—Dad? Pops? George or Fred?—or what fathers say to their kids beyond "How ya doin'?" or "How's school?" "To me, fathers were somewhat of a luxury, an 'extra' parent of sorts," journalist Darrell Dawsey, who grew up in a single-parent household in inner-city Detroit, explains in his memoir Living to Tell About It."

Without a job and an education these young men rarely marry their child's mother even if he wishes to be a father, but without resources, without stability, without a job, the connection may be fragile and when attempts are made "to be there" it is met with what is called "the mama drama", and "the grandmama drama".

"One day, the father arrives at the apartment and walks into what some veteran dads refer to as "mama drama"—a litany of demands and accusations, some no doubt deserved: he is late, he didn't show up last week when he said he would, he hasn't delivered the money he promised for the high chair. His girlfriend's mother, understandably mistrustful of the cause of the wailing newcomer to an already chaotic apartment, adds an unfriendly greeting of her own: this is "grandma drama." "He's 18, she's 16. He drops by to see the baby. He's got some Pampers and formula," explains Neil Tift, director of training for the National Practitioners Network for Fathers and Families. "Grandma doesn't respect him. No matter how much he wants to see the child, how much abuse is he going to take?" "Many black men say to me that the sisters are just too much work," says Nick Chiles, co-author with his wife, Denene Millner, of numerous books on the relationships of African-American men and women. Once men find themselves getting in tangles with women they think of as girlfriends, not as wives, it's no wonder."

Hymowitz points out that there are class issues involved. Middle class people are looking for the life partner who is "the one". "The one" they will settle down with, raise a family with, and pursue the middle class dream of the house with the picket fence in the suburbs with two cars in the drive way and an entertainment center in the house fed by the satelite dish with 156 channels. This life script does not fit for kids who grow up in single parent poverty.

"Most American men take it for granted that not just marriage, but the pursuit of long-lasting love, is an essential life project. They spend a good deal of their adolescence and early adulthood trying to find "the one." And when they think that they have found that person, they have a predictable script in mind: they imagine and plan a life with her, one that usually involves children; they assume that both of them will be faithful; they take public vows to sanctify their shared life venture. Things far too often these days don't work out the way they're supposed to, but the very existence of an inherited script endows life with meaning and orders the otherwise disconnected existence of individual men, women, and children.

But poor black men have no script to guide their deeper emotions and aspirations. Neither searching for, nor expecting, durable companionship with the opposite sex, they settle for becoming Accidental Parents and Families."

So what is the answer? It really is pretty simple as pointed out in another article on this blog: a high school degree, no kids without marriage, and no marriage until at least age 20. Beyond that there needs to be hopes and dreams of a better life with a partner who shares the vision of the future. Love is not about sex today, but about building a life together for tomorrow and ten years from now.

Hope is hard to sell to a kid who, even if (s)he knows who their father is, doesn't know when they will see him again for sure.

Fathers are important. Policy makers and human service program designers need to create opportunities for all stakeholders in the family to recognize, acknowledge, and engage in practices that honor that fact. The current and future generations are depending on it.

Link: City Journal Autumn 2004 | Dads in the ‘Hood by Kay S. Hymowitz.