8 - Vulnerable Fathers

Summary

When I think of my son, I wish I was with him. It's hard to think about this. It makes me wish – no, not wish, ‘cause it's not gonna be there – but if I was gonna wish, the wish would be that I was never broken up with my wife, so that I could always be there, like a family thing, like old-fashioned. Like just her, him, and me. That's the way it was when I was working. I didn't want nobody else, but Sandra. I was like, “I want to be right here, where I'm at, with my kid.”

Primo

The moralistic debates that condemn deficient child-rearing practices in the inner city bemoan the absence of fathers in families. It is assumed that fatherlessness destroys a child's moral fiber, even though the single most overwhelming problem faced by female-headed households is poverty. Based on my relationship to the fathers who worked for Ray, public policy efforts to coax poor men back into nuclear households are misguided. The problem is just the reverse: Too many abusive fathers are present in nuclear households terrorizing children and mothers. If anything, women take too long to become single mothers once they have babies. They often tolerate inordinate amounts of abuse. There is a clear material basis for the failure of fathers to support their progeny in stable, loving families: High school dropouts can no longer find secure jobs in New York City that would allow them to maintain conjugal households on a single income in traditional, patriarchal style.