Essential Dads

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Dr. Jennifer M. Randles. Essential Dads

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Essential Dads

THE INEQUALITIES AND POLITICS OF FATHERING

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Policy priorities also call into question the true purpose of fatherhood programs. Are job training services about overcoming deficits in fathers’ work ethics? Or are they about providing more economic opportunity? Do men need fathering classes to teach them that they should care about and support their children? Or is their primary purpose to help fathers develop parenting and relationship skills (and what must those “skills” entail)? This all points to perhaps the most important sociological question related to responsible fatherhood policy: What is the role of government and public programs in facilitating fatherhood? Is it to supervise and modify men’s behaviors in line with dominant social expectations of “responsible” fathering? Or is it to reduce the financial and practical costs of fathers’ involvement?

These questions reveal how fatherhood as a policy issue exists at the nexus of culture and structure. Responsible fatherhood policy has a dual purpose: to shift cultural ideas of fathering and to provide resources needed to live up to those ideas. Gauging the policy’s full salience depends on asking the right questions that get at how these goals intertwine and how they might diverge. Studies of poverty policy benefit from a cultural analysis; without one, culturally unaware policies reinforce stereotypes of those forced to live in poverty.54 Polices are cultural products that reflect assumptions about deservingness, responsibility, and a society’s structure of opportunity. Cultural values also shape political narratives and the range of alternatives that policy makers envision.

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