Fathers and families: forging ties that bind.

• Author: Lurie, Theodora

New programs are teaching young unwed fathers how to take legal, financial, and emotional responsibilites for their children.

KEVIN HILL'S 1985 sedan is falling apart, door handles held together with tape, springs pushing through torn upholstery. It's a far cry from the red and white Stingray Corvette he tooled around in when he was dealing drugs at age 13, but Hill [not his real name] slides into the driver's seat with a show of pride. It is not the best car he has owned, but it's the first one he ever bought with money earned legally. Having worked two jobs to scrape together the down payment, Hill sees the car as a sign that he finally is turning his life around.

Now 21, Hill has a past of drugs, gangs, and jail. For the first time, he can imagine a different future. "I always dreamt about making it, having a family, going to school, and right now it's finally starting to come together. "

An unmarried father, Hill has a two-year-old daughter whom he makes a point of seeing every day. An 11th-grade dropout, he recently earned a General Equivalency Diploma (GED), enrolled in a community college, and began working as a technician at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.

Hill measures his accomplishments against grim statistics. Scores of his former buddies have met violent deaths. Two of his older brothers were killed in gang wars and one is in jail for shooting a policeman. Two sisters had babies before they were 14. "Out of 15 kids, I'm the only one in my family to get a high school degree and the first one to go to college. When I found out I passed the GED test, I started crying, and when I told my mom she cried with me. She said, |I know you can do it. I know you're going to make it.'"

Hill gives credit for his new direction to the Responsive Fathers Program at the Philadelphia Children's Network. One of a growing number across the country that offer counseling and job-seeking assistance to young unwed fathers, the program provides intensive individual guidance to some 45 participants ranging in age from 16 to 26. It is one of six sites--the others are Cleveland, Ohio; Fresno, Calif.; Racine, Wis.; St. Petersburg, Fla.; and Annapolis, Md.--participating in a national demonstration project sponsored by Public/ Private Ventures (P/PV), a nonprofit public policy organization that designs and evaluates programs for disadvantaged youth.

Partially funded by the Ford Foundation with grants totaling $588,500, the project's goal is to determine the most effective ways to help young unwed fathers take legal, financial, and emotional responsibility for their children. It is part of a broader Ford Foundation effort to support research and pilot projects that explore ways to improve the employment opportunities of unwed mothers and fathers of children on welfare.

The soaring rate of out-of-wedlock births has brought a corresponding rise in the number of poor single-parent families dependent on welfare. According to Federal data, 26% of all babies in the U.S. are born to an unwed mother, four times the rate of a generation ago. Nearly half of all families headed by single mothers live in poverty. Studies show that never-married mothers are far more likely than divorced ones to become chronically dependent on welfare, in part because they receive so little child support. Just 24% of never-married single mothers nationwide had court orders for child-support payments from fathers in 1989, compared to 72% of divorced or separated mothers.

Most efforts to address this situation have focused on helping unwed mothers move from welfare to work and getting absent fathers to pay child support. However, in cases where the fathers are inner-city young men with a poor education, spotty work experience, and few job prospects, child-support enforcement is difficult. Programs like the one at P/PV are testing new ways to help these men meet their support obligations. The P/PV project specifically has targeted younger unwed fathers. "We want to build on the pride they feel when their baby has just been born," explains Nigel Vann, a P/PV program officer. "That's the moment when these guys are most involved with their kids and most likely to want to talk about fatherhood issues. It's harder to re-engage fathers once their children are older."

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