and Carl Auerbach famously challenged the assumption that children need both mothers and fathers to thrive.70 Those who insist on the importance of fathers tend to believe that men and women parent differently as a result of natural (essential) differences, and that men are necessary (essential) for proper child development due to their ability to model masculine behavior. Essentialist ideas of masculinity as a core feature of responsible fatherhood have their roots in religious ideologies of patriarchal family headship and other biblical metaphors. Evidence for this lies in religiously motivated calls for gender-differentiated parenting roles among many leading advocates of the responsible fatherhood movement.71 Silverstein and Auerbach’s challenge to essentialism grew out of their research on coupled gay fathers, which found that the stability and predictability of parenting relationships matter far more than parents’ gender, sexual orientation, or biological relationships to children. The ideology of essentialism, specifically the belief that a child is best off having a mother and father, has contributed to less stability and predictability among many families. Non-married mothers, single gay fathers, and same-sex couples raising children have higher poverty rates than families with married heterosexual couples,72 in part because discriminatory laws and policies have given the latter more benefits and official recognition of their coparenting and parent-child ties.
The political appeal of the essentialist position, Silverstein and Auerbach concluded, reflects social anxiety about changes in family life and gender norms; it is also a backlash against gay rights and feminist social movements that have challenged the power and privilege of heterosexual men within the nuclear family. Research bears out this explanation, as there is little support for the belief that fathers are valuable because of maleness, masculinity, or heterosexuality. As mothers, fathers, and non-binary parents become more similar in how and how much they interact with children, gender is even less salient for how parents influence child development.73
Still, there is no denying that parenting is a gendered experience. Despite the lack of significant behavioral differences between mothers and fathers, adults and children are taught to recognize, anticipate, and respond to gender distinctions, especially among their closest caregivers. That is, we learn to think of mothering and fathering as distinct. This conceptual difference, rather than any innate biological distinctions, shapes children’s understanding of gendered behavioral expectations. Women’s and men’s overall different social, political, and economic positions also contribute to gender differences in parenting meanings, processes, and resources. Structural gender inequalities and ideologies, such as the gender pay gap and expectations that women should be primarily responsible for caregiving, shape parenting capacities and patterned differences between “fathering” and “mothering.”74 The ubiquity and taken-for-granted quality of these patterns make them seem like natural expressions of essential differences between men and women. That fathers overall tend to benefit children more economically and educationally does not reflect biologically based parenting abilities. It reflects gender inequality, specifically that men have more authority, earn more money for equal work, and face less discrimination in the workplace. This is likely why there is less evidence for the link between father-child interaction and better childhood outcomes among low-income families in which fathers have fewer economic and social resources.75
The view that fathers’ masculinity is an important factor in families reflects these socially constructed differences between the meanings and experiences of mothering and fathering. Consequently, many children and parents believe that having male, masculine, or men’s parental guidance is crucial. Lesbian and single mothers deliberately recruit men as role models for their children through extended family and support networks.76 Boys themselves turn to other influential men in their lives, including grandfathers and coaches, as positive masculine role models of good parenting.77 Participants in fathering programs who grew up without positive paternal role models often enroll to develop the parenting skills they believe they lack.78
This all raises key questions regarding political claims about the importance of fathers. Are fathers important because they alone teach boys how to be good men and dads? Research would say no. Adolescents with and without men as parenting role models have similar gender traits, suggesting that gendered behaviors are not imparted only from mothers to daughters and fathers to sons.79 Moreover, there are no differences in child development and well-being outcomes, such as self-esteem and academic achievement, between children raised in two-parent lesbian families and those in two-parent families with a resident father.80
We must therefore consider another angle. How much are men important as parents because our society teaches us that children and families without fathers are inadequate? Beyond grief over a missing parent, how much does the social narrative that “fatherless” children are fundamentally lacking worsen men’s sense of “father hunger”? In a society that tasks individual parents with providing for all of children’s needs with little social support, is it any wonder that children grow to experience a deep sense of deprivation when a large piece of their small private safety net frays? Finally, how much do claims about men’s importance as parents resonate for marginalized fathers because they live in a racist, classist, and sexist society that teaches them they have little else than masculinity to offer their children?
I will show throughout this book why it is crucial to think about these questions in terms of Collins’s concept of controlling images. By teaching them to develop self-images as fathers essential for their children’s well-being, DADS allowed the men I studied to draw symbolic boundaries between themselves and the controlling image of the “deadbeat dad.” This message about the “essential father” is what I call a valorizing image. As a cultural idea that assigns unique value to poor fathers, the “essential father” is paradoxical. Unlike controlling images that stigmatize marginalized groups, valorizing images characterize them as centrally important. However, as with controlling images, the intent of a valorizing image is to shape the behaviors of those who experience marginalization, in this case by providing a compelling rationale for poor fathers’ non-financial involvement as parents.
Both the “deadbeat dad” and the “essential father” are deeply tied to power relations of race, class, and gender. They blame marginalized men for their disadvantage and provide a compelling cultural narrative that explains inequalities as results of individual pathologies, rather than structural inequities. Understanding this paradox built into the image of the essential father is imperative for grasping the social and political implications of fatherhood policy. This requires an in-depth look at how messages about men’s parenting unfold on the ground in responsible fatherhood programming.
STUDYING “DADS”: ON THE GROUND OF RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD POLITICS
In 2012, the U.S. Administration for Children and Families funded fifty-nine programs through the Pathways to Responsible Fatherhood Grants. Over two years, I studied men’s experiences in one of these programs as a unique way of intervening in controversies about the importance of fathers. Men’s relationships with their children are influenced by what scholars call “paternal identity,” or how invested they are in seeing themselves as parents and how satisfied they are with their parenting abilities.81 Yet most of the previous research on fatherhood policies and programs has focused more on what men do as fathers and less on how men think about themselves as fathers.82 Drawing primarily on the voices of sixty-four men who participated in DADS, I reveal what being a responsible parent meant to marginalized fathers often typecast as “deadbeats” and how they managed identities as good parents amid significant economic and social constraints.
DADS served low-income fathers and expectant fathers between the ages of sixteen and forty-five. Located in a midsize city in the Western United States, DADS was part of a community agency I call the Workforce and Education Program (WEP), which provided education, employment, and job training for the county’s low-income residents. Participants had access to an on-site charter high school, paid vocational training, resumé workshops, job search assistance, financial literacy workshops, and relationship and parenting classes.
