Racial/Ethnic Variation in Residential Fathers’ Time in Childcare and Co-presence with Children

Past research on racial/ethnic minority fathers’ involvement in children’s lives tends to focus on subgroups of fathers and narrow definitions of involvement, making knowledge of racial/ethnic variation in fathering obscure. Using ordinary-least-squared regression models with the 2003-2019 American Time Use Survey (N = 30,622), we compare White, Black, Latino, and Asian residential fathers’ time spent in four childcare activities and 10 additional daily activities when fathers are co-present with children, attending to variation by age of children. Results show that how fathers spend time with children varies by racial/ethnic group across stages of children’s lives. Latino fathers spend more time in presence of young children than other fathers, whereas Black and Asian fathers spend less time in presence of older children than other fathers, with differences concentrated in the amount of downtime spent together. Within father-child co-present time, Black fathers spend more time in religious activities, Latino fathers in shopping, and Asian fathers in hobbies. Considering the narrower arena of childcare, Black and Latino fathers spend less time overall, White fathers spend more time on play, and Black and Asian fathers spend more time teaching children. These findings suggest that broadening assessments of time beyond childcare and being attentive to fathers in different racial/ethnic statuses enrich our understanding of how fathers spend time with children and align more with the whole of family life across children’s developmental stages.

The Missionaries of Africa and the Rwandan Genocide

On the basis of documentary evidence, this paper examines the position of the Missionaries of Africa, also known as White Fathers, in political and ethnic matters during the buildup to the genocide in Rwanda, the genocide itself, and the postgenocide period. It argues that the Missionaries of Africa responded to the genocide in different ways. Some, especially those who returned to Rwanda after 1994, recognised the errors done by the church and tried to restart their ministry on a new foundation. However, many, particularly in Belgium, the country from where half of them originated, adopted a more defensive attitude. They subscribed, explicitly or not, to the double genocide theory according to which the crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front equalled or even surpassed those of the Rwandan authorities and the militias during the genocide. On the whole, the General Council of the congregation in Rome reacted to the Rwandan situation in a nonpartisan manner.

Value-Sensitive Design for Feminist Technology: Designing for “Feminist Fatherhood” with Nonwhite Latinx and White Fathers

Value-sensitive design is an approach that seeks to explicitly center the values of design stakeholders. In doing so, the method provides a rich analytical backdrop in which to explore how participants make sense of values and embody values in their designs. In this study, I explore the broad question of how a value-sensitive design approach can be used to surface, address, and possibly reconcile the similar and different culturally informed ways we make sense of being feminist fathers. Two groups of self-proclaimed feminist fathers, white non-Latinx and nonwhite Latinx, engaged in a value-sensitive design approach to designing technology to support their conceptualizations of feminist fatherhood. Four themes around differences between the groups and the kinds of reflections the participants engaged in are summarized. Based on our findings, I contribute suggestions for adapting value-sensitive design approaches to scaffold certain kinds of reflection around authenticity and interpretation in ways that are more grounded in themes of nondominance.

Mortifications Peculiarly Their Own

This chapter explores the sexual exploitation of slavery and enslaved women’s feelings towards children born of rape and concubinage and their reactions to the white fathers of their children. A white man who sold his own offspring likely sold his daughters into the sex trade, underscoring how deeply imbedded rape was in the market economy and in the role of white planters as fathers.The act of rape connected the private realm of the southern home to the market. Sexual exploitation complicated identity and family formation in the slave South and could strengthen children’s identification with their enslaved mothers, or in the rare cases when white men offered preferential treatment to their mixed-race children, could erase Black mothers.

Tuckey Buzzard Lay Me

This chapter examines sexual exploitation and violence in the antebellum South and what it meant for an enslaved person to have a white father. Evaluations of white fathers varied considerably depending on how that father treated his illegitimate offspring, how slave communities treated mixed-race children (which also varied), and an individual’s sense of identity, which was tied to these other factors. Biracial children at times expressed admiration for the few white fathers who openly acknowledged their children and provided freedom and education. They tended to be more ambivalent about white fathers who offered a privileged status on the plantation but not freedom. African American communities expressed particular disdain for white fathers who violated paternal duty by abusing or selling their own children. Reactions to white fathers highlight slaves and former slaves’ consistent notions of paternal duty. African American communities understood that white people had a monopoly on concrete power, but that did not mean they had honor.

Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities over the Long Nineteenth Century

Analyzing published and archival oral histories of formerly enslaved African Americans, Libra R. Hilde explores the meanings of manhood and fatherhood during and after the era of slavery, demonstrating that black men and women articulated a surprisingly broad and consistent vision of paternal duty across more than a century. Complicating the tendency among historians to conflate masculinity within slavery with heroic resistance, Hilde emphasizes that, while some enslaved men openly rebelled, many chose subtle forms of resistance in the context of family and local community. She explains how a significant number of enslaved men served as caretakers to their children and shaped their lives and identities. From the standpoint of enslavers, this was particularly threatening--a man who fed his children built up the master’s property, but a man who fed them notions of autonomy put cracks in the edifice of slavery. Fatherhood highlighted the agonizing contradictions of the condition of enslavement, and to be an involved father was to face intractable dilemmas, yet many men tried. By telling the story of the often quietly heroic efforts that enslaved men undertook to be fathers, Hilde reveals how formerly enslaved African Americans evaluated their fathers (including white fathers) and envisioned an honorable manhood.