Fathers As Relational Resources: What Fathers Want Community Providers and Policy-Makers to Know

Decades following the Fatherhood Initiative in 1995, research about fathers’ contributions to their children’s life trajectories emerged which challenges traditional conceptions of fatherhood based on the nuclear family and fathers as sole providers. In low-income communities, children are least likely to live in traditional nuclear households, and least likely to have a resident father (U.S. Census Bureau, 2023). Involved fathers, however, represent a crucial protective factor for children with low socioeconomic status (Cowan, et al., 2009; Nepomnyaschy, et al., 2022). Therefore, community providers and policy makers serving low-income communities need enriched understanding of factors impacting father involvement. Accordingly, this study investigated 1) fathers’ concepts of fatherhood, 2) how they navigate their roles, and 3) what they need in their communities to support their involved fatherhood. The theoretical framework, Resource Theory of Fathering (Palkovitz & Hull, 2018), guides this research, focusing on how fathers leverage diverse resources, navigate role complexities, and exert their agency in multiple layers of systems. This research contributes to a larger participatory-action research project (Krumer-Nevo, 2022; Gonzalez et al., 2007) aimed at developing a policy advocacy agenda guided by fathers’ insights and supported by a major urban social services organization. Fathers participate as interviewees, in data analysis, dissemination, framing strategy, advocacy, and in this presentation.

Data were gathered from 11 focus groups (N=93) organized with community fatherhood coalitions in three communities near a large Midwestern city. Fathers all experienced low-income, majority African American, and represent rural/semi-rural, suburban and urban communities. Focus group transcripts were coded using Dedoose and analyzed using thematic analysis (Braun & Clark, 2019). Preliminary findings were shared with fathers in the communities via community forums to receive intensive feedback and community forum transcripts were incorporated into the analysis.

Across ecologically diverse communities, fathers had similar experiences. The fathers described their role in multiple dimensions, prioritizing serving as a model and relational support for their children. They emphasized spending time with their children, listening to their children’s perspectives, developing their children’s self-esteem, and building their own esteem as fathers.

Although fathers endorsed being financial providers, they felt defining their role as primarily financial was overly limiting. They were frustrated by work constraints and limited financial resources that reduced opportunities to be with their children. Several sought support for addressing maternal gatekeeping that restricted their access to their children.

Fathers across communities identified the need for more recognition of fathers as relational resources across family and child-centered community spaces, including schools. They wanted affordable, father-specific community programming, including mental health supports, and mutual support and advocacy groups. Unmarried fathers emphatically sought legal resources to support their rights to be involved in their children’s lives.

Findings indicate fathers are strongly motivated to be intensively involved with their children and struggle against roles limiting their involvement to financial supports. Fathers recommend increasing supportive activities to promote fathers’ mental health and involvement with their children and shifting societal narratives via messaging that reframes fathers’ roles holistically, emphasizing the emotional, psychological and relational resources fathers can provide for their children.