D.C. Leaders Told Fathers May Be Key to Ending Welfare
by Ed Thomas
February 1, 2005
(AgapePress) - A panel discussion of Washington, D.C., policymakers and family advocates recently addressed the important role of fathers in the government's consideration of welfare reform. One key presentation was made by a journalist who followed three welfare families in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.Senior New York Times writer Jason DeParle followed three single-parent (single mom) families after the historic 1996 welfare reform legislation for a study described in the book American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare (Viking Books, 2004). In his address at the forum, the reporter explained to Colorado Senator Rick Santorum, California Representative Wally Herger and other lawmakers what he had learned about the importance of fathers in the process of moving families out of poverty.
Roland Warren, President of the National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI), says DeParle's discovery of father's significant role in determining family outcomes is one of the key findings that has emerged from research on welfare and poverty cycles in the United States. He says DeParle documented what many urban community leaders have known and said for years -- that, "in so many poor communities in America, far too many kids are growing up without the love, nurturance and support of an involved, responsible and committed father in their life."
DeParle stressed the father's economic and emotional impact on a family and its direct tie-in with the success of the family in moving away from government aid, Warren says. And, he adds, the author of the ground-breaking welfare case study also discussed an important conclusion that he reached while writing the book.
"Part of the awakening that kind of happened for him," the NFI spokesman notes, "was just this notion that fathers and men have to be a part of what's happening here if we are looking to move children out of poverty and to improve the well-being of kids -- and of women, for that matter." He says the D.C. forum was designed as a way to start planting that idea in the minds of legislators before the pending reauthorization of welfare reform in this session of Congress.
NFI was founded in 1994 as the leading edge of a society-wide movement to confront the problem of father absence. Warren says he hopes U.S. law- and policymakers will consider the "father factor" as they revisit the welfare reform issue, even as his group continues working to educate and equip leaders of national, state, and community fatherhood initiatives to advance this crucial pro-family issue.
Ed Thomas, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
