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"In Essential Dads, sociologist Jennifer Randles shares the stories of more than 60 marginalized men as they sought to become more engaged parents through a government-supported "responsible" fatherhood program. Dads' experiences serve as a unique window into long-standing controversies about the importance of fathering, its connection to inequality, and the state's role in shaping men's parenting. With a compassionate and hopeful voice, Randles proposes a more equitable political agenda for fatherhood, one that carefully considers the social and economic factors shaping men's abilities to be involved in their children's lives and the ideologies that rationalize the necessity of that involvement"--

"Fragile families"—unmarried parents who struggle emotionally and financially—are one of the primary targets of the Healthy Marriage Initiative, a federal policy that has funded marriage education programs in nearly every state. These programs, which encourage marriage by teaching relationship skills, are predicated on the hope that married couples can provide a more emotionally and financially stable home for their children. Healthy marriage policy promotes a pro-marriage culture in which two-parent married families are considered the healthiest. It also assumes that marriage can be a socioec

Since the early 2000s, the federal government has spent nearly $1 billion on the Healthy Marriage Initiative which has the aim of strengthening economic mobility via marriage. Jennifer M. Randles observed marriage education classes closely, interviewing participants and training as a marriage educator. She finds that while healthy marriage policy promotes the idea that marital commitment is a bulwark against poverty, those on low-incomes believe that marriage represents the culmination of prosperity – not a means of achieving it. She writes that relationship policies would likely be more useful if they focused less on the benefits of marriage and more on how economic stress can take an emotional toll on relationships.

In the 1996 overhaul of federal welfare legislation, Congress included provisions to promote employment, marriage, and responsible fatherhood to prevent poverty among low-income families. Little previous research has focused on how marriage promotion policies construct paternal identity. Drawing on data from an 18-month study of a federally funded relationship skills program for low-income, unmarried parents, I analyze how responsible fatherhood policies attempt to shape ideas of successful fatherhood and masculinity in the service of the government's pro-marriage, antipoverty agenda. The program promoted a class-specific version of what I call marital masculinity, one that seeks to redefine marriageability for low-income men by claiming that marriage comes before financial success and encourages fathers to earn more. It did this by targeting fathers' masculine identities in two ways: first, by emasculating fathers who only provide financially for their children, and second, by promoting a highly gendered conception of paternal caregiving. By analyzing how this strategy can be understood as both empowering and controlling for low-income men, this research adds to the sociological literature on how welfare policies shape paternal identity and gendered family practices.

AbstractIn 1996, Congress overhauled welfare policy to promote marriage and work as ways to lift American families out of poverty. Almost all of the funding for governmental marriage promotion has been devoted to relationship skills programs intended to help couples strengthen their relationships, encourage them to marry, and thereby prevent poverty. Marriage promotion policy has sparked intense debate, especially over the connection between marriage and family inequality. While advocates of the policy argue the government should promote marriage because it fosters social and economic well‐being, critics challenge the assumption that marriage itself causes these benefits or will help lift poor families out of poverty. Recent sociological research on why poor and low‐income couples marry less finds that they tend not to marry if they cannot meet a specific economic threshold. This suggests that rather than promoting the view that relationship skills en route to marriage can help prevent poverty, marriage promotion policy could likely better serve disadvantaged families by acknowledging and addressing the socioeconomic roots of family inequality.