| Fathers and Child Welfare Services:
The Forgotten Clients
It is not our purpose here to make a case concerning the importance
of fathers and their role in child care and family life. This
task has been done by various writers (see Lamb, 1981) in different
countries and we will not review their works. However, it is interesting
to note how little has been published about fathers in social work
and child welfare literature (Wolins, this volume). Apparently
this is not specifically an American oversight but one common to
other countries as well. Our own brief review of the international
child welfare journals shows only occasional attention to fathers. Israel
is no exception to this pattern. This author recently examined
all articles published since the inception in 1957 of Saad (which
was recently renamed Society and Welfare), the Israeli
quarterly journal of social work. Not a single article was found dealing
with fathers per se as welfare clients. Although one article
discussed the subject of therapy for divorced fathers, this was
a Hebrew translation of an article published earlier in Social Casework (Leader,
1973). Despite the lack of discussion about this subject, social
workers claim to acknowledge and accept the importance of the father's
role. When one looks closely at the
organization of the social services, the background of the
manpower that provides these services,
and the nature of the services provided, a pattern emerges
that verges on de facto discrimination in most countries concerning
fathers as social service clients. Despite lip service, social services
do not take the father's role seriously and are not geared to accommodate
fathers. Unfortunately, a good deal of the social work literature
on fathers focuses on crises around the absence of a father' due
to death (Alexandrovitz, 1969; Grossberg & Crandall, 1978),
desertion and nonsupport (Snyder, 1975), and separation (Keshet,
1977); or on irresponsible, problematic fathers who have had incestual
relations with daughters (Gentry, 1978; Spencer, 1978). are abusive
(David, 1974; Hindman, 1977) single (Fast; 1979' , Mendes, 1976;
Todres, 1975), or have asked for or taken custody of children (Bartz & Witcher,
1979; Russell, 1969). Although normative attitudes value the father
as an important social service client, social work literature and
actual practices tend to stereotype "welfare fathers" as
problematic, hard-to-reach clients as compared to mothers and children
who are usually the primary clients of child welfare workers. Why have fathers, despite lip service to them
and to their role in child rearing and family life, become "forgotten" clients? What
are the implications of this oversight or neglect for social work
practice? What do we mean when we talk about father's roles? Which
aspects of fathering are we referring to? The following presentation
will discuss some of the processes that have led to a devaluation
of the father's role in welfare work, and explain the need to examine
and understand the role of the father within different cultural
contexts. Exploration of these topics, will, hopefully, open a
broader discussion among child care workers, family counselors,
and researchers in various countries concerning fathers and family
welfare services.
DEVALUATION OF THE FATHER'S ROLE
Mothers and Children
As Handy Clients
A large number of the selective, personal social
services, unlike the more universal social insurances, were created
specifically
for the purpose of coming to the aid of mothers and children in
distress. More important, however, is the fact that the
clinically oriented treatment services, adopted by social work
from the psychiatric
and medical professions, gravitated towards assisting a relatively
cooperative, motivated, and paying clientele. Outreach work with
less available, less motivated and/or hostile clients has only
developed in recent decades but, unfortunately, has not had a major
impact on mainstream social work practice.
In
the same tradition, the working hours of the majority of social
workers, particularly
civil service and welfare department employees, do not include
evening or night shifts that could enable more fathers to take
off from work to meet social workers. Home visits, when made,
are daytime visits, planned to see the mother and children. Social
workers rarely schedule visits to the father's place of employment
to see him during his lunch break. When this author served
as director of the Jerusalem Municipality's Department of Family
and
Community Services several years ago, the municipal welfare office
branches were encouraged to institute evening reception hours
(for appointments and walk-ins), and the number of male parents
who showed up increased dramatically. It is surprising that
more efforts have not been made to serve fathers, especially
since community
organization workers have been exceptionally successful in organizing
fathers for social action. When proper
conditions for father's involvement are created, fathers tend
to respond.
