Supporting Fatherhood

My friend, Fawn, and I were at a coffee shop yesterday when news of Barack Obama's speech on African American fathers appeared in the NY Times. Obama called for tougher enforcement of child support laws and took AA fathers to task for abandoning their families. As we talked, it became clear that decreasing the number of absentee fathers requires more than dinging them for child support. While it's true that being a responsible person requires the decision and the will to do so, it's also true that many factors outside the control of AA men (and poor men, generally) act to undermine their efforts to be responsible fathers: welfare programs that penalize mothers for living in two-income families, lack of accurate sex education and access to birth control that leads to higher rates of teen pregnancy, job discrimination, and bad schools.

It seems to me that if we want more AA men (and men, generally) to be active and responsible fathers, we need programs that reward these behaviors, more than laws that penalize their absence. Specifically, I'd like to see classes in middle and high schools on marriage and family, that identify the core components of healthy relationships and teach basic skills in communication (our local community college taught one called "Relationship Skills/Loving Well" that got national press). I'd like to see job and parenting training for new fathers, maybe even a program like VISTA for new dads. Do you have positive ideas for encouraging and supporting young men to be good fathers? Let's hear 'em.