Just Doing What They Gotta Do: Single Black Custodial Fathers Coping With the Stresses and Reaping the Rewards of Parenting

For single African American custodial fathers, parenting stress is exacerbated by the cultural expectation that Black fathers are normally absent and by the clustering of stresses that Black men are more likely to encounter. This sample of African American fathers have used a repertoire of problem-focused and cognitive coping strategies, including some that are frequently considered culturally specific. Twenty Black single custodial fathers are interviewed and their narratives are analyzed for concepts and thematic categories related to stress and coping. Their narratives indicate that certain strategies are avoided because (a) these strategies are not available to them and (b) they desire to present themselves as independent and competent, thus resisting stereotypes and building a sense of efficacy

The Modern Application of the Best Interests of the Child Theory in Custodial Law

In its traditional sense, family law (aka domestic relations law) involves the legal relationships between husband and wife, parent and child, as a social, political, and economic unit. Recently, the boundaries of family law have to grown to encompass relationships among persons who live together but are not married, so-called non-traditional families. The legal aspects of families, whether they are traditional or non-traditional, include principles of constitutional law, property law, contract law, tort law, civil procedure, statutory regulations, equitable remedies, and marital property and support rights. Most family law statues are drafted as general guidelines. Consequently, state court judges normally have broad discretion in resolving many family law disputes. Moreover, a particular judge’s interpretation of family law issues will be guided by the law of the state whose family law governs the case, and the underlying law is rarely uniform from state to state. A judge may be bound by a state’s traditional family law statutes and judicial precedents, a more modern approach, or a combination of the two

Promoting Responsible Fatherhood

Outlines the need to engage fathers in improving long-term outcomes for vulnerable children at Casey's Making Connections sites. Offers a guide to the elements and principles of effective fatherhood programs, challenges, promising examples, and resources

Behavioral Economics and Developmental Science: A New Framework to Support Early Childhood Interventions

Public policies have actively responded to an emergent social and neuroscientific evidence base documenting the benefits of targeting services to children during the earliest period of their development. But problems of low utilization, inconsistent participation, and low retention continue to present themselves as challenges. Although most interventions recognize and address structural and psycho-social barriers to parent’s engagement, few take seriously the decision making roles of parents. Using insights from the behavioral sciences, we revisit assumptions about the presumed behavior of parents in a developmental context. We then describe ways in which this framework informs features of interventions that can be designed to augment the intended impacts of early development, education and care initiatives by improving parent engagement

Shared parenting: A 70% solution?

In the context of increased litigation over contact, this article examines the debate around proposals for a presumption of ‘shared parenting’. It concludes that such a presumption would not achieve the aims of its proponents. Its introduction would also be fraught with practical and doctrinal problems