"a Father Is Not an Afterthought": Exploring Fatherhood Engagement through Poetic Inquiry

Background: Child welfare scholarship utilizing methods that prioritize the lived experiences of fathers and the professionals who work with them daily is rare. Arts-based research methods such as poetic inquiry (Prendergast, 2009) are burgeoning in social science. These methods represent powerful approaches that encourage collaborating with research participants, centering lived experiences in knowledge building, and enabling meaningful data to be generated through artwork. Additionally, arts-based methods allow for disseminating accessible findings that challenge conventional ways of knowing (Leavy, 2018). The overarching question guiding this study was: What does poetic inquiry illuminate about fatherhood engagement in child and family service settings?

Method: Data from a qualitative study exploring fathers’ barriers and opportunities to actively participate in their children’s lives were utilized to develop research poems. Between 2021-22, five focus groups were led with 17 fathers who had completed a father-focused parenting program in a Southeastern state. Simultaneously, 24 service providers working with fathers in a variety of human service settings participated in semi-structured interviews. Data were transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were coded by at least two research teams members. Research team members utilized a constant comparative approach (Patton, 2002). Findings identified through a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) were used as the conceptual inspiration for research poems (Faulkner, 2007). Research poems were written through a reflexive and iterative process involving several steps. First, themes and participants’ quotes were provided to a member of the research team who is both a poet and social worker. This research team member initially drafted poems that captured and reflected the findings from the thematic analysis. Second, other research team members read and provided feedback on the poems. Feedback was incorporated into additional drafts until consensus was reached regarding the poems. Third, member checking occurred by providing drafts of the poems to participants. Participants provided feedback which was then incorporated prior to poems being finalized.

Results: This poetic inquiry resulted in 14 poems which demonstrated several key findings. Notably, concepts related to justice (e.g., “They say justice is blind/but it sure as hell sees color”), institutional violence and racism (e.g., “Why should you trust me/when hands like mine have covered mouths like yours”), and hope (e.g., “let me also fill/your mind with meaning/your heart with hope/and your life with love”) were illuminated in the research poems. Additionally, the research poems demonstrated emotional and embodied experiences from both fathers (e.g., “Tongue pulled from my mouth/leaving others to tell my story”) and professionals (e.g., “I went into this work wide-eyed/like a child but the system soon/broke me”).

Conclusions: This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating an art-based, creative approach to inquiry that centers the real-world experiences of fathers and service providers working alongside them. Findings highlight lived, emotional, and embodied experiences. Moreover, results suggest these experiences are complex, nuanced, and occur in the context of individual lives encountering systems that perpetuate violence, especially among marginalized and minoritized people and communities.