Community Checkup

For some time now the black community has been bemoaning the lack of involvement of black fathers in the lives of their children. A recent Newsweek article spoke to this issue in the context of discussing a new book, “The Beautiful Struggle” (which looks very interesting) as well as a recent study on the topic.  From the article:

A 2007 study noted that a black father’s ability to financially contribute is one of the biggest determinants of whether he stays in the home. “There’s a host of evidence noting that men who cannot fulfill the breadwinner role often experience distress and interruptions in positive engagement in family life,” says Boston University professor Rebekah Levine Coley, who worked on the study. Low-income, low-skilled men are culturally expected not to care about being good fathers, and those who do care feel like failures when they cannot meet a definition of successful fatherhood in which being the breadwinner is the sole metric. This conundrum gives rise to the absentee father, the lion who would rather be proud than lead his pride. [Source: Newsweek]

This analysis is a fairly common one that addresses how the interaction between financial hard times and beliefs about what it means to be a father (e.g. financially supporting a family) can lead black men to be less involved.  I buy this to some extent.  I do think there are many men, black and white alike, who mostly view fatherhood as financially providing for their children.  And it is true that black men are really financially struggling.  Yet, I don’t know that this fully explains the issue or that it is the best explanation.

An element that is missing from the quoted analysis is how conflict in the mother-father relationship also can lead to one of the parents being uninvolved (usually fathers).  This kind of conflict can take a toll on both of the parents (the child too) to the point that one of them decides to just up and dip out.  Underlying this issue is a more general tension between black women largely influenced by the lens through which we sometimes view each other that is colored by negative stereotypes.  You’ve heard them before–the no-good dog father and the belligerent gold-digging mother just to name a couple.   And we must accept that there are very real elements of misogyny and male-bashing in the culture that bolster these stereotypes.

So in terms of how to best support families and kids with this issue, I question whether it would be more important to improve the financial condition of the father than to improve the relationship between the mother and father (or more generally between black men and women).  The quality of the relationship between parents and the emotional environment it creates for a child is critical and can’t be ignored.  At the end of the day kids need financial resources and a healthy emotional environment. But if I had to bet on one of the two, I’d bet it all on healthy emotional environment.

Enough with my rambling.  What’s your view on the nature of, consequences, and solutions for the black fatherhood situation?

*Shoutout to E for passing on this article.*