“It’s the Economy, Stupid”

In this chapter, the authors describe the effects that neoliberal economic restructuring has had on the earning potential of men at the bottom of the labor force. Pushed into low-wage full-time employment that falls far short of meeting family needs or into part-time employment, or even out of the labor force, these men struggle to contribute as providers, and as fathers more generally. Financial stress in family relationships has become less episodic and more permanent, while marriage has ceased to be a viable institution in economically unstable social circumstances. The jobless recovery of the early part of the decade and the Great Recession at the end help us to see family vulnerability in a neoliberal context.

“I Ain’t No Fucking Check, I’m a Father”

In this chapter, the authors turn their attention to child support policies that were central to 1996 welfare reform, to the organization of Child Support Enforcement in Connecticut, and to Fatherhood Initiative programs that proliferated across the nation after 1998. They explore how low-income fathers made sense of and responded to this changing landscape, paying particular attention to their gendered locations in the family but also to their different racial experiences. Further, they examine how the reorganization of state welfare and child support enforcement was about “getting the money” in an era of state austerity but also about the institutionalization of symbolic power, through which the courts defined, stigmatized, and managed the lives of a marginalized population, reaffirming racial and class hierarchies.

Intimacy, Masculinity, and Relating

The era of neoliberalism has made it more difficult for low-income men to be fathers, at the same time that the expectations for them to be involved fathers has increased. The norms and expectations of “father involvement” have changed rapidly within one to two generations, and yet the labor force and state institutions have not supported low-income families in a way to achieve this. In this chapter, the authors examine how fathers have adapted to these changing circumstances. They consider how the casualization of the labor force has structured the casualization of family life; the essential and yet complicated role that kin play; the neotraditional formation of the family and the “new father” role; the efforts to father through generational family violence and to address toxic masculinity; and the contours of fatherhood as men age into second-generation fathers.

Fathering Through the Looking Glass

In this chapter, the authors look more closely at fathers’ lives on the streets, the ways in which the criminal justice system intersected with and shaped their lives, their experiences of relating with children and mothers while incarcerated, and their perspectives on fatherhood within the institutional interstices of the streets, police, prisons, and community reentry. Key contradictions are examined that challenge marginalized fathers, including reconciling masculinity on the streets with being available and present to children, as well as reconciling norms and expectations of being nurturing fathers with preparing children for living in violent social spaces.

Conclusion

The instability that neoliberal capitalism has sewn into the social fabric reaches across social classes, but its most incendiary effects reach deep into the communities, families, and relationships of lower income populations. Fragile fathers are caught in a web of contradictions shaped by the processes of racial and class marginalization. In this concluding chapter, the authors summarize these contradictions. Drawing on policy researchers, they also outline a broad scope of public policies that would be needed to address the adverse conditions for parenting on the social and economic margins. However, in the end, they argue for a movements-based political solution that draws on the theories and ideas of second- and third-generation feminists.

Public Housing and the Streets

In the next two chapters, the authors focus on the most marginalized fathers in the study. While it is apparent that prisons have become institutions for warehousing the most marginalized populations, public housing developments in the 1970s and after provided a similar institutional mechanism—they became depositories for the poorest families in urban America. A little less than one-fourth of the men in this study spent some of their childhood growing up in public housing, and nearly all of them were racial minorities (93 percent). Further, nearly three-quarters of this group were either locked up or unemployed at the time of the interview. This does not include fathers who grew up in surrounding neighborhoods, many of whom had similar reputations as the “PJs” themselves. It is in these urban spaces that fathers became exposed to the drug trade, robberies, and structural and interpersonal violence, and it is here where they became fathers.

Introduction

The engaged and nurturing father has gained cultural traction in a short period of time. The authors argue that socially and economically marginalized fathers have embraced the new normative expectations of the engaged father and have been encouraged to do so through popular culture and the media; in state welfare, child protection, and probation offices; in jails, prisons, and post-release programs, and in child support and family courts. Within these institutions, they have learned that it is up to them to make better choices, to get themselves together, and to be involved fathers. The authors stress, however, that without substantial changes to the economic, political, and social conditions that facilitate engaged and nurturing fatherhood, these fathers are being “set up.” This chapter describes the argument, the characteristics of the 138 fathers and 41 mothers profiled in the book, the social-historical dynamics of inequality in Connecticut, and the organization of the book.

Welfare Reform and Market Conformity

This chapter summarizes the post-1970s neoliberal restructuring of US state welfare that culminated in the 1996 welfare reform act. The authors demonstrate how neoliberal welfare reform, combined with changes in the labor force, has destabilized families and left both low-income mothers and fathers with fewer options for subsistence, particularly during economic downturns. They also show how the devolution of authority for welfare provision from the federal to the state government resulted in state reductions in public assistance during times of economic crisis due to a decline in state tax revenues and because subsidizing businesses in the state was a priority. Further, by viewing the perspectives of couples in the first part of the decade and among fathers after the Great Recession, we see how neoliberal state changes are viewed through a gendered lens.

Fathers Making Sense of It All

This chapter examines the cultural frames and narratives fathers used to represent themselves, tell a coherent story about their lives, and project an identity of themselves into their futures. It was rare that their frames and narratives conveyed an understanding of the systemic class, racial, and ethnic inequalities and barriers that confront them. More generally, fathers were reactive to moralistic discourses that cast them as irresponsible, unreliable, negligent, deadbeat dads. They attempted to derive socially valued identities along a range of symbolic boundaries that included distinguishing themselves from fathers who relied on welfare, from fathers uninvolved in their children’s lives, and, most of all, from their own irresponsible, absent fathers. They adopted individualistic narratives about taking responsibility, “manning up,” and making fatherhood central to their lives. The men imagined themselves doing better and, in nearly all cases, being engaged fathers was at the center of these projected, hopeful constructions.