Across the political spectrum, unwed fatherhood is denounced as one of the leading social problems of today. Doing the Best I Can is a strikingly rich, paradigm-shifting look at fatherhood among inner-city men often dismissed as “deadbeat dads.” Kathryn Edin and Timothy J. Nelson examine how couples in challenging straits come together and get pregnant so quickly—without planning. The authors chronicle the high hopes for forging lasting family bonds that pregnancy inspires, and pinpoint the fatal flaws that often lead to the relationship’s demise. They offer keen insight into a radical…
Easy-to-read basics to help families toward economic stability. Includes emergency benefits, job search and readiness, and basic budgeting. Presentation slides on CD-ROM (2010) are available for purchase, allowing for easy presentation by your staff to clients.(Author abstract modified)
This is Strengthening Young Families' economic stability handbook, in easy-to-read Spanish. It teaches basics to help families toward economic stability. Includes emergency benefits, job search and readiness, and basic budgeting. (Author abstract)
This chapter provides an overview of the findings about everyday living and child welfare service involvement from 18 life stories collected from fathers involved with one Children's Aid Society in southern Ontario. Results indicate fathers appreciated understanding and supportive service providers, useful assistance, and connecting to useful resources.
This chapter discusses the need for interventions that bring fathers and paternal family members to the table in child protection efforts, and shares a case study from Vermont that illustrates how restorative justice can be used in family group meetings to challenge totalizing characterizations of fathers and men and help social workers partner with families and collaboration with their professional colleagues to create balanced assessment’s and manage risks. 64 references.
Juvenile court judges are uniquely able to influence the health and well-being of children in foster care by asking about a child's health status and special needs, ordering appropriate assessments and services, and ensuring that identified needs are addressed through the child's court-ordered case plan. Judges can require that attorneys, caseworkers, and caregivers bring detailed information about a child's health to court. This booklet provides an overview of important health issues for children and youth in foster care. The appendix provides three downloadable age-appropriate forms that…
Unpublished Paper
There are approximately 1.8 million U.S. children with at least one parent in the military (Department of Defense, 2010). Maintaining an all-volunteer military force has led to an increase in older, career military members that are more likely to have children (RAND, 2010). Due to extended military commitments and recent deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, the need to understand the impact of deployment and military work commitments on children and family relationships has come to the forefront. While a number of studies have explored the influence of deployment and a military lifestyle on…
This clinical guidebook highlights the Young Parenthood Program (YPP), a brief research-based intervention designed to help young expectant couples learn to co-parent. The goal of the program is to support the development of interpersonal skills needed to maintain a constructive co-parenting relationships and diminish the risk of problems such as intimate partner violence, child maltreatment, or father disengagement. Following an explanation of the challenges faced by teenage parents, research findings on the effectiveness of YPP, and components and principles of the program, the role of the…
Unpublished Paper
Few empirical studies address the lived experience of single African American fathers. Research has been conducted on African American fathers with respect to their lack of presence in the lives of their children, the negative effects to children due to their absence, lack of provision for their children, and child support issues (Bronte-Tinkew, Scott, & Lilia, 2010; Coles, 2009a; Gursimsek, 2003; Krampe & Newton, 2006). However, there is little in the literature about African American fathers who choose to parent alone. The literature from affirming works was explored to counter the…
Unpublished Paper
Guided by ecological resilience perspectives this study examined the association between various risk factors (neighborhood risk, discrimination, peer victimization, fathers' risk behaviors) and African American and Latino adolescent boys' physical and relational aggression. Fathers' parenting behaviors were examined primarily as mediators and moderators of those associations to determine how they might exacerbate or protect against those risks. Both adolescents and their fathers reported on fathers' parenting behaviors. Data were collected from 234 adolescents (mean age of 15.17, 34.2%…
