Shawn Maxam, of ‘For Shawnel,’ on the crisis in Black fatherhood in America.
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I feel particularly troubled about this because I have a seven year-old nephew whose father is dead. The man is my brother, for whom my blog ‘For Shawnel’ is named.
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I have recently come to the realization that fathers (of course parents in general) are very much responsible for the adult behaviors of their children. Usually we aren’t aware of how large an emotional impact our father’s presence—or even lack of it—have on our personalities. Oftentimes mothers receive the bulk of the credit—and blame—for the type of person their child becomes. I feel particularly troubled about this because I have a seven year-old nephew whose father is dead. The man is my brother, for whom my blog ‘For Shawnel’ is named.
Many boys are emotionally distant and incapable of expressing their feelings in constructive manners. Especially Black boys. We have this warped sense of masculinity and fatherhood. Many of the fathers of my friends who are Black were either completely absent or womanizers (including my own dad) or like my nephew’s father, no longer living. So when boys grow and don’t know how to be faithful in their relationships or are unable to take charge of their lives, I am not surprised.
The deification of Black mothers (although definitely worthy) is problematic because many Black males only learn to respect their mothers while continuing to treat other women—their wives, girlfriends and female co-workers—like crap. This deification of the mother-son dynamic also plays out in men who expect the women in their lives to reprise the maternal role and provide the unconditional love of childhood.
We need fathers, father-figures, coaches and mentors to be celebrated year round, but we also need them to be present every day. We need them to be role models for being men, for having adult relationships with women, and as fathers who are actively parenting their children.
Whether we want to admit it or not, there is a father crisis in communities of color and it won’t be addressed until our society admits that fathers do matter.
Read more Father’s Day stories on The Good Life and more from Shawn Maxam on For Shawnel.
—Photo credit: Elvert Barnes/Flickr
About S. Maxam
Thank you for this article!!! I agree more fathers need a presence, the few of us that are in our child’s life don’t get much respect. Especially single dads of little girls. Little girls need their father just as much as little boys, teaching a young woman to respect herself and others will in the long run stem the stigma of the age old battle between women and men.
yeah totally agree Tony. Glad you liked it.
Whether we want to admit it or not, there is a father crisis in communities of color and it won’t be addressed until our society admits that father do matter.
And that’s the clincher.
People want to simultaneously complain about fathers (and not just black ones either) need to “step up” and write fathers off as useless parental figures.
Either fathers matter and they want them to get active or they don’t matter therefore they aren’t worth complaining about. They can’t have it both ways.
“Either fathers matter and they want them to get active or they don’t matter therefore they aren’t worth complaining about. They can’t have it both ways.”
yeah there’s a bit of cognitive dissonance happening that causes this to happen. We need more emotional clarity.
It’s more than culture.
The laws regarding divorce also need to be changed. Fathers and mothers both have a right to parent their own children in marriage and divorce (unless there is a finding of unfitness by the courts–i.e. not just an allegation).
Sometimes the law follows the culture, other times culture follows the law.
When the equal pay act and sexual harassment laws were passed, then respect for women in the workplace followed.
I’m curious as to what laws you’re referring to, specifically.
I was thinking of the equal pay act of 1963 (I believe) and the civil rights act of 1964 (or whichever law made it a crime to sexually harass employees or offer sex for raises or threaten to fire a worker if they didn’t have sex with you).
Actually I think the problem is the laws themselves are gender neutral however they are enforced in a heavily gendered manner. Just like fair pay. There was never anything on the law books that said to pay women less than men but it happened anyway.
In fact I think a lot of the gender issues (here in the States at least) stem more from laws that are enforced/not enforced in sexist ways rather than actual sexist laws.
That’s kind of what I was getting at with my question…it also means that a lot of the sexism in the U.S. is social (not institutional). Not always, but a lot, and I think the family court system falls into this.
….it also means that a lot of the sexism in the U.S. is social (not institutional).
You wouldn’t be able to tell with the way its usually talked about. Its “institutional this” and “institutional that” with some folks. I was under the impression that while the institution(s) didn’t actually decree those sexist things it was a matter of said institution(s) not having a problem with them or not doing anything to stop them.
However it seems to me that the difference between what is institutional or not seems to hinge on if the topic at hand is something that harms women or men. As in the sexist manner in which wages are paid out is institutional but the sexist manner in which divorce law is handled is not institutional, all based on which one is being harmed.
Which is it?
Woah, woah, woah, mate. Institutional discrimination is when it’s the policy of an institution to discriminate…and it was first coined as a term to explain racial discrimination. Social discrimination is when it’s socially acceptable to discriminate. Individual discrimination is when an individual is discriminating. The three can come together…but social discrimination in itself isn’t institutional (unless you consider society itself an institution).
Historically in the west (and still today in some parts of the world) discrimination against women was/is institutional. By policy, women weren’t allowed to vote, thus institutional. It didn’t matter whether individual women wanted to vote, or whether individual men wanted women to vote…the institution of the U.S.’s political system wouldn’t allow women to vote. An example of that today is how women aren’t allowed to hold certain positions in the military. That’s institutional. Now I cannot think of an example of how men have experienced institutional discrimination (on the basis of them being men) in the west. Social and individual discrimination, most certainly, but not institutional. And as I write that I actually would have to disagree with myself and say that the original wording in a lot of domestic violence law would actually be an example of institutional discrimination against men as a group.
Arguably institutional discrimination is easier to change because you only have to convince the few people in control of that institution that there is a problem. Where it becomes wicked difficult to create change is when you’re talking about social and individual discrimination.
And as I write that I actually would have to disagree with myself and say that the original wording in a lot of domestic violence law would actually be an example of institutional discrimination against men as a group.
Thank you for recognizing that. Also I’d say the draft. Sure you can argue that it also institutionally discriminated against women by preventing them from going to war but I would definitely say that being drafted to go to war under pain of punishment (draft dodging was a crime) simply because you’re a male of a certain age is institutional discrimination. (And there is also Selective Service in which when a male turns 18 he must register for it under pain of fine, prison, automatic denial of college application, automatic denial of financial aid application, and/or (if he immigrated) possible loss of citizenship.)
This is also what I’m talking about when it comes to people trying to understand each other and (hopefully) work together there are so manny different interpretations and understandings of things.
I’m not completely sold on the idea that the draft and selective service is institutional discrimination against men. It’s totally screwed up, yeah, but I wouldn’t call it institutional discrimination. I’d perhaps argue it’s more societal norms worming their way into the institution of the draft.
We’ll have to disagree then. The draft (and Selective Service) was put in place and maintained by the US government. It may have come from societal norms and ideas of gender and combat but I’d call it institutional discrimination.
Even by what you said here:
Institutional discrimination is when it’s the policy of an institution to discriminate.
It’s clear matter of “men must do this, women cannot do this” held in place by the US government.
(And coulnd’t you say the same about women not being able to hold certain positions in the military? The beliefs that women shouldn’t be in front line comabat or even not near the battle field at all because they are too precious to send off?)
(Yeah derail on the real. If I have more to say on this I’ll email you.)
Yeah, I was thinking I’d e-mail you more to discuss it, as I’m still thinking on it.
Heather writes:
“Now I cannot think of an example of how men have experienced institutional discrimination (on the basis of them being men) in the west.”
I would say the ability of women to legally force men to become fathers (which nobody has the legal right to do to mothers) is institutional.
The Maverick feminist Karen Decrow linked abortion rights for womenand ending of (forced) paternity suits for men, detailing her belief that nobody should be forced into parenthood. She served as Pres of NOW from 1970 to 72.
Many of her quotes are still as groundbreaking today as they were then when she details the right of men to surrender the legal rights and obligations to a child.
Heather says:
“That’s kind of what I was getting at with my question…it also means that a lot of the sexism in the U.S. is social (not institutional). Not always, but a lot, and I think the family court system falls into this.”
I think it’s a lot of both. I think the primary / non-custodial parenting model needs to go away (as a one-size-fits-all solution). What needs to replace it is a rebuttable presumption of shared parenting.
The primary / non-custodial model is institutional. The fact that mothers win primary custody 80% to fathers 6% is both institutional and socialized. Some district use the tender years doctrine or other rationales to validate their bias.
The governor of MN just veto’d a shared parenting law that passed overwhelmingly the legislature. The law did one and only one thing: increased the time that non-custodial parents were permitted and legally expected to enjoy (barring legitimate reasons/evidence) 35% of the parenting time up from 25%.
