Do We Lower the Bar for Black Fathers?

Do We Lower the Bar for Black Fathers?

by Mark Anthony Neal | @NewBlackMan

I am a better father, than I am a husband; or at least that is what has been affirmed to me, if I am to gauge such things by the number of compliments that I receive from friends and passer-bys. Indeed it’s been so easy to believe the hype, as strangers react in amazement when I show any hint of nurturing, affection or playfulness with my two daughters. I used to strut around thinking I was doing something exceptional; twelve years of parenting and decades of critical attention to the discourses that frame contemporary Black masculinity have taught me that such affirmation is borne out of a belief that Black men play little role in the lives of their children. In a society that expects so little from them, Black fathers often get celebrated for doing exactly what they are supposed to do as parents.

I thought about all of this, when the Today Show recently did a story about the positive impact of horseplay between fathers and children. It’s not new research; I cited the decade-old research of Ross Parke and Armin Brott (Throwaway Dads: The Myths and Barriers That Keep Men from Being the Fathers They Want to Be) in my book New Black Man (2005), paying particular attention to the effects play with fathers has on the self-esteem of daughters. I can’t think of a father that doesn’t find such activity one of the most pleasurable experiences of parenting, especially with young children; such play is still a vital part of my relationships with both of my daughters. I can imagine play with fathers becoming one of the pillars of a normative American fatherhood, along with providing security and discipline.

Yet, regardless of race, the expectations associated with fatherhood are far less dynamic than those that we expect of mothers, so much so that there are even institutional impediments that discouraged men from fully engaging in parenting responsibilities beyond those that are viewed as normal. 

It is only within the last decade, for example, that public restrooms include unisex changing stations or changing stations in men’s bathroom to accommodate fathers. In interactions with child-care providers, teachers, and pediatricians, fathers continue to be treated as disinterested on-lookers. Child-care providers almost never provided me information about the kinds of days my daughters had when I picked them up, without me making an effort to get such information. They would freely share such information with my wife—and always with much more detail than they shared with me. It has been no different with their schooling, as teachers and administrators seem genuinely confused—or even concerned for their safety—when Black fathers, in particular, decide to be classroom parents or occasionally decide to visit, as if we are all party to some on-going child custody case with our baby-mama.

And if institutional forces didn’t do enough to discourage more engaged parenting by fathers, popular culture has been a trusted source to further dissuade engaged fatherhood. Indeed there is an entire comedic tradition—a cottage industry really —built around fathers and parenting. Films like Daddy Day Care (2003), Parenthood (1989) and Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) and numerous television sitcoms have flourished by making the clueless, ineffective father the regular punch-line. In early television culture—and well into the 1980s—the comic image of the father trying to survive the challenges of domestic life, where countered by equally troubling comic images regarding women in the workforce; I’m thinking specifically about a the highly influential I Love Lucy, which along with early sitcoms like Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie (where the main female characters had magic powers) served as a backlash to the influx of women in the workforce during World War II.

Indeed, in our contemporary culture, the lowered expectations for Black fathers are powerfully contrasted by expectations for Black mothers that adhere to parenting standards that are almost impossible sustain, without an engaged co-parent; mothers in general are given little sympathy when they fail to live up the societal expectations of what a “true” mother—woman—is supposed to do.

While there are many criticisms directed at absentee Black fathers—and legitimately so—very rarely is that level of critique extended to Black fathers when they are present, even if they are engaged in abusive behavior towards their partners and their children. Not so ironically, there is a equally troubling discourse that blames Black women, their ambitions, and their so-called attitudes for the failure of Black fathers to remain in the home or as engaged parents. Such critiques place a premium for fathers being present, often overlooking that what many children need, is simply to have as many adults as possible involved in their lives, regardless of gender or if they live in the residence.

With so many communities being challenged by chronic unemployment, particularly among adult males, parenting and gender scripts are seemingly being re-written as we speak. The Today Show feature that I cite above, as well as sitcoms like Modern Family, is evidence of a culture trying to wrap its head around what fathers bring to the table as parents—beyond traditional expectations—at a time when many fathers have little choice but to take a hands-on approach to parenting in order for their families to survive. It should not have taken a national economic crisis for us to realize that in devaluing the role that men can play in raising children, regardless if they are parents or not, we are devaluing the lives of our children also.

***

Mark Anthony Neal is the father of two adopted daughters, aged 12 and 8.  The author of several books, including the forthcoming Looking for Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities (New York University Press), Neal also teaches African-American Studies at Duke University and is the host of the weekly Webcast, Left of Black, produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter @NewBlackMan

A "Fatherless" Debate?

(Traditional) Fathers Don’t Always Know Best
by Kai Wright

The notion that kids can’t develop properly without a biological father was a lie when Dan Quayle asserted it in 1992, and it’s a lie when Barack Obama says it now.

Read the Full Essay @ The Root

A Daughter's Reflection...

special to NewBlackMan


Oatmeal
by Stephane Dunn

My father (daddy) dies. He is in bed with his girlfriend and he wakes, says her name, gasps, and that’s it. He is gone. Heart attack. It’s March and three weeks after we’ve buried gramps, my mother’s daddy. And that’s the last time I spoke to my father. The day of that funeral. We chatted a few minutes about how it was time for a little reunion, maybe a barbeque in Fort Wayne where he lived and maybe May 22, his birthday and the birthday of his granddaughter, my sister’s then two year old. I tell him that anytime I listen to James Cleveland, I think of him and Sundays, getting ready for church and leaving, all except he, who always remained at home with Albertina Walker, James, and the Mighty Clouds of Joy, cooking up some good smelling roast or stew. He laughed a little, kind of sad, and that was it. He was dead three weeks later.

