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 In memory of my parents, Yecheskel and Dvora Opochinsky,
who did not get to meet my wife and kids—wish you were here.
To Steve and Elinor Fienberg, my new parents—thank you.
To my wife, Dora,
my kids, Yoni and Emma,
Elizabeth and Hannah.
And for all the fathers who try to do the best they can.
CZO

For Steve, Chen, and Eric—the fathers in my life.

DCO
 Contents

Series Foreword ix
Foreword xiii
Joseph H. Pleck
Preface: Counseling Diverse Populations of Fathers xvii
Dora Chase Oren and Chen Z. Oren
Acknowledgments xxv
About the Editors xxix
Contributors xxxi

Section 1 Historical Perspectives and

Current Directions 1

1 The New Fathering Movement 3

Ronald F. Levant and David J. Wimer

2 Counseling Fathers from a

Strength-Based Perspective 23
Chen Z. Oren, Matt Englar-Carlson, Mark A. Stevens, and
Dora Chase Oren

3 An Assessment Paradigm for Fathers and Men

in Therapy Using Gender Role Conflict Theory 49
James M. O’Neil and Melissa L. Luján

Section 2 Counseling Fathers Across Ethnic Groups 73

4 Mexican American Fatherhood:

Culture, Machismo, and Spirituality 75
Joseph M. Cervantes
viii Contents

5 Working With Asian American Fathers 101

Atsuko Seto, Kent W. Becker, and Nirupma Narang

6 Another Side of Invisibility:

Present and Responsible Black Fathers 121
Anderson J. Franklin

7 Counseling Caucasian Fathers:

Affirming Cultural Strengths While
Addressing White Male Privilege 141
Jesse Owen and Jon Glass

Section 3 Counseling Specific Populations

of Fathers 163

8 Challenges and Clinical Issues in Counseling

Religiously Affiliated Fathers 165
John M. Robertson

9 Increasing Clinical and Contextual Awareness

When Working With New Fathers 187
Rod Berger

10 Working Therapeutically With Stay-at-Home Fathers 207

Aaron B. Rochlen and Ryan A. McKelley

11 Counseling Teen Fathers:

A Developmentally Sensitive
Strength-Based Approach 231
Ferdinand Arcinue and Judy L. Prince

12 Counseling Gay Fathers:

Stepping Into the New Frontier 253
Daniel J. Alonzo

13 Counseling Older Fathers 277

Rory Remer, Neil Massoth, Gwendolyn Pugh Crumpton,
Chen Z. Oren, and Dora Chase Oren

Index 301
 Series Foreword

One of my goals for the Routledge Series on Counseling and Psycho-

therapy with Boys and Men has been to support the publication of books
by highly respected scholars that would address the needs of neglected
populations of boys and men. So, I was ecstatic when I learned that
Dr. Chen Oren and Dr. Dora Chase Oren—two national authorities
on fatherhood issues—were interested in editing a volume on fathers
whose challenges and concerns warrant the increased attention of men-
tal health professionals.
It will come as no surprise to many readers of this book that Drs.
Oren and Oren have assembled an impressive team of colleagues to
produce Counseling Fathers, which is the third volume in this series.
For the past several years, Drs. Oren and Oren and their students have
been a consistent presence at numerous professional conferences, pre-
senting the findings of their research about the needs of fathers and
how practitioners can help them. Through their ongoing work on the
subject, Drs. Oren and Oren have developed a network of counselors,
marriage and family therapists, psychologists, and social workers inter-
ested in supporting fathers in the important roles they play in their
families and their communities. To my great pleasure, a dedicated sub-
group from this network pulled their informative ideas together in this
volume. What will be surprising to some readers, however, is that until
recently, fathers have been neglected and viewed with disdain by schol-
ars and helping professionals, which is why this book is so badly needed.
Many behavioral scientists prior to the 1960s and 1970s assumed that
fathers were relatively unimportant in the development of their chil-
dren (Cabrera, Tamis-LeMonda, Bradley, Hofferth, & Lamb, 2000). In
addition, for decades the literature on fatherhood was dominated by a
deficit perspective that overemphasized the inadequacy of men to be
effective parents (Hawkins & Dollahite, 1997a). Due in large part to
this deficit point of view, services for fathers were lacking (Kiselica,
2008). As Hawkins and Dollahite (1997a) have pointed out, “when
scholars and practitioners approach their work with fathers from a
x Series Foreword

deficit paradigm, they are likely to find inadequate role performance”

(p. 3), overlook good fathers, and fail to see the potential of men to care
for their children.
As a positive alternative to the deficit perspective on fathers, a new
generation of social scientists and clinicians has constructed the genera-
tive fatherhood model, which emphasizes the many ways that fathers
care for the next generation and strength-based approaches to sup-
porting men in their role as fathers (see Brotherson & White, 2007;
Fagan & Hawkins, 2001; Hawkins & Dollahite, 1997b; Lamb, 2003;
Snarey, 1993). In Counseling Fathers, Drs. Oren and Oren and their
esteemed colleagues have situated themselves within the generative
fatherhood tradition by examining numerous theoretical, cultural, and
developmental issues pertaining to work with fathers and by describing
strength-based interventions with several special populations of fathers.
In short, Counseling Fathers helps us to understand the complex con-
texts in which men become fathers, the challenges they face during the
transition to parenthood and the in years following the birth of their
children, and the many ways practitioners can identify and utilize male
strengths to help men be loving, engaged fathers.
I thank Drs. Oren and Oren and their colleagues for adding Counsel-
ing Fathers to this series, and I look forward to the positive influence
their work will have on the practice of counseling, psychotherapy, and
social service with fathers.

Mark S. Kiselica, Series Editor

The Routledge Series on Counseling and
Psychotherapy with Boys and Men
The College of New Jersey
January 2009
Series Foreword xi

References

Brotherson, S. E., & White, J. M. (2007). Why father’s count: The importance
of fathers and their involvement with children. Harriman, TN: Men’s Stud-
ies Press.
Cabrera, N. J., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Bradley, R. H., Hofferth, S., & Lamb,
M. E. (2000). Fatherhood in the twenty-first century. Child Development,
71, 127–136.
Fagan, J., & Hawkins, A. J. (Eds.). (2001). Clinical and educational interventions
with fathers. New York: The Haworth Clinical Practice Press.
Hawkins, A. J, & Dollahite, D. C. (1997a). Beyond the role-inadequacy perspec-
tive of fathering. In A. J. Hawkins & D. C. Dollahite (Eds.), Generative
fathering: Beyond deficit perspectives (pp. 3–16). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Hawkins, A. J, & Dollahite, D. C. (Eds.) (1997b). Generative fathering: Beyond
deficit perspectives. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Kiselica, M. S. (2008). When boys become parents: Adolescent fatherhood in
America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Lamb, M. E. (Ed.). (2003). The father’s role in child development (4th ed.). New
York: Wiley.
Snarey, J. (1993). How fathers care for the next generation: A four-decade study.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
 Foreword
Joseph H. Pleck

Fathers today face significant challenges. In a Pew Research Center

(2007) national survey, about three-fifths of adult men and women said
that they think it is harder to be a father now than it was 20 or 30 years
ago. And how well does the public think today’s fathers are doing in
the face of this increased “paternal challenge”? Of women in the survey,
56% said today’s dads are doing as good a job or a better job raising
their kids compared with fathers a generation ago. Intriguingly, married
working mothers’ assessments of fathers’ performance were especially
positive: 72% of those working at least part-time and raising young chil-
dren said dads today are doing as good a job or better.
But here’s the rub: Among fathers themselves, there is a crisis of
paternal self-confidence. Only 41% of men in the Pew survey thought
contemporary fathers are doing better or even as well as fathers in the
past. A clear majority of men (55%) said today’s dads are actually doing
a worse job.
The need for this important book lies precisely in the intersection
of today’s increased paternal challenges and the rising crisis in pater-
nal self-confidence. Practitioners can use this book as a guide for clini-
cal work and interventions to help fathers from diverse groups become
the kinds of fathers they want to be. Researchers will benefit from the
future directions it identifies for further exploration of today’s paternal
challenges, and ways both to remediate the researchers and to transform
the challenges into positive growth and resilience.
From the viewpoint of someone who began working on fathering in
the 1970s, the way that the “landscape” of fatherhood, both scholarly
and culturally, has changed over the last four decades is remarkable.
When I started out, “fatherhood research” meant research on the con-
sequences of father absence. Through the early 1970s, it seemed that
in psychological theory, fathers were considered absolutely towering
figures in child development, but towering only by their absence, not
by their presence. Of course, a father did not have to be nonresident to
xiv Foreword

be absent. In my clinical internship in 1970 at a major Boston psychiat-

ric hospital, having a weak, passive father was so commonplace in case
histories that it might as well have been preprinted on the patient his-
tory form. Someone involved in the 1991 film Hot Shots, a parody of Top
Gun, must have heard about this: A psychiatrist in the film, after inter-
viewing the main character, pilot Topper Harley, enters the diagnosis in
Harley’s case file using a stamp, “Paternal Conflict Syndrome (P.C.S.).”
Besides father absence, other aspects of paternal behavior and chil-
dren’s relationships with their fathers gradually began to be studied
in the 1970s and early 1980s, such as fathers’ roles in children’s cog-
nitive, social, and moral development; fathers’ interaction style; and
infant attachment to fathers. However, at that time no formal construct
existed that addressed how large a part fathers play in the care and
socialization of their children—in simple terms, how much fathers do
as parents. No existing construct had yet been developed that captured
emerging concerns about whether fathers were “doing enough” with
their children, and from the perspective of the adolescent and young
adult, whether his or her father is “really there for me.”
In the mid-1980s my colleagues Michael Lamb, James Levine, and
I formulated the concept of “father involvement.” The involvement
construct is now so deeply embedded in contemporary thinking about
fatherhood that it may be surprising to many to realize how recent this
concept actually is, and how controversial it has been.
Like most new constructs in the social sciences, the involvement con-
cept soon came in for its share of criticism. Didn’t the concept imply
a “maternal template?” A deficit perspective on fathers? A feminist-
­oriented assumption that there should be equity in parenting? Didn’t
it ignore fathers’ thoughts and feelings? Devalue fathers’ economic sup-
port for their children? Wasn’t the concept based on the experience
of only White middle-class fathers, therefore defining fathering in a
way that makes fathers of minorities and of lower socioeconomic status
appear deficient? (For an analysis of these critiques and my evaluation,
see Pleck & Stueve, 2001.) Also, isn’t the idea that father involvement
is increasing only “media hype”? (For recent U.S. and European data
indicating otherwise, see Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004.)
In my view, these “father involvement wars” of the 1990s reflect-
ing the intense debates about these questions are now over. The good
news is that everyone won. That is, the engagement, accessibility, and
responsibility components in the Lamb-Pleck-Levine formulation of
involvement continue to be studied. Paternal warmth, support, control/
monitoring, and other cognitions and affects not included in the original
formulation are also receiving increasing attention, and economic sup-
port is now clearly recognized as an aspect of fathering. Researchers still
do vary in how they operationally define involvement. Some have broad-
ened the concept of involvement to include cognitions, affects, and eco-
nomic support, and other investigators have found value in maintaining
the original focus on engagement, accessibility, and ­responsibility while
Foreword xv

studying other aspects of fathering as additional dimensions. What is

important is not resolving a theoretical debate about what the term
“involvement” should include, but that these latter dimensions are being
increasingly investigated as important components of fathering, whether
considered as aspects of involvement or not.
Today, as reflected in this book and elsewhere, fatherhood research
and practice have entered a new era. This new period is marked espe-
cially by the recognition that fathering occurs in multiple contexts that
can be profoundly different from each other. Chapters in this volume
cover a wide range of these contexts, including many cutting-edge ones
not discussed in other recent compendia. Of course, no single collection
can cover all possible topics and groups, because this would require
including not only all the ones previously recognized, but also all the
others emerging more recently. Just to keep them in mind, some of the
other father groups that could not be addressed here but are receiving
increasing attention include stepfathers, incarcerated fathers, cohabit-
ing biological fathers (who are surprisingly numerous), “fragile family”
fathers, and of course the very large group of nonresident fathers.
A particularly notable way in which this book fosters today’s new era
of fatherhood research and practice is its attention to the ways that father-
ing is embedded in and intertwined with masculinity. It has been perhaps
commonplace to say that fathering is gendered. This important fram-
ing leads to focusing on differences between men and women—certainly
worthwhile. But to say, more pointedly, that fathering is intrinsically
linked to issues of masculinity is a further conceptual step that the field
is only now beginning to take. This next step, reflected in this volume’s
chapters, necessarily gives more attention to variations among men in their
parenting. In bringing the masculinity perspective to fatherhood, one of
this book’s special contributions is its mix of authors, a mix that includes
some of the founding, long-time contributors to the psychological study
of men and masculinity as well as important new voices.

