Responsible Fathers Research Articles

The Magnificence of the Qing – European Art on the Jesuit Mission in China

Cross-cultural encounters between China and the West date back to the first centuries A.D., when merchants, missionaries and travelers from numerous nations undertook the journey via the Eurasian land route known as the Silk Road. However, the most productive interaction that would profoundly and permanently affect both China and Europe was stimulated by the members of a religious order founded in 1534, namely the Society of Jesus. In the following years the highly intellectual Jesuits would slowly but steadily work their way into the vast realm of Chinese life with the help of an insistent albeit accommodative propagation introducing first and foremost Catholicism, Western sciences like mathematics, astronomy and medicine, philosophy, culture as well as the arts. This policy of accommodation was introduced by the Italian Jesuit Alessandro Valignano (1539- 1606) - responsible father in command of the China mission - and cunningly implemented by celebrated Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (1552-1610). Rather little attention has been paid to the subject of the arts, regarding their development and changes throughout the time of the Jesuit China missions. Remarkably, even Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (1674-1743), French Jesuit, geologist and sinologist, who is nowadays seen as the greatest author of the age on China and composer of Description de la Chine et de la Tartarie chinoise – which includes detailed information on the geography, culture, history, and politics of China, Chinese Central Asia, Tibet and Korea - did only briefly mention the arts in this context (Volume III, p. 1510). Even though his work is the largest and most comprehensive work on China produced by a Jesuit, he was among the Sinologists who never visited China himself. Interestingly, well-known figures such as Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Hume and Goldsmith relied on and referred to Du Halde as their principle source of knowledge (Mackerras, 1989). We can therefore view his work as a fundamental element of how China was represented in the West – very positive, charming and slightly propagandistic.

The parenting role of African-American fathers in the context of urban poverty

This qualitative study examines low-income African American fathers' perceptions of their parenting role and the strategies they employ to bring up children in poor urban neighborhoods. Focus groups and individual interviews were conducted with 36 fathers who had contact with their children at least twice a month. Men in the study expressed conventional views of their fathering roles as provider, nurturer, and teacher, but placed the most emphasis on "being there" for their children, as their financial circumstances limited other forms of involvement. Many fathers felt their circumstances to be exacerbated by a hostile child-support system. They desired to teach their children alternatives to the negative practices and values they saw in their urban neighborhoods and to have the skills to prosper in mainstream society. Overall, the findings suggest that many low-income urban fathers already desire to be responsible fathers but see themselves as limited by material and structural challenges. Services and policies that promote the economic stability of low-income fathers are recommended.

The lyrics of laborious life: popular music and the reassertion of migrant manhood in Northeastern Thailand

The focal subject under investigation in this paper is the gendered identities of overseas male migrant workers as presented in the contemporary popular song lyrics from Northeastern Thailand. My reading of such lyrics is informed by my ethnographic fieldwork of Thai migrant workers in Singapore. I intend to uncover some complex, cultural junctures of transnational labor migration, in which men, mobility, and music have come across and formed a social force to reshape cultural imagination of migrant manhood. I argue that popular music celebrates male heroism of overseas migrant workers. Instead of challenging existing structures of hegemonic masculinity in the region, popular song texts poetically reaffirm and reassert the traditional dominant gender ideology and cultural practice. Overseas workmen are usually depicted as hard‐working, self‐sacrificial heroes in their attempts to rescue their families as well as romantic, caring lovers and morally responsible fathers.

Georg Händel (1622–97): The Barber-Surgeon Father of George Frideric Handel (1685–1759)

George Frideric Handel was born in Halle (Saale) in Germany. After initial musical education in Germany and Italy, he came to London as a young man and spent the rest of his life in England. Until recently, little has been written of his early life in either the English or the German literature, and it is not widely known that he was the son of Georg Händel, a barber-surgeon of repute. When his father's name is mentioned, it is usually to claim that he actively discouraged his son's musical education. Georg Händel lived in a turbulent time; he became an eminent surgeon who served as valet and barber to the Courts of Saxony and Brandenburg, as well as a distinguished citizen of Halle. In describing his surgical duties, we show how these differed from those of barbers in England and France at that time. Barbers in Germany were less controlled, freer to practise as they pleased, and Händel himself had important duties in public health and forensic medicine. George Frideric was the first son of the second marriage, born when his father was 63 years of age. We aim also to dispel the notion that Händel's influence on his son's career was as obstructive as has been claimed, but rather that he was a responsible father with his children's interests at heart. This is shown in the success achieved by all his children, most of whom followed their father into medicine, while George Frideric became the most famous of them all, being regarded by posterity as one of the greatest composers.

Pater familias.

Pater familias.

Comic politics: gender in Hollywood comedy after the new right

Provides a critical introduction to the theories of the politics of comedy using case studies from contemporary popular film, and includes a look at animation and computer enhanced comedies, a consideration of voice and embodiment in Whoopi Goldberg's movies and an investigation of the responsible father in family comedies.

Who Is Responsible for Responsible Fathering?

