REPORT OVERVIEW

Between November 1997 and April 1998 the Alliance for Young Families, a Boston-based nonprofit working on behalf of teen parents, conducted six focus groups around the state with young fathers. The Alliance embarked on the project in order to provide its member agencies - providers of services to teen parents - with information about the issues and problems young fathers face. The Alliance agreed to share its findings with the Governor's Commission on Father Absence and Family Support, which is working on policy promoting responsible fatherhood.

The groups were conducted in five cities: Boston, Lynn, Lawrence, Worcester and New Bedford. Efforts to arrange groups in western Massachusetts were unsuccessful. (The Alliance also collected information from five young fathers in Framingham, though it did not conduct a group with them.) Altogether, 40 young men ranging in age from 15 to 25 participated in the groups. Within this age range, all fathers who agreed to participate were accepted; no other criteria had to be met. Forty percent of the participants identified themselves as Hispanic; thirty percent as African-American; ten percent as white; ten percent as bi-racial; and ten percent as African-Caribbean. Most men had only one child, but a significant minority had two or more.

Three of the groups were convened on a one-time basis for the purpose of the project; the other three had existed prior to the project as support groups. In two of these cases, support group members were joined by young men from other local youth programs, and for this reason the majority of participants in most groups were strangers to one another. Participants were paid stipends of $10 each. Each group was led by a male and female facilitator and lasted approximately two hours.

The bulk of each session was given to structured but casual discussion on a variety of topics, including education, housing, jobs, family conflict, self-esteem and dreams for the future. Following each discussion the young men were asked to fill out a questionnaire about their attitudes and experiences as young fathers. The questionnaire also asked for demographic information such as age, ethnicity, school status and job status.

Though project participants were ethnically diverse, they nevertheless shared a number of characteristics. Most young men had been raised in poor or middle-class households by their mothers and had had no regular contact with their fathers. Most had experienced problems in school, and many had dropped out. Many, probably the majority, had also been arrested at least once, most often for fighting, selling drugs or similar offenses. While some of the young men thus had troubled histories, it is important to note that those troubles seemed not particuarly exceptional, especially in light of the social and cultural environment in which they lived. In manner, dress, speech and most other outward indicators, they indeed seemed exactly like their non-parenting peers, simply ordinary young men on the cusp of adulthood coping, successfully or unsuccessfully, with the stresses of contemporary urban life. The real difference between them and other young men - a difference acute to most of them - lay in the responsibility they now bore to help raise a child.

In fact, it was in their feeling about their children that the group participants were perhaps most uniform: All expressed love for their children, concern for the children's future and a desire to make a regular contribution, both financial and emotional, to their children's lives. The extent to which they could actually make such a contribution tended to depend on several factors, some of which were within their control and some of which were clearly out of it. A key issue seemed simply to be maturity itself. While a few of the older participants had obviously outgrown their adolescent problems and become confident, self-directed men, most of the young men seemed to be struggling with their new role as parents. Fully aware of their responsibilities to provide for their children, they were unsure exactly how they were going to do it, either now or over the long term, and occasionally their plans were convoluted and unrealistic. For many, a chaotic, unstable home environment and lack of guidance clearly were obstacles to thoughtful decision-making. For a good many others, problems tended to coalesce around family conflict, particularly conflict with their child's mother or her relatives. In some cases, family disputes seriously impinged on the fathers' ability to visit their children consistently or form lasting relationships with them. Of all problems, interpersonal conflict seemed the most weighty and difficult for the young men, and the one they felt least able to resolve.

All in all, more than 60 percent of the fathers said they sometimes "felt overwhelmed" by the various problems in their lives, and nearly 100 percent said they worried "a lot" about the future. Many of the participants expressed a sense that their youth was now over, and that they needed to get on track quickly. Succeeding - or at least settling on a plan of action - had become a matter of great urgency for them, and they felt there was no time left to waste. Indeed, the vast majority of young men agreed with the statement, "I can't afford to make mistakes or mess up, because people are counting on me."

Rather than presenting the participants' remarks in the context of an academic article, we have elected to allow the participants to speak for themselves, an opportunity young fathers - often considered a "hidden population" - have seldom been granted. Below are a series of excerpts taken from the focus group discussions. Quotes are arranged by category and are preceded by introductory remarks based on a quantitative analysis of the questionnaires and on observation of the individuals and groups in action. Following the excerpts are a set of findings and recommendations.

Introduction | The Project | Their Own Fathers | Becoming A Father | Life With Children | Family Conflict | Violence and the Children | In School | Money | The Law | Housing | Jobs and Dream Jobs | Improving the System | Findings | Recommendations