A Critical Exploration of Biological and Social Fathering Among Afro‐Caribbean Fathers

• Published date: 01 February 2021
• Author: David S. Green,Susan S. Chuang
• Date: 01 February 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12479

D S.G S S.CUniversity of Guelph

A Critical Exploration of Biological and Social

Fathering Among Afro-Caribbean Fathers

Objective: This research explores fathers’ con-

struction of fathering to expand knowledge on

the behavioral, cognitive, and affective domains

of father involvement, focusing on middle child-

hood in ethnic minority families.

Background: Fathers’ contributions to chil-

dren’s development and socialization have

received increasing attention since the 1970s.

Although exploration of ethnic minority fathers

has increased, the literature on ethnic and

minority fathers is limited because insight into

fathers living outside North America continues

to be understudied.

Method: This study employed a qualitative

methodology from a social constructivist

perspective and a bioecological model to

contextualize fathering in Afro-Jamaican fami-

lies. Phenomenological thematic analysis (PTA)

was used, focusing on 24 semistructured inter-

views from ve biological and 19 biological and

social Afro-Jamaican fathers.

Results: Using Palkovitz’s (1997) conceptual-

ization of fathering, including behavioral, affec-

tive, and cognitive domains, phenomenological

thematic analysis was extended to include the

spiritual domain. Furthermore, fathers reported

being engaged with their biological and social

children in similar ways.

Conclusion: These ndings highlight the need

for researchers to explore both the universal

and culturalized aspects of fathering in cultural

contexts.

Department of Family Relations and Human Development,

University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, Ontario,

N1G 2W1, Canada (dgreen05@uoguelph.ca).

KeyWords:Black fathers, fathers, father involvement, father-

ing, qualitative research,socialization.

Implications: Fathers should be supported

through social policies and program interven-

tion to encourage fathers to be involved in

children’s lives in multiple ways.

Historically, fathershave received little attention

in early theories of parenthood and often were

not regarded as equally important to children’s

development as were mothers (Parke, 1996).

Lamb’s (1975) proclamation of fathers as the

forgotten contributors to children’s develop-

ment focused attention on fathers, leading to

theoretical and empirical advancement in this

research. The greater attention to fathering

research primarily concentrated on fathers’

presence (coresidence) in the households of

their children, including the various ways in

which fathers were involved with their children

and their links to children’s developmental

outcomes (Pleck, 2010). Furthermore, the

vast majority of fathering research (Goldberg

et al., 2009) has continued to explore fathers

of European backgrounds, especially from the

United States (Henrich et al., 2010). Recently,

exploration of ethnic minority fathers has

increased (Chuang & Tamis-LeMonda, 2013;

Chuang & Zhu, 2018); yet insight into fathers

living outside North America continues to be

understudied. Within this context, the attempt

to understand fathering should be regarded as

a sense-making undertaking because reality

is constructed in the context of culture and

situations (Falkheimer & Heide, 2006). There-

fore, to address current gaps in the literature,

this study focused on Afro-Jamaican fathers and

their conceptualization and operationalization

of father involvement.

282Family Relations 70 (February 2021): 282–296

DOI:10.1111/fare.12479