WASHINGTON — Single parenthood is never an ideal situation. In African-American communities, it is an epidemic that puts children on a disparate path even before they are born. Studies show that 70 percent of African-American children are born to unmarried mothers and 40 percent of all children, regardless of race, live in homes without fathers. As a nation, the United States ranks 28th among developed countries in infant mortality rates, which is 50 percent higher than the 2010 rate predicted in 2000 of 4.5 infant deaths per 1,000 live births.
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies’ Commission on Paternal Involvement in Pregnancy Outcomes (CPIPO) released a report this week on fathers’ influence on child health and development. CPIPO aims to improve paternal involvement by “reframing debates and informing research, policy and practice” to encourage and support increased involvement by expectant fathers. Its goals also include identifying barriers that prevent men from being more involved and finding options to overcome them and developing a national media strategy to promote a more active male role. The center, whose research largely focuses on African-Americans and other peoples of color, held a report briefing on Capitol Hill on Thursday.
“While health practitioners and public health agencies have made strides in addressing many of the risk factors that affect pregnancy, we think the issue of improving paternal involvement holds a great deal of promise for reducing infant mortality rates in the Black community, said Dr. Jermane Bond, a Joint Center research associate who oversaw the commission’s work.
Surprisingly, few studies have been done on the impact of paternal involvement in pregnancy outcomes. Two years ago, CPIPO member Dr. Amina Alio, a medical anthropologist at the University of South Florida, did a computer search on the topic and found that as of mid-2009, only seven research articles had been published versus the “thousands upon thousands” of articles about maternal issues.
“While we need to address the lack of research, we do know enough to say that men are vitally important to healthy pregnancies and healthy births,” said Ralph Everett, the Joint Center’s president and CEO. “The commission has done a great job of putting together recommendations for policy changes to improve paternal involvement in pregnancy outcomes while pointing the direction toward improving our knowledge of doing so can lead to healthier families.”
According to the Joint Center report, this huge omission in paternal involvement research can be attributed to such reasons as the additional effort and expense required to collect data on fathers; a lack of understanding of cultural variations; the status of the expectant parents’ relationship; or the fact that in some families the primary male role model may not be the biological father.
Research has found that the prenatal period provides a “golden opportunity” for fathers to be more physically and emotionally involved before and after the birth of a child, and that their involvement helps to ensure that the expectant mother seeks proper care and avoids risky behaviors such as smoking or drug use. As a result of their early involvement, fathers are far more likely to be involved in their children’s ongoing growth and development.
