FATHERHOOD IN AMERICA
FATHERHOOD IN AMERICA

Author: Carl Mazza

Publisher: Charles C Thomas Publisher

Published: 2017-01-27

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 0398091374

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Fathers are critical to their children's growth and development. Research on the involvement of men with their children stresses the important role that fathers play from infancy to adolescence. Due to the ethnically diverse population of fathers in America, culture and context frames the nature of fathering and shapes expectations within a cultural milieu. The book offers a wide range of vantage points–social work, family studies, marriage and family therapy, counseling, sociology, psychology, gender studies, anthropology, cultural and ethnic studies, urban studies, and health. There are five primary parts within this book, each of which looks at numerous facets of fatherhood in the twenty-first century. Part I defines the concept of fatherhood and family composition, becoming a father, young fathers, single fathers, fathers and daughters, and examines the father-son relationship. Part II looks at nonresident fathers, homeless fathers, incarcerated fathers, and the never married fathers. Part III reviews biological fathers, stepfathers, male foster carers, fatherhood and adoption, and gay fathers. Part IV examines the cultural dimensions of fatherhood, including Latino, African American, and Native American. Part V explores the fatherhood service delivery system by engaging fathers in culturally competent services, measuring the father's involvement, and the initiatives to support fathering. The context, practice, and gaps in responsible fatherhood programs are discussed. This informative and sensitive book will be useful for researchers, students, and professionals in the field of social work, health, family counseling, and human services. Applicable in classrooms and treatment situations, Fatherhood in America bridges the gap between research and practice through chapters authored by some of the country's foremost fatherhood scholars and clinicians by offering fresh perspectives and keen insights borne out of field experience working with fathers.

Choosing Fatherhood
Choosing Fatherhood

Author: Lewis S. Kostiner

Publisher: George F Thompson Publishing

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781938086052

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Absentee fathers has been identified as American's most pressing problem by the Brookings Institute, because nearly every social ill finds its roots in fatherless homes. Choosing Fatherhood explores this issue through the art of photography in which Lewis Kostiner creates portraits of dads who are involved in their children's lives.

Families without Fathers
Families without Fathers

Author: David Popenoe

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-12

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 1351520563

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The American family is changing. Divorce, single parents, and stepfamilies are redefi ning the ways we live together and raise our children. Many "experts" feel these seemingly inevitable changes should be celebrated; they claim that the "new" families, which often lack a strong father, are actually healthier than traditional two-parent families—or, at the very least, do children no harm. But as David Popenoe shows in Families Without Fathers this optimistic view is severely misguided. Examining evidence from social and behavioral science, history, and evolutionary biology, Popenoe shows why fathers today are deserting their families in record numbers. The disintegration of the child-centered, two parent family—especially in the inner cities, where as many as two in three children are growing up without their fathers—and the weakening commitment of fathers to their children that more and more follows divorce, are central causes of many of our worst individual and social problems. Juvenile delinquency, drug and alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancy, welfare dependency, and child poverty can be directly traced to fathers' lack of involvement in their children's lives. Our situation will only get worse, Popenoe warns, unless men are willing to renew their commitment to their marriages and to their children. Yet he is not just an alarmist. He suggests concrete policies, and new ways of thinking and acting that will help all fathers improve their marriages and family lives, and tells us what we as individuals and as a society can do to support and strengthen the most important thing a man can do.

Gay Fatherhood
Gay Fatherhood

Author: Ellen Lewin

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2023-07-19

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0226476596

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Men are often thought to have less interest in parenting than women, and gay men are generally assumed to prefer pleasure over responsibility. The toxic combination of these two stereotypical views has led to a lack of serious attention being paid to the experiences of gay fathers. But the truth is that more and more gay men are setting out to become parents and succeeding—and Gay Fatherhood aims to tell their stories. Ellen Lewin takes as her focus people who undertake the difficult process of becoming fathers as gay men, rather than having become fathers while married to women. These men face unique challenges in their quest for fatherhood, negotiating specific bureaucratic and financial conditions as they pursue adoption or surrogacy and juggling questions about their future child’s race, age, sex, and health. Gay Fatherhood chronicles the lives of these men, exploring how they cope with political attacks from both the "family values" right and the "radical queer" left—while also shedding light on the evolving meanings of family in twenty-first-century America.

Mean Dads for a Better America
Mean Dads for a Better America

Author: Tom Shillue

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2017-06-06

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 0062656198

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As a comedian and conservative thinker, whip-smart funny Tom Shillue grounds his ideas about our current culture and political climate in stories from his childhood — a portrait of growing up in 1970s America. Growing up as one of five kids in a devout Irish Catholic family in a small town outside of Boston, Tom sincerely believes that the rough-and-tumble, rules-dominated world in which he came of age was a better America—a time and place that made him into the well-adjusted, happy, successful man he is today. In Mean Dads for a Better America, Tom reminisces about his childhood, his family, and the traditional values he cherishes. He takes us back to a time when neighbors disciplined each other’s children without fear of being sued, when kids made it to the family table for dinner, when parents’ rules were gospel, when the occasional fistfight was considered a fair way to solve a problem, and when children were free to roam, make mistakes, and experience the first tastes of independence. Tom debates, debunks, and entertains with his hilarious approach to issues of the day, tackling the issues that confound many Americans, like our hypersensitive culture and overzealous parenting. As Tom celebrates the stability of family life and the sanity of days gone by, he encourages us to hold on to our sense of humor and look back at our own lives, as we work towards creating a better future for ourselves and our kids, all while making us laugh.

