ENSURING NONCUSTODIAL PARENT, FATHER-INCLUSIVE LENSES ARE APPLIED TO

DECISION-MAKING

Anchored in racial equity and informed by families’ lived experience, 2Gen approaches build upon the power of education, early care and learning, health, and employment systems to ensure equitable access

to resources and opportunities for entire family units. Policymakers and practitioners at city, county, and state levels continue to embrace the 2Gen approach, and the field is encouraged by ongoing bipartisan

commitment at the federal level. The Two-Generation Economic Empowerment Act and the Pathways to Health Careers Act are two positive and concrete steps toward ensuring that prosperity passes from one

generation to the next.

But too often — at all levels — leaders fall short of ensuring that custodial and noncustodial, resident and nonresident, father-inclusive lenses are applied to their decision-making. Regardless of intent, this results in

harmful consequences that undermine the economic security, health, and well-being of children and the adults in their lives. 

We saw this at the onset of the pandemic with Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act guidelines for exempting cash assistance from federal tax offsets. While offsets to pay taxes, educational loans,

and other government debts were granted exemptions to ensure cash flowed to families, the act did not exempt direct cash payments from offsets to pay child support arrears. This meant that across the country, as

many as 2.1 million noncustodial parents — most of whom are fathers — in the child support program did not receive full cash assistance because they owe child support arrears assigned not to families but to states to pay

back Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash assistance received by families. If — as is the case in this example — the intention is to ensure that children and families have access to

resources to meet their basic needs, we must intentionally, explicitly, and consistently apply noncustodial parent, father-inclusive lenses to decision-making.

THE OPPORTUNITY

As leaders at all levels, in public and private sectors, plan and execute immediate and long-term efforts to ensure families bounce back stronger, now is the time to embed father-inclusive, noncustodial parent lenses

into platforms and processes.

Opportunities to do so include:

„ Incorporating a gender analysis into decision-making processes

„ Disaggregating data around race, gender, and parental status

„ Explicitly identifying noncustodial caregivers and fathers as target populations within family-supportive policies and programs

„ Revisiting eligibility requirements based on residential status (i.e., whether or not caregivers live in the same household as their children)

„ Training staff on implicit bias

„ Operationalizing father-friendly principles and practices

THE EXAMPLE

Strengthening Families for Success Act Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-OR), Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and Representative Danny Davis (D-IL) have introduced legislation to improve federal programs designed to promote healthy co-parenting and financial stability for families with low incomes. To ensure that families receiving TANF benefits get as much of the money collected through child support payments as possible and help caregivers maintain healthy co-parenting relationships, the legislation would:

„ Modernize child support by eliminating cost recovery for TANF, Title IV-E foster care maintenance payments, and Medicaid birth costs by fiscal year 2026 while providing bridge funding to help states implement these changes.

„ Reauthorize the Healthy Marriage Promotion and Responsible Fatherhood grant program through fiscal year 2025, establish infrastructure for grantees to measure outcomes and receive technical assistance, and ensure continuity of services during a public health emergency.

„ Address the COVID-19 public health emergency’s impact on the child support program and families by providing emergency flexibility during the pandemic and exempting 2020 Economic Income Payments from the CARES Act from reduction or offset.

Download Report Below:

Ascend_Fatherhood-Lens

New Book Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City

"Destined to become one of the classics of the genre" (Newsweek), the riveting, unforgettable story of a girl whose indomitable spirit is tested by homelessness, poverty, and racism in an unequal America—from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Andrea Elliott of The New York Times. 

 

Invisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of a girl whose imagination is as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn shelter. Dasani was named after the bottled water that signaled Brooklyn's gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. In this sweeping narrative, Elliott weaves the story of Dasani's childhood with her family's history, tracing the passage of their ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north. As Dasani comes of age, the homeless crisis in New York City has exploded amid the deepening chasm between rich and poor. 

 Dasani must guide her siblings through a city riddled by hunger, violence, drug addiction, homelessness, and the monitoring of child protection services. Out on the street, Dasani becomes a fierce fighter to protect the ones she loves. When she finally escapes city life to enroll in a boarding school, she faces an impossible question: What if leaving poverty means abandoning your family, and yourself?  

By turns heartbreaking and inspiring, Invisible Child tells an astonishing story about the power of resilience, the importance of family, and the cost of inequality. Based on nearly a decade of reporting, Invisible Child illuminates some of the most critical issues in contemporary America through the life of one remarkable girl.

