Black Single Fathers: Choosing to Parent Full-Time
Summary (3 min read)
METHOD AND SAMPLE PROFILE
- Combining the qualitative research principles of grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967) with limited quantitative data, this research focused on identifying key elements in the process buttressing the choice to become full-time fathers.
- Fathers are admitted to the study based on their racial identity and custodial status.
- About five of the fathers had legal custody—that is, custody adjudicated by the courts.
- Several themes emerged asmore important considerations than others.
THE CHOICE OR DUTY TO PARENT
- Defining choice and weighing the individual pushes and pulls of the decision to parent is a murky area.
- Four of the fathers experienced a period of time when they did not have custody of their child, and three of those four fathers were able to use that time to complete a college education and find stable employment, whereupon they requested custody.
- Moreover, for these men the choice to conceive and give birth to a child is not a decision separate from the one to raise a child; rather, the former implies the latter.
- Nevertheless, he says, “People compliment me for having custody, but I don’t really warm to the compliments too much, because they are complimenting me on something that I felt was my responsibility to do.”.
- And it’s not like she just abandoned him on some wayside station.
BREAKING A CYCLE OF BAD DADS
- Striking among the findings here is the role played by the fathers’ experiences in their families of orientation in their motivation to father full-time.
- Rather than re-creating that paternal motif in their generation, many of these men found their lack of a nurturing father to be a consciously motivating factor in their own parenting experience.
- It was like, you know, I’m not going to do what my father did to me.
- Then the next time I saw himwas at his funeral.
- Another father had his son’s friend living with them as well, and two fathers spent a significant part of their timementoring other young children through community or school programs.
PROVIDING ROLE MODELS FOR CHILDREN
- Asmentioned earlier, one of the fathers had had some conflicts with law enforcement as a juvenile; two others had siblingswhowere “living the street life” or in jail.
- His daughter has had some behavioral problems in the past year, and he feels he was not as understanding and responsive to her needs as he was to his son’s, perhaps because he assumed his son would have been more likely to experience problems than his daughter.
- But with my son, I knew that a lot of things are going to bring him down, as far as being a black male.
- So I’ve always tried to prepare him and kept him with me, where he would learn from me.
- While this desire to be a rolemodel for their children wasmore often expressed by fathers of boys, girls represented a slight majority of custodial children (seven of a total of thirteen custodial children).
JUST FULFILLING AN ESTABLISHED DREAM OR BOND
- For some of the fathers, taking custody just seemed the natural thing to do, given a long-held desire to be a father, to enact an image they had held of the perfect family, and/or to fulfill the close relationship they had with their children.
- She was very ill through the whole pregnancy, and she had a hard time in labor.
- Larry says that those years of working on the relationship with his kids effected a bond that motivated him to take custody.
- As I look back on it, I think that was how the authors bonded.
- Most previous studies (Chang and Deinard 1982; Greif 1990; Ihinger-Tallman, Pasley, and Buehler 1995; Marsiglio 1991b; Morgan, Lye, and Condran 1988) of single custodial fathers indicate that gender plays a role in father custody (see Furstenberg et al.
AVAILABILITY OF RESOURCES
- In the choice to parent, the availability of resources is often a major, though not always a conscious, consideration.
- Several studies (Lerman 1993) have found that employment didn’t make black men more likely to marry; rather, it made them less likely to become fathers prior to marriage.
- Most of the fathers also had a residence in place when they took custody.
- But once my baby was born and they seen the responsibility that I was taking for her, they didn’t mind at all.
- The remaining fathers live within five miles of some of their family members and call on them for assistance to one degree or another.
RACIAL AND GENDER STEREOTYPES
- The issue of stereotypes of black men was raised by the interviewer.
- Most said it did not play a significant role in their decision at the time.
- Alex, father of one-year-old Alex Jr., said, “I see that image out there, but I don’t feel that I’m doing this to prove that image wrong.
- But in a larger sense I’m doing it for every man out there that’s in this situation.
- Or that could be if he only, you know, took it upon himself to say, “Okay, this is theway it is—I’m going to handle my business,” as opposed to searching around for reasons not to do it.
