Men in the US want to care, and they are doing more of the care work than ever before. The State of America’s Fathers study and report start from the belief that empowering and supporting men to be caregivers is necessary for all of us – for women and gender-diverse individuals and the equality they deserve, for children, for men themselves, and for our country.
Fathering
In the field of violence prevention work with men and boys, there is growing interest in engaging men as fathers. Fatherhood is identified as a key entry point that can be strategically leveraged to support male engagement, both during men’s transition to parenthood and throughout their involvements as parents and caregivers.
Four streams of work have converged to shape interest in engaging men as fathers in the prevention of domestic and sexual violence:
Parenting programs have been identified as a promising strategy to strengthen parenting skills; increase men’s participation in caregiving; improve the quality of family relationships, health, and well-being; and prevent violence against children. Yet, most parenting programs primarily reach mothers and female caregivers, but fathers and male caregivers also have the power to transform their children’s lives.
The State of the World’s Fathers 2023 (SOWF 2023) report reveals that thousands of women and men across the world are calling for care to be central to their lives, which can only be addressed by a fundamental overhaul of power structures, policies, and social norms around both paid and unpaid care work.
Neoconservative social scientists have claimed that fathers are essential to positive child development, and that responsible fathering is most likely to occur within the context of heterosexual marriage. This perspective is generating a range of governmental initiatives designed to provide social support preferences to fathers over mothers; and to heterosexual married couples, rather than to alternative family forms.
Fathers have a vital role to play in preventing and reducing men’s violence against women and in building a non-violent future.
Dads, Gender, and Violence Prevention
There is a strong rationale for engaging fathers in efforts to prevent men’s violence against women.
There is intensified attention in Australia at present to the messages about manhood, good and bad, that boys and young men grow up with.
The concept of caring masculinities emerges from critical scholarship on men and masculinities, where a group of men is identified who express masculinities that seek to break with the most rigid and hegemonic gender mandates, rejecting male domination and adopting, instead, a set of values derived from the ethics of care. By taking responsibility for caring for other people, they also adopt practices that reveal a path towards a balanced division of tasks based on gender.
What role do fathers play in violence prevention and building a non-violent future?
This new white paper by Professor Michael Flood explores fathers' roles in violence prevention. It was launched at the inaugural Fathering Summit on March 14 2024, in Sydney (Australia), hosted by the Fathering Project.
The paper notes that:
1. Positive father involvement is good for children, mothers, families, and fathers themselves
2. Positive father involvement and non-violence go together
As a country, we in the US face a storm of overlapping crises, resulting in exhaustion, grief, stresses on our mental health, polarization, and pessimism. In moments of crisis, we often seek to identify a single root issue, which if addressed, might turn the tide and find us in calmer waters. Caring for each other – in our homes, workplaces, schools, and elsewhere – is something that we all need and that helps us all thrive.