With that title, you might have thought I’m talking about our work around coparenting for parents. Actually, I’m talking about the fatherhood and marriage field. The President’s budget plan that calls for using $500 million dollars in fiscal year 2011 in a new Fatherhood, Marriage and Family Innovation Fund is a good opportunity for the fatherhood and marriage fields to assess their relationship to each other, and work to get along for the betterment of both. (For a nice explanation of the proposed Fund, see the posting by the Center for Family Policy and Practice, here.)
As a graduate student in public policy in the late 1990s, I remember the clear divisions between the “fatherhood” folks and the “marriage” folks. Unfortunately, despite a lot of good work, there are still some who want to divide along these lines, rather than unite to support a broader vision of healthy fatherhood and healthy couple relationships.
At MFFN, we subscribe to the notion that supporting fatherhood and marriage (and we would say, much more broadly, supporting healthy relationships, whether it directly leads to marriage or not) are not opposing priorities. Rather, in the words of pre-eminent researchers, “responsible fatherhood and couples’ relationship quality are closely linked rather than opposing priorities.” To quote: “qualitative, longitudinal, and now intervention research findings indicate that a man’s capacity to fulfill his role(s) as father is embedded in his relationship with the child’s mother.” In turn, for parents who live together, strengthening the parents’ relationship has been found to increase the father’s involvement in parenting. (For the full article, read “Policies that Strengthen Fatherhood and Family Relationships,” Knox, Cowans and Bildner, MDRC, here).
The President’s proposed Fatherhood, Marriage and Family Innovation Fund allows support for both fatherhood and healthy relationship support and education. Healthy relationship support and education supports healthy marriages. Like any relationship or marriage, the fatherhood field and marriage field may have points of disagreements. But let’s use this opportunity to find our points of agreement. Let’s show that we can get along, and support passage of the President’s budget plan.
Melissa Froehle
Policy and Program Director
The Fathers and Families Coalition of America supports the development of safe and stable families. The best environment for these children is parents who have a healthy relationship and are actively engaged in the life of their child. The Fathers and Families Coalition of America recognizes that for the past three and a half years the Office of Family Assistance has devoted $150 million annually to build strong families/responsible fathers. We can identify the best practices and we recognize the need to expand on the services provided to fathers, families and expansion on external evaluation of funded programs. Earlier funded programs in the 1990’s (Parent’s Fair Share, Fathers at Work Initiative, Partners for Fragile Families, and Responsible Fatherhood Program) provided initial blueprint of services for fathers. However, as demonstration project afford lessons on how to improve modalities and methodologies were acquired. In 2005, those lessons gained, provided enhanced services for families and inclusion of relationship skill building with Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood grantees.
In 2010, we have two outstanding proposals to promote the well-being of children through TANF Fatherhood, Marriage and Family Innovation Fund and U.S. Congresswoman Julia Carson’s introduction of the Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act: H.R. 2979. Optimal public policy could build on child outcomes and reinforces fathers’ work attachment, family attachment and the knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors necessary for these to be attained and sustained.
So, this is a great opportunity and we all need to be aware that Tursday, June 17, 2010 the U.S. House Ways and Means Sub-Committee Family and iNcome Security will meet to discuss fatherhood programs. We must galvanize to support relationship skills building and fatherhood funding.
Comment by James C. Rodriguez, MSW, CEO/President — June 14, 2010 @ 5:01 pm