DISCUSSION
- While this sample is neither random nor large enough from which to generalize, the goal of qualitative research is to capture the complex assumptions, meanings, and motivations that guide the decisionmaking process.
- The intent of this studywas not to test theory but rather to build theory from the ground up, explore new territory in the growing field of fatherhood, give voice to a previously unheard from group of fathers, and provide a sense of how they choose to parent.
- An increasing number of black men are adopting children, particularly boys (Anonymous 1994).
- Kotre (1984) made the point that one cannot rewrite one’s own history, so one is compelled to rewrite it in a new generation.
- By proactively taking custody of their children, by being there for them, they can be the intervening agent who halts or even reverses the consequences of a previous generation’s mistakes, consequences both for themselves and for their children.
NOTES
- The rate of teen pregnancy has been declining among African Americans in the past few years, and one of the main contributing factors in the apparent rise in the proportion of nonmarital births among African Americans is the increasing tendency to postpone marriage among African Americans and the subsequent declining fertility rates among married black women.
- The declining rate of fertility among married black women means that nonmarital births form a larger portion of all births.
- Dowd (1997) estimated that 41 percent of father-custody families are remarried men.
- Throughout this article, all the names of fathers and children are pseudonyms.
- Only one of the fathers had been belowmajority age—sixteen—at the time of the birth of his first child; eight of them had been in their twenties and thirties.
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"Black Single Fathers: Choosing to P..." refers background in this paper
...…1990;Greif and DeMaris 1989; Hanson 1981, 1986; Hipgrave 1982; Katz 1979; Keshet andRosenthal 1976;Mendex 1976;Orthner, Brown, and Ferguson 1976; Robinson and Barrett 1986; Risman 1986; Rosenthal and Keshet 1981; Santrock andWarshak 1979; Smith and Smith 1981; and Tedder, Libbee, and Scherman…...
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Frequently Asked Questions (12)
Q2. What is the common type of assistance given to fathers?
The two fatherswith the youngest children also are men who work second- or third-shift jobs, and they receive themost assistance (about forty hours of child care per week) from familymembers.
Q3. Why did the fathers take on a full-time parenting role?
because of the biological differences betweenmen andwomen and theway their society has structured gender roles, men have more of a choice than do women as to whether to take on a full-time parenting role once a child is born.
Q4. What is the rate of teen pregnancy among African Americans?
The rate of teen pregnancy has been declining among African Americans in the past few years, and one of the main contributing factors in the apparent rise in the proportion of nonmarital births among African Americans is the increasing tendency to postpone marriage among African Americans and the subsequent declining fertility rates among married black women.
Q5. How many of the nine fathers took custody of their children?
Excluding the adoptive father in this sample, five of the remaining nine fathers had continuously coresided with their children since birth; that is, upon divorce or separation from the mother, they immediately took custody.
Q6. What are the common family member assisters?
Mothers and sisters are themost common family member assisters, but aunts, grandmothers, brothers, and uncles play an occasional role as well.
Q7. What did the fathers say about parenting?
at least four of the fathers here used language that indicated that they also saw parenting as a duty and that self-imposed standards, rather than circumstances, were more likely to have constrained their choice, impelling them to take on the responsibility.
Q8. What is the main reason why black men are less likely to marry?
In particular, the higher level of unemployment among black men has been debated as a factor in determining their lower marriage rates.
Q9. What was the reason for Larry to take custody of his daughter?
Larry waited until he was settled in a two-bedroom apartment to get custody of Erica, and he currently is hoping to be able to move to a larger apartment or house to be able to take his son as well.
Q10. What does he think of the decision to parent as a single father?
Ray, divorced father of ten-year-old Kyle, realizes that his choice to parent as a single father could garner him more kudos than is usual for single mothers.
Q11. What did the fathers say about taking custody of their children?
”For some of the fathers, taking custody just seemed the natural thing to do, given a long-held desire to be a father, to enact an image they had held of the perfect family, and/or to fulfill the close relationship they had with their children.
Q12. How many children did the fathers of girls have?
While this desire to be a rolemodel for their children wasmore often expressed by fathers of boys, girls represented a slight majority of custodial children (seven of a total of thirteen custodial children).