Since the mid-1990, promoting responsible fatherhood has remained on the national policy agenda, but fatherhood-related policy initiatives have yet to generate tangible outcomes for low-income communities. Almost 1 billion dollars have been allocated to address the combined efforts of marriage and fatherhood education, but the results have been minimal. Recent literature reveals a deep seeded legislative misunderstanding about the reasons behind low marriage rates among low-income couples. Contrary to popular cultural narratives that imply a blatant disregard for marriage, there is evidence that low-income couples respect the institution of marriage. Socio-economic barriers, however, inhibit that union from taking place. Despite this plausible explanation, policy-driven initiatives often employ program curriculums that seek to modify the behaviors of fathers by instilling in them the value of hard work as opposed to addressing the socio-economic circumstances they face. This partly stems from the broader cultural narrative and a related public perception that Black fathers are lazy and unwilling to work. Responsible fatherhood grantees have the potential to begin deconstructing negative perceptions of Black fathers by uncovering new information in these federally funded programs. Using qualitative interviews, this study utilizes a three-article style format to examine the presence of the dominant cultural narratives regarding Black fatherhood in Responsible Fatherhood policies and organizational narratives of the agencies tasked with policy implementation.

In this study, I interviewed 57 low-income urban fathers about how they distribute resources between children, how they define responsible fatherhood and how they negotiate state surveillance. First, using queuing theory, I find that these fathers do not distribute their resources of time and money equally but instead give more of their resources to a smaller number of children in order to maximize their impact. I identify nine criteria that men use to prioritize among their children: timing of life course interruptions, distance, formal child support, desirability of the pregnancy, restraining orders, other resources available to the child, age of the child, gender of the child, and the child's reaching out behavior. Second, instead of financial provision or daily care, these men define a responsible father as someone who: acknowledges paternity to the child, mother, and his local community; spends sufficient time with the child to be at least a mentor or "Big Brother" figure; monitors the child's home; meets the child's basic financial needs before spending money on luxuries for himself; minimizes absences in the child's life; and voluntarily distances himself from the child when it is in the child's best interest. I analyze these findings in light of the common definition of responsible fatherhood and suggest several possible theoretical explanations to explain the divergence from this definition. Third, I find that low-income men experience surveillance through three state institutions: child support enforcement, the criminal justice system, and child protective services. They resisted this surveillance primarily by becoming invisible and dropping "off the radar." Men justified their resistance in five ways: they had their own material needs, they did not want the child, they did not want to separate from their child's mother, compliance was unnecessary, or they were incompetent to comply. I analyze these findings in light of Foucault's theory of state social control which contrasts state responses to leprosy and the plague.