Estrangement and Reconciliation

On almost every indicator of child well-being, children today fare worse than their counterparts did just a generation ago. The reason proposed by some is the dramatic rise, over the last thirty years, in the number of children living in fatherless households. In 1960, less than 8 million children were living in families where the father was absent. Today, it's 24 million.

Where are the fathers? Divorce, single unwed motherhood, child-support and welfare policies, and incarceration are the prime suspects in their disappearance. Couple this with the pervasive attitude, from school systems and human services to the media, that "Dads don't matter. Men are inept parents." And even those men who wish to be involved with their children, regardless of their marital or financial status, have often been overlooked or marginalized. Yet research shows that children growing up without fathers are more likely to fail at school or to drop out, engage in early sexual activity, develop drug and alcohol problems, and experience or perpetrate violence.

Importance of Father Involvement

A good father is critical to the optimal development and well-being of a child. Father's role is more than that of economic provider of the past and now includes nurturing, caregiving, and emotional support in both obvious and subtle ways. Successful fatherhood correlates strongly with many attributes of children successfully growing up:

Healthy child development. This includes physical and mental health habits, success in school, self-respect and self-esteem, respect for others and for appropriate authority, constructive social and peer activities, as well as the avoidance of substance abuse, delinquency, and other forms of high-risk behaviors.

Gender identity. An appropriate masculine role model is believed to help boys seeking to create and understand their place in the world, and girls formulating the terms of respectful and happy relationships with the opposite sex.

Responsible sexuality. Understanding the emotional and social prerequisites and the consequences of sexual activity depends on a father's involvement. Programs to reduce teen pregnancy are a significant focus of father involvement initiatives.

Emotional and social commitment. The invisible bonds of affection and protection are strengthened in children through the demonstration of these bonds in day-to-day father involvement.

Financial security. Family self-sufficiency is greatly enhanced, even in poorly paid sectors of the economy, where father involvement is strong.

Fathers and men are discovering a fuller role in the lives of children and families in numerous ways. Virtually all human service fields are exploring and elaborating the positive lifelong outcomes associated with father and male involvement in the lives of children and families. Programs to help men be better fathers, understand their roles and responsibilities of rearing a child, learn about child development, find out alternative disciplinary options, and, in some cases, how to be a man, are emerging nationwide. For example, the Commonwealth of Virginia's Department of Social Services reports that in 1997 there were 15 programs for father involvement; in 2002 they have more than 80. Head Start programs, community-based initiatives, such as the National Fatherhood Initiative, and programs for incarcerated fathers, are developing and showing results. But what about involving father and other males in child welfare?

Children who grow up in father-absent homes are significantly more likely to do poorly on almost any measure of child well-being. For example:

* Almost 75 percent of American children will experience poverty before they turn 11 years old, compared to only 20 percent for families where there are two parents.

* Violent criminals are overwhelmingly males who grew up without fathers, including 72 percent of adolescent murders and 70 percent of long-term prison inmates.

* Children living in father-absent homes are also more likely to be suspended from school, or to drop out; be treated for an emotional or behavioral problem; commit suicide as adolescents; and be victims of child abuse or neglect.

Father Involvement in Child Welfare

If children's well-being is so closely tied to father involvement, why are so few fathers involved in the child welfare system? Does our family-centered practice truly include all the family? Or does "parent involvement" too often translate into "mother involvement" and family-centered practice mean only mother-and-child-centered practice?

While research shows father involvement benefits children's well-being, the child welfare system seems to contradict this in its practice at all levels of the continuum, i.e., child protective services, foster care, kinship care, adoption, and family preservation.