But barring these
outreach attempts, the father client is often, unfairly labeled
as "hard to reach." This is especially true of lower-class
fathers, because of their work routine or apparent lack of interest. Welfare
service organization, "normal" working hours, and father's
employment tend to reinforce the subtle stigma concerning uncooperative
fathers, or fathers as passive client partners, cooperating by
proxy through their wives.
Fathers
too, often have their own stereotypes about what their role should
be in relation
to social services and social workers. Many fathers delegate these
contacts to the wife, who is considered more available for appointments
and who is presumed to handle these matters. Sometimes father's
roles are conditioned by the roles social workers "give" them. For
example, an absence of efforts to involve fathers can be taken
as a message not to get involved. If these social worker "messages" match
the father's own stereotype of his wife's role as in charge of
social worker contacts, there is little chance of obtaining the
father's input and involvement. Unfortunately,
these messages are often conveyed to fathers in foster care, school
social work,
and other services that cater instinctively to the major partner,
the mother, who often is also usually the applicant for the service. Fathers
are much less frequently treated as major clients in child
welfare, even though good practice has implicitly tended, to presume
equal importance. By default or by design, fathers are the neglected
partners in social work.
Women Treating Women
Social
work, in most countries, is primarily a women's profession. In America, approximately
63% of the national membership of the National Association of Social
Workers are females (Kadushin, 1975; Loavenbruck, 1973; Sheehan,
1976). One study by Fischer and others (1976) found that. a strong
pro-female bias characterized the judgments of a sample of American
social workers; however, this finding was not reconfirmed in a
subsequent replication study (Dailey, 1980). In Israel, as well,
nearly 80% of all social workers are women (Israel Association
of Social Workers, 1980). Not only, is the working day geared
for women social workers raising their own children, but wage agreements
for Israeli welfare workers have always included special benefits
for working mothers, including shorter working hours and daycare
subsidies. The Israeli public welfare scene
is essentially one of women social workers helping female clients, There is strong
evidence suggesting that this is true in the United States as well,
where the majority of female social workers are employed in direct
practice rather than administrative roles (Fanshel, 1976).
"Child welfare," too,
as a field of social work practice, is predominantly a female profession,
both factually and stereotypically. Teenage prostitutes in Israel,
for example, were generally classified as a "child welfare" concern. Consequently,
only women social workers work with them. Unfortunately, this
arrangement never really allowed for or facilitated work with
the girls' pimps located in unsavory hangouts in the various cities
where women workers would not go. However, when the work with juvenile
prostitutes was transferred from the Child Welfare Division in
the Jerusalem municipality to the predominantly male-staffed Division
of Rehabilitation, male social workers engaged in outreach work
with both the pimps and the adolescent prostitutes, with very successful
results. Moreover, for the first time, many young girls had access
to a stable, helpful, father figure:, the male social worker. For
the first time, pimps were threatened by the male social worker
who vied for the loyalty of "their" girls. In a, very
effective, planned way, the new father surrogates weaned the girls
from dependency on the pimps to a more independent, satisfying
lifestyle.
One
particularly distressing area of social service where fathers,
or the importance of the
father figure, has been neglected, is that of institution or boarding
school placement. This is especially true for most socialist countries
of Europe, but also for many Western countries as well.
In
Israel, child placement has been a major response to family disruption,
mass immigration
absorption, poverty, and overcrowded housing (Jaffe, 1982a). The
Youth Aliyah organization alone cares for over 20,000 youths living
away from home (Department of Children and Youth Aliyah, 1979)
and the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs is responsible for
placing 12,000 children (Merari, 1978).
