{"id":865,"date":"2009-06-17T08:21:21","date_gmt":"2009-06-17T14:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=865"},"modified":"2009-06-17T08:21:21","modified_gmt":"2009-06-17T14:21:21","slug":"self-taught-fathers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2009\/06\/17\/self-taught-fathers\/","title":{"rendered":"self-taught fathers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week the press release services are aflutter with stories about parenting, with father&#8217;s day just a few days away, but one particular story caught my eye about &#8216;non-traditional fathers&#8217; authored by a sociologist who interviewed low-income fathers about the meaning of fatherhood &#8211; specifically in light of the difficulties faced by these fathers parenting in the absence of a spouse or a father-figure role model in their own lives.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newswise.com\/articles\/view\/553395\/\">Newswise<\/a> reports:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This Father\u2019s Day, a Brigham Young University sociologist is focusing on dads that don\u2019t fit the traditional script \u2013 dads in the mold of the character played by Will Smith in the film <em>The Pursuit of Happyness<\/em> (before he earned millions as a stockbroker).<\/p>\n<p>These dads are poor. They\u2019re unmarried. Their own fathers commonly were a lesson in what not to do. Defining fatherhood as they go, these dads shared the meaning they find as self-taught fathers in a study Professor Renata Forste published in a recent issue of the journal <em>Fathering<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThose who didn\u2019t have a role-model type father, they know what they don\u2019t want to do, but they don\u2019t know what to replace it with,\u201d Forste said.<\/p>\n<p>A clear theme emerged from in-depth interviews with 36 such single dads: Their relationship with their own father determined whether they aimed to succeed, or aimed not to fail. The men who felt close to their fathers tried to \u201cpass the baton\u201d and be a nurturing parent that balances work and family time. One 23-year-old dad in this group had this succinct answer: To make as much money as you can while spending the most time with your kids.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The impact of the absence of positive role models was also noted in the study&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cA lot of them talked about coaches, Scout leaders, and fathers of friends,\u201d Forste said. \u201cThey desperately need positive role models and men in their lives. Anybody who works with youth has an opportunity to make a difference.\u201d<br \/>\nForste also notes the work of Princeton sociologist Sarah McLanahan with a project called Fragile Families. McLanahan\u2019s research finds that attending the birth of their child can be a life-changing moment for young men that may not otherwise embrace fatherhood.<\/p>\n<p>The dads interviewed in the BYU study \u2013 selected because they are involved parents \u2013 also cast the birth of their children in life-altering terms:<\/p>\n<p>Right away I knew I had a responsibility and it was mine so I wasn\u2019t going to deny it or try to forget about it or anything.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newswise.com\/articles\/view\/553395\/\">Read more. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week the press release services are aflutter with stories about parenting, with father&#8217;s day just a few days away, but one particular story caught my eye about &#8216;non-traditional fathers&#8217; authored by a sociologist who interviewed low-income fathers about the meaning of fatherhood &#8211; specifically in light of the difficulties faced by these fathers parenting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[70,104,39110,122],"class_list":["post-865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-family","tag-income","tag-inequality","tag-lifecourse"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=865"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":870,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865\/revisions\/870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}