Adolescent Fatherhood

ADOLESCENT FATHERHOOD:
A Conversation with Waldo Johnson

By Robin Walls, SSA second-year administration student

Waldo Johnson is an Assistant Professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. His research focuses primarily on adolescent fathers. In a recent interview, I spoke with Johnson about the myths and realities of adolescent fatherhood.

Adolescent fathers are often depicted as irresponsible teenagers who engage in sexual behavior for which they may be physically, but not always emotionally ready. Thus, if their partners become pregnant, they often play a distant or superficial role in their children's lives. Johnson agrees that to a certain degree, teens become fathers because they are not fully conscious of the responsibilities of fatherhood, and if they were, such knowledge could serve to delay fatherhood.

Johnson notes, however, that there are also social influences, such as media messages, which impact a teen's decision regarding fatherhood, by primarily focusing on the enjoyable aspects of sexual behavior, without the accompanying responsibilities.

It is known that peer pressure plays a big part in influencing adolescent behavior, including sexual activity. Johnson states, "peer pressure often makes a big difference and particularly with young men, ...many of them are influenced by their peers, who are perceived as having sex". For many teenagers sex is not a planned event, but is in fact opportunistic, "when they get up in the morning it's not like it hasn't come to mind, but they don't prepare for it. They don't necessarily carry condoms in their wallet in the event that they're planning to have sex."

In fact, peer influence may be significantly more influential than sex education. While females generally benefit from formal education regarding the emotional and physical aspects of maturing, often times males do not. Johnson describes the process that African-American males go through as being a "ritualized" rather than a formal education.

Paternal Involvement Among Adolescent Fathers

Regarding paternal involvement, Johnson has found that there is a broad spectrum. If both parents are minors, they are likely to reside in the parent's home. Thus, depending on how the grand-maternal or paternal parents feel about continued contact between the adolescent parents, teen fathers may have little control over access to their children. But as Johnson points out, maturity is also an important factor in understanding family formation and structure among unmarried adolescent parents. "My research explored men's expectations as fathers and adolescent fathersQlike older fathers talk in terms of providing support for their families. But across the board you find a real disjuncture between what adolescent fathers say and do in terms of paternal role functioning." Economic obstacles often faced by urban, and in particular African American, adolescent fathers, can prohibit them from supporting their children financially.

Johnson also discussed his view of the recent welfare reform legislation with regards to the overwhelming focus on adolescent mothers. He opposes the notion of intervention programs that dichotomize adolescent mothers and fathers and cites recent child development research which contends that fathers play an equally important role as do mothers in basic child nurturing and development.

Practical Implications

Johnson serves on the Advisory Board of the Paternal Involvement Project (PIP), which began in 1992 as a demonstration project. PIP is designed to work with fathers who are disconnected from their children and to help them become emotionally and financially involved. It's primary population is adults, but serves fathers as young as 17.

The project encourages fathers to spend time with their children. The agency tries to work out arrangements with both parents regarding visitation. If unable to reach an agreement, the goal is for visitation to take place at the agency. The program also provides educational and professional assessments as well as educational assistance

Professor Johnson feels that one of the most important aspects of PIP is that, "....[it has] been able to create an opportunity by which men can pursue their responsibilities as fathers by becoming involved." To that end, the project has also been heavily involved in shaping more father-friendly policy. For instance, when fathers become involved in the project one of the first steps is to establish legal paternity. Once legal paternity is established, PIP works with the court system so that fathers are not immediately in arrearage for child support, but are expected to pay once they begin working.