'I HAD THE STRESS OF THE WORLD':
A REPORT ON YOUNG FATHERS IN MASSACHUSETTS
THEIR OWN FATHERS
Most group participants - 63 percent - grew up in homes without fathers, and only 23 percent said they learned how to be a father from their own father. Relationships with their fathers, absent from the home or not, tended to be poor, and many young men said they planned to be better fathers to their children than their fathers had been to them.
I myself grew up without a father. To this day, you know, I don't give two damns about my father. Eighteen years of age, and he's trying to make an attempt to contact me, and all I can say is, 'If you die, I wouldn't even cry. I wouldn't even go to your funeral.' And that kind of pushes me to be there for my son .... I'm going to make sure that I'm going to be there because I know what I had to go through growing up without a father.
It's the young generation of fathers that are trying to keep fatherhood alive. Old people are the ones that messed it up.
When I first met him, I was probably around twelve. And I was, you know what I'm saying - I ain't get to the fact like, 'You just bounced on me and come back.' He come back like I'm one of his friends and he can leave the state and come back and see me. I ain't like that, and I told him that. And ever since I talked to him about that - I actually argued and yelled at him for that- I ain't heard from him ever since then.
I'm gonna ride my baby's mother 24-7. Even though we ain't together, if she need to go somewhere, I'm going with her. I'm doing this and that. I ain't trying to end up like my real father.
He comes by like once a year, okay, to see me. He was there for me when I was a little kid. When I was around five, he moved to Chicago. Last year he moved to New York. Now he comes by once a year. We don't have that father-son relationship. We can't talk about nothing.
My father could have been anything. Instead he ended up an alcoholic.
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