In May 1998 issue of this journal, William Doherty, Edward Kouneski, and Martha Erickson proposed a conceptual framework on Responsible Fathering. For both empirical and theoretical reasons, we found their essay be problematic. The proposed model excludes key features of fatherhood and of motherhood, and researchers who attempt operationalize it or practitioners who attempt develop programs from it are destined be misguided. We are concerned authors wrote from a position of advocacy. We agree new research on fatherhood primarily reflects a position valuing involved fathers and discussions about absent fathers sometimes have a moral overtone. This is particularly evident in policy arenas. Congress, in fact, titled a 1998 child support bill, The Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act. As demonstrated by plethora of empirical studies blaming mothers for their children's behavioral, psychological, and social problems (Caplan & Hall-McCorquodale, 1985), discussions about motherhood have moral overtones as well. Arguments grounded solely in ideology are inherent in nature of public discourse. What is important for researchers who advocate a specific policy position in our journals is adhere principles and practices agreed upon within a scientific community, regardless of ideology (Furstenberg, 1999). We appreciate authors' willingness make their underlying assumptions explicit. We draw attention empirical literature authors neglected, however, and raise questions about their explicit and implicit reasoning. We take issue with their assumptions and their conclusions, and we critique their model by highlighting sociohistorical context of fatherhood, childhood, and motherhood. WHAT CHILDREN NEED? A key, explicit assumption of authors is that children need [italics added] and deserve active, involved fathers throughout their childhood and adolescence (p. 279). Although there might be an ideological basis for this assumption, it lacks empirical support. Members of scientific community may agree on what children need-broadly defined-for biological, physical, emotional, psychological, and social well-being. There is agreement, however, these needs must be met by a parent of a certain gender. In their study of children from single-parent households, Downey, Ainsworth-Darnell, and Dufur (1998) asked: Do women and men play unique roles in shaping children's well-being? (p. 878). They concluded the challenge for family researchers is distinguish between familial characteristics are necessarily important for creating positive family environments for children and those, such as sex of parent, are not (p. 892). We have no objection children having actively involved fathers, but research has demonstrated children's needs can be met within full range of fathers' involvement, from no involvement fathers raising children on their own (Acock & Demo, 1994; Risman, 1987). WHICH FATHERS MATTER Doherty et al. focused on heterosexual, biological fathers to delimit review (p. 279). Except for marital status, nothing in authors' conceptual model accounts for their emphasis on biological fathers. Furthermore, there is no empirical evidence biology predisposes fathers be responsible and involved (Cooksey & Fondell, 1996). The authors deliberately excluded adoptive, gay, step, fictive kin, and other father surrogates, many of whom are involved, responsible fathers. They suggested nonbiological and gay fathers deserve empirical and programmatic focus, but they saw such focus as beyond scope of their paper. Given authors' concerns about children's needs and variety of ways through which men function as fathers in contemporary society (e.g., Hawkins & Eggebeen, 1991), we are at a loss understand their decision. Because there are involved and engaged fathers who are meeting their children's needs in all of excluded groups, a contextual model of responsible fathers would and should include them. …

The City Under Siege

This essay explores the impact of alcohol and drug abuse on the individuars life, family, and community in a secularized society. The upsurge of crime in the city is the consequence of many variables, besides drugs and alcohol: lack of education, training, and jobs, the disintegration of the family, and inadequate administration of justice in the midst of a social climate of relativism. There is a need for the reintegration of the family, particularly the re-inclusion of a responsible father as a role model. In order to restore city life, there is an urgent need for a more active religious involvement at all levels, especially for teaching moral values in homes and schools. A new global evangelization of communities would highlight the importance of Judaeo-Christian values for the formation of character, and personal and community responsibility so necessary for a civil society.

Child Support Payment Behavior: An Econometric Decomposition

Growing concern about the cost to families and society from child support noncompliance has resulted in a flurry of scholarly articles and in welfare reform legislation addressing child support. The attention has been drawn from reports showing that almost 2.3 million women of the 4.4 million owed support in 1985 did not receive all they were owed-many receiving no payment at all [17].' The implications of this are far-reaching. It is well known that over half of all female-headed families have children in poverty, and many of these families will end up drawing Aid to Families with Dependent Children payments. Child support could help shift the burden from general tax revenues to the responsible father. For the family, the benefits of additional income may result in reduced stress on the mother and less disruption in the lives of the children. Taking a longer run view, greater family income has been linked to more years of schooling and higher wage rates in the early part of a child's career [7]. Higher payments of child support, then, may serve to increase current parental income and help reduce future poverty. In this paper we use a more efficient estimator to model child support behavior than has been used. The technique allows the extraction of more information from the data than previously has been possible, in particular the marginal impact of changes in variables on the probability of being a nonpayer, partial payer or full payer, and on the expected amounts paid. We show the usual practice of combining individuals who only pay a part of their order with those who pay all of their order into one group may lead to misleading policy conclusions. The combining of these groups does give a sense of the total amount that can be collected across individuals. Often as important, though, are compliance issues centered on those not paying all of their support order. While attention has been paid to those paying none of their order, partial payers have been ignored in the literature. In the course of our work we find support for the effectiveness of the federal Child Support Enforcement Program (CSEP) in increasing compliance with support

Case Reports

The displacement of roles in an incestuous family is described. As the daughters grew up, the mother abandoned early her rôle as a mother and nurturing, protective figure. She became one of them, playing the rôle of oldest daughter who, however, had passed the age of being the object of the incestuous wishes of the father (her husband). For his part, the father ignored her as a wife and in many ways this abandonment was a confirmation that she was no longer playing her rôle as spouse. On the other hand, the husband was unable to be a mature, responsible father who could take care of the affective needs of the family, so he gradually looked to his oldest daughter for a love relationship. In doing so he was himself abdicating as a father, perceiving himself as in his daughter's peer group. The second daughter, a pre-pubertal girl, out of jealousy and self-defence, assumed the rôle of ‘guardian’ of her older sister in trying to stop the relationship with the father and eventually refusing the advances he made to her. In the end, she revealed the ‘affair’ that took place between the father and the oldest daughter to the mother. The many changes in family relationships described, arising out of the incestuous relationship, shows that the disturbance in rôles leads in the end to the destruction of the family. Whereas there might have been many reasons to justify incest taboos for millenia past, in contemporary society the major reason justifying this taboo is that tolerance of it leads in fact to the destruction of the nuclear family, which is still, despite many changes, the key group of society.