Responsible Fatherhood Requires More Than Responsibility

By Dr. