Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2005. / Title from title screen (viewed 19 May 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the School of Behavioural and Community Health Sciences. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2007 / Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment for the degree of Master of Social Work. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 55-58).

Thesis (M.S.)--Brigham Young University. Dept of Recreation Management and Youth Leadership, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

published_or_final_version / Social Work and Social Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

M.A. (Clinical Social Work) / This research involves exploring how middle childhood boys at a primary school experience the phenomenon of growing up with an absent father both functionally and psychosocially. The absent father being defined as a living father who does not live with his son and has chosen to be uninvolved in a financial, physical, emotional or spiritual way and has little contact with his son. The goal of the study was to investigate the effect of absent fathers on middle childhood boys and to gain an understanding of how they view the absence of a father in their lives. The objectives included exploring the experience of the boys in growing up with an absent father, to determine the boy’s perception of how their father’s absence has impacted on their lives, as well as to make recommendations for social work and other social service practitioners. A qualitative approach was selected for this study with a view to allowing participants to give rich descriptions of their individual experiences of growing up with an absent father. It is an exploratory study, informed by phenomenology. Exploratory, as it necessitated gaining insight into a situation and phenomenological as it entailed describing the participants experience of their life story. The research population for this study was defined as all boys in Grade Seven at the primary school. The boys were aged between twelve and thirteen. Purposive sampling was used as it allowed the researcher to select the participants based on necessary and relevant criteria. Five participants were selected as the researcher believed that it would give a sufficient overview of the phenomenon being researched and would reach data saturation. The interviews were all started with the same request namely, “Tell me about your relationship with your father?” Thereafter a semi-structured interview schedule was used as a backup tool when relevant questions needed to be asked. Participants were prepared for the interviews prior to the commencement of the study. Data was analysed according to a phenomenological method namely, Familiarisation; Immersion/Bracketing; Inducing Themes; Coding; Elaboration and Interpretation. These procedures were followed until a full description of the participants’ experience of absent fathers was disclosed. Four themes namely, emotions, loss, self-esteem and the single mother were identified ...

Thesis (M. A. (Communication Studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2022 / South Africa experiences a high rate of absent fathers and this makes single-mother households a prominent family structure in the country. There are many framings and discourses of single mother households in the media, ranging from the critical to the negative and occasional positive ones. But in these discourses, do the resilience, strength, and hard work of single mothers form part of the framing of single mothers in South Africa? The destruction of the Black family structure is one of the disastrous legacies of colonialism and apartheid in South Africa. The discoveries of gold and diamonds brought a rapid social and economic transformation in the country, and Black families bore the brunt of this transformation which changed the Black family structure to date. The implementation of colonial and apartheid policies such as the migrant labour system was set to grow the White economy and achieve this goal by getting cheap labour from Black males in the homelands. The migrant labour system forced Black men to work in the mines leaving their families behind as the men were placed in single-sex hostels. This system, therefore, resulted in many households being fatherless and women or mothers wielding the household responsibilities while their husbands were in the cities. This historical context is important in studying current absent fatherhood and single mother households in South Africa. The study used a historical approach to understand the Black family structure prior colonial era, and how it transitioned during colonialism, and apartheid up and in the current post-apartheid era. This study is built on the theories of post-coloniality, the intersectional burden of femininity, media framing, and it engages critical theoretical scholars such as Homi Bhabha, Arlie Hochschild, Simone de Beauvoir, Bell hooks, and Kimberle Crenshaw amongst others. Through these theoretical lenses, I examined the influence of colonialism and apartheid on the contemporary father absence and female-headed households. The theoretical lenses were further used to examine how the past influence the future and how women's issues are addressed. I also examined the role of media in the (re)presentation of female-headed households. The study tackled three objectives: to examine the media discourse of single motherhood in South Africa; to analyze if women’s resilience in matrifocal families forms part of the media discourse of single motherhood, and lastly to explore the effects of colonialism and apartheid on Black family structure and their consequences in South Africa today. Data were collected through an analysis of a documentary film titled “Last Grave at Dimbaza”. This was an apartheid-era documentary that captured the lives of both Black and White families during apartheid. I examined this film to locate data that capture the media discourse about absent fatherhood during apartheid–which directly reflects the South African colonial-apartheid influence on this phenomenon. Data were also collected from online newspaper publications such as IOL, TimesLive, and News24 on stories about single-motherhood within a period of three years from January 2018 to December 2020 to address the media construction of single-motherhood in the post-apartheid era. The results of the study show that media discourse tends to perpetuate a normative negative and global trend of stereotyping mothers who receive social grants. Single mothers are portrayed as a group that misappropriates state resources, who pocket state money to meet their personal needs. They are thus stereotyped as social burdens on the state finances and contribute to the country's economic risks. Women are portrayed as victims of apartheid without any agency in the absence of their men. The study revealed that women had to find ways to survive or feed their families while waiting for their husbands to send money. However, what is missing in this portrayal is how women in the Bantustans survived under the migrant labour and apartheid laws and policies. Thus, this study found that coloniality seems to continue to shape the Black family structure and that the father's absence in the black society persists and this pattern is transmitted from one generation to another. It was also revealed in this study that when the father is absent, he leaves a trait of absence that his son becomes likely to inherit. Black families are still built from the bourgeois colonialist environment, absent fatherhood and female-headed households are the legacies of colonialism as it is inherited from the colonial background and compounded by socio-economic challenges. Single mothers who are confronted with multiple burdens in raising their children should have their agency, resilience, and challenging work acknowledged. They should be celebrated, not scorned. / National Research Foundation (NRF)

This study was predicated on the belief that a father brings something unique to the family, thus, making irreplaceable contributions to the life of a child. Fathers are unique in that they provide something different from mothers. They are irreplaceable because when they are absent, children are said to suffer emotionally, intellectually, socially, and behaviorally. The contributions of fathers to a child's well being cannot be fully replaced by better programming, ensuring child support programs, or even by well-intentioned mentoring programs. A review of literature relevant to delinquency and adolescent behavioral and academic success revealed that there may be a correlation between a male role-model and the teaching of self-control and socially appropriate behaviors. Indeed, much of what the large body of research pertaining to fatherhood reveals is that, compared to children raised in two-parent homes, children who grow up without their fathers have significantly worse outcomes, on average, on almost every measure of well being (Horn, 2002). In addition, an understanding of the factors that may influence delinquent behaviors, in particular within the family unit, can better equip parents and educators to support those who may be exhibiting the beginning signs of delinquent behavior. This study was designed to determine the influence of, or correlation between, juvenile delinquency and the presence or absence of a father-figure in a child's life. Responses made on the Delinquency Check List between two sample sets, delinquent and non-delinquent adolescents, were examined. The study attempted to determine if delinquent activity among adolescents was differentiated by the absence or presence of a father-figure in a child's life. This study also investigated the frequency and severity of delinquent activities between adolescents in the determined sample groups.

The term “deadbeat dad” has been used to refer to nonresident fathers who intentionally avoid meeting child support obligations. Such a stereotypical image has reinforced the notion that public policy should strengthen the child support enforcement system to prevent nonresident fathers from escaping their financial obligations to their children. Public pressure, along with the need to recoup government expenditures on welfare costs, has compelled the federal and state governments to build a strong child support enforcement program during the past decades. Although many empirical researchers have found that strict child support enforcement is responsible for an increase in child support payments received through a formal system, the extent of non-payments still remains high. Arrears, defined as unpaid child support either owed to custodial families or the government, grew to over $115 billion nationally. Although the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) collected and distributed approximately $7 billion of these arrears in 2016, 11.3 million child support cases still had arrears remaining. Despite the growing problem of child support arrears, relatively little research has been carried out on the long-term factors and outcomes associated with arrears accumulation. This is because prior studies of child support arrears rely on cross-sectional data, which cannot adequately address this research gap. What is more, in regarding information on child support outcomes, many previous child-support studies rely predominantly on maternal reports rather than on information obtained directly from the noncustodial fathers, which may introduce measurement errors. The proposed study will solve this problem by using data from Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study, a longitudinal survey of 4,898 children born to married and unmarried parents in the major cities in the U.S. between 1998 and 2000. Because the data are the first and only longitudinal information providing a nationally representative sample of unmarried fathers, it is eminently suited to address the limitation of prior research. The objective of the proposed three-paper dissertation is to address gaps in the literature by exploring the following three questions. Question 1. What are the effects of state-level child support enforcement policies on long-term individual patterns of arrears accumulations among noncustodial fathers? Strong child-support enforcement is responsible for noncustodial father’s child support arrears accumulation. However, little is known about the extent to which child support policies affect noncustodial fathers’ long-term patterns of arrears accumulation. Studying the long-term patterns of arrears accumulation is potentially important, especially for policy makers who would be better able to make informed decisions about the timing of policy intervention. This chapter will examine the long-term impact of child support policies that penalize a father who had failed to comply with child support obligations on his arrears accumulation patterns. Question 2. What is the association between arrears and fathers’ later health/mental health outcomes? The next chapter of the study will discuss one of the detrimental consequences of child support arrears: fathers’ health and mental health problems. While several notable qualitative studies have provided anecdotes about challenges that the noncustodial fathers face after the accumulation of child support arrears, only one quantitative study examined the association between the fathers’ arrears and their health and mental health problems. The proposed study will address these gaps in knowledge by using the stress process model proposed by Pearlin and colleagues. Question 3. How child support indebtedness matter for residential union formation among non-resident couples at childbirth? How money matters for union transitions among low-income unmarried parents have been of great interest to policy makers given the extensive evidence that marriage (or cohabitation) is associated with lower rates of child poverty. Child support enforcement is the tool intended to mitigate financial loss experienced by children. The system simply collects money from the noncustodial parent (usually fathers) and distributes it to the custodial parent (usually mothers). Therefore, the child support system is highly linked to union transitions decisions among parents who are either recipients or obligors of child support. Despite extensive empirical studies on this topic, limited research has been aimed at understanding the adverse consequences of child support enforcement and its impact on union formation. That is, rather than successfully collecting money from noncustodial fathers, some governments’ efforts could be failed to make many low-income fathers comply with their obligations, resulting in a decline in the amount of child support received by custodial mothers. Thus, this chapter will investigate whether fathers’ arrears accumulation affects transitions to residential unions among parents not living in such unions at childbirth. In this chapter, parents who did not cohabit at birth, but who subsequently formed residential unions with one another or with a new partner are modeled as competing risks using a discrete-time competing risks hazard model framework.

Thesis (M.A. (Social Work)) -- University of Limpopo, 2018 / The overall aim of the study was to explore the perceptions of the phenomenon ‘Absent Fathers’ in Mphanama Community. The objectives of the study were to assess the effects of culture and beliefs on the domination of parenting, to debunk the myth that marital status of parents determines the involvement of fathers in their children’s upbringing and to establish who is seen as having the majority power over the child in Northern Sotho culture as compared to other cultures. This study used qualitative approach because the researcher wanted to explore and understand the phenomenon of Absent Fathers. The researcher focused on feelings, behaviour, descriptions and words from the participants. The other reason for using this approach was to find reality about perceptions of the phenomenon absent fathers and explore their primary interpretation of their situation than that of the researcher. The researcher used exploratory research design. The data was collected through semi-structured face-to-face interview was collected from twenty (20) single mothers who are bona fide members of Mphanama and have not just visited the community at the time of the study. The sample was inclusive to single mothers who are bona fide members of Mphanama and have not just visited the community at the time of the study. Their marital statuses were not considered upon selection, so this may be mothers who were never married, married or even divorced women. The participants were from different ages as insight from all age cohorts will be highly valuable. The researcher underpinned the study from the feminist movement is vast in orientation and there is no singular prescription of what the feminist theory constitutes. It is however, stated that within the feminism there is a high degree of consensus that the distinct underlying principle is the awareness of gender and the politics of gender within society. The researcher used thematic data analysis. The researcher followed the steps of thematic data analysis which are transcription of data, checking and editing, Analysing and interpretation, and Generalization. This study is relevant to Social Work Profession and the Department of Social Development as it will contribute positively in delivering services to the clients served. The issue of absent fathers often leads to family dysfunction and leads to other social problems, this is frequently visible in rural families of low-economic-class where the father is usually seen as the sole provider for the family.

The two studies of this dissertation examined mothers' perspectives of nonresident fathers' involvement in low-income families. The overall goal of these studies was to gain a more comprehensive understanding of nonresident fathers' involvement and its effect on family well-being. In the first study I applied a relatively new methodology, zero-inflated negative binomial regression, to overcome the methodological shortcomings of previous studies. The models (N=1215) examined what factors predicted two aspects, presence and level, of father-child contact and paternal engagement. Different factors were found to influence presence of father-child contact and frequency of contact. Similarly, different factors predicted presence of paternal engagement and level of engagement. Thus, a nonresident father's decision to be involved in his child's life may be a fundamentally different decision than how much he is involved. In addition, parents' positive relationship--romantic relationship and higher quality of relationship--was found to be the major predictor influencing all outcome variables. It appears that a positive co-parental relationship is central to nonresident father involvement. In my second study, I qualitatively examined rural mothers' perceptions of nonresident fathers' involvement (N=83). Specifically, I investigated whether mothers are really "gatekeeping" the father involvement, as suggested by previous research. There was no simple yes/no answer to this question, rather, results suggested that whether a mother acts as a gatekeeper of her children depends on her unique circumstances. Mothers, by at large, wanted the nonresident fathers to be involved in their children's lives and to perform responsible fathering, but mothers' expectations of the fathers' roles may be narrowly defined and, therefore, easily violated. Some mothers did intentionally refuse or limit father-child contact in cases where they believed that father involvement would threaten the safety of their children. In these cases, "gatekeeping" behavior can be viewed as one survival strategy for the mothers. The two studies presented here collectively demonstrate the complexity of non-resident father's involvement and provide insight that will be useful for policy targeted to low-income families. / Graduation date: 2005