Selected books on fathers and fatherhood
- Black Fathers by This book offers a broader, more positive picture of African American fathers. Featuring case studies of African-descended fathers, this edited volume brings to life the achievements and challenges of being a black father in America. Leading scholars and practitioners provide unique insight into this understudied population. Short-sighted social policies which do not encourage father involvement are critically examined and the value of father engagement is promoted. The problems associated with the absence of a father are also explored. The second edition features an increased emphasis on: the historical issues confronting African descended fathers the impact of health issues on Black fathers and their children the need for therapeutic interventions to aid in the healing of fathers and their children the impact of an Afrikan-centered fathering approach and the need for research which considers systemic problems confronting African American fathers community focused models that provide new ideas for (re)connecting absent fathers learning tools including reflective questions and a conclusion in each chapter and more theory and research throughout the book. Part I provides a historical overview of African descended fathers including their strengths and shortcomings over the years. Next, contributors share their personal stories including one from a communal father working with underserved youth and two others that highlight the impact of absent fathers. Then, the research on father-daughter relationships is examined including the impact of father absence on daughters and on gender identity. This section concludes with a discussion of serving adolescents in the foster care system. Part II focuses on the importance of a two-parent home, communal fathering, and equalitarian households. Cultural implications and barriers to relationships are also explored. This section concludes with a discussion of the struggles Black men face with role definitions. The book concludes with a discussion of the impact of adoption and health issues on Black fathers and their children, and the need for more effective therapeutic interventions that include a perspective centered in the traditions and cultures of Afrika in learning to become a father. The final chapter offers an intervention model to aid in fatherhood. An ideal supplementary text for courses on fathers and fathering, introduction to the family, parenting, African American families/men, men and masculinity, Black studies, race and ethnic relations, and family issues taught in a variety of departments, the book also appeals to social service providers, policy makers, and clergy who work with community institutions.ISBN: 9780415883665Publication Date: 2011-04-28
- Fathers, Childcare and Work by The work-life balance of fathers has increasingly come under scrutiny in political and academic debates. This collection brings together qualitative and quantitative empirical analyses to explore fathers' approaches to reconciling paid work and care responsibilities. Taking a global perspective, contributors explore how fathers realize and represent their gendered work-care balance and how enterprises and experts, in country specific institutional context, provide formal and informal resources, constrains, expectations and social norms that shape their practices. Chapters explore how fathers from different social and economic backgrounds fullfil their roles both within the family and in the workplace, and what support they rely on in combining these roles. Further, the collection explores an area of research that has been little investigated: the role played by organizational cultures and experts (such as obstetricians, gynaecologists, paediatricians and psychologists) in shaping notions of 'good' fatherhood and fathering, to which individuals are required to confirm, and to which they, variously, comply or resist.ISBN: 9781787430426Publication Date: 2018-05-11
- Failing Our Fathers by Maligned as "deadbeat dads" or sexually and financially irresponsible inner-city fathers and overlooked in discussions of poverty and family policy, economically vulnerable nonresident fathers are a greatly misunderstood population.Failing Our Fathers summarizes the most recent quantitative and qualitative research, and undertakes new analyses to fill in important gaps, to produce a comprehensive picture of who these fathers are, what types of relationships they have with their families and children, and the challenges theyface meeting what their loved ones and taxpayers expect from them. The great majority of these men see their children on a regular basis, despite the financial, legal, and extra-legal barriers they face. Besides requiring fathers to support their children, we must enable them to do so bysupplementing their earnings and supporting their co-parenting, in ways that parallel how we require and enable vulnerable single mothers to support their children. The book lays out specific reforms required to achieve this goal as well as tips for those resources for economically vulnerablenonresident fathers.ISBN: 9780199371143Publication Date: 2015-01-05
- Papa, PhD by It is not easy raising a family and balancing work and personal commitments in academia, regardless of gender. Parents endure the stress of making tenure with the demands of life with children. While women's careers are derailed more often than men's as a result of such competing pressures, fathers, too, experience conflicting feelings about work and home, making parenting ever more challenging. In Papa, PhD, Mary Ruth Marotte, Paige Martin Reynolds, and Ralph James Savarese bring together a group contributors from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines. They are white, black, South Asian, Asian, and Arab. They are gay and straight, married and divorced. They are tenured and untenured, at research-one universities and at community colleges. Some write at the beginning of their careers, others at the end. But, perhaps most important they do not look back-they look forward to new parental and professional synergies as they reflect on what it means to be a father in the academy. The fathers writing in Papa, PhD seek to expand their children's horizons, giving them the gifts of better topic sentences and a cosmopolitan sensibility. They seriously consider the implications of gender theory and queer theory-even Marxist theory-and make relevant theoretical connections between their work and the less abstract, more pragmatic, world of fathering. What resonates is the astonishing range of forms that fatherhood can take as these dads challenge traditional norms by actively questioning the status quo.ISBN: 9780813548784Publication Date: 2010-11-03
Websites
- Father's Day Background and SymbolsSeveral events may have inspired the establishment of Father's Day. One of these was the start of the Mother's Day tradition in the first decade of the 20th century. Another was a memorial service held in 1908 for a large group of men, many of them fathers, who were killed in a mining accident in Monongah, West Virginia in December 1907.
Sonora Smart Dodd was influential in the establishment of Father's Day. Her father raised six children by himself after the death of their mother. This was uncommon at that time, as many widowers placed their children in the care of others or quickly married again. - A nationwide holidayIn 1972—58 years after President Woodrow Wilson made Mother’s Day official—that the day honoring fathers became a nationwide holiday in the United States.
Research and data on fathers and fatherhood
- 8 facts about American dadsThe changing role of fathers has introduced new challenges as dads juggle the competing demands of family and work. Here are some key findings about fathers from Pew Research Center.
- Research on fatherhoodA study by Pew Research shows that fatherhood is a positive experience and central to dads’ identity