Essential Dads
The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Barbara S. Isgur Endowment Fund in Public Affairs.
Essential Dads
THE INEQUALITIES AND POLITICS OF FATHERING
Jennifer M. Randles
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
University of California Press
Oakland, California
© 2020 by Jennifer Randles
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Randles, Jennifer M., author.
Title: Essential dads : the inequalities and politics of fathering / Jennifer M. Randles.
Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020014438 (print) | LCCN 2020014439 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520335226 (cloth) | ISBN 9780520335233 (paperback) | ISBN 9780520974388 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Fatherhood—United States—Case studies. | Fatherhood responsibility movement—United States—Case studies. | Parenting—United States—Case studies. | Equality.
Classification: LCC HQ756 .R355 2020 (print) | LCC HQ756 (ebook) | DDC 306.874/20973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014438
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014439
Manufactured in the United States of America
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For my dad,
Bennie Randles,
who always knew the importance of being there.
Contents
2. Being There Beyond Breadwinning
3. Resources for Responsibility
4. Making a Case to Mothers
5. New Fathers and Old Ideas
6. Teaching the Essential Father
7. Having It Better
Acknowledgments
Appendix: Pregnancy and Parenthood in the Field
Notes
References
Index
1 Knowing What a Father Is
“I don’t want him to grow up like I grew up. I want my son to have everything. I don’t want him to be a have-not,” explained Christopher.1 Father to three-year-old Chris Jr., Christopher, a twenty-two-year-old Black man, was feeling unsteady but hopeful when we met. He was searching for a place to live, looking for a job, and planning how to get back together with Chris Jr.’s mother, Monique. “No matter how bad me and his mom disagree, or how bad other things get, I still try to be there for him because you’ve only got one dad. There are only two ways to keep me from being there for my son, if I’m in jail or dead.”
Christopher knew the heartache of the first and had come dangerously close to the second. A former gang member who left school after the eleventh grade, Christopher was raised by his paternal grandmother in one of the poorest neighborhoods in America. When he was born, his parents struggled with homelessness and addiction. With his mother in prison, Christopher’s father tried to care for him, but there was not enough money for both milk and diapers. He relinquished custody when Christopher was three months old, becoming less involved as his son grew older. With a sigh of resignation, Christopher praised his grandmother while expressing longing for a close relationship with his father:
She was an amazing parent, stuck it through no matter what. I got the clothes and food I needed. I might not have had the name brands, but I was never hungry. . . . I always said growing up that I will never be like my dad. I want [Chris Jr.] to know what a father is. I want him to be able to say, “My dad was there.” I feel like I’m trying to make up for my dad’s flaws in my relationship with my son, to make sure he doesn’t grow up and question, “What happened to my dad?” I’m here because I want to do better, as a father and a man in general, to get it together, to be able to support my family like a man should. Because that’s how I was raised. Grandma didn’t teach me to be a slouch.
Incarcerated the year before for selling drugs, Christopher knew he had to find a safer way to make the money needed to support his family, one that did not involve always “looking over my shoulder” and fearing the ultimate separation from his son. He confided to me, “I’m not going to lie. The thought of doing it again has crossed my mind. But every time it does, I just push it back and think of when I had to talk to my son from across the glass on his birthday.” Christopher still felt the sorrow of that isolation. “It broke my heart. I’m not an emotional person, but I cried. My son was crying, asking why he couldn’t come to the other side. I couldn’t answer. I knew right then, no more.”
That decision led him to enroll in DADS, a government-funded “responsible fatherhood” program that provided high school completion classes, paid job training, and fathering and relationship skills education. Government promotion of responsible fatherhood, which began with the 1996 U.S. Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, also known as welfare reform, has targeted economically vulnerable men like Christopher whose social and financial struggles hinder their fathering aspirations. The U.S. government defines responsible fatherhood as “being present in a child’s life, actively contributing to a child’s healthy development, sharing economic responsibilities, and cooperating with a child’s mother in addressing the full range of a child’s and family’s needs.”2 For fathers like Christopher—poor, homeless, unemployed, without a diploma, and bearing the stigma of a criminal record—this is a tall order. With no home and little money, Christopher could not keep Chris Jr. overnight, and he struggled to remain on good terms with Monique, who limited Christopher’s contact with Chris when they fought. Still, Christopher made it a priority to see his son every day and viewed DADS as an opportunity to “get back on [his] feet” after spending Chris Jr.’s third birthday in jail.
When I asked if DADS helped him do that, he was optimistic but ambivalent. The program offered a safe way to earn $400 a month and an opportunity
