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The responsible fatherhood movement encourages fathers to be involved in their children's lives and advocates for societal support of such involvement.
| | This article may need to be rewritten to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards.(May 2009) |
The responsible fatherhood movement encourages fathers to be involved in their children's lives and advocates for societal support of such involvement.
The number of children living in single-parent households has increased since the 1960s. Approximately 9% of children under 18 lived with a single parent in 1960; [1] by 2007 this rate had increased to nearly 32%. [2] The largest growth occurred between 1970 and 1985, when the growth of single-mother families leveled off. [3] This shift is attributed to a variety of widely recognized social changes that occurred in American society in the 1960s and 1970s: changing sexual morals increased the prevalence of sexual activity outside of marriage and decreased the stigma surrounding out-of-wedlock births; American attitudes about marriage and divorce changed; and women made economic gains that increased their independence and ability to leave unhappy marriages. While the social science community of the 1960s and 1970s initially regarded single-mother households as "just another alternative family form", evidence began to surface in the late 1970s demonstrating that children raised in households where the father was absent were disadvantaged relative to other children. [4]
In 2008 in the United States there were an estimated 28 million children growing up in households without fathers. [5]
Along with the changes in family formation in the latter part of the 20th century, the issue of healthy, responsible fatherhood also began to gain attention. In 1974, Dr. James A. Levine published Who Will Raise the Children? New Options for Fathers (and Mothers). [6] In this report, "Levine suggested that the long-term goal of equal opportunity for women in American society would never be achieved without serious and meaningful recognition of the significance, interest, and responsibility of fathers in children's lives. Levine called for changes in major social institutions, changes in how families raise boys and girls, and changes in the mutual expectations of men and women as they form families." [7]
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, a national responsible fatherhood movement began to take form in the United States. "Within this 'movement,' one may discern a range of groups with competing masculinities and contesting claims and grievances....[T]he Fatherhood Responsibility Movement seeks to overcome barriers of income, race and politics." [8]
As the responsible fatherhood movement has matured, educational and social service programs have grown to meet the needs of fathers across the country. For example, in 1981, the Ford Foundation infused the first large-scale U.S. funding for responsible fatherhood programming through The Fatherhood Project, initially at Bank Street College of Education in New York and expanding across the nation at various other sites. [9] In 1985, the National Urban League began its Male Responsibility Project, focusing on fatherhood among teen parents. [10] By 1988 the U.S. federal Family Support Act included a provision that allowed states to use Welfare-to-Work funds, intended to help single mothers on welfare, to increase contact between noncustodial fathers and their children. [11] In 1991, the nation's first fathers' resource center was launched in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The number of services and supports for fathers continues to expand.
In the first years of the 21st century, there was a growing awareness about the importance of healthy father-child relationships. "Among these benefits are higher levels of school performance and increases in healthy behaviors... For example, children raised with significant positive father involvement display greater empathy, higher self-esteem, increased curiosity, higher verbal skills, and higher scores of cognitive competence." [12] Increasingly, the responsible fatherhood movement has defined itself by focusing on the development of healthy father-child relationships. A separate branch of the men's movement has been that related to Fathers' rights movement. In contrast, the responsible fatherhood movement embraces healthy motherhood and seeks to encourage stronger supports for mothers and fathers to grow as healthy parents.
Responsible fatherhood in the United States is traditionally defined by financial provision, declaring legal paternity, and active participating in caregiving tasks [13] Recent research suggests that low-income fathers may define responsible fatherhood with a different set of criteria that places more emphasis on time, play, and keeping an eye on the child's well-being, similar to a Big Brother or a social worker. [14]
In 2009, the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports in Singapore commissioned a survey on the perception of fatherhood. It polled 2,220 Singaporeans and permanent residents aged 18 and above. The findings: [15]
Fathers can be more involved in children's lives
Fathers still seen primarily as breadwinners
What do you think are a father's roles and responsibilities? Respondents were asked to give up to three answers.
Top five answers:
Bottom five answers:
A father is the male parent of a child. Besides the paternal bonds of a father to his children, the father may have a parental, legal, and social relationship with the child that carries with it certain rights and obligations. An adoptive father is a male who has become the child's parent through the legal process of adoption. A biological father is the male genetic contributor to the creation of the infant, through sexual intercourse or sperm donation. A biological father may have legal obligations to a child not raised by him, such as an obligation of monetary support. A putative father is a man whose biological relationship to a child is alleged but has not been established. A stepfather is a male who is the husband of a child's mother and they may form a family unit, but who generally does not have the legal rights and responsibilities of a parent in relation to the child.
A stepfamily is a family where at least one parent has children that are not biologically related to their spouse. Either parent, or both, may have children from previous relationships or marriages. Two known classifications for stepfamilies include "simple" stepfamilies, where only one member of the family's couple has a prior child or children and the couple does not have any children together, and "complex" or "blended" families, where both members of the couple have at least one pre-existing child.
A single parent is a person who has a child or children but does not have a spouse or live-in partner to assist in the upbringing or support of the child. Reasons for becoming a single parent include divorce, break-up, abandonment, domestic violence, rape, death of the other parent, childbirth by a single person or single-person adoption. A single parent family is a family with children that is headed by a single parent.
The fathers' rights movement is a social movement whose members are primarily interested in issues related to family law, including child custody and child support, that affect fathers and their children. Many of its members are fathers who desire to share the parenting of their children equally with their children's mothers—either after divorce or as unwed fathers—and the children of the terminated marriage. The movement includes men as well as women, often the second wives of divorced fathers or other family members of men who have had some engagement with family law. Many members of the movement are self-educated in family law, including child custody and support, as they believe that equally-shared parenting time was being unjustly negated by family courts.
