The NCOFF Fathers and Families Roundtables: Exploring Issues in the Seven Core Learnings

The decline in the quality of life for children coupled with sweeping changes in policy and support to poor families within the past two years heighten the need for coherent and responsive efforts. The seven Core Learnings are the framework through which the field can examine these issues and deepen our understanding of the needs and problems facing fathers and families. Distilled from the experiences of practitioners and found to be resonant with critical research analyses, the Core Learnings provide the context for the National Center on Fathers and Families (NCOFF) to conduct and support interdisciplinary, crossdomain activities, build the knowledge base on fathers and families, and promote a forwardthinking agenda within and across research, practice, and policy. Future initiatives around father involvement, we believe, must secure the well-being of children over the short- and long-term and must address the increasing challenges with which growing numbers of children and their families grapple. The NCOFF Fathers and Families Roundtable Series was designed to explore these challenges and work toward positive change.

This report summarizes some of the salient issues discussed at the NCOFF Fathers and Families Roundtable, a series of meetings developed around the seven Core Learnings. Each of the seven meetings was designed to connect researchers from different disciplines, practitioners, and policymakers in small, focused forums that stimulate critical analyses. Discussions ranged from new conceptualizations of work on fathers and families (particularly around issues of race, culture, poverty, and gender) to creating and implementing working groups that pursue practice-focused research and design innovative approaches to the study of fathers and child and family welfare. (See Appendix A for meeting agendas, Appendix B for a list of participants, and Appendix C for a description of the framework and methodology for the Roundtable Series.)

The current momentum in the field across the areas of research, practice, and policy marks a shift, if not a transformation, in the view of what counts as research or the possibilities for research to effect positive change. The 1995-1997 roundtable meetings demonstrate the breadth and depth of promise that these collaborative activities hold for broadening the field, engaging a more critical discussion, and promoting action. There has been considerable interest from the research community about practice-focused research, from practitioners about the possibilities for collaborating with researchers, and from policymakers to engage a variety of audiences in efforts that support families. This interest points to a need for NCOFF and the field to promote opportunities for conversations and work that not simply cut across the domains of research, practice, and policy but also develop integrative frameworks.

As a university-based research center, NCOFF is committed to understanding a range of theoretical and practical issues in the field, i.e., to study whether, how, and with what effects fathers do and can contribute to children's well-being, support of mothers, and family functioning. We are encouraged by the interest in practice focused efforts, continued commitment to basic and policy research on families, and increasing public attention to father involvement and family efficacy The Fathers and Families Roundtable Series is one important step toward building the field. It will be enriched only by well-planned, vigorously pursued agendas that support family efficacy, children's well-being, and positive father involvement and by our continued and collaborative investment in individuals, communities, and organizations committed to effecting positive change.

Vivian L. Gadsden
Director

For information about ordering the "1995-97 Roundtables Report", contact the National Center on Fathers and Families at mailbox@ncoff.gse.upenn.edu

Mission:

The mission of the National Center on Fathers and Families (NCOFF) is to improve the life chances and the well-being of children and the efficacy of families by facilitating the positive involvement of fathers. NCOFF aims to achieve this mission by promoting the conduct and dissemination of sound basic, applied, and policy research that examines critically issues in the seven Core Learnings and related work and that can contribute to social change. Developed in the spirit of the Philadelphia Children's Network's (PCN) motto, "Help the children. Fix the system.", NCOFF seeks to increase and enrich the possibilities for children, particularly those most vulnerable to hardship and poverty. NCOFF shares with PCN the premise that children need loving, nurturing families; that families need support in providing nurturance; and that a critical component of support includes increasing the ability of fathers, mothers, and other adults to contribute to children's social, emotional, and cognitive development.

Seven Core Learnings

• Fathers care--even if that caring is not shown in conventional ways.

   

• Father presence matters--in terms of economic well-being social support, and child development.

   

• Joblessness is a major impediment to family formation and father involvement.

   

• Existing approaches to public benefits, child support enforcement, and paternity establishment operate to create obstacles and disincentives to father involvement. The disincentives are sufficiently compelling as to have prompted the emergence of a phenomenon dubbed "underground fathers"--men who acknowledge paternity and are involved in the lives of their children but who refuse to participate as fathers in the formal systems.

   

• A growing number of young fathers and mothers need additional support to develop the vital skills to share the responsibility for parenting.

   

• The transition from biological father to committed parent has significant development implications for young fathers.

   

• The behaviors of young parents, both fathers and mothers, are influenced significantly by intergenerational beliefs and practices within families of origin.

  The seven Core Learnings are at the heart of NCOFF's agenda for research, practice, and policy and serve as a framework for the field. They represent the knowledge and experience of practitioners who confront complex problems facing fathers and families and are consistent with research across multiple disciplines. They offer an important lens through which policymakers might learn more about the implications and impact of legislation and policy decisions on the lives of large numbers of fathers, mothers, children, and families. Within them are captured salient issues experienced and felt deeply by a range of fathers and families--from those who are financially secure to those who are the most vulnerable to poverty and hardship.

  The Core Learnings were identified immediately prior to NCOFF's inception by frontline practitioners in a series of survey and focus group activities conducted by the Philadelphia Children's Network and NCOFF Fommulated first as seven hypotheses drawn from practitioners experiences in programs serving fathers and families, each hypothesis was tested against existing published research and policy studies. As each hypothesis was borne out in the literature, it became a Core Learning. A library of infommation was developed for each. The resultant seven libraries now constitute the NCOFF FatherLit Research Database and include over 6,000 citations, annotations, and abstracts of research, available in written, diskette, CD, and electronic form.