The Parenting Experiences and Programmatic Needs of Black Fathers Living with Life Challenges

Background and Purpose: Black fathers from low-income backgrounds often face significant barriers to engaging with their children, attributable to challenges such as un/underemployment, imprisonment, substance abuse, trauma, and depression. Such challenges, however, are situated in a larger social context that must be considered. Men of color experience higher rates of poverty, racial discrimination, and mass incarceration. Due to multigenerational barriers to parenting, Black fathers often lack positive examples from their own lives of how to build strong, supportive and communicative parental relationships. As a result, many Black fathers lack parenting skills and the necessary resources to actively participate in their families' lives. The current study seeks to explore Black fathers’ experiences and areas of needed support when parenting while facing major life challenges.

Methods: We conducted seven individual semi-structured interviews with Black fathers aged 34 to 63 (M=43.7) with children under the age of 18 who participated in one of two evidence-based parenting programs (the Nurturing Father’s Program or Forging Resilient Relationships) offered in the DC metropolitan area. The fathers had varying levels of annual household income (ranging from $15,001 to above $60,000), and numbers of children (ranging from 1 to 9). The interviews explored how five distinct life challenges (i.e., un/underemployed, mental illness, substance use, intimate partner violence, and trauma) experienced by Black fathers impact their ability to parent their children, how fathers cope with these challenges, and additional areas of needed support. Data will be transcribed verbatim and analyzed using thematic analysis.

Results: Fathers experienced post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression. Mental health challenges were often chronic, rooted in childhood trauma and experiences of gun violence. Prior experiences of trauma encouraged fathers to raise their children in safe neighborhoods and focus on understanding their child’s emotional needs. Fathers were both victims and perpetrators of intimate partner violence, specifically verbal and physical abuse, impacting their ability to successfully co-parent and for some resulting in criminal charges. Experiences of unemployment attributed to acute events such as COVID were easier to navigate relative to those linked to permanent life changes (e.g., a newly acquired disability or criminal record). Being unemployed afforded fathers more time to bond with their children and prompted creative, affordable child-friendly activities. Few fathers reported current substance use, limited to recreational marijuana use. While some fathers sought support from formal resources (e.g. therapists and domestic violence counselors) to cope with these life challenges, others dealt with it on their own relying on prayer, an established routine, and physical activity. Additional programmatic needs identified by fathers include an increased focus on mental health resources, referrals to affordable therapists, conflict resolution skills, and ongoing peer support via wellness calls and support groups.

Conclusion and Implications: In recognizing the vital role that fathers play in childrearing, it is essential to nurture their parenting skills and ability to cultivate healthy relationships with spouses or co-parents, and children. Results highlight how Black fathers who have experienced life challenges wish to be supported, and pragmatic ways interventionists can strengthen current and newly developed programs.