Or, you know, fathers. Half of success in fatherhood comes from simply showing up. Absentee fathers contribute to the generational erosion of the family fabric that is almost impossible to undo.
I guess if the government stopped putting a higher rate of black fathers in jail (they may show up).
Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)
21–30 of 406 posts
Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)
#22Probably applies to all children, not just those with specific genetic attributes.
Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)
#23This gets into a much larger issue of policing intersectioning with darker skinned peoples in the US. When many of the dads are arrested in jail or prison, obviously they aren't being mentors. And they aren't permitted to be in their childrens' lives. And much of this is overpolicing and overcriminialization. Add this to sentences being worse, and it's unsurprising it happens. We as a nation are setting the situation…
Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)
#24Great article, but our societal approach to minority folks is not oriented towards individual mentorship unfortunately. Self-reliance is not considered a meaningful goal - it's so much more convenient to herd them towards ethnically-focused non-profits and "community organizers" funded by government or by politically-minded foundations; mold them into people who will always be dependent on the government for somethin…
You need to have discipline to be able to benefit from a mentor. And probably vice versa.
Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)
#25Or, you know, fathers. Half of success in fatherhood comes from simply showing up. Absentee fathers contribute to the generational erosion of the family fabric that is almost impossible to undo.
Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess if the government stopped putting a higher rate of black fathers in jail (they may show up).
Very insightful. It becomes a vicious cycle when fathers aren’t even able to show up because they’re behind bars.
Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)
#27Or, you know, fathers. Half of success in fatherhood comes from simply showing up. Absentee fathers contribute to the generational erosion of the family fabric that is almost impossible to undo.
It is, quite seriously, heartening, as a father, to know that just 1) being there at all, and 2) trying with some amount of thoughtfulness not to screw up your kids, puts you well into the top half of fathers, by quality. You can still mess up constantly, and pretty badly, but remain better than average.
Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article does not mention whether or not the subject's father was present in his life. Why did you leap straight to that?
Probably because GP is making a general point about the subject of the article. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4104793/ It's not easy to link to on this page (unless someone can help me out), but there's interesting data about fathers being present in the lives of their children and its impact. The beige/tan chart about 35% of the way down is what I'm referring to.
If statistical evidence is all we’re gonna rely on, it’s seems less to do with the dangly bits between a parents legs and more what emotional lessons they’re teaching while the other parent takes some very much needed rest.
What a shock, sharing the emotional load keeps one anxious train wreck parent from raising an anxious train wreck kid who can’t achieve.
Life lessons we knew decades ago but now we have a stat. So it means more I guess to be gentle with each other.
Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)
#29Or, you know, fathers. Half of success in fatherhood comes from simply showing up. Absentee fathers contribute to the generational erosion of the family fabric that is almost impossible to undo.
I guess if the government stopped putting a higher rate of black fathers in jail (they may show up).
Perhaps I'm naive, but I can't imagine it to be more than 15% of this population [and that would be pretty extreme]. If that's the case, how can incarceration be considered a major cause of these fathers "failing from showing up?" (I guess we'd need a number for that, too..)
Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)
#30Or, you know, fathers. Half of success in fatherhood comes from simply showing up. Absentee fathers contribute to the generational erosion of the family fabric that is almost impossible to undo.