Are out-of-wedlock births the root cause?
By: Peter Katel, The CQ Researcher
One in five American children lives in a household with income below the poverty line--$22,050 for a family of four. Not only are the daily lives of poor children difficult, but experts worry that many will suffer lifelong effects from early deprivation. Concern about child poverty has grown especially strong amid a push in Congress for sweeping budget cuts, including reductions in spending on food stamps and other anti-poverty programs. As child poverty continues to rise amid the nation's persistent economic woes and high unemployment, a long-simmering debate over the problem's root causes is heating up. Liberls argue that fewer children would fall into poverty if the government safety net were stronger and more jobs were available for struggling parents. Conservatives, on the other hand, say child poverty largely stems from parent behavior--particularly a growing tendency to have children out of wedlock.
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By: Cynthia Gordy, The Root
Does the state discourage poor fathers from being present in their children's lives? There are the emblematic images, like Diahann Carroll as a single mother on welfare in the 1974 movie Claudine, struggling to hide her boyfriend from a social worker.
Urban legends tell of "man in the house" rules that prohibit men from living under the same roof as moms who receive public assistance. Between media images, half-truths -- and also well-meaning but flawed policies -- the belief that the welfare system undermines poor families has been entrenched in the public mind for decades.
Now, with new fatherhood initiatives at public-housing authorities nationwide, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is seeking to debunk that idea.
By Yeganeh June Torbati, The Baltimore Sun
After he and his wife separated in 2007, Bruce Jordan, 37, entered a long custody battle for one of their children, Matthew, an active 7-year-old who loves watching "SpongeBob SquarePants" and other cartoons.
The father of seven children in all, Jordan, who lives in East Baltimore, says he felt he had been too absent from the lives of his other kids.
"As far as my son, I wanted to make a difference," Jordan said on a recent afternoon, clutching a water bottle and looking relaxed in a Nike T-shirt and jeans. "I didn't just want to be a father with seven children and not have any of them with me."
In taking over the day-to-day care and supervision of his child, Jordan has joined the increasingly large ranks of single fathers in Maryland. According to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the rise in the number of Maryland families led by single fathers in the past decade outpaced the rise in single-mother families for the first time since at least 1970, as far back as the state data is available.
There are now about 47,200 single-father households in the state, an increase of nearly 6,000 over 2000, or 14 percent. The number of families led by single mothers increased by about 5,000 over the past 10 years, or 3.2 percent.
Though just 22 percent of single-parent households in Maryland are led by men, the data suggest more parity than ever before. Experts attribute the change to a more flexible court system where joint-custody arrangements are far more common, and to broader career options for women.
"There's been a slow shift in the way that men view their roles as father, the way that women view men's role as father, and the opportunities for women in the workplace," said Geoffrey L. Greif, who teaches at the University of Maryland School of Social Work and has written a book on single dads. "It gives women more permission to have men raise children after a divorce."
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By Geoffrey L. Greif University of Maryland Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland
By Joseph T. Jones, Jr., James Worthy, Eddie White, Will Davis and Edward Ptichford Center for Urban Families, Baltimore, Maryland
For social workers and other helping professionals, some populations have historically been harder to reach than others. Such difficulties are frequently the result of a combination of factors ranging from structural impediments (e.g., location of services, language match between provider and family, history of service provision to that population) to professionals' understanding of the population (see, e.g., Johnson, 2010b).
This article, though acknowledging the structural impediments, attempts to increase family social workers' understanding of one historically underserved and misunderstood population, urban, African American fathers.