Although there is
substantial literature on problems of separation and the need for
mother figures in dormitory settings, less emphasis has been placed
on the need for father figures and male role models . How much
contact is provided with a consistent adult male figure? Is
this possible in view of the relatively rapid turnover of institution
counselors, cottage parents, and other male staff members? One
variation of congregate care, the S.O.S. children's villages, originated
in Austria by Herman Gemeiner (Dodge, 1972), rejects as a matter
of principle the concept of cottage fathers, and insists on employing
only unattached cottage mothers in order to guarantee long-term
stability of the person in the mother surrogate role. Unfortunately,
the childcare theory, underpinning this policy has never been clearly
explained or researched, despite the rapid expansion of S.O.S.
villages around the world (S.O.S., 1977).
Congregate
care generally tends to de-emphasize the father role for either
logistical or
conceptual reasons, and this development is an important subject
for further study. It is ironic that many of the dependent children
in placement came from homes without healthy father relationships. They
never really have an opportunity, in placement to make up for
that loss. Indeed, in a study of dependent institution children’s
attitudes towards their parents, Jaffe, (1982b) found that institution
children, had more positive feelings for their fathers than did
children awaiting placement or children living in normal home situations.
In summary, despite
the apparent importance attached to fathers as key partners in
social work practice, other realities have resulted in a downgrading
of this partnership and a marked lack of accommodation for fathers.
FATHERS AS A SUBCULTURE
All
too often, the term "fathers" is used to specify a presumably homogeneous
group of people who occupy a certain role in the family. But any
discussion of fathers must ask: Which fathers we are talking
about? Is there a prototype? Do we relate to "fathers" as
some mythical, universal, Western father, or are we thinking about
different fathers from various cultural groups? Are we talking
about disadvantaged or affluent fathers, about immigrant fathers
or "old-timer" fathers? On second glance, everyone.
will acknowledged that beyond certain universal similarities there
are vast differences in the role and status of the father in different
cultures, and that even within various cultures the father role
can be studied as part of a specific subculture. For social workers
and child care professionals this information is crucial if one
is to provide services and function properly. One excellent
example of the importance of such information can be seen from
Riszk's
(I 977) advice to supervisors of social, workers working with Arab
village families in Israel.
The Arab family structure is avowedly patriarchal. The father is
the authority; he is God-on-Earth. The way his children are raised,
his relationship to his wife, are based on his teaching, his orders,
and his use of physical punishment to resolve problems. Only infrequently
is encouragement given to internal strengths and abilities of
the family members, and rarely does he encourage them to express
themselves regarding their problems. There is no trace of the
principle of equal rights their relationship with him. In essence,
all these things show that the major factor in father-child relationships
is the fact that the children and other family members must blindly
obey and honor their elders, otherwise they will be called to order
by physical force [p. 181].
Without the insights noted above, it would be folly to attempt childcare
work with the fathers described. Similar information has proven
vital for work with Jewish fathers who immigrated to Israel from
Moslem countries and fathers from ultra orthodox communities who
came from Poland, Hungary, or Russia. How many American social
workers have studied the subculture of the Puerto Rican, Cuban,
Mexican, or Native American father? And how many British social
workers have studied the father's role in West Indian, West African,
and Asian migrant families who came to England in recent decades? These
cultural, ethnic, and social aspects of social work with immigrant
fathers and families are matters of concern today for most Western
countries and in recent years have become topics for regional and
international meetings of social workers.
Because
the issue of fathers in social work practice has been neglected
in general,
this situation hardly afforded grounds for studying fathers as
part of a specific subculture. Much has yet to be learned about
fathers in new cultures. What do we know about the changing role
of fathers as a result of the clash between traditional and modem
cultures among immigrant groups? What has the father's handling
of his role change done to the self-image of his children, to their
image of the father, and to their selection of male role models? How
do second-generation sons of immigrants, torn between new and
old cultures, relate to social services and social workers? Are
their attitudes different from that of their fathers, and if so,
in what ways?
