Fatherhood Arrested: Parenting from Within the Juvenile Justice System (review)

In her study of young fathers within the California Youth Authority correctional institutions, Anne Nurse presents compelling evidence that the "failure to recognize [the] overlap between prison and young fatherhood has serious and wide-ranging consequences" for families, communities, and social institutions. Her focus on problems lends itself to an interdisciplinary approach, which will appeal to researchers in criminology, family studies, urban and community studies, sociology, anthropology, and social psychology. With a concise writing style (a short 176 pages) and engaging attention to detail, Fatherhood Arrested will be used by students and scholars in the classroom as well as practitioners and policymakers in the field.

Nurse's contribution significantly builds on the lack of research of men's reintegration into families and communities after incarceration. She combines pilot participant observation in parenting classes with a survey of parolees (N = 258), a subsample of individual in-depth interviews (N = 20), and continuing observations during institutional family-visiting hours. Her skillful weaving of quantitative and qualitative techniques illustrates both the potential and the achievement of a rigorous mixed-methods approach that offers more insight than either methodological technique offers by itself.

Nurse moves beyond the typical focus on the individual offender that limits our understanding of how and why young men are embedded in social networks. For example, she cites an institutional rule that forces inmates to list only one "girlfriend or wife" for visitation, effectively alienating other partners and children. Actually, young fathers are located in dynamic relationship configurations within multiple family systems, and they transition in and out of these relationships over time. Unfortunately, men reported only about their oldest child, and it would be interesting to explore their negotiation of multiple family systems and children in different households. Men do, however, discuss their discomfort with "the next dude in line" who is recruited to play the flexible father figure and to help ensure the family and children's survival.

One chapter of findings addresses father involvement within prison. Initial "role dispossession" in total institutions (as noted by Goffman) sets the tone for the absence of policies to encourage generative behavior as a deterrent to recidivism. Nurse captures emic language to illustrate processes that shape tenuous relationships, such as "the summer shake," in which men's partners seek out new relationships, and "hard timing," in which men are overwhelmed by the demands of prison life and subsequently cut off ties with family and friends. Other men find that prison offers access to education programs and time to reflect on new life priorities and commitments. In this way, incarceration can be a turning point in the life course that raises young fathers' expectations for involvement as family members.

After tenuous beginnings, however, most men often cannot live up to heightened expectations upon release and reintegration into families and communities. The following chapters address men's motivation and actual involvement with children after release, as well as negotiation of family relationships, primarily with the mothers of their children. Nurse balances a gendered critique of men's general distrust of women (many men recommend "don't trust the baby's mom") with accounts of effective supportive relationships. The apparent lack of support for partnering relationships stands in contrast to growing support for fathering relationships, from men's peers, families, and communities. Yet how is father involvement possible within a conflictual coparenting relationship, or in spite of shame that men felt as ex-offenders and absent fathers? Nurse offers a thorough consideration of men's involvement through child support, in-kind support, and visitation. The range of defined involvement can expand by integrating concepts from the growing body of literature on father involvement. For example, nonresidential fathers who cannot offer financial resources often provide social capital for their children by linking them to their own family members for additional resources, caregiving, or social support.

Fatherhood Arrested leads...