This report focuses on the role and importance of fathers in the lives of their children. Emphasis is placed on ways that the family support movement can support fathers and strengthen families. The guide examines traditional family service assumptions about the involvement of mothers and fathers and describes programs that reach out to men. Articles identify barriers to fathers' involvement in family support programs and highlight the elements of community-based father-friendly programs. A special message from Vice President Al Gore is included.
This report describes a project undertaken in 1995 by the National Center for Children in Poverty to map State initiatives for young children and families and to develop a framework to track changes in initiatives over time. Thus, the Map and Track project was designed to determine the initiatives that States are undertaking to promote the healthy development of children. The report begins by identifying developments that make information about State initiatives for children and families timely; describing the types of State initiatives tracked by the project; outlining proxy indicators 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…
Given the support for increased involvement of parents in their children's schooling and the positive contribution men can make to children's development, it is important to reach out specifically to fathers or other significant males in parent involvement efforts for pre-kindergarten and early childhood programs. This digest discusses barriers to male involvement, including: (1) fathers' fears of exposing inadequacies; (2) ambivalence of program staff members about father involvement; (3) gatekeeping by mothers; and (4) inappropriate program design and delivery. The digest also offers the…
Research on intergenerational learning includes a range of studies that focus on the transmission of beliefs and practices and modeling of behaviors from generation to generation. This critical review focuses on the broader issues in intergenerational learning and the multiple, though small, streams of work that examine the impact of fathers' involvement in families. The discussion focuses on four areas: (1) intergenerational and life-course issues that have emerged over the past 25 years; (2) parental influences on children with special emphasis on parenting and grandparenting, parent-child…
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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).
This conference presentation explores current patterns of public transfer receipt (such as earned income tax credit, public health insurance coverage, food stamps, and public assistance) among single-father families and provides an update on existing census-based research on characteristics of single-father families. Data were obtained from the March Current Population Surveys (CPS) for selected years from 1983 through 1995. Demographic characteristics, socioeconomic characteristics, and public transfer receipts were compared for three types of fathers: (1) married fathers; (2) single fathers…
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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…
This study reviewed research about fathering to develop a framework for understanding the variables that influence the level of father involvement in the life of a child. The contextual analysis is intended to inform responsible fatherhood initiatives and programs. Research findings indicate that father involvement is affected significantly by environmental factors, such as the man's relationship with the mother of his child, employment status, and income level. The study suggests that the contextual nature of fatherhood indicates that cultural, economic, institutional, and interpersonal…
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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…
