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This paper explains the rationale of interventions designed to support the relationship between children and their battering fathers. Traditional domestic violence services have focused primarily on treating battered women and their children, neglecting to hold fathers accountable for the effects of their abuse. The involvement of abusive men in the welfare of their children forces them to take responsibility. Interventions also help children to resolve their feelings of conflicting loyalties to their parents. Children's groups are often effective in helping children understand the nature of…
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Journal Article While it is rare that a biological father will appear and contest his child's adoption, just the possibility that this might occur is often enough to dissuade couples and individuals from adopting newborn infants. There has been little progress toward legal reform in this area, with the States left to try on their own to reconcile the Supreme Court's guidance on the issue of biological fathers' rights with their own judgments about the role an unwed father should play in the life of his child. This article begins by analyzing the development of unwed fathers' rights in American adoption law…
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Journal Article The experience of adolescent fatherhood was explored through in-depth interviews. Ten African American teenage fathers from a midwestern city were asked to describe what being a father meant to them. The subjects discussed their perceptions of fatherhood and described some of the obstacles to meeting their paternal aspirations. Key themes included the subjects' desire to be actively involved with their children and the critical influence of the subjects' experiences with their own fathers. Strategies for working with adolescent fathers are also presented. (Author abstract).
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Journal Article This article describes the court case in which the Kansas Supreme Court addresses the stepparent adoption provision of the Kansas Adoption and Relinquishment Act. The court for this case held that the statute will be strictly interpreted in favor of the birth father who was in danger of having his parental rights forfeited when the issue was whether he failed or refused to fulfill his parental obligations. The court for this case reversed the district court order granting the adoption by the stepfather. The court granted significant protection in the stepparent adoption to the father who…
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Fathers give tips about how they care for and relate to their children aged birth to 3 years.
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Journal Article Although it is generally assumed that fathers are absent from the lives of children being raised on AFDC, evidence from a case-control study in Worcester, Massachusetts, suggests that there is considerable father-child contact. Participants in the study included 220 sheltered homeless women and 216 low-income housed women and their dependent children. The women were interviewed about the father of each child, the physical and mental health of each child, education, support networks, and custody. The children also were asked about their social networks. Twenty percent of the fathers paid child…
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Journal Article In 1994, the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed an order dissolving the adoption of "Baby Richard" and returning the child to his biological parents after 3 1/2 years with an adoptive family. This decision prompted the Illinois General Assembly to make significant changes to the State's adoption laws. In an effort to secure the finality of adoptions, the legislature promulgated several new burdens on putative fathers. The author examines the problems faced by courts and legislatures across the United States in addressing the plight of thwarted putative fathers, analyzes the case and the new…
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Journal Article Using data from the National Survey of Families and Households, we investigate how fathers spend time with their children, what encourages them to do this, and the effects of fathers' time on children's academic achievement. We pay particular attention to the type of family structure that resident fathers and children share, and we find this to have an influence on both the activities that fathers engage in with their children and on children's grades. Both family structure and shared activities between fathers and their children are associated with children's academic achievement, but father…
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Journal Article To further the understanding of the determinants of fathering, the parenting of 64 fathers of first-born male toddlers was observed at home at four ages across the second and third years of life (15, 21, 27, and 33 months). Four qualitative measures of fathering were derived from the observational data. Hierarchical linear regression models were used to assess the association(s) between these fathering behaviors and variables representing three broad domains of influence on parenting (parent characteristics, social-contextual factors, and child characteristics), as well as social economic…
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Journal Article This editorial highlights a conference on fatherhood sponsored by the Department of Defense. It discusses the challenges military families face and identifies several initiatives that are designed to provide support and education opportunities to military fathers.
