The DADS program was essential in these cases for bridging the gap between men’s paternal identities as involved fathers and their actual behaviors influenced by multiple and often insurmountable barriers. It was a unique situated space where they could redefine being a good provider as not just a parent committed to giving children financial support, but a father who loved them enough to change his life and life chances for their future well-being.
BEING THERE AS BEST THEY CAN
The men’s stories aligned with Edin and Nelson’s finding that marginalized fathers espouse a “doing the best I can” ethos that justifies providing materially only on an as-able basis, often through highly visible or essential items such as expensive sneakers or formula and diapers.19 Given that this rarely covers half the actual costs of raising a child, mothers and others still believe that fathers’ attempts to do what they can often fall far short of enacting the responsible parent role. Fathers’ narratives indicated that they too were acutely aware of these perceived inadequacies and worked hard to develop identities as responsible fathers who reject narrow expectations of financial provision. On the surface, the result is a flexible and vague conception of responsibility whereby “being there” can mean doing anything on behalf of children.
Yet, considering the inequalities that structure the lives of marginalized fathers, being there—even its most essential component of staying alive—was no small feat for the men who found their way to DADS. It entailed resisting the pressure, both economic and social, to participate in illegal underground economies and gang activity, which risks cutting off paternal involvement if a father is incarcerated or, even worse, if he is killed. This resistance often requires fathers to cut off ties with close friends and family members. It also resigns them to the very low-wage sector of the formal labor market where even full-time work rarely earns enough to support a lone individual, much less a family. That these were core concerns of most of the men with whom I spoke revealed the inherent limitations of using definitions of paternal involvement based on white middle-class men as a starting point for political discussions of fathering. These accounts compel the question: What does “responsible fathering” look like when a man must worry that he may not make it to his child’s next birthday?
These findings also showed how government programs enhance marginalized fathers’ abilities to devise parenting scripts that allow them to resolve fundamental identity conflicts resulting from inequality. More broadly, they suggest how definitions of responsible fatherhood focused on time and care can be as problematic as those that emphasize breadwinning. Racism and economic vulnerability do not just undercut the ability of poor fathers of color to provide financially for their children. They prevent many from “being there” according to any definition.
Programs that focus on fathers’ identity regarding issues of breadwinning and caregiving represent a radical shift in how policy intervenes in fathering. Political definitions of good fatherhood in the United States have hinged on economic self-sufficiency and family financial support. In a significant departure from these criteria, responsible fatherhood programs may be one of the most important political and social contexts for developing men’s abilities to assert identities as successful men and fathers who circumvent singular expectations of economic providership.20
Offering fathers a space to connect with similarly situated men allows them to share and confide with others who empathize with what it is like to be on the margins of families and society.21 By increasing men’s sense of belonging and promoting a more inclusive understanding of family, fathering, and masculinity, programs can also be catalysts for changed perceptions of the gendered attributes of parenting.22 They are also politically redefining what fatherhood means outside the narrow bounds of biological paternity, marriage to children’s mothers, and financial child support. Shifting the perspective about the intended goals of fatherhood policies—from one solely focused on fathers’ finances and children’s outcomes to one that also acknowledges the importance of validating how men define, negotiate, and manage fathering expectations—is a powerful strategy for reducing the marginalization of men in family policy.23
Fathers’ stories also reinforced the importance of designing policies and programs around the cultural dimensions of parenting that most make sense in the context of marginalized men’s lives.24 We must understand how and why particular models of fathering resonate more with low-income men because they account for the inequalities that profoundly shape their lives. Without this insight, definitions of fathering embedded in policy risk reinforcing those inequalities and culture-of-poverty assumptions about marginalized men’s parenting. Fathers’ narratives specifically point to the need to rethink paternal “responsibility” in the context of deeply entrenched structural constraints. Government definitions that task fathers with addressing children’s full needs obscure how living up to one component of responsibility can jeopardize fulfilling others. Like Cayden, who quit high school to care for newborn Alisha, numerous fathers I studied experienced social and economic setbacks as the results of putting their children’s needs first. Many had to choose between higher-paying illegal and life-threatening activities and making much less to ensure that they would live long enough to see their children grow up. This suggests that marginalized fathers emphasize care and time not only because they are the components of fatherhood they can actually achieve, but because it is the most emotionally resonant way marginalized men can justify making impossible parenting choices.
“Being there” signals more than a greater focus on time and love over money in men’s descriptions of good fathering. That almost all the fathers I studied used this language indicates that it has become a common conceptual shorthand for reconciling the growing expectations of fathering and marginalized men’s inabilities to realize them. Both ubiquitous and amorphous, “being there” can refer to any level and type of involvement, even enrolling in a fatherhood program like DADS. Lest one should think this renders the phrase meaningless, I argue that the opposite is actually true. Men across lines of race and class have embraced the “new” fatherhood cultural ideal that dads should be financial providers and nurturing caregivers.25 That marginalized men equally espouse this multifaceted understanding of responsibility, despite the many more obstacles they face in fulfilling it, challenges culture-of-poverty assumptions that poor fathers of color hold different parenting values.26 I found that “being there” captured how men used a fatherhood program to perform paternal identity work, especially by aligning their challenging lived experiences with culturally ascendant ideas of being worthy men and fathers.
Ultimately, in carefully listening to these men, I discovered how DADS helped them tailor their definitions of good parenting and providing to account for the socioeconomic constraints that eroded connections to their children. The program was an opportunity to abandon lifestyles, relationships, and disadvantages that undermined their fathering capabilities. As importantly, it helped them negotiate definitions of “good” versus “bad” fathers and reconfigure dominant fatherhood scripts—especially that of the good provider—based on the experiences of white middle-class men and the implicit exclusion of men like them. Cayden and his classmates pursued the program to align their identities as responsible fathers based on a breadwinning-plus script with their behaviors. As I show in the next chapter, what they found was a group of people who validated these flexible, more inclusive meanings of “being there” and helped them access the resources they needed to live up to them.
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