express diverse and nuanced definitions of responsibility.13
Men doubly marginalized by poverty and racism tend to struggle the most with living up to breadwinning expectations of paternal responsibility. Ideas of responsible fatherhood embedded in directives to support “a child’s intellectual, emotional, and financial well-being” incorporate traditional aspects of economic providing with contemporary ideas of emotional and social engagement. I learned that, for poor men of color, these “newer” ideas of nurturing fatherhood meant that they now risk failing in numerous ways as parents. The main problem for the men in DADS was that their social and economic constraints prevented them from achieving either traditional or contemporary fathering goals.
Breadwinning is often talked about as the component of responsible fatherhood economically vulnerable men can least afford. Yet both the financial and emotional components of fathering have costs that often surpass their means. Fathers who do not live with their children, as was the case with many DADS participants, are more likely to spend time with kids when they have more economic resources; those who do live with children are more likely to contribute financially as a replacement for time and care.14 That money is often a prerequisite or substitute for other forms of involvement suggests that more flexible definitions of fathering rarely translate into more emotional engagement when fathers’ breadwinning capabilities falter. As was the case for DADS participants, this signals how broader ideas of paternal engagement can validate men as more than mere breadwinners, while simultaneously setting them up to feel inadequate as both providers and caregivers.
Fathers’ stories reflected this harsh reality. They also revealed how men actively used the program to claim identities as responsible fathers and deflect stigma that they were failed providers and parents. A primary way they did so was by co-opting the language of provision, which traditionally denoted fathers’ financial responsibilities, and using it to describe the value of fathers’ time, love, and existence. By defining a “good provider” as one who gives of himself, especially in the context of deep poverty, fathers were able push back against the controlling image of the “deadbeat dad.”15 Men viewed DADS as an opportunity to improve their job prospects and their children’s lives. Even more so, they experienced it as a rare space for the performance of important boundary work. For them DADS was not just a social program. It was a unique place where they could draw symbolic, relational, and sometimes even physical boundaries between the men they used to be and the fathers they wanted to become.
This chapter explores how marginalized men used particular frameworks of fathering and providing to make claims about their moral worth as responsible parents. Sociologist Ann Swidler theorized how people in distinct structural locations develop different cultural “toolkits” they can use to create strategies of action that solve their problems in emotionally resonant ways.16 DADS gave men additional conceptual tools to understand and justify 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:
