Research on teen fathers is scant, largely due to the difficulty in accessing them. According to a recent report from the National Center for Health Statistics, the US birth rate for men aged fifteen to nineteen was 12.3 per 1,000 (Martin, Hamilton, Osterman, Driscoll & Mathews 2017). However, as the report also states, information and figures about fathers are often inaccurate. Birth certificates serve as the primary source of data, but details on fathers (including age) are frequently missing – this is especially true for the children of unmarried mothers and/or mothers under the age of twenty-five (Abma, Martinez & Copen 2010; Kimball 2004; Martin et al.
2017; Thornberry, Smith & Howard 1997). Despite this difficulty, research-ers have still managed to garner important social/demographic information about teen fathers. For example, we know that men who come from low socioeconomic backgrounds and men of colour are more likely to father a child in their teens (Bunting & McAuley 2004; Klein 2005; Martin, et al. 2017; Thornberry et al. 1997). We also know that teen fathers tend to complete fewer grades in school and are more likely to participate in a variety of deviant/risky behaviours (including drug use, fighting, gang membership) (Bunting & McAuley 2004; Glikman 2004; Miller-Johnson, Winn, Coie, Malone & Lochman 2004; Pears, Pierce, Kim, Capaldi &
Owen 2005; Thornberry et al. 1997).
Beyond documentation, the absence of teen fathers within academic and lay discussions of teen pregnancy is still linked to the fact that women are viewed as the central subjects. Assumptions of responsibility – for birth control or pregnancy prevention, for childcare and for financial provision among many others – run throughout our cultural portrayals and discus-sions of teen pregnancy (Weber 2013). And these assumptions do not exist in isolation. They are contextual – located within historical, cultural and moral boundaries. Notions of teen pregnancy as a social problem, notions of what it means to be a teen parent (and/or a parent, generally) are deeply rooted in structures of gender, social class, race and age.
While discussions about paternal involvement (or those that attempt to explore the increasing participation of fathers in more hands-on
caregiving) continue to evolve and develop, they still tend to take for granted the role of providing (Christiansen and Palkovitz 2001; Roy 2004).
For instance, research that explores the work–family balance that fathers (as well as mothers) must negotiate presumes that there is, at the very least, a job that requires negotiation (Voydanoff 2002). And despite social, cul-tural and even academic movements that push for re-definitions of ‘good dads’ as more than just a provider – as someone who is ‘there’, as some-one who melds traditional expectations of a good job with ‘new’ ideals of nurturing fathers – the norm of breadwinning has not been sufficiently displaced (Roy 2004; Townsend 2002). In other words, what it means to be a ‘good dad’ has certainly expanded – it can mean many things. But what it means to be a ‘bad dad’ is still largely predicated on expectations of financial provision.
For teen fathers, the expectation that they financially provide for their families is further hindered, given the limited job availability for young fathers, stemming from factors such as age, lower educational attainment and decreased skill sets (Allen & Doherty 1996; Glikman 2004; Kiselica 2008; Marsiglio 1994; Paschal 2006). Teen fathers are also unique in that, beyond the challenges of being successful breadwinners, they must also negotiate cultural stereotypes that assume that teen fathers are absent, uninvolved, or at the very least, non-contributing. In addition to cultural norms that dictate that fathers provide financially, teen fathers also face negative stereotypes that take for granted the idea that they won’t provide (Weber and Schatz 2013).
The teen fathers I interviewed were clearly aware of this. Take Josh, for instance, a twenty-one-year-old father of two: ‘You gotta support your kids,’ he says. ‘If not, you’re gonna be a deadbeat.’ Michael, seventeen and new father of a two-week-old son, gave a similar account:
‘No matter how many kids you got, you have to take care of your kids regardless, you know. I don’t want everybody lookin’ at me like I’m a deadbeat dad or nothing like that.’
The metaphorical ‘deadbeat’ serves as a straw man that many of the fathers compared themselves to – and, to be sure, it was an identity they work hard to avoid. All of the fathers I interviewed wanted to be seen as good dads.
But more than just a metaphor or an identity, the ‘deadbeat’ also represents the power and the hegemony of the breadwinner norm.
Participating (or at the very least, paying lip service to) the breadwin-ner norm allows them to portray themselves as good dads, even if only discursively. But this language also creates additional dilemmas. To put it simply: very few of the teen fathers I interviewed are able to accom-plish breadwinning successfully. Many of them struggled to find regu-lar and stable work, let alone work that paid enough that would allow them to take care of their children/families. Despite the apparent una-vailability of this expectation, all of the men in my study maintained the notion that as fathers/fathers-to-be their new role was defined primarily by their need to financially provide for their children and families. We need to recognize, though, that their choices are few: on the one hand, failure to participate, to deny the importance of financially providing for their children, makes them deadbeats from the start. On the other hand, the expectation that they be breadwinners (and their acknowledgement of it) creates additional dilemmas by drawing attention to their current or potential failure. It is this negotiation that I focus on in this chapter.
Specifically, I examine the ways in which teen fathers negotiate and attempt to resolve the dilemma of financially providing. For the teen fathers here, the breadwinner discourse is a resource, but it is also a problem to be man-aged (see Wilkins 2012b).
In this study I explore how teen fathers negotiate the stigmas and expectations of teen pregnancy, responsibility and fatherhood within the culturally deemed appropriate bounds of masculinity, social class and youth.
As I explore below, teen fathers’ respective locations in the middle-class, working-class or lower-class strata further complicate the ways in which they negotiate cultural expectations of fatherhood. While debates sur-rounding teen pregnancy centre on the question of whether or not teen pregnancy ruins lives, the following analysis demonstrates that the answer is more complex than yes or no.