They sit in a circle and talk of the joys and pains that fatherhood has brought them.
They are men of the street, products of patchwork families. Most were abandoned by fathers. Some know addiction, others the city jail, poverty, anger, rejection and on.
All have children. Few are married.
But on this night in West Baltimore, this unlikely band of fathers-errant is talking poetry. Poetry! They are reading aloud a poem about how fathers guide their sons best through "solid- rock example."
It's time to get real, they say. Time to do right by their kids.
After the poem is finished and a few have spoken, Cyril Lynch, a 38-year-old Baltimore truck driver, a father of three, clears his throat and quietly says what they all are thinking, as tears well in his eyes.
"I don't want my boys seeing me in the street doing things I don't want them to do," he says, his 2-year-old son, Cyril Jr., clutched tightly in his arms. "It puts a lot of feelings in my heart to read these things."
The words now pour out. They talk of learning trades, finding jobs, supporting their kids. They long to be the dads their dads never were.
"These young guys, they want to be better fathers and better men," says Joe Jones, head of the Baltimore program that has brought these inner-city men together. "They just need to find out how."
In many communities across the nation, men are voicing similar ambitions. A growing number of programs, like Jones' support group, are trying to encourage responsible fatherhood.
Proponents believe they are part of a burgeoning social movement aimed at persuading fathers of all classes, races, income levels, and religions to become a larger part of their children's lives.
"We want to make two points - first, that fathers are important," says Wade F. Horn, president of the National Fatherhood Initiative. "And secondly, that the most important thing a father can do is invest himself in his children."
Horn, a psychologist and former Bush-administration official, is the closest thing to a spokesman the fledgling cause of responsible fatherhood has today. The NFI is a private nonprofit based in the Washington suburb of Gaithersburg.
What Horn and others espouse seems almost too obvious and fundamental to be recognized as any new trend - like discovering motherhood and apple pie. But it is a reaction to some cold, hard facts of fatherhood's failings in the 1990s. To wit:
* Nearly one-quarter of U.S. children now live in a home without a father (biological, adoptive or stepfather).
* About 1.2 million of the nation's children will be born out of wedlock this year, about one-third of all births.
* More than 1 million children experience divorce annually.
* While teen-agers spend an average of 21 hours watching TV each week, they spend an average of 35 minutes per week talking to their fathers, according to a 1994 study.
The movement's supporters feel a kinship to groups as diverse as Promise Keepers, the fundamentalist Christian movement, and Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March three years ago. Both extolled a pro-father philosophy.
Twice, the 5-year-old NFI has held national summits on fatherhood. Its TV ads urging fathers to spend more time with their children have enjoyed the equivalent of $100 million in free air time, according to the Advertising Council Inc.
In Congress, a House subcommittee is pondering the Fathers Count Act, which would give states $2 billion over five years for pro-fatherhood programs.
Suddenly, it's become fashionable to talk about fatherhood.
"For too many years we've been engaged in collective amnesia about the importance of fathers in the lives of children," said Ronald B. Mincy of the Ford Foundation, which has underwritten a national "Fragile Families" program to support and study fatherhood in poor communities. Leaders in the movement blame the prevalence of divorce and out-of-wedlock births for minimizing the father's role in child-rearing. The results: more children living in poverty and children who are more likely to drop out, get involved in drugs or crime and treat their own children poorly.
Do they blame women for this? Not really. The men say they are prepared to take most of the rap but point to extenuating circumstances like government welfare programs that have discouraged marriage.
They also see the women's rights movement as having changed the nature of family life. In just three decades, the father's role has been fundamentally altered from the traditional patriarch to something less well-defined.
"But we are not about bashing feminism," says Horn. "This is about asserting the responsibility of fathers. Women are generally a receptive audience for us."
Horn traces the beginning of the fatherhood movement to Dan Quayle's "Murphy Brown" speech in 1992. The then-vice-president criticized producers of the show for having a main character, an intelligent, highly paid professional woman, bear a child alone and consider it a mere "lifestyle choice."
The comment raised hackles, particularly among liberals. But on re-examination, Quayle's central point - that fathers have lost stature in society - has won converts across the political spectrum.
