Fathers Abandoning Responsibility:

An Interview with Carrie Carpenter

Aired January 4, 2000

David C. Barnett–On tomorrow's INFOhio After Nine, correspondent Harry Boomer will introduce us to a local single mom and she'll talk about her absentee fathers and how they are trying to get back with their families. That's on tomorrow's INFOhio After Nine. Joining us in the studio right now is Carrie Carpenter, director of government affairs at the Center for Families and Children, which also has a program that tries to put families back together. Thanks for joining us this morning.

Carrie Carpenter–Good morning.

DCB–You know, there are images out there of men who are, more largely talking about men here, I guess, who have supposedly abandoned responsibility, who have left everything in the mother's lap. Is that a fair image, is this "deadbeat" stereotype, is that fair?

CC–Sure. The Annie Casey Foundation just came out with a study that says 66% of households in the city of Cleveland are run by single parents, so it's certainly a reality in Cleveland.

DCB–What about the fact that there are fathers out there who are trying to do the right thing, but just can't due to the economic circumstances?

CC–Yeah, a lot of dads feel reallyu alienated from their children in large part because they are having trouble financially supporting them, and they don't really know how to re-engage with their families, so one of the things that our program does is try to re-engage them with their family unit.

DCB–And that's called Fathers and...

CC–Fathers and Families Together. It's a six-part program, six components, it seeks to strengthen the family, strengthen the father-child bond by teaching them literacy so they can work with their kids on homework, things like that. It helps fathers assume greater parenting responsibility and tries to enhance the self-sufficiency of the family, not only through economic contributions, but also by teaching the fathers respect for the children's mother, so they have a better working relationship there as a family.

DCB–So, this has been going on longer than Rising Tide?

CC–Yes, we've had our program for four years. When we started it, it was funded by the O'Neil Foundation, the Murphy Foundation and with some help from United Way as well. Now we're seeing a trend with welfare reform, the government is now willing to fund these programs, so we actually have a line item in the state budget under government and Taft's funding for fatherhood programs.

DCB–Now we've got the October deadline coming up here, that's months away, but it's coming up pretty fast, isn't it?

CC–It certainly is coming up fast. We're looking now at a time crunch where we need to really hurry and put major support programs in place and in addition to that, we really need to look at the long-term, not just piecing things together for the short-term, but look at the long-term and prevention programs, how to prevent these things from happening.

DCB–How do you track the success of your particular program?

CC–We actually just had a three-year evaluation where we track the dads. We had an independent evaluator come in and look at the program, we look at their job placement rates, we look at if they are still engaged with their family. We actually have an alumni group for our fathers' program called The Council of Fathers, where about a hundred of that dads that have gone through our program are still active with the program through like a grassroots-community action-type activities, anti-violence campaigns in the schools, things like that.

DCB–You talk about the need to not do so much of this patchwork stuff, but look at the long-term. How do you propose to do that?

CC–Well, we really need to take a hard look at what the community needs as far as prevention, making sure that these dads feel comfortable to be engaged with their families, it prevents women from having to be on welfare if they're engaged all along.

DCB–One of my favorite things to ask in situations like this is that 90.3's listenership is made of a lot of people that certainly aren't on welfare, and there's certainly some that are well-to-do. Why does the average listener to this station care about this situation? Why should they?

CC–I think average listeners all care about children living in poverty and by re-engaging fathers, it helps pull children out of poverty.

DCB–But how does that affect their lives, you know, the person listening right now says, "I'm sad, I'm sympathetic about these people, but this doesn't affect my life." Is that true?

CC–I don't think that's true, I mean, it affects the financila well-being of our entire community.

DCB–How so?

CC–Just by, you know, is the job workforce ready. We don't have enough technology jobs in Cleveland, we don't have enough employees for technology jobs in Cleveland, and the hotel industry is lacking employees, so by re-engaging fathers with their families and teaching them self-sufficiency, engaging them and training them in these job programs that are needed.

DCB–Carrie Carpenter is director of government affairs at the Center for Families and Children. Thanks for joining us this morning.

CC–Thank you.