Essential Dads. Dr. Jennifer M. Randles
Читать онлайн книгу.
involvement in nonfinancial terms. They relied on program messages to explain their parenting choices, shape high-status paternal identities, and resist characterizations as deadbeat dads. Ultimately, they selected and interpreted meanings of responsibility that most aligned with their abilities. This signified how marginalized men still feel accountable to breadwinning-plus definitions of good fathering directly at odds with their life circumstances, but also how they make sense of the structural inequalities that shape their parenting.
The “new” father ideal codified in policy may be a more flexible definition for privileged men who can mobilize their social and economic resources to meet (or outsource) the simultaneous demands of providing money, time, and care. However, marginalized men can experience expanded notions of the father’s role as more restrictive when deep poverty and racism limit living up to multiple components of responsible parenthood. That Cayden paid little in child support and had no contact with Alisha meant that he feared falling short in multiple ways as a father. DADS helped him manage these insecurities by giving him a space to claim and enact an identity as a good father—“not a deadbeat”—who was “here” and “trying.” One of the most significant components of DADS was how it framed the nonfinancial aspects of fathering as valuable forms of provision, allowing men without class and race privilege to assert identities as successful providers.
REDEFINING THE GOOD PROVIDER ROLE
Fathers described how their prior understandings of being there focused on “providing” or being a “good provider,” but not just financial resources. DADS validated this breadwinning-plus model of fatherhood that the fathers already valued. They defined providing as giving children money and material goods, such as diapers, but just as importantly time, opportunity, and a father committed to their well-being. Fathering classes offered through DADS reinforced this multidimensional idea of provision, including physical presence, emotional engagement, and monetary support. The 24/7 Dads classes many took explicitly taught men to think of providing in this broader way by noting that “the problem that many dads have is that they allow work to control their lives so much that they lose sight of how much they value family and the relationship between work and family. They think of themselves as providers of money or that providing money is so important that it’s okay to not provide in other ways.”17 Although working too much was rarely a problem fathers in DADS had, given their limited job prospects, many explained how the classes helped them better see themselves as providers of all things children needed to thrive. Fathers repeatedly described to me the importance of supporting their children financially, but also insisted that money alone was insufficient for being a responsible father. Men’s participation in the program helped them rearrange the hierarchy of responsibilities in their estimations of the father role.
Challenging the idea that breadwinning should be a father’s main parenting priority, respondents stressed how time, care, and their participation in DADS were ways of being there that most benefited children. Taylor, a twenty-four-year-old Black father of two, told me that the most valuable lesson DADS taught him is the importance of providing a father’s time:
I’m there. I teach him right from wrong. I buy him clothes. . . . I take him to school. I pick him up, send him to doctor’s appointments, help him with his homework, and teach him how to play sports. . . . The classes taught us to be there, not just financially, but physically. . . . Spending time with your kids is the most important. Money goes and comes, but time goes and don’t come back. I’m there from the time he wakes up to the time he goes to sleep. I was there to see his first crawl.
Like Cayden and Taylor, most fathers described good providers as those who go beyond breadwinning to be there physically and emotionally. This was something they believed before joining the program.
Still, messages from DADS were crucial for reinforcing their breadwinning-plus script of responsible fatherhood. The program’s emphasis on the importance of care and time was symbolically powerful to men who relied on these messages to develop a sense of themselves as good providers, despite the various life circumstances that prevented them from offering children much money. DADS helped men rationalize that their presence was even more important than finances. Fathers learned that time was a finite resource in a way money was not and something only a father could offer. Although money was certainly finite for men in DADS, they came to understand paternal presence as even more valuable and scarce. These messages gave fathers something they never had before: a framework for understanding their worth to children as providers in a way not dependent on education, employment, or earnings.
How men used the language of provision to describe responsible fatherhood reflected this new understanding. When talked about in relation to fathering, the terms provide and provider generally indicate supplying the money or material goods necessary to meet children’s needs for food, clothing, housing, and the like. Notably, however, the fathers I spoke with talked about provision in terms of meeting their children’s needs for attention, protection, instruction, and nurturance. That DADS staff and the curriculum discussed providing in this way helped fathers conceptualize paternal provision in broader, more inclusive terms. Michael, a twenty-four-year-old Latino father of two, told me: “Some people think that being a good dad is . . . providing stuff for them. I think being a good father is actually being there emotionally and physically and providing care for them, such as when they’re sick.” For fathers, this redefinition of the good provider role helped them reframe successful fathering around components of parenthood they could attain.
As part of fathers’ identity work, it allowed them to claim identities as good providers in ways that were possible in spite of their economic obstacles. Dustin, a twenty-two-year-old Black father of one, talked about providing as supplying all the tangible and intangible things his daughter needed to thrive: “Being there is the ability to provide for all their needs, being able to pay rent and do things like that, but not only that. It’s about preparing for her future, reading to your daughter, teaching your daughter, talking to her, taking her out to the park, having family moments, keeping her away from all the music, all the negative stuff. . . . Providing is not just money. My own dad gave me lots of money, but he didn’t really provide because he wasn’t really there.” According to these men, providing was an all-encompassing term that captured the many varied components of responsible fatherhood. They believed it was equally as important to provide things as it was to provide a dependable father-child relationship through which children felt safe and loved, created fond memories, and learned to trust others. Facundo, a nineteen-year-old Latino father of one, described providing as being there “at soccer games, taking him out for ice cream, sitting on the couch with him watching Saturday morning cartoons and eating cereal.” For Caleb, a forty-year-old Native American father of three, being a good provider meant that “ain’t nobody sitting at the award ceremony at school looking for Dad.”
Defining providing and being there outside the bounds of breadwinning also helped fathers emotionally manage how work and care responsibilities conflict when time was a limited resource. Curtis, an eighteen-year-old Latino father of one, told me that DADS “teaches you that you’re not a bad dad if you can’t give your kid what they want, all the extra things. You’re not a bad dad for that. You can’t get mad at yourself. All you can do is try harder. If you work a lot and go home tired, and you can’t really socialize with your family because you’ve got to get up in a couple hours, you can’t hate yourself for that. Sometimes you can only do one thing, either your family or your job. Sometimes in providing for your family you’re struggling with your family.” Curtis learned that being a good father meant having to make hard choices between the different components of involvement. Like others, he described time spent at work as a way of spending time on behalf of, if not with, his children.
Other fathers talked about providing as what a responsible father should not do to be there for his children. As the 24/7 Dads curriculum noted, this included not putting breadwinning and money above children’s other needs. David, a twenty-two-year-old Black father of one, explained that being there is about “making sure they have everything they need, . . . being at all their school events, so she can look up and see me there. But it also means not putting work before my daughter.” Tanner, a thirty-seven-year-old multiracial father of two, participated in DADS through a residential drug addiction treatment program, an alternative