Two of the movement's leading supporters, for instance, are Vice President Al Gore and Republican (and frequent Clinton critic) William J. Bennett, two men who seldom agree on matters of social policy.
"The most exciting thing [in the movement], quite frankly, is the development of this bipartisan consensus," said Ralph Smith, vice president of the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation, which has supported fatherhood programs.
At the heart of the movement are efforts to reinvigorate fatherhood in the inner city, where the consequences of fatherless families are most dire. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 66 percent of black children are not living with their biological father - more than twice the percentage for white children.
Enter men like Jones, who launched his outreach program in Baltimore five years ago. An outgrowth of "Healthy Start," a federally funded campaign to reduce the city's high infant-mortality rate, the program was created to encourage men to support the women who are bearing their children.
The men who enroll must attend a prenatal appointment with a doctor, two pediatric appointments, fatherhood classes and a weekly support group. Jones tried offering incentives to get men to attend - gift certificates for infant products and the like - but they turned out to be unnecessary: Most men wanted the help.
"Red flags have gone up for years, and we've ignored them," said Jones, 42, a one-time drug addict and 12th-grade dropout from the Lafayette projects who is now a married father of three, working toward a master's degree in mental health. "The extended family is overextended."
Jones' clients are, on average, in their mid-20s, with a ninth grade education and no job. Most had little or no relationship with their fathers.
At the support meeting in West Baltimore, the fathers talked enthusiastically about using what they learn to help their children.
"Yesterday, I saw my 5-year-old daughter for the first time since she was 1," one man told the group. "I know I inflicted a lot of pain on that child's life by not being there."
Malcolm Allen, 27, brought along his 4-year-old daughter, Elisha, to the meeting, but not her older sister, Niasha. The 5-year-old didn't want to see him because he hadn't come to see them in seven months.
"I just needed to speak to someone," he said.
So far, about 550 men have graduated from the program, which can take six to 18 months to complete. The effort has won some national attention - including a visit from Vice President Gore - but its future is uncertain: Federal funds for Healthy Start were cut by nearly 40 percent this year.
That kind of uncertainty over money has been a hallmark of fatherhood advocacy. Traditional government programs have long been directed at mothers and their children and have tended to view fathers as culprits.
"Whether the system of family services recognizes a family as a mom, a dad and a child, or a mom, a child and a perpetrator makes all the difference," said Mincy of the Ford Foundation. "Someone has to specialize in worrying about that problem."
Mincy and others are hoping Congress may change that with the $2 billion legislation proposed this year by Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr., a Florida Republican. While the money is modest for a social program, supporters see the bill as important. For the first time, responsible fatherhood programs would be deemed worthy of long-term federal funding.
"We have to do something about this," said Shaw, a Fort Lauderdale resident. "It really focuses on the poverty level. This is where the greatest problem is."
But the bill has been controversial, in part because it requires states to promote marriage. Some believe marriage is not always the ideal goal in the inner city, where relationships are more likely to be complicated by drug or alcohol use and abuse, or the tendency of men to have children by multiple partners.
Still, Horn and other fatherhood leaders are adamant that marriage is a central tenant of their efforts.
"We don't argue that if you put a guy in the household, everything will be fine," said Horn. "But if a father isn't there, he won't be around to do the good things a father does."
Yet even the most ardent fatherhood proponents fear their movement may not last. Promise Keepers, which has attracted hundreds of thousands of men to rallies, has recently hit financial hard times and is scaling back its efforts.
Unlike the women's movement, in which the National Organization for Women has been a central force, the fatherhood campaign is loosely organized around sometimes divergent interests. The needs of the disadvantaged are not always the same as, say, the needs of divorced fathers looking for greater custody rights.
"To be considered a social movement, the fatherhood issue must be more than a collection of disparate activities," said Horn.
Whether it's truly a social cause or not, the one thing fatherhood has going for it is a lot of support from the public. A 1996 Gallup survey found that eight in 10 adults believe that father absence is the nation's "most significant problem."
"I think this has pricked people's consciousness," said George Gallup Jr., who sits on NFI's board. "Things could be turned around in a dramatic way."
Pub Date: 10/18/98