In
most countries, social welfare workers are drawn primarily from
the dominant culture,
whereas their clientele are drawn from ethnic minorities (Jaffe,
1977). This has provided a built-in strangeness between helpers
and receivers of service and a need for both social workers and
clients to learn about the other's culture. Affirmative admission
policies at various schools of social work and the introduction
of some, courses on ethnic customs and cultural anthropology may
have alleviated the problem somewhat. Nevertheless, within this
larger picture, there is an urgent need for studying the subcultures
of different groups of fathers in a systematic way. This can be
done "in the field" after one's professional education,
but universities today are also beginning to grapple with this
problem. Perhaps one of the reasons for the delay in teaching
about fathers in different subcultures (and perhaps about mothers,
too) was a reluctancy to acknowledge or legitimize the importance
of ethnic issues in childcare practice. The goal in most Western
countries for many decades has been towards rapid acculturation
of immigrants within the melting pot, rather than encouraging
diversity and cultural pluralism. Furthermore the early denial
of the importance of ethnic issues in social work education in
favor of "generic" principles and methods of intervention
may have served to allay fears of middle-class, white social workers
concerning their own competency to understand and treat problems
of all clients regardless of ethnic background. In Israel, for
example, until the early 1970s it was generally considered unacceptable
arid, socially divisive to emphasize SephardiAshkenazi (i.e.,
Middle-Eastern vs. Western) differences and ethnic background
as correlates of social stratification and social problems. After
all, they were all Jews, and the country had been founded on the
principle of the Ingathering of the Exiles.
Fortunately,
reality has caught up with social ideology in most countries, and
professionals
involved in social welfare and their social institutions are becoming
more aware of ethnic issues and the need to accept, and understand
ethnic subcultures. Among the pioneering Educators in this endeavor
are Billingsley (1968), Billingsley and Giovannoni (1972), Montiel
(1970, 1973), Kim (1973, 1976), Rothman (1977), Turner (1972),
Jaffe (1981), and Jenkins and Morrison's (1978, 1980). For social
work education, Jenkins latest (1981) work is of great importance
because it attempts to develop a typology for incorporating ethnic
factors into social welfare based on experiences with five ethnic
groups in America. Jenkins also reviews ethnic issues in Britain
and Israel. She is one of the few social work educators to present
the ethnic dilemma in social services in international perspective,
and her observations show quite clearly how all of us in different
countries are struggling with very similar problems. Nevertheless,
Jenkins' research did not deal with fathers in ethnic subcultures,
although by sensitizing social workers to the general topic, she
may provoke more specific research on fathers.
SUMMARY
It is ironic, perhaps, that the renewed interest
in women's rights and women's roles in modem society has also
led to a "rediscovery" of
the role and problems of fathers as a distinct client group. As
society begins, to identify each parent as a separate entity and
experimentation with family roles becomes more acceptable, the
male, as well as the female parent role, is receiving more attention.
For social welfare and childcare workers, this
development is very important because there has been, as this
chapter shows, a tendency
to overlook the father as a client. The reasons for this situation
are varied, ranging from the organization and demographic make-up
of the social work profession to stereotypes about fathers and
a lack of knowledge about ethnic groups. Whatever the reasons,
social work practice and research has not accommodated or appreciated
the role of the fathers. He has been dealt with as a problematic
figure rather than a full partner in social service delivery. In
order to correct this situation, both conceptual and administrative
changes may be necessary in child and family care practice. Above
all, a greater sensitivity to the role of fathers as partners and
clients is needed. If social work still includes outreach,
if office hours do not dictate clientele, and if father subcultures
are more sympathetically understood, then social work has a chance
to help fathers.
Beyond the issue of father's rights to social services, it is important
to emphasize that effective "child welfare" practice
begins with parents, biological or psychological, and that inadvertent
or conscious discrimination against either parent can result in
poorer service to children.
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We are grateful to
Michael Lamb for granting www.fathercare.org permission to reproduced
extract from:
Lamb,
Michael E, & Sagi, I.,
Fatherhood and Family Policy, Laurence
Erlbaum Ass,1983,
pp 129-37
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