Don’t remember who called. Mama, I think, with that voice that said somebody died before the “I got some bad news” comes out. Still, I am surprised, too surprised to say much or think much. My older sister has to be told; my younger sister, daddy’s best thing, knows. She is crushed - two little kids of her own but now a little girl missing what she’d already lost and the chance that somehow that perfect arc of daddy and little girl love will return whole. My older sister is dry but full of stuff, a good deal held back and in; it comes out in funeral planning drama days later in Indiana when she ticks the girlfriend off and we have to pay for the burial instead of using money he’d supposedly put aside for that.

At the funeral, I sit in the front row - my brother, younger sister, then me and the older sister. The younger sister is beside herself, the coffin, the church, us in the front row, hits hard. Her father is really gone. She wails one line, ‘I’m not ready.” I take my place in front of the pulpit, off to one side of the coffin and stand beside the brother and older sister and pay homage. I come last or maybe next to last and talk about oatmeal. I think it is a poem, kind of, but really some words trying to say something about someone I’ve missed for years, someone I’ll keep missing. I could only eat daddy’s oatmeal. Only he made it perfectly, not too thick or thin and so pretty with just the right mix of cinnamon and butter and just a bit of sugar, so good I did not need toast or milk. I say that I haven’t eaten it, oatmeal, for years, not anybody’s even my own.

I cannot remember them all, but I know my words were all about oatmeal - the best oatmeal ever. I returned to my seat and held my wailing sister. Maybe I did not, could not wail or cry because I was there and I wasn’t. I’m in the black dress, the coffin, silver, a few feet away and my sister cries on my shoulder but I’m looking down high above the choir stand and the preachers, including my step dad pastor and I’m looking down, noting the too empty pews and the few familiar faces dotting benches. I see we four sitting on that front pew and my mother and some aunts a ways behind us and the little singing and organ playing going on. When it’s over and a cousin has preached his subject, about what I cannot recall, we walk down the aisle to the preacher’s ‘ashes to ashes’ and I greet a boyfriend from back in the day and an old high school friend and then there is the cemetery. The coffin goes down, down, down and too soon we’re back at the church where people eat chicken and exchange numbers. And that’s it.

A few months later on a Sunday summer morning, my off and on again poet boyfriend rises early and says come on. For some reason I don’t ask where or why just throw on sweats, a t-shirt, and some tennis shoes and mask my fast beating heart when he pulls the four-wheel out of the drive. We don’t go far from the beige subdivision but it seems miles away, the hidden little woods behind a school where we stop. There are trees undisturbed reaching up past the clouds and a little brook in the center of the tree clump. We sit on a fallen trunk, under another tree where the bright morning sun warms up and filters down through the leaves. We don’t speak. I feel something that’s been too far from me, quiet, calm. I raise my t-shirt, baring a breast and raise my chest and ask the sun to warm me all the way through. The poet leans over softly and kisses the breast then rises and walks off. I cover my breast and rise too but do not follow him. I head towards a tree frozen in convulsions and lean against the bewitched body and look up.

I imagine the trees really do go on and on as far away as daddy and gramps and grandmamma and further, maybe to where there actually is a heaven. I stretch against the bewitched one and stretch my neck trying to see that far. Without warning, there’s a wetness on my cheeks and a low sound. My Poet stays away and I cry and look up until it comes again - calm and quiet. Minutes later, we get back on the four-wheel but this time, I hop on the front and take that wheel. I forget to worry about going too fast or getting hit in the face with a branch or flying off the thing if we hit a curve too fast. I don’t know it then, but I will learn to make oatmeal that I like.

***

Stephane Dunn, Ph.D, MFA, is currently an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Morehouse College. She has also taught at Ohio State University. A scholarly and creative writer, she specializes in film, popular culture, literature and African American studies. She is the author of articles and commentaries and the book, Baad Bitches & Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films (University of Illinois Press 2008).

Obama, the Father

from The News & Observer

Point of View: A Father's Day Message
by Mark Anthony Neal

DURHAM - The dap-love that Barack Obama and wife Michelle shared at a recent rally highlights one of the most refreshing, yet seldom talked about aspects of his candidacy. This was Barack Obama not simply as the first African-American nominee of a major political party, but Barack Obama as African-American husband and father.

The Obama campaign has tried throughout this year's presidential campaign to downplay the significance of the senator's race, yet he stands as such a stark counterpoint to long-held stereotypes about African-American men as fathers and husbands. In this regard, his ascendency challenges myths not only about the capacity of African-Americans to serve as commander-in-chief, but also about black men as fathers.

With Father's Day almost upon us, Barack Obama, the African-American father, offers needed affirmation of the black men who toil and struggle to be effective parents.

There's a veritable cottage industry associated with so-called black fatherlessness, as many books and studies make the link between under-achieving black boys and the lack of father figures in their lives. The very idea of the shiftless, lazy, irresponsible black male has reached such mythical proportions that when black men show evidence of even the most basic of parenting skills, it's cause for celebration. Indeed, much of Obama's appeal lies in the fact that he has overcome the absence of his own father.

In his best-selling memoir "Dreams from My Father," Obama provides a heart-wrenching account of the effect that not having his father in his life had on him. Obama's parents divorced when he was a child and he had little contact with his father, who died in 1982. Obama literally had to conjure a father, whom he saw only once after his parents' divorce, recalling, "I would meet him one night, in a cold cell, in a chamber of my dreams."

Yet there's no secret to Obama's success. Even without his father present, he was a product of strong parenting and adult presences, such as his grandparents, in his life.

Read the Full Essay @