Apparently the governor decided this was too destabilizing.
I think fatherhood is highly over rated & we should guide young males to see how life altering nightmarish it can be when not planed, it destroys life’s of young men in most cases.
I think what you’re detailing is when women have the legal right to force men to become fathers.
Nobody has the legal right to force women to become mothers. This is an issue that men and men alone have to face. But, this is a small % of all fatherhood in America. Many men think becoming a father is the best time of their life.
If the law sucks, change the law it doesn’t mean fatherhood sucks.
Shawn, it was short and to the point … thank you. It is a crisis and something has to be done. I only wish I knew what can be done, now that there’s been so much damage. Something should have happen years ago to change things. The normalization and sometimes celebration of fatherless homes sure as heck hasn’t helped. The “single parent” homes is a broad brush that normalizes fatherless homes in that most of those “single parents” are moms who have kids with little to no male role models.
Women were sold a bill of good where they were told that they can do it all. I guess that perhaps because we’re on the heel of fathers day, some will reserve their comments about fatherless homes… then again, it’s early and the article was recently posted.
Kids having kids …. It’s amazing. We currently have a 15 year old on my unit that has a 3 month old son. In the last year, We’ve had no less then 7 adolescent males who have kids. All of these guys are court mandated into drug treatment, all of them have criminal records. How do things look for these kids kids? No so good. And BTW, they aren’t all minorities.
The cycle isn’t changing and I see very little attempt to change it. Sorry if I sound gloom but it’s how I feel. Okay, so I’m gonna throw this out there and I know that I’m gonna get a lot of flack but …. In some case, I feel that what a lot of these women have done is just shy of abuse. They hide behind the cloak of the trials and tribulations of single motherhood which appears to excuse what they do. Then you hear, “where is the baby’s daddy?” Yeah, you tell me? Tell me why the daddy isn’t part of the kids life? Tell me why you even had a kid without knowing that the daddy is ready to be a daddy? Tell me why (in the case of the 15 year old) you would even think that having sex with another child? What happen in these kids lives that they view sex at that age as something okay or normal?
Adolescents are developing mentally and physically. A lot of people like to ignore the emotional development of an adolescent, accordingly ignore the emotional impact sex has on the adolescent. Sex = love to an adolescent. No matter how much we want to paint it in a different light, the reality is that sex with developing adolescents result in problems later. Now we have a bunch of kids with kids and the a bunch of kids without dads because the “dads” are kids and it’s virtually impossible for them to be role models much less active dads.
So Shawn, any suggestions on what we can do to start to change things? The problem has existed for a long time and it’s not getting any better. The saying “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic” comes to mind. There are very clear stats on the how kids are affected by fatherless homes. Now what?
Suggestions on changing things…I mean it’s a complicated issue so it’s hard to name anything simple.
I would mainly say we have to aware as men to participate in venues where we can be role models to boys. I would love to see more male teachers, social workers, guidance counselors and other professions where kids can interact with men within context that allow for vulnerability and emotional attachment.
I’d love to see an article from TGMP detailing the story of the Minnesota governor vetoing the shared parenting law and subverting the will of the people.
I really think this is an important topic. If this blog discusses it, maybe others will too.
If we want more involved fathers, then changing the law will help change the culture.
What? Veto on shared parenting?
I wish I had the time to get on this. Seriously John D you should write this and submit it to GMP. And I’m not trying to say that as a way to push the onus of starting the conversation back on you. I’m saying this because you have a voice too.
If you are unsure of the value of a father, ask any child of divorced parents.
Now imagine the disaster that is the black family, where 70% lack a father.
I am a father and a coach/mentor in Oakland California, so I feel uniquely qualified to lend a voice to this discussion. Like most things in life,what one hears about an issues should be taken a measure of doubt and suspicion. The narrative on the ineptitude of black fathers is no exception. There are many moving parts to this puzzle that under most circumstances are put in their proper places.The truth is black women are not as blameless as they would appear and black men are not as irresponsible as they appear.In some ways, the same hurdles that white men face, in a post feminists, post 9/11, post financial crisis world, in trying to find wholeness and identity, I face. In my mind, the biggest hurdle to my fulfilling my role as a man and as a father is the black communities obsession with the motherhood complex. Black women have bought into the nonsense that men are dispensable and that they are enough.