The Modernization of Fatherhood
The Modernization of Fatherhood

Author: Ralph LaRossa

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 0226469042

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The period between World War I and World War II was an important time in the history of gender relations, and of American fatherhood. Revealing the surprising extent to which some of yesterday's fathers were involved with their children, The Modernization of Fatherhood recounts how fatherhood was reshaped during the Machine Age into the configuration we know today. LaRossa explains that during the interwar period the image of the father as economic provider, pal, and male role model, all in one, became institutionalized. Using personal letters and popular magazine and newspaper sources, he explores how the social and economic conditions of the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression—a period of technical innovation as well as economic hardship—fused these expectations into a cultural ideal. With chapters on the U.S. Children's Bureau, the fathercraft movement, the magazine industry and the development of Parent's Magazine, and the creation of Father's Day, this book is a major addition to the growing literature on masculinity and fatherhood.

Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities over the Long Nineteenth Century
Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities over the Long Nineteenth Century

Author: Libra R. Hilde

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2020-10-01

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 1469660687

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Analyzing published and archival oral histories of formerly enslaved African Americans, Libra R. Hilde explores the meanings of manhood and fatherhood during and after the era of slavery, demonstrating that black men and women articulated a surprisingly broad and consistent vision of paternal duty across more than a century. Complicating the tendency among historians to conflate masculinity within slavery with heroic resistance, Hilde emphasizes that, while some enslaved men openly rebelled, many chose subtle forms of resistance in the context of family and local community. She explains how a significant number of enslaved men served as caretakers to their children and shaped their lives and identities. From the standpoint of enslavers, this was particularly threatening--a man who fed his children built up the master's property, but a man who fed them notions of autonomy put cracks in the edifice of slavery. Fatherhood highlighted the agonizing contradictions of the condition of enslavement, and to be an involved father was to face intractable dilemmas, yet many men tried. By telling the story of the often quietly heroic efforts that enslaved men undertook to be fathers, Hilde reveals how formerly enslaved African Americans evaluated their fathers (including white fathers) and envisioned an honorable manhood.

Life Without Father
Life Without Father

Author: David Popenoe

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0684822970

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The author of Disturbing the Nest: Famiy Change and Decline in Modern Society reveals how the disintegration of the child-centered, two-parent family, and the weakening commitment of fathers to their children that usually follows, are a central cause of many of America's worst individual and social problems.

Project Fatherhood
Project Fatherhood

Author: Jorja Leap

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2016-06-07

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0807077879

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A group of former gang members come together to help one another answer the question “How can I be a good father when I’ve never had one?” In 2010, former gang leader turned community activist Big Mike Cummings asked UCLA gang expert Jorja Leap to co-lead a group of men struggling to be better fathers in Watts, South Los Angeles, a neighborhood long burdened with a legacy of racialized poverty, violence, and incarceration. These men, black and brown, from late adolescence to middle age, are trying to heal themselves and their community, and above all to build their identities as fathers. Each week, they come together to help one another answer the question “How can I be a good father when I’ve never had one?” Project Fatherhood follows the lives of the men as they struggle with the pain of their own losses, the chronic pressures of poverty and unemployment, and the unquenchable desire to do better and provide more for the next generation. Although the group begins as a forum for them to discuss issues relating to their roles as parents, it slowly grows to mean much more: it becomes a place where they can share jokes and traumatic experiences, joys and sorrows. As the men repair their own lives and gain confidence, the group also becomes a place for them to plan and carry out activities to help the Watts community grow as well as thrive. By immersing herself in the lived experiences of those working to overcome their circumstances, Leap not only dramatically illustrates the realities of fathers trying to do the right thing, but she also paints a larger sociological portrait of how institutional injustices become manifest in the lives of ordinary people. At a time in which racial justice seems more elusive than ever—stymied by the generational cycles of mass incarceration and the cradle-to-prison pipeline—the group’s development over time demonstrates real-life movement toward solutions as the men help one another make their families and their community stronger.

Do Fathers Matter?
Do Fathers Matter?

Author: Paul Raeburn

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2014-06-03

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0374141045

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"In Do Fathers Matter? the award-winning journalist and father of five Paul Raeburn overturns the many myths and stereotypes of fatherhood as he examines the latest scientific findings on the parent we've often overlooked. Drawing on research from neuroscientists, animal behaviorists, geneticists, and developmental psychologists, among others, Raeburn takes us through the various stages of fatherhood, revealing the profound physiological connections between children and fathers, from conception through adolescence and into adulthood--and the importance of the relationship between mothers and fathers. In the process, he challenges the legacy of Freud and mainstream views of parental attachment, and also explains how we can become better parents ourselves."--www.Amazon.com.