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Married Fathers and Caring Daddies: Welfare Reform and the Discursive Politics of Paternity

Author(s): Lynne Haney and Miranda MarchSource: Social Problems, Vol. 50, No. 4 (November 2003), pp. 461-481Published by: University of California Presson behalf of the Society for the Study of Social ProblemsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/sp.2003.50.4.461.

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SOCIAL PROBLEMS, Vol. 50, No. 4, pages 461481. ISSN: 0037-7791; online ISSN: 1533-8533

2003 by Society for the Study of Social Problems, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Married Fathers and Caring Daddies:Welfare Reform and the DiscursivePolitics of Paternity

LYNNE HANEY, New York University

MIRANDA MARCH, New York University

This article analyzes the paternal politics underlying contemporary welfare reform in the United States.

Current research on U.S. welfare reform tends to focus on the redefinition of womens responsibilities and social

conceptions of motherhood. We contribute to this scholarship by explicating the ways in which reform politics

also advance powerful conceptions of fatherhood. Through a discourse analysis of national-level policy debates

surrounding new fatherhood legislation, we deconstruct policymakers views on what constitutes fatherhood. We

then compare their discourses to those articulated in interviews with 51 low-income, African American women.

From the comparison, we argue that these groups conceptions of fatherhood diverged in critical ways. Policy-makers constructions prioritized the form of mens paternal relations over the content of those relations

defining fatherhood in terms of mens biological, institutional, or financial connection to their children. By

contrast, the low-income women we interviewed prioritized the content of mens paternal relations over their

formconceptualizing fatherhood in terms of mens identification with and participation in paternal activities.

By juxtaposing these discourses of fatherhood, our analysis complements feminist research on how ideologies

of motherhood influence welfare policies. And by theorizing the differences between these groups conceptions of

fatherhood, we hypothesize about the policy implications of this conceptual divergence.

Since the enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation

Act (PRWORA) in 1996, social scientists have conducted an enormous amount of research on

welfare politics and policies. Some scholars documented how the replacement of Aid to Fam-ilies with Dependent Children (AFDC) with Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF)

restructured womens relationships to social assistance. Their research suggests that new work

requirements and eligibility rules pushed women to rely more on the labor market and familial

networks and less on state programs (Meyer and Storbakken 2000; Mink 1998; Rose 1995).

Other scholars analyzed welfare reform for what it signified about the reconstitution of the

state itself. Their analyses indicate that reform marked an end to welfare maternalism and a

stronger emphasis on womens roles as wage earners (Little 1999; Orloff 2000; Reimer 2001).

Still other scholars tackled the terrain of welfare practices to examine shifts in the mode of

state redistribution. Their research exposes variations in the local implementation of reform

and in womens ability to transition from paid mothering to wage labor (Blank and Haskins

2001; Corcoran et al. 2000; Danziger et al. 2000).

Many colleagues and friends offered valuable feedback on different incarnations of this article. In particular, the

authors would like to thank Robin Rogers-Dillon, Duke Ferris, Kathleen Gerson, Dorith Geva, Kate Gualtieri, Amie Hess,

Ruth Horowitz, Robert Jackson, Allison McKim, Ann Orloff, Arlene Skolnick, Andrs Tapolcai, members of the Gender

and Inequality Workshop at New York University, the Social Problems editor, and the anonymous reviewers for their

insightful comments and suggestions. Direct correspondence to: Lynne Haney, Department of Sociology, New York Uni-

versity, 269 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10003-6687. E-mail: [email protected].


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462 HANEY/MARCH

All of this research indicates that contemporary welfare politics marked a redefinition in

womens responsibilities and in social conceptions of motherhood. Yet this politics also re-

configured other familial and domestic relations. Most notably, it set forth conceptions of

fatherhoodmessages about the attributes and characteristics associated with fathering. From

the outset, fathers were central to welfare reform legislation. An early draft of the PRWORA

portrayed fathers as failing to live up to their paternal obligations and thus hastening the de-

mise of the nuclear family. Although such rhetoric had been toned down by the time the

PRWORA passed, it continued to surface in the political debates surrounding the Act. The pre-

occupation with defining fatherhood did not end there: Following the enactment of the

PRWORA, the U.S. Congress drafted new fatherhood legislation. First introduced in 1998,

the legislation was designed to complement the PRWORA. The legislation has since undergone

multiple revisions, metamorphosing into eight different Acts; as of 2003, three Acts remained

under Congressional review.1In all of its incarnations, this legislation advances powerful visions

of fatherhood and creates programs to target men as fathers.

Although there is ample evidence that paternal politics underlie contemporary welfare

reform, sociologists still know very little about the content of this politics. What conceptions

of fatherhood are advanced in these political debates? How do policymakers imagine the role of

fathers and represent their needs? Sociologists know even less about whether policymakersnotions of fatherhood are in sync with those adhered to by the men and women they target.

To what extent are the definitions of fatherhood worked out in the halls of Congress consistent

with those held by members of the communities most affected by reform?

In this article, we explore these questions through an analysis of the discourses of father-

hood articulated by national policymakers and by a sample of low-income women. Put another

way, we examine the descriptive practices of fatherhoodthe interpretive processes through

which paternal meanings are produced and sustained (Gubrium and Holstein 1987, 1990,

1993). On the one hand, we deconstruct the political debates surrounding fatherhood legisla-

tion to illuminate policymakers narratives about what constitutes fatherhood. We then compare

these narratives to those advanced by a group of 51 low-income, African American women.

From the comparison, we argue that there are substantive differences in these groups dis-courses of fatherhood. First, they articulate contrasting definitions of fatherhood: Although

policymakers views varied, they tended to prioritize paternal form over function, emphasizing

mens biological or financial connections to children. And while the low-income women we

interviewed held somewhat divergent paternal blueprints, they converged to prioritize paternal

function over form, conceptualizing fatherhood in terms of mens identification with, and par-

ticipation in, paternal activities.

In addition to contesting the definition of fatherhood espoused by policymakers, our

respondents challenged its causal logic. For policymakers, paternal form gave rise to paternal

functionin their view, fathers would care for children once their relationship was formal-

ized through marriage and breadwinning. For the low-income women we interviewed, it

worked the other way around: The formalization of paternal relations came after men had

performed as caring parents. By distinguishing between biological and real fathers, orfathers and daddies, our respondents privileged the quality of mens relationship to chil-

dren over the formalities of their ties (Furstenberg 1995). Just as Patricia Hill Collins (2000)

theorized that other mothering is a key form of childrearing in low-income, African Amer-

ican communities, we found other fathering to be central to their notions of the paternal.

In this way, we should be clear from the outset that our analysis focuses on the discur-

sive politics of fatherhood. Of course, it could be argued that this focus misses the reality of

1. Most recently, it also surfaced in debates about the re-authorization of TANF. In its current re-authorization

proposal, the Bush administration earmarked $300 million each year for five yearsfor a total of $1.5 billionto promote

marriage for TANF recipients. It remains to be seen whether this re-authorization proposal will be approved and if it will

affect the scope of the fatherhood legislation.


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Welfare Reform and the Discursive Politics of Paternity 463

paternal practices and ignores debates about what fathers are actually doing for children. Yet,

following other scholars of familial discourse, we insist on the analytical utility of decon-

structing how family relations are imagined and represented in everyday life (Harris 2001;

Holstein and Gubrium 1993, 1994; Rosenblatt 1994). By interrogating the paternal theories

adhered to by policymakers and low-income women, we expose how they assign meaning to

social ties and designate the rights and obligations accompanying them (Hopper 1993). By

analyzing family rhetoric as an ideological code, we investigate how, like maternal politics,

paternal politics are used to in/validate certain family ties and relations (Mink 1995, 1998;

Smith 1993). And by recognizing the complex relationship between familial rhetoric and

practice, we hypothesize about the practical implications of these groups divergent conceptions

of fatherhood (Harris 2001; Miller 1990).

Maternal and Paternal Discourses of Welfare

Analyses of familial discourse have long been central to the feminist scholarship on the

welfare state. Gender scholars have provided detailed accounts of the maternalist underpin-

nings of U.S. welfare politics and the ways in which conceptions of motherhood shaped, andwere shaped by, the development of welfare policy. Feminist historians have revealed that,

since its inception, the U.S. welfare state was maternalist in orientation (Brush 1996; Haney

and Pollard 2003; Koven and Michel 1993). An abundance of research on the Progressive Era

has established that female reformers drew on maternalist visions, and mixed them with their

own versions of professionalism, to carve out places for themselves in policymaking circles

(Gordon 1994; Muncy 1991; Skocpol 1992). In doing so, female reformers inserted a particu-

lar view of motherhood into state policiesa view that opposed the public and private and

separated wage labor and caretaking (Goodwin 1997; Orloff 1996). This conception of mother-

hood was replete with racial and class biases; to a large extent, it was a bourgeois notion of

motherhood that pathologized the practices of immigrant, African American, and working-

class mothers (Gordon 1994; Mink 1995). Despite its racial and class specificity, this maternalist

vision became locked into the U.S. policy regime. This rhetoric then had practical effects on

womens lives and shortened the leash that tied women to the domestic sphere (Muncy

1991). Ultimately, it also had structural effects and fostered the emergence of a two-tiered

welfare system, which positioned women as domestic caretakers dependent on a male wage

(Fraser 1989; Fraser and Gordon 1994; Nelson 1990).

Feminist analyses of contemporary welfare politics tend to share this maternal focus.

Most gender scholars emphasize the material effects of the recent round of welfare reform.

Many interpret reform as signifying an end to the bifurcated welfare systemby requiring

poor mothers to participate in wage labor, the PRWORA may blur the line between the mas-

culine and feminine subsystems of welfare (Harrington 2000; Orloff 2000, 2003). By com-

modifying poor womens labor, reform may result in a less gender-differentiated welfare

system. Other gender scholars are not as sanguine about the material effects of reform.Because the ideal of the full-time caretaker never applied to poor, African American mothers,

they argue that welfare reform simply mandates these womens participation in wage labor

(Mink 1998, 1999; Roberts 1999). Moreover, they question the states commitment to enjoin-

ing motherhood and employment, claiming that the lack of adequate support for womens

incorporation into the labor market may deepen their impoverishment and/or heighten their

reliance on men (Edin 2000; Kittay 1999; Piven 1999; Thomas 1995).

Although gender scholars diverge in their evaluations of the material effects of welfare

reform, they converge to view it as a reconceptualization of motherhood. Clearly, contempo-

rary welfare politics has been shaped by maternal politics. Yet paternal politics have also

become central to debates about state provision. The insertion of the paternal into these debates

marks a change in development of U.S. social policy. As Ann Orloff (2003) has argued, U.S.


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464 HANEY/MARCH

welfare policy rarely targeted men as fathers. Instead, men tended to be conceptualized as

everything women were not: as independent wage earners as opposed to dependent caretakers;

as rights-bearing individuals as opposed to members of needy families; and as beneficiaries of

cash benefits as opposed to recipients of services (Fraser 1989; Nelson 1990). Contemporary

welfare reform complicates this division by positioning some men as fathers. The introduction

to the PRWORA constructed men as part of the problem, attributing poor womens vulner-

ability to irresponsible men and dead beat dads. The Act also dictated appropriate paternal

behavior, requiring that fathers undergo paternity testing and pay child support. Hence, after

decades of feminizing the needs of poor families, U.S. welfare policy has acknowledged mens

roles as fathers.

This shift has not gone completely unnoticed in the welfare reform literature. Yet here,

too, the focus has been on how the PRWORA tracks men and how this new tracking subverts

the welfare systems two-tiered, gendered structure. Just as women may have been pushed

into the masculine tier through mandatory employment, men may have moved into the

feminine tier through mandatory paternity testing and child-support enforcement (Monson

1997; Orloff and Monson 2002). In addition, mens positioning as fathers may signify the rise

of a third welfare tier designed to punish men who fail to support their families (Willrich

2000). According to this line of reasoning, welfare reform will breed new stratification amongmen: While some men will continue to enjoy the privileges associated with the breadwinner

role, others will be criminalized because of their failure to fulfill the responsibilities of this role.

While quite promising, these analyses of the states systemic tracking of men beg a critical

question: If policymakers now define men as fathers, how do they interpret paternal roles and

responsibilities? As we know from feminist theories of welfare, states are not only re/distributive

bodiesthey are also interpretive entities that define the ideal attributes and characteristics of

parents and spouses (Fraser 1989; Haney 2002). As analyses of maternalism reveal, state inter-

pretations of the maternal were extraordinarily powerful: From the Progressive Era on, they

shaped what was possible at the policy level. They also influenced womens reactions to poli-

cies, sometimes leading women to accept policy constraints and other times prompting women

to resist them. The same can be said of definitions of fatherhood. Thus, before scholars cantheorize the paternal politics of welfare, they need to analyze the discourses of fatherhood

and paternal visions articulated in welfare debates.

In fact, there are strong indications that, outside the welfare arena, social conceptions of

fatherhood are in flux. The gender revolution in the U.S. has left an imprint on cultural def-

initions of fathers as well as mothers (Furstenberg 1995; Gerson 1995; Hochschild 1989).

Many scholars argue that there has been a shift from viewing fathers strictly as breadwinners

to highlighting their roles as nurturers (Coltrane and Galt 2000; Marsiglio 1995). Once defined

by their biological and financial connection to children, fathers are increasingly expected to

be emotionally close to and available for their children. These cultural expectations have

been shown to influence mens evaluations of themselves as fathers (Furstenberg and Harris

1993; Lerman and Ooms 1993). As William Marsiglio (1998) put it, the emphasis has shiftedfrom mens procreative responsibilities, or the practical aspects of paternity, to mens procre-

ative consciousness, or their emotional attachment to paternity. To what extent do national

policymakers echo this shift in emphasis? Are their discourses of fatherhood consistent with

these cultural changes? And do low-income women concur with these conceptions of father-

hood? How do they represent paternal roles and responsibilities?

Data and Methods

To explore these questions, we rely on two types of data. First, we conducted a discourse

analysis of the debates surrounding fatherhood legislation first formulated in 1998. We traced


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the different incarnations of this legislation and the testimony related to it.2During its four

year history, this legislation was debated numerous times by members of Congress, policymakers,

family experts, and fatherhood activists. These debates and testimony provided a unique

window into the paternal politics of welfare reform. Perhaps even more than those related to

the PRWORA, these Congressional debates exposed national policymakers discourses of

fatherhood and of paternal responsibility. And, unlike the PRWORA, there has been virtually

no sociological work on the pending fatherhood legislation, despite its clear relevance to

analyses of gender and the welfare state.

Second, we coupled this discursive analysis with a study of the narratives of fatherhood

produced in 51 in-depth interviews with low-income women. Our interview sample was

drawn from one of the longest running studies of disadvantaged families, the Baltimore Parent-

hood Study (BPS). The BPS commenced in 1966 with a sample of 399 pregnant adolescents;

it now includes these womens offspring (Furstenberg, Brooks-Gunn, and Morgan 1987).

Since 1966, the BPSs retention rate for the first cohort of women was 57 percent; since 1983,

the retention rate for their children was 75.5 percent.3Drawing our sample from the BPS

accorded us unique research opportunities. It allowed us to avoid snowball sampling, which

is a common sampling procedure in this kind of research. Snowball sampling often breeds a

homogeneous respondent pool comprised of women with similar backgrounds and life expe-riences. The BPS enabled us to include a relatively diverse group of low-income women and

to control for their age and experience with the welfare system. As a result, our sample looks

similar to the population targeted by welfare reformers: Low-income, African American

women who were teenage mothers or the children of teenage mothers.

Our sub-sample of 51 women was drawn randomly from the entire BPS sample. Of our

respondents, 65 percent had long-term or recent experience with the welfare system. At the

time of the interview, 80 percent were working outside the homemany of them were

employed in low-wage, service-sector jobs in food service (12 percent), child care (12 per-

cent), retail sales (8 percent), personal care (8 percent), or cleaning services (6 percent). All of

our respondents had children; 85 percent had more than one child. Overall, 68 percent of our

respondents had been married; 38 percent were living with spouses at the time of the inter-view. An additional 20 percent were living with boyfriends or lovers. Roughly 25 percent of

our respondents maintained regular, on-going contact with their childrens biological fathers;

30 percent had limited contact with these men. Finally, 15 percent of our respondents

received regular, formalized child support from their childrens biological fathers.

Our interviews were conducted in respondents homes, and ran for three to four hours.4

The interviews addressed two general issues. First, they examined respondents experiences

with welfare reform: How did they interpret the recent shifts in welfare policies? What

aspects of reform did they find most relevant to their lives? Second, they probed into the

organization of their community and kin networks and the allocation of resources within

them. It was here that our respondents expressed their interpretations of fatherhood. We

were not entirely prepared for their focus on men; given prevailing assumptions about the

2. The legislation and testimony analyzed in this article were collected from the online LexisNexis database,

which includes the complete transcripts of all the material cited. The database allows for the search of legislation and

testimony by topic and for the tracking of different versions of a bill. It also permits researchers to follow the trajectory

of a bill through its relevant subcommittees.

3. These retention rates are similar to other studies such as the National Longitudinal Study of Young Women

(NLS-YW) and the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). For instance, from 19661995, the NLS-YW had a reten-

tion rate of 59.7 percent, only slightly higher than the BPSs rate for the first cohort of women. Moreover, BPS partici-

pants are comparable to those from these other studiesthey are similar to their national counterparts in terms of

education, marital status, and employment, although they have slightly fewer children and lower rates of welfare use.

For more on these parallels, see Foley (1998a, 1998b).

4. All but one of these interviews were taped and transcribed. For the one interview that was not taped, we ana-

lyzed the notes taken by one of the interviewers.


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466 HANEY/MARCH

importance of female support networks, we expected our respondents to highlight the role of

female kin (Hao and Brinton 1997; Oliker 2000; Stack 1974). And to some extent they did.

But our respondents also spent large portions of the interview constructing narratives about

men as fathersthey often shifted the focus of our questions to discuss their definitions of

fatherhood and their theories of what fatherhood entailed. Quite early in the research we

realized that these paternal representations were themselves ripe for investigation. Thus, the

focus of our analysis largely came from below and reflected what our female respondents

problematized about contemporary welfare politics.

Making Better Fathers: Paternal Form over Paternal Function

Just two years after Congress passed the PRWORA, it began to formulate legislation aimed

at fathers. These Acts were clearly related: While the PRWORA set forth an agenda for womens

appropriate childrearing, the fatherhood legislation did the same for men. The Acts even shared

a father; Representative Clay Shaw, a Republican from Florida, was active in writing the

PRWORA and in pushing the House version of the Responsible Fatherhood Act. In 1998,

the office Representative Nancy Johnson, a Republican from Connecticut, issued an advisoryto members of Congress announcing the first round of hearings on new fatherhood legisla-

tion. The advisory noted that oral testimony would be heard only from invited speakers, a list

that included directors of programs for low-income fathers, child support administrators, and

members of advocacy groups. A second round of hearings took place in 2000.

Transcripts from these hearings revealed widespread bi-partisan support for fatherhood

legislation. Those involved in the political debates seemed to agree on three issues. First, they

shared a definition of the problem: The nuclear family was declining in African American

communities, which resulted in generations of fatherless children. Both the House and Sen-

ate legislation began with a litany of problems associated with fatherlessnessfrom substance

abuse, to delinquency, to physical neglect, to out-of-wedlock births, to poverty (U.S. Congress,

Senate 1999). As the House version warned, Violent criminals are overwhelmingly maleswho grew up without fathers (U.S. Congress, House 2001). And as the Senate version cau-

tioned, Children who live apart from their biological fathers are . . . more likely to bring

weapons and drugs into the classroom . . . more likely to become pregnant as teenagers (U.S.

Congress, Senate 2001).

To support such claims, policymakers and experts made frequent references to the

Moynihan Report, which popularized the notion of the African American family as a tangle

of pathology. In his testimony, Charles Ballard, an African American head of several father-

hood programs and himself the father of an out-of-wedlock child, praised Moynihans pro-

phetic statements on the decline of the American family, and the African American family in

particular and urged Congress to have the courage to act on Moynihans recommenda-

tions (U.S. Congress, Senate 2000a). As in the Moynihan Report, many policymakers used

rhetoric of intergenerational contagion, likening fatherlessness to a disease passed downthrough the generations. As Gregory Palumbo, executive director of Oklahomans for Families

Alliance and a fathers rights activist, told legislators:

Many of the behaviors that result in negative social indicators for children are learned, and passed

down from generation to generation. The consequences of fatherlessness for children are associated

with dramatic increases in being homeless or runaway, behavioral disorders, drug use, and filling

prisons. (U.S. Congress, House 1999a)

In addition to their common definition of the problem, policymakers agreed on the gen-

eral contours of a solution: to reconfigure the role of fathers in low-income communities.

When these experts referred to fathers, they meant something quite specificmen with bio-

logical connections to children. Policymakers conceptualized fatherhood in quite formulaic


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terms. For them, the act of procreation was the foundation of fatherhood; fathers were men

with blood ties to children. In their construction, biological fathers irresponsible behavior

had pushed their families into poverty and led their children into delinquency, recklessness,

and even suicide. From this perspective, once the severed ties between biological fathers and

their offspring were mended, a plethora of social problems would be resolved.

How could state policy mend these severed ties? Here, too, policymakers appeared to

agree: Their formulaic view of fatherhood led them to rework the institutional links between

biological fathers and their children. Rather than relying on past techniques that coerced men

into paying child support, the policies they proposed sought to transform men into solid family

members. This implied formalizing the relationship between childrens biological fathers and

mothers through marriage. It meant strengthening the structural relation between biological

fathers and their offspring. It also implied solidifying normative paternal roles and responsi-

bilities. In short, it meant securing a married, nuclear family formwhat Dorothy Smith

(1993) has termed the model of the Standard North American Family, or SNAF.

Although policymakers converged to view biological fatherhood as the problem, and

marriage as a panacea, they diverged somewhat over how to conceptualize the ideal SNAF

model. Some policymakers insisted on a model based on male breadwinning and female domes-

tic service. For them, once men became breadwinners, they would transform into responsible

fathers. Other policymakers were less insistent that men become sole providers and more

preoccupied with their wage-earning potential. Recognizing that the two-wage-earner family

has become the norm, their goal was to prepare men to fit this family model. Thus, while both

groups strove to turn biological fathers into married fathers, they disagreed over the precise

means to this end: Should policy endeavor to secure the male breadwinner family form in low-

income communities? Or should policy concentrate on making low-income men marriageable

by fostering their employability?

Making Men Marry: Good Fathers Are Heads-of-Households

Policymakers who emphasized the cultural pathologies that undermined the male bread-winner family form tended to be the most vociferous and to receive the most media atten-

tion. The causal links they made among social problems were clear: Poor communities failed

to value married fatherhood and male breadwinning. Without the inculcation of such values,

these communities would continue to be plagued by cycles of crime, out-of-wedlock births,

and welfare dependency. For them, the crisis of fatherhood was rooted in the ethos of the

poor. The goal was to impose another definition of fatherhood on poor communities and to

restore men to their rightful place as fiscal and moral heads-of-household. Once a proper

family form was in place, appropriate paternal functions would emerge. In effect, lawmakers

assumed that once men were married, they would naturally assume the breadwinner role. As

Wade Horn, Assistant Secretary for Children and Families, told Congress:

Federal legislation must clearly promote married fatherhood as the ideal. All available evidence sug-

gests that the most effective pathway to involved, committed, and responsible fatherhood is mar-

riage. Research consistently documents that unmarried fathers, whether divorced or unwed, tend

over time to become disconnected, financially and psychologically, from their children. . . . We need

a public policy that supports [fathers] work as nurturers, disciplinarians, mentors, moral instructors

and skill coaches. (U.S. Congress, House 1999b)

This discourse of fatherhood gave rise to clear policy prescriptions. All the versions of

fatherhood legislation mandated that state funds be used to hold married fatherhood as the

ideal. Politically conservative policymakers took this one step further, arguing that low-

income fathers were not sufficiently acquainted with the ideaof marriage itself. Represent-

ative Nancy Johnson testified:


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468 HANEY/MARCH

Part of the problem seems to be that our society ceased to expect poor people to marry and that

there was nothing wrong with millions of poor children being reared by single mothers, often on

welfare. This view is completely out of touch with what we know about what it takes to make

adults healthy and happy and . . . what it takes to rear strong and accomplished children. Marriage

is goodfor both the poor and nonpoor. If we can restore marriage to its rightful place at all levels

of our society, we will have accomplished more that could be achieved by any government program

we might design. (U.S. Congress, House 1999c)

To achieve this, policymakers proposed to teach men about marriage and its rewards. The

Senates Responsible Fatherhood Act of 2001 called for the promotion of marriage through

disseminating information about its benefits. The legislation provides states with grants to

fund television and print advertisements that promote the formation and maintenance of

married two-parent families. States can either produce these campaigns directly or contract

them out to non-profit organizations and religious agencies. Concomitantly, the legislation

channels funds for programs that promote the benefits of marriage on an individual level

through counseling and mentoring programs. Again, states would have wide latitude to fund

public, private, or religious programs.

Some politically conservative skeptics responded that information was not enough: Even

if low-income men became aware of the benefits of marriage, they might not have the emo-tional maturity for marriage. As Jeffrey Johnson, president of a national non-profit group

dedicated to strengthening families, explained to Congress:

Young, low-skilled, unmarried, poor parents have their children before they are mature enough to

understand and manage a committed relationship and before they recognize the implications of

unmarried, unprotected sex and childbearing. (U.S. Congress, Senate 2000c)

To secure this resocialization, policymakers proposed teaching low-income men how to form

successful marriages. A recurring provision in the House and Senate Acts was that states must

fund at least one fatherhood program that utilizes married couples to provide services for

low-income fathers. For example, the 2001 House version stipulates that funding be used:

[To] sustain marriage through marriage preparation programs, premarital counseling, marital invento-ries, skills-based marriage education, financial planning, and divorce education and reduction programs,

including mediation and counseling. (U.S. Congress, House 2001)

In addition, this legislation established and funded fatherhood programs with strong ther-

apeutic components. The Senates version proposed to instruct men how to sustain marriage

through marriage education programs and fatherhood preparedness classes. These pro-

grams included educational campaigns to give men relationship skills, premarital counseling

to impart knowledge about healthy marriages, and marital enrichment classes to offer con-

flict resolution techniques. Wade Horn defended the focus in a media interview:

It would be wholly inappropriate for the government to run a dating service. . . . Were going to

support activities that help couples who choose marriage for themselves develop the skills and

knowledge necessary to form and sustain healthy marriages. I find it almost unfathomable why

anyone would be against helping a low-income family who chooses marriage for themselves access

the skills and knowledge to build a healthy marriage. (Toner 2002)

Making Men Marriageable: Good Fathers Are Wage-Earning Husbands

Policymakers at the other end of the political spectrum supported many of these proposals.

Democratic lawmakers and experts tended to agree that there was a crisis of fatherhood in

low-income communities. And they concurred that the roots of the crisis could be traced to a

breakdown in the connection between marriage and fatherhood. Yet while political conser-

vatives insisted that stable families were synonymous with male breadwinning families, these

policymakers claimed that healthy families could include two wage earners. For them, the


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impediment to married fatherhood was not low-income fathers moral or cultural ethos, but

their inability to contribute materially. Without the ability to act as wage earners, these policy-

makers argued, men found it difficult to maintain a nuclear family form.

By recognizing the futility of demanding that men without economic opportunities get

married and support their children, these policymakers inserted a new distinction into policy

debates about fatherhood: There were men who could support their families materially, but

would not; and there were men who would support their families materially, but could not.

In essence, they distinguished between dead beat dads and dead broke dads (Orloff and

Monson 2002). They also claimed that most low-income fathers fell into the latter category

they were men who had the desire to support their children, but who lacked the capacity to

do so. Until these men became marriageable, there would be little incentive for low-income men

and women to formalize relationships through marriage. In his written testimony, Dr. Jeffrey

Johnson, the head of the national pro-family group Partners for Fragile Families, described the

rehabilitation strategies his organization utilized to make low-income fathers marriageable:

Dead-broke dads are often young, had their first child before finishing high school or acquiring

much work experience. They are in all practical respects, unemployable. . . . In line with the goal of

promoting marriageablility and increased child support, all PFF grantees are required to institute or

provide access to intensive career and personal development skills training in preparation for place-ment in family sustaining, wage growth jobs. . . . In addition, we teach values, manhood, parental

accountability, anger management, health, sexuality and pregnancy prevention, conflict resolution

and self sufficiency. (U.S. Congress, Senate 2000c)

Given that these policymakers viewed marriageability as central to the crisis of father-

hood, they sought policies to address mens unemployment or underemployment. According

to them, poor communities lacked the right values and the right jobs. Low-income men

needed a sense of masculinity that affirmed their obligations to children; they needed oppor-

tunities for financial self-improvement; and they needed programs that provided job training,

education, and practical skills. Once they became wage earners, they would begin to act as

responsible parents. And once they had economic opportunity, the gender role confusion

that arose from their lack of economic power would end. The reverse would also occurwithfamily relationships formalized, men would have an incentive to improve their financial

standing; with connection to their offspring, men would have a reason to advance economi-

cally. Just as conservative policymakers blueprints linked breadwinning to good fathering,

these lawmakers discourse maintained that wage earning would make men better fathers. As

Preston Garrison, the head of another fatherhood program, testified:

Serious attention must be paid to building the capacity of low income fathers to attain the economic

sustainability necessary to maximize the potential for children to grow up free from poverty and

dependence on the government. To accomplish this, we must give attention to increasing the ability

of fathers . . . to become employable in the new workforce so they can contribute economically and

emotionally to their children. (U.S. Congress, Senate 2000b)

The discursive connection these policymakers made between wage earning and father-hood appeared in the proposed legislation less often than the agendas of conservative policy-

makers. But both the House and Senates fatherhood legislation did contain provisions for job

training and educational programs for low-income men. For example, the 1999 House ver-

sion included funding for programs that sought to improve low-income fathers economic

status by providing work-first services, subsidized employment, career-advancing education,

job retention, and job enhancement (U.S. Congress, House 1999a).

The more recent version of the House legislation coupled such provisions with programs

to instill a family-oriented masculinity in low-income men and to teach them to become fis-

cally responsible. It not only earmarked funds to inculcate the values necessary for sexual

fidelity and non-violent conflict resolution, but it included programs to socialize men into

roles as financial planners. As it stated, fatherhood programs were designed:


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470 HANEY/MARCH

[To] improve fathers ability to effectively manage family business affairs by means such as educa-

tion, counseling, and mentoring in matters including household management, budgeting, banking,

and handling of financial transactions, time management, and home maintenance. (U.S. Congress,

House 2001)

Hence, while policymakers debated what type of family form state policy should prioritize,

they shared a definition of fatherhood that privileged the biological and material dimensions of

fatherhood over its social dimensions. All those involved in the Congressional debates argued

that the biological relationship between fathers and their children should anchor family

structure; the biological connection between fathers and their children was an irreplaceable

component of healthy families. They also assumed that, in some form, the nuclear family

model would transform men into responsible fathers. Once an appropriate family form was

established, fathers would adhere to gender-appropriate roles and behavior.

The rhetoric used by policymakers to condone and condemn various paternal forms

clearly reflected a larger political discourse about families. From the first advisory announcing

the fatherhood hearings, the contours of the fatherhood debate were shaped by a SNAF-

infected rhetoric that pathologized non-nuclear family forms. The near consensus on the

desirability of biological, married families among those invited to testify before Congress sug-

gests that the parameters of the debate were set so narrowly as to preclude discussions ofalternatives to SNAF. If policymakers testimony expressed a somewhat divergent causal

ordering of marriage and breadwinning, their insistence that ideal paternal form gives rise to

ideal paternal functions remained mired in a conservative family values discourse.

Making Better Daddies: Paternal Function over Paternal Form

Like members of Congress, the low-income women we interviewed had strong opinions

about fatherhood. In fact, their views were so strong that they surfaced in all our interviews,

even though few of our interview questions pertained directly to fatherhood. When we asked

these women about the connections between their work and family lives, they discussed

fathers. When we questioned them about the role of extended kin and community networks

in their lives, they discussed fathers. And when we inquired about their experiences with state

assistance, they discussed fathers. Although their representations of fatherhood occasionally

diverged, they did converge to challenge the simple formula adhered to in Congressional

debateswhereby fatherhood was defined in biological terms and good fathering was reduced

to mens institutional or financial connection to children. Instead, these women advanced a

more complex and malleable conception of fatherhood.

Initially, this flexible definition caused some confusion in the interviews. Our own assump-

tions about the biological basis of fatherhood led us to misinterpret respondents views. For

instance, in describing the excellent relationship between her mother and father, 31-year-old

Loretta explained, They have known each other for 25 years. And [they have] been married

20 years. Other women, like Sheryl, a 49-year-old mother of six, showed us pictures of herchildrens fathersmen who looked only a few years older than her children. Still other

women, like 32-year-old Darlene, began the interview by explaining that her childrens

father was incarcerated. Then, later in the interview, she claimed that her children were

lucky to have a father who did right by them and saw them almost every weekend.

Needless to say, we were quite perplexed by such seemingly inconsistent accounts.

Whos Your Daddy?: Biological and Other Fathers

As the interviews progressed, it became clear that such accounts were not inconsistent.

Women like Loretta, Sheryl, and Darlene did not define fatherhood in strictly biological terms.

Nor did they see procreation as the foundation of fatherhood. Instead, they maintained that


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there were biological and real fathersand often the two did not meet. As Margaret, a 49-

year-old mother of two put it: Every man that fathers a child is not a father.

Like Frank Furstenbergs (1995) distinction between daddies and fathers, our respon-

dents invented ways to classify mens involvement in their childrens lives. Put another way,

they advanced a conception of other fathering that was similar to Collins (2000) notion

of other mothering. According to Collins, other mothering or community mothering arose

out of the historical, economic, and social conditions of African American communities

conditions in which it was not always possible or desirable for biological mothers to be sole

caretakers. Similarly, our respondents presented other fathering as emerging out of a combina-

tion of necessity and choice. Many of them recounted painful memories of paternal abandon-

ment, which they argued had prompted them to adhere to an expansive notion of fathering.

Some of them claimed that men wanted nothing to do with them or their children; others

explained that men had been forcibly separated from them due to incarceration. These women

then presented other fathering as a response to their experiences of lossas a way to support

themselves and their children in the sheer absence of biological fathers. As 32-year-old Kim-

berly described her daughters biological father:

He conceived her, but now hes nowhere. For the first three or four years of her life, he was locked

up. So he didnt see her. Now he has three other kids. Hes married. And he just forgot about her. I

really dont even want her to be a part of that. He wont even do paternity. Its all messed up. I went

down to social services to get him down for a [paternity] test. But he gets all mad and wont do it.

[It is] just not worth it. I would rather just leave it alone.

While paternal abandonment was by far the most common reason given for the impor-

tance of other fathers, some women also linked their definitions of fatherhood to their own

emotional and physical abuse. These women told stories of being hurt and disappointed by

their biological fathers so often that their views of fatherhood changed. They portrayed the

inclusion of other fathers as something of a survival strategy, as a way to protect themselves

or their children from further abuse. For example, after years of watching her 32-year-old

daughter be neglected by her biological father, Dorothy suggested that her daughter find a

real daddy and stay away from her biological father who causes more grief than any-

thing. Then there was 32-year-old Jackie, who re-examined her notion of fatherhood after

discovering her infant son with 2nd and 3rd degree burns to the crown of his headwounds

inflicted on him by his biological father. She claimed that in order to protect her son, she

replaced his biological father with her long-term lover, Arnold. When we asked about the

role Arnold played in her childrens lives, Jackie explained:

As far as they [her children] know, Arnold is not their real father. Hes daddy. He is not who made

us . . . But he is daddy. He does everything for them. He has been in their lives since they were

babies . . . So they call him daddy. They know nobody else as daddy. I know I will have to answer

for it, come Judgment Day, but until I get to that point, all they will know is that their biological

father is dead. If they see him on a bus, I wouldnt say, Thats your father.

So who did these women classify as other fathers? A majority of them applied this label to

male relativesgrandfathers, uncles, cousins, or brothers. They were men who lived in close

proximity to women and their children. In discussing such men, women claimed that their

blood ties were less important than their on-going contact through familial networks. When

women spoke about their own other fathers, they frequently constructed these relationships

as evolving over time, beginning when they were children and stretching into adulthood.

April, a 33-year-old mother of two, considered the man her mother married when she was a

small child to be her father. Although they divorced when April was young, she continued to

call him her father, displaying pictures of him in her apartment and calling his new wife her

stepmother. When her children get older, she hopes they will exhibit pictures of their

fatheran elderly uncle who moved in with them after her daughters biological father


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472 HANEY/MARCH

was shot on the street while taking the girls shopping. When asked about the father of her

two children, 48-year-old Mabel described their daddy:

Ive been with him since 1985. Hes not the father of either of my kids. But he is, really. Hes been a

part of their lives since they were real young. Hes the only daddy they know. Even though hes got

four other kids, he raised mine. Hes their daddy.

In addition to extended kin, our respondents applied the other father label to men fromtheir community and friendship networks. Roughly 35 percent of the women we interviewed

discussed other fathers with no biological relation to their children. These men were neigh-

bors, friends, and fellow church members. As 30-year-old Stephanie discussed her daughters

daily routine, she stopped to comment on the significance of the girls other father:

She has a real supportive godfather; hes my best friend . . . Hes married and has a little girl, but he

realizes how hard I work to keep things nice and he just helps . . . He knows that she doesnt really

have a male role model. So thats what I ask of him, to be here for her and to come get her on a Sat-

urday and take her places. He comes over and spends time with her. . . . He takes care of her. She

goes home with him on weekends and stuff. She has the best godfather in the world; far better than

any dad she could have.

Other fathers could also be these womens former boyfriends and lovers. Some womenwhose children had different biological fathers designated one of them as the father of all

their children. For instance, Michele, a 31-year-old mother of three who was no longer in

touch with two of her childrens biological fathers, presented the man she was in contact

with as a father to all three of her kids. Hes real good, she explained. He takes them all out

on the weekends. He treats them the same, you know. Like his kids. Not like playing favorites

or anything. Latarsha, a 29-year-old mother of three, portrayed one of two of her ex-husbands

in a similar way. She believed that the biological father of her oldest son wanted little to do

with them, but that Marvin, the biological father of her youngest son, was an involved parent.

So she positioned Marvin as another father to her older son. As she explained:

[Marvin] normally takes the youngest one off to his house. He will spend time with the oldest one,

too . . . Hes been around the oldest one since he was little, so its kind of like the oldest one kind ofgrew up with him really as a father more than his own father . . . Just about every weekend the

youngest one will go and then the oldest one will call him on the phone. And talk about boy things

or whatever. Its not like he doesnt have a male figure in his life. He is closer to him than he is to his

own father. Because his father has never been there.

Clearly, these womens construction of fatherhood is not entirely new; nor is it a simple

outgrowth of the most recent round of welfare restructuring. In many ways, it harks back to

the familial constructions uncovered by Carol Stack (1974) in her ethnographic work in an

African American community nearly 30 years ago. Like Stacks informants, our respondents

used the category of father to denote social ties and emotional attachments rather than a sim-

ple biological connection. In fact, some of our respondents even traced the long legacy of

their paternal representations: They claimed to have had other fathers as they grew up, and

then to have used other fathers to help raise their own children. For Jacqueline, a 53-year-

old mother of three, this paternal construct was passed down in her family across three gen-

erations. When Jacqueline was in her mid-30s, she learned that the man she thought was her

biological father was really a family friend. She took the news in stride, recalling that the

daddy of her own children had no biological connection to them. When we asked about

the father of her daughters children, she responded that he was not in their lives either.

Then she smiled and noted that a reliance on multiple fathers ran in the family.

The Limits of Marriage and Money

These womens broad definition of fatherhood had important implications for their theo-

ries of how men became good fathers. National policymakers adhered to a clear formula for


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this: For them, marriage and money would make men better fathers. Yet neither marriage

nor money was as central to our respondents paternal blueprints. While 68 percent of them

had been married, roughly one third lived with spouses at the time of the interview. Statistics

like this provoke consternation in national policymakers, prompting them to channel funds

to promote marriage. The assumption underlying these efforts is that men pose the main

obstacle to marriage. A similar assumption characterizes much of the social scientific work on

the crisis of fatherhood (Blankenhorn 1995; Hobson and Morgan 2002; Nock 1998). For

instance, Elijah Anderson (1993) has argued that coupling in inner-city communities resembles

a game of conquest in which women exchange sex for the promise of marriage and money.

Men are expected to do right by these women by marrying and supporting them. But mens

own desires often lead them elsewhere, which can create a community of part-time fathers.

The women we interviewed painted a very different picture of their expectations and

desires. Far from presenting it as a panacea, these women expressed a deep ambivalence

about marriage. As Kathryn Edin (2000) found in her work on low-income womens views of

marriage, many of our respondents said they were better off without a spouse since marriage

posed more risks than rewards. In explaining their logic, these women often drew on their

life experiences: Those who had been married frequently recalled that their spouses created

more turmoil in their lives. Others remembered that marriage had made their lives more hecticas it meant another child to care for. As Mildred put it, Nobody told me that when you get

married, thats like having another kid. Still others revealed that they felt materially and

emotionally constrained by their spouses. Moreover, few of the women who remained single

thought of themselves as losers in a game of conquest. Far from it: They told stories of mar-

riage proposals they had rejected and of engagements they had called off. Over and over again,

these women insisted that marriage was not the way to make a man responsible or to secure

a sense of well-being. As 29-year-old Sonya recounted her relations with men, she noted:

The man has always been basically a want thing. Its never been a need, like some young women

[say]: I need him, he has to help me. Ive never been there. Ive always been totally in control so

that if a man is in my life, he fussed, You act like you dont want me to do nothing. I always feel

like if you are going to do it, do it . . . You live here like I do. You open and shut that refrigerator soyou see what the house needs . . . You look at the childrens feet, you know if they need shoes . . .

So Ive always been independent. [Men] made me that way.

Our respondents articulated a similar logic when conceptualizing the relationship between

marriage and fatherhood. Just as they questioned the desirability of marriage for themselves,

they were suspicious about its benefits for their children. In effect, they rejected the discursive

connection that policymakers made between an ideal paternal form and ideal paternal

functions. Importantly, few respondents were opposed to marrying their childrens fathers in

the abstractif the men were committed parents, perhaps it made sense to formalize the

relationship. But they insisted that, in and of itself, the formalization of the relationship did

not transform men into compassionate parents. As 49-year-old Carol passionately argued as

she discussed the development of her two children:I get angry when I see all these studies that say theres something wrong with children because its

only one parent raising them . . . I have two very positive children. One of them is Stephanie, who I

raised as a single parent. And the other one, I was married and still raised [him] as a single parent . . .

My son and daughter are almost identical. Because a person being there and a person participating

and being a father and a dad are two different things. He fathered him. He didnt discipline him. He

didnt listen to him. He didnt help. He didnt do anything . . . I can love my children enough for

two. I can be a mother and a father if I have to, and I have been.

As Carols comments indicate, many of our respondents felt the need to justify the dis-

tinction they made between marriage and fatherhood. And they frequently did so by appeal-

ing to their experiences. As in their rationales for their inclusion of other fathers, these women

drew on life experiences to support their rejection of marital reductionism. Discursively, they


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Close to all of the women we interviewed claimed that the most fundamental aspect

of fatherhood was a mans identification as a father: Was being a father key to a mans sense of

self? Was it a salient identity for him? Did he take pride in his parenting? Our respondents pre-

sented these issues as far more significant than a mans biological or material relation to chil-

dren. Their paternal discourse therefore allowed for all kinds of men to be good fathers

biological fathers, relatives, neighbors, or friends. Mens sense of responsibility mattered the

most. This is how 32-year-old Paulette described the biological father of her two children, a

man who never paid child support:

He is a good father. He took a job as a coach at their [her daughters] high school. Imagine, so he

can see them when he likes. He sees them cause hes the lacrosse coach. He talks to them. Hell call

up and see how they are doing and everything . . . To me, thats a good father.

In our respondents paternal conceptions, mens identification as fathers gave rise to good

paternal practices. Explicitly and implicitly, our respondents represented paternal behavior as

an outgrowth of mens commitment as parents. As these women discussed their paternal ideals,

they offered numerous examples of what they saw as good paternal practices. For some, good

fathers were nurturing and caring: They nursed children when they were sick; they listened

when kids needed to be heard; and they provided children with attention, advice, and stabil-ity. For others, good fathers simply spent time with children: They visited children on a regular

basis; they entertained kids; and they gave kids access to new familial and social relationships.

For others still, good fathers acted as mentors: They taught kids right from wrong; they

helped to discipline children; and they fostered kids talents and interests. When we asked

Marquia, a 32-year-old mother of three, to describe her childrens relationship to their bio-

logical father, she depicted him as encompassing all of these characteristics:

They jump on him and yell, Daddy, daddy, daddy. Whatever they want, movies, games, gossiping.

He listens to the music they listen to now. So hes a big kidrolling around, wrestling, punching

each other. One [daughter] is into wrestling; one is into Angel and Buffy. Hes doing these things

with them . . . Hes also a protector. Over-protective of his girls. [Hell say] Look at what you are

wearing. Youre not going out of the house. By respecting him, they are respecting themselves.Then theres the support thing. My daughters are tomboys with the sports. He tells them to be the

best and excel at what they want. Hes the father-type. And a friend. When they need to gossip or

just let it all out . . . Each one of them got to have their time [with him]. So he spends so much time

with them, yakking about this and that.

Other women, like Sonya, stressed good fathers importance as role models:

You learn from your daddy lots of things. Since my father was not around, my granddaddy was my

daddy. He taught me a lot. Like how a man should treat me. I learned from him how I should

expect to be treated by a man. I dont accept nothing less . . . This is one of the things Devon [her

boyfriend] shows to Nikita. Hes a model like that. How he treats me, she sees that. How he treats

her, too. Thats real. That stuff stays with you.

Importantly, few of our respondents believed that their caregiver ideal could be imposed

on men or that men could be forced to become committed to their children. In explaining

their doubts, these women frequently drew on their experiences with such coercion: They

recalled demanding that men spend more time with their children or using child support

decrees to force a paternal connectionusually to no avail. They also recounted how such

attempts seemed to backfire, prompting men to become increasingly alienated and disen-

gaged from parenting. Unlike policymakers, who maintained that men could be pushed into

fathering through material support or marriage, these women insisted on the limitations of

paternal pressure. Instead of forcing men to form bonds with their children, many of our

respondents said it was more fruitful to look to extended kin and community networks for

men who already identified as fathers and were ready to serve as good fathers.


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While our respondents caregiver ideal emphasized paternal identification and practices,

the form of mens connection to children was not irrelevant. They simply assigned paternal

form a different relevance than did policymakers. First, in their model, the form of mens

relationship to children could be solidified once men had established good paternal practices.

For them, paternal form came from paternal function, which was something of a reversal of

policymakers causal logic. Second, the paternal forms their model privileged diverged from

policymakers ideals. When these women spoke about formalizing a paternal relationship, they

often mentioned assigning labels to these men. Once men had proven themselves as good

fathers, they earned labels like daddy, godfather, or father. Such labels fixed the rela-

tionship, signifying its long-term viability. Our respondents also discussed solidifying paternal

form through cohabitation. For them, the decision to live with lovers, male relatives, or friends

signified mens new level of paternal responsibility and willingness to participate in childrens

everyday lives. It also implied mens acceptance of a new financial role since cohabitation

often formalized mens material contribution to childrearing. Thus, along with paternal labels,

cohabitation became a sign to denote mens contributions as daddies and their integration

into childrens lives.

In short, our respondents defined fatherhood as a social relationship and good fathering

as a commitment to caretaking. Like policymakers, the women we interviewed constructedpaternal blueprints both to represent and validate particular domestic relations and attach-

ments. And, like policymakers, these women advanced complex paternal theories both to

reflect and produce interpersonal responsibilities, rights, and obligations. Yet there remain

critical differences between these groups paternal discourses. Their discourses were produced

in different contexts and wielded vastly different amounts of social power and influence over

state policies. They also had contrasting referents. As our respondents articulated their pater-

nal constructions, they almost always drew on their experiential environments: They con-

veyed the importance of other fathers by referring to their own upbringing; they expressed

their ambivalence about marital and material reductionism by recounting what they found

desirable and viable in their actual kin and community networks; and they imagined the

caregiver ideal by accentuating their experiential knowledge of childrens needs. Instead of

reverting to abstract ideology, as so many policymakers did, our respondents drew on real-life

referents to project what kind of paternal bonds would best secure childrens well-being.

Although it is outside the scope of this study to assess these projections, other sociologists

have found the content of fathers relationships to children to be more important than the

form of the relationships. They have established that the formation of a close and caring rela-

tionship with a father figure has the strongest effect on a childs well-beingirrespective of

whether the father figure is married to the mother or has a biological connection to the child

(Coltrane 1998; Furstenberg 1995; Furstenberg and Harris 1993; Marsiglio 1995). Thus, it

appears as though our respondents experiential knowledge highlights the key influences on

childrens welfare: paternal involvement, interaction, and attachment.

From Paternal Discourses to Paternal Policies

After decades of using the social policy apparatus to dictate the terms of motherhood,

U.S. policymakers have set their sights on fatherhood. Although welfare policies always sent

implicit messages about the appropriate attributes of fathers, they now do so explicitly. As

the U.S. Congress drafted and debated legislation targeted at fathers, it set forth a powerful

discourse of fatherhood. Their discourse prioritized the form of mens connections to children

over the content of those connections. They constructed fathers in narrow, biological terms

by negating the paternal roles played by a variety of men; they emphasized mens institu-

tional relations to children by insisting that marriage will transform them into better fathers;

and they stressed mens financial obligations by equating good fathers with breadwinning


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478 HANEY/MARCH

fathers. Policymakers assumed that the absence of this paternal model bred pathologies of

fatherlessness. The only way to correct for these absences and pathologies was to impose an

appropriate model of fatherhood on low-income communities.

Yet our interview data suggest that there is a common model of fatherhood in the com-

munities targeted by policymakers. While this model was not consistent with that of policy-

makers, it was far from pathological. Instead, it was constructed and sustained by women

who cared deeply about their childrens well-being. Theirs was a flexible definition of father-

hood that privileged the content of paternal practices as opposed to their institutional form. It

highlighted mens identification with parental roles and commitment to children. It allowed

for a variety of men to fill paternal roles, from biological to other fathers. It separated mens

marital connections and material contributions from their broad responsibilities as fathers.

Finally, it considered paternal involvement, attachment, and caregiving as ideals.

Clearly, more research is needed on the prevalence of this conception of fatherhood as

well as its effects on childrens well-being. Yet if our respondents accounts are any indication,

there is likely to be a discursive disjuncture between policymakers and their targeted commu-

nities. The possible sources of this disjuncture are many. These conceptions of fatherhood

emanated from different discursive environments: Policymakers advanced their paternal

claims in a highly politicized debate on the floor of Congress, while our respondents did so ina relatively private interview setting. The discursive demands of these contexts certainly

varied, perhaps shaping the parameters of what could be said. Yet while situational differ-

ences may help to explain the form of these discoursesespecially the formulaic and reduc-

tionist quality of much of policymakers rhetoricthey do not go far enough in accounting

for the content of their paternal conceptions and the causal links they imply. For such an

account, more substantive factors should be analyzed. In particular, policymakers paternal

discourse often reflected an ideological commitment to the SNAF model and politically-

conservative notions of family values; they were also mired in debates about fiscal and soci-

etal responsibility. Many of our respondents were cognizant of this ideological frame, as they

frequently justified and defended their paternal blueprints in relation to it. But while our

respondents paternal discourse was not devoid of ideological commitment, it was grounded

much more in the actualities of their everyday lives and in personal and social experience.

Understanding the potential sources of this discursive disjuncture is analytically and polit-

ically significant given that it is likely to have practical implications. The history of state inter-

vention into poor womens mothering provides a clue as to what these practical effects might

entail. From the Progressive Era on, welfare policy held out the nuclear family as the norm,

pushing poor women to conform to middle-class notions of childrearing. While such policy

efforts rarely succeeded in enforcing conformity, they did place new pressure on poor mothers

by forcing them to overcome the gap between their experiences and the dictates of social policy.

These policies also made it difficult for poor women to sustain the maternal forms they believed

worked for them. The individualistic model of mothering embedded in state policy often ran

counter to their collective mode of motheringleaving the carework done by other mothers

unremunerated. Although poor women created inventive ways to remunerate this labor, itsinformal nature strained and constrained these networks. Policymakers not only ignored poor

womens conception of mothering, but they actually worked against it. In doing so, they left a

series of maternal possibilities untapped. They also bred misconceptions about poor womens

mothering by stigmatizing those who did not adhere to their narrow definition of mothering.

Instead of learning from this history, U.S. policymakers are poised to repeat it with low-

income fathers. There are, of course, alternatives. Although our respondents rarely spelled

them out explicitly, their accounts implied distinct fatherhood policies and programs. Some of

them may overlap with those proposed by Congressit is imaginable that our respondents

would support programs to emphasize paternal involvement and financial responsibility. Yet

other policy solutions are also imaginable. Rather than devoting public funds to marriage

programs that may undermine existing paternal networks, state policy could harness these


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support networks to care for children even more effectively. This could be done by securing

childrens access to the other fathers surrounding them through state-funded after-school pro-

grams, sports programs, or community groups. Another approach would be to use state funds

to secure the longevity of other-father relationships. This could include everything from com-

munity grants that support on-going mentoring programs to housing grants that enable poor

families to reside in the same neighborhood over time. Yet another approach would be to

ensure that other fathers have the resources they need to care for children. This would mean

finding ways to channel state funds to those men who actually father children, may they be

relatives, friends, or neighbors. All these approaches rest on the recognition of existing forms

of fatherhood and of the ways they operate and evolve. They also depend on replacing policy-

makers narrow definition of fatherhood with a more flexible conception that is sensitive to the

realities of parenting in low-income communities.

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