Doing the Best I Can: Fatherhood in the Inner City - Softcover

Edin, Kathryn; Nelson, Timothy J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520283929 ISBN 13: 9780520283923

Publisher: University of California Press, 2014

Synopsis

Across the political spectrum, unwed fatherhood is denounced as one of the leading social problems of today. Doing the Best I Can is a strikingly rich, paradigm-shifting look at fatherhood among inner-city men often dismissed as "deadbeat dads." Kathryn Edin and Timothy J. Nelson examine how couples in challenging straits come together and get pregnant so quickly - without planning. The authors chronicle the high hopes for forging lasting family bonds that pregnancy inspires and pinpoint the fatal flaws that often lead to the demise of the couple's romance. They offer keen insight into a radical redefinition of family life, where ties between parents are peripheral and the father-child bond is central. Drawing on years of fieldwork, Doing the Best I Can shows how mammoth economic and cultural changes have transformed the meaning of fatherhood among the urban poor.Intimate interviews with more than one hundred fathers make real the significant obstacles that low-income men face at every step in the familial process: from the difficulties of romantic relationships to decision-making dilemmas at conception, the often celebratory moment of birth, the hardships that accompany the early years of the child's life, and beyond.

About this title

Review

"An essential book."--Harold Pollack"The Washington Post/WonkBlog" (07/01/2013)

About the Author

Kathryn Edin is Professor of Public Policy and Management at the Kennedy School of Government and a Faculty Affiliate with the Sociology Department at Harvard University. She is the coauthor of Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage and Making Ends Meet: How Low Income Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low Wage Work. Timothy Nelson is Lecturer in Social Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is the author of Every Time I Feel the Spirit: Religious Experience and Ritual in an African American Church.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0520283929
• ISBN 13: 9780520283923
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 294