Session: Empowering Diverse Fathers: Transformative Anti-Racist, Anti-Oppressive, and Decolonizing Strategies for Optimal Child Outcomes in Marginalized Communities (Society for Social Work and Research 28th Annual Conference - Recentering & Democratizing Knowledge: The Next 30 Years of Social Work Science)

Fathers are a vital influence in their children's healthy development, yet their significance is often overlooked and underrepresented in research and practice. Fathers from diverse backgrounds face unique challenges due to systemic racism, oppression, and colonization. The limited understanding of the diversity of fathering experiences perpetuates harmful stereotypes and undervalues fathers' role in child development. Empowering diverse fathers with transformative anti-racist, anti-oppressive, and decolonizing strategies is critical to optimize child outcomes in marginalized communities. This symposium presents research challenging current understandings of fatherhood and promoting equitable and inclusive fathering practices. Papers examine father-child relationships in low-income families, harmful stereotypes of fathers in literature, and innovative strategies to strengthen fathering practices in diverse communities.

The first paper, "Racially and Ethnically Diverse Fathers: Shared Parental Responsiveness with Mothers and Early Child Outcomes in Families with Low Income," highlights positive parenting behaviors of racially and ethnically diverse fathers and mothers from low-income contexts. The paper explores how such fathers and mothers work as a family system to develop a shared sense of parental responsiveness that then benefits their young children's behavioral, socioemotional, and cognitive development. The second paper, "Positive Father Involvement and Social Resilience in Children at Risk of Child Maltreatment," examines the effects of positive father involvement on children's social resilience, particularly in at-risk children who have experienced child maltreatment. The paper highlights the importance of positive father involvement in building social resilience in at-risk children and suggests that intervention programs that aim to enhance healthy social functioning may benefit from targeting father involvement as a key intervention component. The third paper, "Exploring Father-Adolescent Closeness: A Random Forest Approach," examines the relative importance of factors promoting positive father-adolescent relationships, with a focus on current interactions between fathers and adolescents. The paper suggests that policies and interventions that enable fathers to spend time with their children will likely help adolescents navigate challenges they face, such as resisting and challenging racist and oppressive environments. The fourth paper, "Challenging Stereotypes and Broadening Perspectives: A Thematic Analysis of Fatherhood Representation in Human Behavior in the Social Environment Textbooks," examines the representation of fathers in human behavior in the social environment (HBSE) literature. The paper highlights the limited and stereotypical views of fathers and fatherhood roles perpetuated by HBSE textbooks, which can have negative impacts on social work researchers' understanding of and inquiry into fathers and their role in child development.

This symposium highlights the critical role of fathers in promoting optimal child outcomes in marginalized communities. The four papers presented in this symposium collectively challenge traditional power dynamics in knowledge creation and dissemination by centering the perspectives of diverse fathers and families. These papers underscore the importance of promoting positive father involvement, and the need to recognize and address unique experiences and resilience of fathers of diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. We hope that the findings presented in this symposium will help to inform policies and interventions aimed at supporting diverse fathers and families and ultimately lead to more positive child outcomes in marginalized communities.