U.S. Rep. Danny K. Davis is working to support Austin fathers and families of all shapes and sizes.
Data from the 2022 American Community Survey shows that 26% of households in Austin, North Lawndale, East Garfield Park and West Garfield Park are led by single mothers. For fathers who do not live with their children, there are fewer opportunities to connect and engage with their children, something Davis has been working to remedy.
“Our vantage point is that fathers should be actively engaged in the lives of their children whether they live with them or whether they don’t,” Davis said.
Recognizing and promoting fatherhood has gained national interest in recent years. Many communities have implemented programs that support fathers, providing them with the resources and connections they need to strengthen relationships with their families.
Earlier this summer, Davis hosted “Fatherhood in the Neighborhood,” a celebration for fathers in the community. Highlighting the importance of father figures and their role in the community, the day brought together neighbors to support fathers and families.
“We had more than 200 men who came to our office on that Saturday to engage in positive conversation, to experience fellowship and camaraderie of other men and other fathers,” Davis said.
In neighboring Chicago communities, investing in fatherhood has proven to be worthwhile.
Marlo Passmore is the program director for Brightpoint’s Thriving Fathers and Families Program, an initiative that allows fathers to participate in a 12-week curriculum that focuses on building healthy families and relationships. Although the program is located in the Englewood and West Englewood communities, they accept fathers from all over the Chicagoland area.
The program provides fathers with resources to improve their capacity as parents. After completing the initial curriculum, fathers are connected with services that help them support their families, continuing to grow relationships with co-parents and their children.
“In my opinion, the more stable a household is, the more likelihood of the family thriving,” Passmore said. “While a lot of our fathers are under the impression that there aren’t many services that are catered to fathers and fatherhood, we wanted to make sure we tapped into that demographic and potentially distilled that myth.”
Thriving Fathers and Families received a grant about five years ago that allowed them to grow their operations, and Passmore said that investing in fatherhood has paid off.
She tells the story of a father who entered the program hoping to improve his relationship with his co-parent amid complicated circumstances. Through the program, he began to repair the relationship with his co-parent. It was so successful that his co-parent attended the completion ceremony and spoke to the audience about the impact the program had on them.
“The dad was able to garner ideas and ways to better communicate with the co-parent and it then turned into a situation where although they are not together, their relationship begin to get better because she was able to see the change in his behavior as it related to being a co-parent,” Passmore said.
Although some fathers might not live with their children, opportunities and resources for them to support and engage with their families yield positive outcomes in our communities.
For Davis, supporting fathers and their children extends outside of his district. As a member of the United States House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, he recently introduced legislation that aims to improve the relationship between incarcerated parents and their children.
“We work to bring fathers into positive contact with their children,” Davis explained. “Even to the extent of taking children for the last several years to correctional institutions to visit with their fathers, and that has been a very rewarding experience.”
A 2020 report from the Task Force on Children of Incarcerated Parents found that nearly 200,000 children in Illinois, or about one in 20, have had a parent in jail or prison.
Davis has aiding in providing incarcerated fathers from the community with the opportunity to form relationships with their children.
At the start of his “Fatherhood in the Neighborhood ” celebration in June, he accompanied children in the community who were visiting family members at the Sheridan Correctional Center.
“There were some fathers who hadn’t seen their children in five or six years and there was one fellow who had never seen his granddaughter,” Davis said. “There were fathers who acknowledged that they were going to do a better job of trying to care for their children and there were children … who hadn’t seen their fathers in a couple years and so forth, but had good feelings about them.”
Davis plans to continue supporting fathers and families in the community with solutions people can see, such as supporting community groups for fathers and continuing to work on legislation to help local families.
“Rather than cursing the dark, light a candle,” Davis said.