Get Ready to Step Up, Dad

Such tugs of territory cross income and racial lines. The Urban Institute recently brought together university researchers who, under different federal grants, have been following thousands of young children and their mostly low-income, unmarried parents in cities around the country. One might assume the fathers in these families have little to do with their children or have disappeared entirely, but that is not the case, said Ronald Mincy, a professor of social policy at Columbia University and a principal investigator in one of the studies. Even among the dads who live apart from mother and child, half spend some time regularly with their children.

Conflict between the men and their partners keeps many of the dads from staying fully engaged, according to researchers. Is that because they don't want to have anything to do with their kids? Or are the mothers of their children keeping them away?

Sociologist England says "the answer is usually some messy in-between. The guys all have stories that 'She won't let me see them.' But the women will say there were good reasons beyond child support. 'I know he's been involved with drugs,' they'll say. 'Or, he used to say he'd come get our kid and not show up. My son got heartbroken and I don't want to expose him to that anymore.' "

That children do better in and out of school when in regular contact with fathers is well established. What is not as well understood is what that father-child contact should look like. "Our research on child development is entirely too matri-focal," said Mincy.

Mothers know intuitively why we are important to our kids, and research has expanded what we know. Perhaps if we understood better how valuable fathers are in ways similar to, and different from, our own, we would do more to make parenting a true partnership. It also wouldn't hurt if both mothers and fathers realized how forgiving kids can be. Kids give parents enormous credit just for trying. Neither sex has to get it perfect.

Even dads who don't make a lot of money know they are going to have to get in the game more deeply. Many, in fact, look forward to it, according to Alford Young Jr., a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan. Young, who supervised a study of such men in Boston and Indianapolis, quoted from two of them at the Urban Institute.

"From what I've heard," said a young man named Darnell, "fathers in the past were pretty much breadwinners and that was just about it. . . . The father wasn't back then . . . as emotionally invested in the father-child relationship as they are now. . . . It's definitely going in the . . . right direction, you know. Especially with women working more."

Another subject, Brian, recalled friends coming over one time when his little daughter was living with him. He was braiding her hair.

"They like, 'What you doing?'

"Ain't nobody else going to do it. It's all about being a daddy," he responded. "I know I ain't no punk. That's what daddies do nowadays."

If we mommies can let them. ¿

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