Our study asks a question that the responsible fatherhood and human services fields sometimes avoid because it’s inconvenient: If we say fathers matter, why are so many systems designed as if they don’t?
Those that truly want to engage fathers must adopt a simple discipline: Stop confusing outcomes with intent. If a father is not consistently present, ask what has been blocking him before you make assumptions or lean on stereotypes.
by Dr. Jeffery Shears, Co-Chair, The Moynihan Institute for Fatherhood Research and Policy
Fulton County, Georgia, sits inside Metro Atlanta, an area that has long been used as a national mirror, a place where America’s hopes and contradictions show up in high definition. The story many people think they already know is a tired one: Black fathers don’t show up. But new fatherhood research published by MIFRP fellows and their colleagues says something more honest. Black fathers show up with love, intention, and persistence, despite being forced to navigate a maze where the walls move.
At its core, our study asks a question the responsible fatherhood and human services fields sometimes avoid because it’s inconvenient: If we say fathers matter, why are so many systems designed as if they don’t?
Our Latest Fatherhood Research and Its Findings
This research centers nonresidential Black fathers in Fulton County and explores what stands in the way of engagement, what helps it flourish, and what fatherhood programs and stakeholders must do differently to stop mistaking barriers for a lack of love.
Our approach to this study matters because its method signals respect. The co-authors used a qualitative, phenomenological design, conducting semi-structured interviews and follow-up focus groups with 12 self-identified Black fathers in Fulton County. These were not “checkbox” conversations. We intentionally made room for men to describe what it feels like to love their child and still have to negotiate access to fatherhood.
Here’s what we learned:
The study reveals co-parenting dynamics as a major fault line.
When co-parenting is healthy, fathers describe communication that stays centered on the child and makes space for both parents to function. When co-parenting becomes hostile, fathers describe emotional strain, frustration, and a level of gatekeeping that can make dads feel like they’re auditioning for access rather than stepping into responsibility. Our research shows that strained co-parenting relationships are not simply interpersonal drama. They become structural barriers when reinforced by systems that lack pathways for repair and for shared parenting support.
The study points to a dearth of father-centered community supports.
Fathers repeatedly described how family-serving environments are often built with mothers in mind, leaving men to either squeeze into spaces not designed for them or give up after repeated signals that they are peripheral. This is not an indictment of mothers or mother-centered supports. It is a challenge to the field: Family work cannot be fully funded, staffed, and structured around one parent and then act surprised when the other parent struggles to stay connected.
The research highlights legal and institutional barriers.
The fathers describe legal processes, including child support and legitimation in Georgia, as confusing, expensive, and emotionally draining, especially when layered with experiences of discrimination within systems meant to administer fairness. When a father believes the system is rigged against him, he may still fight for his child, but he does it with a constant tax on his mental health, time, and stability.
The study explores what public narratives routinely ignore: fathers’ interior world.
Many fathers described fear at the start of fatherhood. Younger men, especially, felt unprepared. However, fathers of all ages reported that these feelings often shifted to pride and deep attachment once their child arrived. Fathers spoke about identity, self-efficacy, and the drive to offer their children what they did not always receive. In the language of leadership, this is purpose forming under pressure. In the language of family, it’s a man deciding the pattern stops here.
One throughline should reframe how America reads Black fatherhood: resilience.
Our findings do not romanticize struggle, but they do document persistence. Even with co-parenting conflict, limited community supports, and legal barriers, fathers described pushing to remain present and positively involved. The point isn’t that men should have to be heroic to be fathers. The point is that they already are doing the work, and the responsible fatherhood and human services fields have a responsibility to stop building (or advancing) systems that require heroics for dads to maintain a relationship with his child.
What This Research Means for Fathers Incorporated
Research is only as valuable as what it changes. Fathers Incorporated (FI) won’t let this study sit on a shelf. It sharpens service-delivery models and validates what frontline work has long shown: Fathers need more than motivational speeches. Fathers need navigation, skill-building, and systems that stop punishing involvement.
Here are practical ways this research is being used, and how it can shape the work going forward:
- FI can continue to tighten the integration between fatherhood development and co-parenting support, treating co-parenting as a core engagement strategy rather than an optional add-on. If co-parenting conflict blocks access, then co-parenting skill-building is father engagement work.
- The MIFRP study reinforces the need for father-inclusive program design across community agencies. This means leveraging FI’s expertise to train partner organizations to welcome and communicate with fathers, and to build father-affirming environments that don’t treat men as visitors in their own families. Our research even underscores how staffing and the presence of men in service environments can shape whether fathers feel supported enough to engage.
- Since legal navigation remains a major lever, FI can continue building bridges between fathers and credible navigation, particularly regarding legitimation and the father’s understanding of rights, responsibilities, and pathways that protect the child relationship. When fathers know the process and feel accompanied through it, they are less likely to disengage out of exhaustion.
- Our findings also point to a gap that many programs under-address: reentry stabilization and the financial rebuilding that makes consistent parenting easier to sustain. Programs that treat employment, stability, and father engagement as separate tracks will keep losing fathers to the friction of survival. In contrast, program models like FIs that serve incarcerated and returning-to-community dads holistically will successfully retain and engage fathers.
Research as Guidance for the Responsible Fatherhood and Human Services Fields
Now for the larger question: How can this paper inform fatherhood programs and stakeholders nationwide?
Fields that truly want engaged fathers must adopt a simple discipline: Stop confusing outcomes with intent. If a father is not consistently present, ask what has been blocking him before you make assumptions or lean on stereotypes.
Fatherhood programs across the country can take at least five cues from this study:
- Build fatherhood services that include co-parenting repair as a standard feature, because co-parenting conflict isn’t a side issue; it’s often the gate to the child.
- Make father supports visible in community spaces where men already are, and design programming that treats fathers as clients, not collateral.
- Create warm handoffs into legal education and navigation, especially in states with unique policy barriers that shape father access.
- Expand economic stability and reentry supports as a father engagement strategy, not merely workforce development.
- Teach staff to engage fathers with dignity and clarity, because program culture is a form of infrastructure.
If this sounds like a big shift, it is. But history has shown how quickly public sentiment can change when truth is spoken with moral force. Dr. King did not persuade the nation by offering a softer story. He named what was happening and demanded alignment between our stated values and our public systems. That is the invitation in this research: Align the systems with the values we claim to hold.
Black fathers in Fulton County aren’t asking for trophies. They’re asking for a fair shot at being present.
*
This blog post includes insights from “Barriers to and Facilitators of Paternal Engagement for Black Fathers in Fulton County, Georgia,” an article published recently in Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Servicesby SAGE Publications by Dr. Jeffrey Shears, Dr. Cassandra L. Bolar, Dr. Lorenzo N. Hopper, Dr. Matisa Wilbon, and Dr. David C. Miller from the Moynihan Institute for Fatherhood Research and Policy (MIFRP) with colleagues Carmen Rudd and Aremu M. Smith.
To learn more about the work of the Moynihan Institute, visit www.themoynihaninstitute.com.
You can also read summaries of MIFRP’s recent research right here on Dads Pad Blog:
