Father Figures

In the reading “American Fathering in Historical Perspective”, the role of the father within a family is becoming more and more important. Although mothers are still in charge of the children and the household work, the fathers are slowly becoming more involved in this domain. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the father’s role was more of a figure head who would instill moral values and teachings into his children. He was a man that deserved much respect and reverence from his family. Later in the 20th century, the father became a war hero figure and therefore displayed signs of strength and masculinity. Today, the role of the father has not evolved too much over time. The mother is predominantly in charge of the well being and upbringing of the children while the father is primarily the breadwinner. Fathers have become more involved in the children’s lives and household maintenance. In my opinion, I expect fathers to be highly involved in life at home. I think the upbringing of the children and maintaining the household should be more of a balancing act between both mother and father.

In the second article, Deutsch discusses the reasoning for why families work alternating shifts, trying to make a balance between family and work. For more lower class families, parents work alternating shifts to accommodate maintaining the home because they do not have a housekeeper to do so. Also, one parent needs to be at home to watch the children or able to pick up and drop off the kids at day care. For these families, it is absolutely necessary to have two jobs between the two parents to be able to economically support the family. I do not think this kind of a life is desirable. It seems like the house would always be chaotic and unorganized. For the children, they would only be able to be with one parent at a time and be tossed around from day care and parental view. I would never want to work in alternating shifts for I feel like it would hinder my children and make me extremely frustrated that I would barely see my husband. I think working these alternating shifts would be very frustrating for the family as a whole and require a lot of patience among everyone.

According to Dorothy Roberts, there are many social forces that prevent family participation of Black fathers. For one, many black father wind up in jail or jobless. It seems like from the article, black fathers are more flakey and fall out of their roles as a father. They seem to be financially unstable, unwilling to keep a job or stay out of tribal. Their wives will not stand for this, for this bad influence on their children, so often these absent fathers are kicked out of their home completely. I thought Roberts groups together black fathers and stereotypes them in an unfair light.