A paternal bond is the human bond between a father and his child.
Sociology of the family is a subfield of the subject of sociology, in which researchers and academics study family structure as a social institution and unit of socialization from various sociological perspectives. It can be seen as an example of patterned social relations and group dynamics.
The family is called kazoku (家族) in Japanese. It's basically composed of a couple as is the family in other societies. The Japanese family is based on the line of descent and adoption. Ancestors and offspring are linked together by an idea of family genealogy, or keizu, which does not mean relationships based on mere blood inheritance and succession, but rather a bond of relationship inherent in the maintenance and continuance of the family as an institution.
Child custody is a legal term regarding guardianship which is used to describe the legal and practical relationship between a parent or guardian and a child in that person's care. Child custody consists of legal custody, which is the right to make decisions about the child, and physical custody, which is the right and duty to house, provide and care for the child. Married parents normally have joint legal and physical custody of their children. Decisions about child custody typically arise in proceedings involving divorce, annulment, separation, adoption or parental death. In most jurisdictions child custody is determined in accordance with the best interests of the child standard.
A stay-at-home dad is a father who is the main caregiver of the children and is generally the homemaker of the household. As families have evolved, the practice of being a stay-at-home dad has become more common and socially acceptable. Pre-industrialization, the family worked together as a unit and was self-sufficient. When affection-based marriages emerged in the 1830s, parents began devoting more attention to children and family relationships became more open. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, large-scale production replaced home manufacturing; this shift, coupled with prevailing norms governing sex or gender roles, dictated that the father become the breadwinner and the mother the caregiver.
Family is a group of people related either by consanguinity or affinity. The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Ideally, families offer predictability, structure, and safety as members mature and learn to participate in the community. Historically, most human societies use family as the primary locus of attachment, nurturance, and socialization.
The fathers' rights movement has simultaneously evolved in many countries, advocating for shared parenting after divorce or separation, and the right of children and fathers to have close and meaningful relationships. This article provides details about the fathers' rights movement in specific countries.
The traditional family structure in the United States is considered a family support system involving two married individuals providing care and stability for their biological offspring. However, this two-parent, heterosexual, nuclear family has become less prevalent, and nontraditional family forms have become more common. The family is created at birth and establishes ties across generations. Those generations, the extended family of aunts and uncles, grandparents, and cousins, can hold significant emotional and economic roles for the nuclear family.
Dads for Life (DFL) is a national men's movement in Singapore promoting active fatherhood.
A working parent is a father or a mother who engages in a work life. Contrary to the popular belief that work equates to efforts aside from parents' duties as a childcare provider and homemaker, it is thought that housewives or househusbands count as working parents. The variations of family structures include, but are not limited to, heterosexual couples where the father is the breadwinner and the mother keeps her duties focused within the home, homosexual parents who take on a range of work and home styles, single working mothers, and single working fathers. There are also married parents who are dual-earners, in which both parents provide income to support their family. Throughout the 20th century, family work structures experienced significant changes. This was shown by the range of work opportunities each parent was able to take and was expected to do, to fluctuations in wages, benefits, and time available to spend with children. These family structures sometimes raise much concern about gender inequalities. Within the institution of gender, there are defined gender roles that society expects of mothers and fathers that are reflected by events and expectations in the home and at work.
Shared earning/shared parenting marriage, also known as peer marriage, is a type of marriage where partners at the outset agree to adhere to a model of shared responsibility for earning money, meeting the needs of children, doing household chores, and taking recreation time in near equal fashion across these four domains. It refers to an intact family formed in the relatively equal earning and parenting style from its initiation. Peer marriage is distinct from shared parenting, as well as the type of equal or co-parenting that father's rights activists in the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere seek after a divorce in the case of marriages, or unmarried pregnancies/childbirths, not set up in this fashion at the outset of the relationship or pregnancy.
The Supporting Healthy Marriage Project (SHM) is part of the Healthy Marriage Initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, that was launched in 2003 as "the first large-scale, multisite, multiyear, rigorous test of marriage education programs for low-income married couples". The project is motivated by research that "indicates that married adults and children raised by both parents in stable, low-conflict households do better on a host of outcomes". The evaluation is led by MDRC, in collaboration with Abt Associates and other partners. USASpending.gov reports payments of more than $30 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to MDRC for work on the Supporting Healthy Marriage Project from 2009 to 2012.
The Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) is a United States government office responsible for overseeing the U.S. child support program. Child support is the obligation on parents to provide financial support for their children. OCSE was established with the Federal Government’s enactment of Child Support Enforcement and Paternity Establishment Program (CSE) in 1975, which was enacted to reduce welfare expenses by collecting child support from non-custodial parents.
The family structure of African Americans has long been a matter of national public policy interest. A 1965 report by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, known as The Moynihan Report, examined the link between black poverty and family structure. It hypothesized that the destruction of the black nuclear family structure would hinder further progress toward economic and political equality.
Childhood in early modern Scotland includes all aspects of the lives of children, from birth to adulthood, between the early sixteenth century and the mid-eighteenth century. This period corresponds to the early modern period in Europe, beginning with the Renaissance and Reformation and ending with the beginning of industrialisation and the Enlightenment in the mid-eighteenth century.
Paper abortion, also known as a financial abortion or a statutory abort, is the proposed ability of the biological father, before the birth of the child, to opt out of any rights, privileges, and responsibilities toward the child, including financial support. By this means, before a child is born, a man would be able to absolve himself of both the privileges and demands of fatherhood.