References

Pew Research Center. (2007). Being Dad may be tougher these days, but
working Moms are among their biggest fans. Retrieved July 26, 2008,
from http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/510/fathers-day
Pleck, J. H., & Masciadrelli, B. (2004). Paternal involvement in U.S. residential
fathers: Levels, sources, and consequences. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role
of the father in child development, 4th ed (pp. 222–271). New York: Wiley.
Pleck, J. H., & Stueve, J. L. (2001). Time and paternal involvement. In K. Daly
(Ed.), Minding the time in family experience: Emerging perspectives and
issues (pp. 205–226). Oxford, UK: Elsevier Science.
 Preface
Counseling Diverse
Populations of Fathers
Dora Chase Oren and Chen Z. Oren

With almost 60 million fathers today in the United States (U.S. Census
Bureau [USCB], 2001), it is critical for mental health providers and
educators to give thoughtful consideration to how fathers are counseled.
The increased immigration and diversification of the U.S. population
(Cabrera, Tamis-Lemonda, Bradley, Hofferth, & Lamb, 2000; Coley,
2001; Lamb, 2004) have significantly impacted fathers’ roles and expe-
riences. Mental health providers’ increased knowledge and understand-
ing of diverse fathers’ experiences, background, and world views set the
stage for more effective counseling.
By 2007, the United States had experienced an explosion in interest
about fathers. President George W. Bush prioritized increasing fathers’
involvement as the 12th most important key policy (U.S. Govern-
ment, 2001). Landmark legislation and public policy were established
to ensure child support, including the Personal Responsibility and
Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-193; Cur-
ran, 2003). Programs such as DADS Family Project (Cornille, Barlow,
& Cleveland, 2005) and the National Fatherhood Initiative (National
Fatherhood Initiative, 2006) were developed to help fathers gain mas-
tery and expertise in their roles as parents. Recent trade books such as
The Father Book: Being a Good Dad in the 21st Century (Cohen, 2001)
and The Expectant Father (Brott & Ash, 2001) as well as ubiquitous
articles such as “Moms Knows Best, but It’s Time for Guys to Get
More Into the Game” (Detroit Times, December 17, 2006) and “Unwed
Fathers Fight for Babies Placed for Adoption by Mothers” (New York
Times, March 19, 2006) highlight the current significant attention paid
to fathers. Almost three-quarters of the U.S. population believe that
xviii Preface

fatherlessness is the most significant family or social problem facing

America (National Center for Fathering, 1999).
Mental health providers and researchers recognize the growing pub-
lic attention to fathers and have increased efforts to study and address
fathers. Some of the broad issues identified include changes in family
structure (Curran, 2003; Marsiglio, 1995) and male gender roles (Fagan
& Hawkins, 2001; Marsiglio, Day, & Lamb, 2000). Other research areas
have included child support and noncustodial fathers (Curran, 2003;
O’Donnell, Johnson, D’Aunno, & Thornton, 2005); nontraditional
households including gay fathers, single fathers, and stepfathers; and the
transition to fatherhood (Condon, Boyce, & Corkindale, 2004; Draper,
2003; Zelkowitz & Milet, 1997). King, Harris, and Heard (2004) noted
that ethnicity and race are related to fathers’ patterns of involvement
with their children. Experiences become more complex within minor-
ity groups who have their own definitions of successful fatherhood/
fathering (Lamb, 2004), unique challenges and accomplishments, and
particular norms for appropriate affective expression (Fagan & Hawk-
ins, 2001; Sue & Sue, 2007). Today’s mental health providers can more
effectively counsel fathers by viewing them not only in terms of their
influence on children, but also on a broader scope that incorporates
the father’s individual experiences. The sheer enormity in numbers and
types of fathers is remarkable:

In 2000, there were over 25 million fathers who were part of a traditional
married-couple family with children under 18 (USCB, 2001).
Children who were part of the “postwar generation” could expect to
grow up with two biological parents who were married to each other.
Eighty percent did. Today, only about half of children will spend
their entire childhood in their families of origin (USCB, 1997).
Over 2 million households include children living in nontraditional
family structures. Approximately 1.9 million include opposite sex
unmarried couples; 96,000 are female partners, and 66,000 are
male partners (USCB, 2001).
While the number of single mothers remained constant over the
3‑year period from 1988 to 2001, the number of single fathers
grew 25% to over 2 million in 1998, which represents an increase
of 50% since 1990 (Brown, 2000). In 2000, single-father families
jumped to one in six of single-parent families (USCB, 2001).
The number of stay-at-home fathers, while modest, continues to
grow. In 2005, there were an estimated 5.8 million stay-at-home
parents: 5.6 million mothers and 143,000 fathers (USCB, 2001).
Despite the growth in single-father households, the United States is
the world leader in families without fathers (Klinger, 1998).
Culture is associated with types of family structure. Over half of Afri-
can American children, almost a third of Hispanic children, and
20% of White children live in single-parent homes (USCB, 1997).
Preface xix

The current demographic landscape of the United States illustrates the

importance of not only training mental health providers to understand
a father’s experiences, but also the timeliness of addressing the differ-
ences and similarities of the many types of fathers.
The approval of the Guidelines on Multicultural Education, Train-
ing, Research, Practice, and Organizational Change for Psychologists by
the American Psychological Association was a milestone event in the
diversity training of some mental health providers (Arredondo & Perez,
2006). One area of multicultural competency includes a counselor’s
knowledge and understanding of a client’s world view, culture, and
background to increase rapport and promote successful treatment out-
come (Sue & Sue, 2007). Multicultural competencies are an important
construct for mental health providers to understand to be effective in
helping culturally diverse populations (Fuertes et al., 2006).
The U.S. census data suggest that the diverse groups of fathers
addressed in this book continue to increase, with more Asian American
and Hispanic fathers, teen fathers, older fathers, stay-at-home fathers,
gay fathers, and the like than ever before (USCB, 1997, 2001). Several
researchers have called attention to the need to focus more research
on these diverse groups of fathers and to develop clinical applications
(Andrews, Luckey, Bolden, Whiting-Fickling, & Lind, 2004; Coley,
2001; Fagan & Hawkins, 2001). The growing need to study under-
represented fathers in child development has been highlighted by the
recent changes in welfare reforms, child support, paternity establish-
ment, immigration, and child custody (Lamb, 2004). Although schol-
arly attention has begun to focus on ethnic and special groups of fathers
in child development (Lamb, 2004), limited focus has been given to the
counseling of these fathers (Fagan & Hawkins, 2001).
This book is designed to bridge the gap between fathers and profes-
sional helpers. The two main foci of this book, the application of work-
ing with different ethnicities of fathers and with diverse subpopulations
of fathers, represent a unique pairing that adds to the understanding of
counseling fathers. The intent is to highlight some of the United States’
common ethnic/racial groups of fathers (Caucasian, African American,
Asian American, and Hispanic) as well as specific populations of fathers,
such as religious fathers, stay-at-home fathers, gay fathers, and others.
It is beyond the scope of this book to examine each type or category of
father; the selected populations represent a consideration of both cul-
tural and distinct experiences. Similar to any type of counseling, there
are many different ways to help fathers. The authors draw from theory,
research, and clinical experiences to highlight some effective ways to
provide counseling to different populations of fathers.
The focus of this current text is on fathers’ multilayered experiences
rather than an emphasis on fathers’ involvement with their children and
within their families. The importance of looking at both ethnicity and
specific groups highlights the focus of multiculturalism that considers
the experience of different populations and is not limited to race or