BUY BOOK

 NEW REPORT! CDF's The State of America's Children 2021

Since the Children's Defense Fund last published our annual State of America's Children report in February 2020, our children have experienced a year of unprecedented upheaval due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a racial reckoning year in the making. These shifts have impacted every aspect of children's lives more quickly than data can track; even the most recent available data sets do not fully encompass how this past year has shaped our lives. This, of course, includes our 2021 State of America's Children report. Because, as one element of the report makes clear, "Our Children are Not Immune."

A year marked by such dramatic change and drastic negative impact on children's lives must be followed by one of healing and restoration, coupled with bold action.  We hope this report will serve as a call-to-action to join us as we take the proactive steps necessary to fulfill our vision of a nation where marginalized children flourish, leaders prioritize their well-being, and communities wield the power to ensure they thrive

The report includes KEY FINDINGS BY POLICY AREA 

• Child Population 

• Child Poverty 

• Income and Wealth Inequality 

• Housing and Homelessness 

• Child Hunger and Nutrition 

• Child Health 

• Early Childhood 

• Education 

• Child Welfare 

• Youth Justice 

• Gun Violence 

• Immigrant Children

READ MORE

What All Dads Need to Recognize About Modern Fatherhood

An excerpt from Fatherly's parenting book, Fatherhood, is available now for pre-order.

Oct 01 2021, 5:07 PM

The following is an excerpt from Fatherhood: A Comprehensive Guide to Birth, Budgeting, Finding Flow, and Becoming a Happy Parent, Fatherly’s first parenting book from Harper Horizon’s, an imprint of Harper-Collins.

Your father knew nothing. Well, next to nothing — at least, next to nothing when it came to the likely effect he would have on you or your life. At most, when you were born, he had an inkling of what his presence and participation could offer. You inherited that same inkling. You’re considering it now, an undistinguished mass like an uncut diamond. Your sense is that you can make something priceless of it, but even the first cut requires a decision you might not be ready for. After all, you don’t know the first thing about diamond cutting.

Maybe your father loved you, maybe he didn’t. Whether he was present or absent, understanding, or harsh, “good” or “bad” in your estimation, he was most likely unaware of what he held — because there was nobody to teach him to shape it.

Like others before him, he progressed through the experience of fatherhood, trying to refine the raw white stone, and trying to make it shine. Someone just needed to help him find the correct angles.

Since 1950, the U.S. government has spent roughly $600 billion on NASA programs, nearly $10 billion collecting data on mothers, and the $15 million in change it found between the couch cushions went to research related to fatherhood. But the bulk of that research has been conducted in just the last decade. Which is all to say that humanity knows more about Alpha Centauri than we know about whether your old man messed you up.

Want to know what will happen to you in the moment that your child is born? Not much. As birth releases an oxytocin flood to your wife’s brain, overwhelming her with feelings of love so profound she ugly cries into low-thread-count hospital sheets, you may very well be tempted to check the Browns score (spoiler: they’re losing). You may feel this runs counter to the favored sentimental and celebrity narrative — “The first time I saw that face, my whole world changed!” — but birth experiences are as unique and varied as the men that have them. Instant love may be the story but it’s not necessarily the norm.

So, when does Mom pass Dad the oxytocin? When she passes the baby. Men only receive the biological benefits of dad-status when they start taking care of their kids. Odd as it may sound, those initial dirty diapers become a gateway drug to care. You’ll want more. But only if you keep doing it. And it goes on like that forever; kid and Dad passing the good feelings back and forth like a joint until, if all goes well, the former delivers the latter a heartfelt eulogy. But Dad must start, because the kid’s hands are too small to roll one and because that’s the one thing that we absolutely know for sure, peer-review and all: whatever seriously good vibes are going to be, must start with you.

While your father might have known nothing, he was particularly in the dark about the things he did know — which was a lot. He was pretty much parenting all the time. And surprise, surprise, most of the time, he was probably doing fine. Roughhousing was parenting; watching television with you was parenting; talking to your mother at the dinner table was parenting. Fatherhood is only a state of being in that it’s the act of being who you are. Because the fact is that the person you are before you have a kid will not be appreciably different than the person you are after you have a kid. And that person is the template your kid will use to learn how to live in the world. So becoming a good father is about knowing yourself, and leveraging all that’s good in you towards raising someone who knows better than you. That’s love.