ejs Q & A with

Dr. Jennifer Hamer

Jennifer Hamer, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She received her Ph.D. in 1995 from the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Hamer teaches a variety of courses at SIUE, including Marriage and Family, Sociology of the Black Family, Intergroup Relations, and Race and Ethnic Relations. She has conducted extensive research on African American non-custodial fathers and custodial mothers. Her current research is focused on parenting in a capitalist, social-welfare state. In particular, the current work examines the experiences of parents who are simultaneously negotiating the needs of young children, elderly kin and themselves within the context of a changing political economy.

We appreciate Professor Hamer=s willingness to take the time to provide us with a glimpse of her research, teaching, and service activities. But before we get to the Q and A, I want to provide a brief review of Professor Hamer=s new book, What it Means to be Daddy: Fatherhood for Black Men Living Away from Their Children (Columbia University Press, 2001).

...low-income black live-away fathers, like all fathers, continuously negotiate their parenting within particular social, political, cultural, and economic circumstances. These circumstances consist of historical and contemporary social and economic injustices, cultural misrepresentations, unrealistic public expectations, and vague parental agreements with the mothers of their children (Hamer, 2001: 199).

Dr. Hamer=s new book develops a sophisticated understanding of the lives and circumstances under which poor black live-away fathers parent. Professor Hamer employs multiple forms of scholarly inquiry in her book, examining the subject on the structural, meso-sociological, and interactional levels of analysis. She first examines the larger social and historical context in which contemporary parenting practices have emerged, organizing the discussion around the confluence of racist state policy, social and economic injustice, distorted media images, and Western notions of parenting. Included in the first section of the book is a fascinating description of the historical development of the black family from the time of slavery to the present. Professor Hamer then shifts the discussion to the ways in which the live-away fathers and custodial mothers view their own and each others parenting. This is a crucial part of the picture, for it not only tells us about the behavioral aspects of parenting, but also the subjective expectations, negotiations, and multiple social constructions of reality of parenthood, all nested within larger structural and cultural contexts. This explication is superb, as Dr. Hamer weaves these discussions with excerpts from her interviews with eighty-eight fathers, thirty-three mothers of the fathers= children, and twenty-one adult children. We learn of the struggles, conflicts, and good faith efforts of both men and women as they parent, in spite of critical popular images in the media, hostile cultural institutions, and challenging economic environments.

Professor Hamer=s findings utterly destroy the popular image of poor black live-away fathers as Abad@ or inept because they supposedly do not to care about their children=s emotional or physical health. We also learn from Dr. Hamer=s interviews that there are several forces that can undermine the extent to which fathers parent their children: A lack of time (caused in part by difficult work schedules and job stress), physical separation, transportation problems, economic instability, multiple sets of children, and the fathers= own intimate relationships, including those with the custodial mother. Professor Hamer urges us to situate these practical difficulties in structural and institutional contexts, many of which have their source in systemic discrimination and injustice. Dr. Hamer ends her impressive book with a review and critique of social policy initiatives, pointing out that while faith-based efforts to encourage and support parenting are desirable, they are only part of the solution, for:

Inevitably, what poor and working-class black live-away fathers actually do for their children rests with society=s ability to provide them access to sufficient economic means. It is equally contingent on the legitimacy and support granted to their paternal status. It is also based on their ability to interact and communicate with those who assist in the co-parenting of their children. It is further influenced by black men=s ability to define and voice their own vision of fatherhood in the context of their collective economic and social circumstances. For those men who have little else to offer, the provision of nurturance, love, and affection are priceless aspects of fatherhood (Hamer, 2001: 220).

So concludes Dr. Hamer=s book, and we are left with a deeper appreciation of the behavioral and situational complexities of the matter, but also an appreciation of the real-life triumphs and tribulations of poor black live-away fathers and custodial mothers. We are also left with a fine example of cutting-edge scholarship, as evidenced by Professor Hamer=s sophisticated weaving of theory, method, and substance with a multidimensional presentation of the life experiences and reflections of people whose voices have often been ignored.

On to the ejs interview with Dr. Hamer.