In focus groups of fathers and child welfare workers, funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the issues facing fathers in child welfare elicited some sharp responses. Overall, focus group participants who worked in child welfare admitted that it was easier to work with families made up of single mothers and children. One worker with 24 years of experience stated flatly: "We don't involve fathers. The system is mother focused." Another worker said, "If the mother says the father is dead, we stop right there. It quite simply is easier than trying to locate the father, especially if we feel the mom will not be cooperative." Yet another worker made the point, "A father in the family makes it harder. It's easier to let dad stay in the background and not deal with him. Then I don't have to deal with my own issues about men. It is easier to deal with mom only." Clearly, from this discussion, mothers are the gatekeepers to the father's participation. Mothers have to believe that the family will benefit from the father's participation. Furthermore, this discussion implies a systemic bias for excluding fathers. It is easier to manage the ongoing interactions over the course of a case by working only with one parent, the mother. In frontline practice, the potential for a compliant relationship with the mother takes precedence over a comprehensive working relationship with all the family.

Improving Father and Male Involvement

There are many reasons why fathers and men are "missing" when it comes to child welfare. These reasons are magnified within the distressed circumstances that are characteristic of the child welfare population. To address this absence of fathers, with the goal of creating greater accountability and responsibility on all sides, we need to begin with this cornerstone fact: fathers and men are excluded within the policy, programs, and practice of child welfare.

Addressing the issues raised by father and male involvement in child welfare depends on integrated agency-based work bringing together two pieces: key fatherhood and male involvement issues and the way these issues intersect within child welfare. These are helpful guideposts about how to proceed as we begin the work of father involvement in child welfare. We need to understand the following premises:

Father involvement depends on recognizing the fragility of fatherhood. Nonresidential fathers in child welfare are at very high risk for noninvolvement with their children. All child welfare professionals need to recognize the many possible reasons for this, and not view it as either a father's lack of interest in the children, the removal of a "risk factor," or a means to streamline case planning. Instead, we need to shore up these fragile relationships. Legal paternity and child support payments create the critical institutional supports for constructive father involvement. But they also raise many issues. Policies requiring TANF reimbursement with child support dollars hearken back to earlier policies that punished two-parent involvement and created incentives for single-parent families. Recent policy briefs have begun to raise our awareness of this issue (Elaine Sorenson, The Urban Institute). An implication is that difficulties arising in poor families as a result of legal paternity and child support do not necessarily disqualify a man from father involvement.

Father involvement is closely connected to the relationship to the mother. The father's relationship with the mother is the single greatest determinant of significant and successful father involvement. Mothers exercise disproportionate control over parenting. Because of this, they need to understand and participate in a family system that is more open to male involvement but in ways that does not threaten their own roles. Mediation and negotiation to promote the advantages of a father's involvement needs to be a standing and ongoing opportunity. "A Team Parenting Model," bringing together mother and father with selected service providers and peer supports, can minimize conflict and promote the children's best interest. Such services have been pioneered but not widely used. We have learned, however, that one-sided advocacy for fathers' rights is likely to increase polarization and exacerbate existing tensions between parents. A negotiation approach is also critical as domestic violence services grow and confront the difficult practice challenges of assuring family safety and well-being.

Father involvement focuses the influence of families of origin. Grandparents and extended families have significant influence on father involvement. The mother's parents and kin influence access to children. The mother's parents' acceptance or rejection of the father can be critical to sustaining, rebuilding, or eliminating a father's role. Fathers' parents and kin are a resource for developing a new father's identity, especially if he is a young or teenaged father. The older generation can also be a force for maintaining conventional, and sometimes unproductive, gender roles. We need to understand the dynamics of the intergenerational families and see their strengths. Social network service models, such as family group conferencing or intergenerational services, need to incorporate the knowledge and skills necessary to work with these intergenerational dynamics to help and support fathers to gain and maintain access to their children. As we learn more about the constructive and positive relationships over a lifetime- which defines permanency-these models will include foster and concurrent planning resource families, open adoptive relationships, as well as specific supports for men and fathers sustained in different types of wrap-around planning.

Father involvement requires understanding and using life transitions. Many fathers have difficulty sustaining emotional ties and social commitments when they also experience other risk factors (substance abuse, poverty, mental health issues, or unemployment) that are often characteristic of child welfare. To keep fathers involved requires understanding and emphasizing life transitions. We need to give both residential and nonresidential fathers opportunities to understand their changing status and roles that accompany major milestones such as pregnancy, birth, and rearing a child.

Increasing their ability to provide familiar, stable, daily routines will help create important resources in a child's life. Fathers' participation in rituals, such as birthdays, holidays, and school graduations, are the building blocks of their engagement. Not surprisingly, men may need help in transitions from married or residential fatherhood to divorced or nonresidential fatherhood. More intense services, monitoring, supervision, and support are then needed to help fathers build continuity in the relationships that become fragile at these times. Divorce or separation within foster families is also important to consider. Similarly, the transitions over the course of a child welfare case fall under this heading. Assessments, case planning, and case reviews are not opportunities to confirm a father's problems and deficiencies, but are building blocks for responsible fathering. Protocols and standards for locating fathers, for engaging fathers through appropriate outreach activities, and for making them a part of child welfare case plans need to be included. "Reasonable efforts" to locate and involve fathers need to be part of child welfare casework practice.

Father involvement relies on integrating an employment dimension into child welfare. Successful father involvement depends on a practice based on a solid understanding of the difficulties and challenges of balancing work and family, especially within the economically distressed circumstances prevalent in child welfare. We need to pay attention to work-to-family role transitions, role conflict, and role differentiation. We need to reconsider the link between a father's unemployment and emotional disengagement and the tendency toward "punitive fathering," or tying fathers' involvement to his ability to meet child support payments, and improve interventions. The highest risk factor of all for loss of fathers' support and contact comes from the combined effects of unemployment and non-residential status. Here, the child welfare system's tendency to accept a father's absence conspires with a child support policy that allows debt to pile up. In our culture, which overwhelmingly defines self-worth through economic activity, the results are tragic. Too often, this practice inflicts punishment on children. At the same time, it is important not to link employment and involvement too closely; some programs show that father involvement is a powerful motivator of employment. We must work to find the balance.

Father involvement requires assistance in building relationships with community systems. Fathers whose families are involved with child welfare have the additional burdens of meeting the terms and complying with many community systems: the courts, child support agencies, child welfare, social/health/mental health services, and schools. Without adequate community-based resources for coaching, brokering, advocating, and supporting fathers, adding these tasks to a father's everyday life can be highly stressful. This stress affects a father's relationship within the family.

Father involvement depends on fathers working with fathers. In the literature and program review on which these recommendations are based, peer support-fathers working with fathers-is the glue holding programs together. This is especially important in the face of the accumulated barriers addressed above. Caseworkers who are male and have the knowledge and skills can make a big difference. "Support fathers," used as a component of safety planning, can make a difference. Father-to-father support within community-based partnerships works. The accumulation of these activities will eventually achieve the critical mass needed to "tip the scales" towards a balanced appreciation of the role of fathers in child welfare.

Conclusion

Addressing father and male involvement will not be an easy task. It is not just a matter of adding statements about the role of fathers to training materials, or creating a new program category to enhance male involvement at any one point in the system. The issue of father and male involvement is a deeply systemic one that touches on multiple points of the child welfare system. We hope that the resources we present will wrap the fabric of hope around father involvement in child welfare enhancing safety, permanency, and well-being for children-and their fathers.

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References

Berg, Insoo Kim and Susan Kelly. (2000). Building solutions in child protective services. New York: Norton.

Bernstein, Nina. (2000). "When the Foster Care System Forgets Fathers," New York Times, May 4, 2000.

Doherty, William J., Edward F. Kouneski, and Martha Farrell Erickson. (1996). Responsible fathering: an overview and conceptual framework. University of Minnesota.

National Family Preservation Network (2001). An assessment of child welfare practices regarding fathers. www.nfpn.org/resources/articles/fathers.php.

Sorenson, Elaine (2002). Obligating dads: Helping poor nonresident dads do more. Washington, DC: Urban Institute.

Sylvester, Kathleen and Kathleen Reich (2002). Making fathers count: assessing the progress of responsible fatherhood efforts. Baltimore, MD: Annie E. Casey Foundation.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, www.fatherhood.hhs.gov

Virginia Department of Social Services, Virginia Fatherhood Campaign Materials, www.vahealth.org/fatherhood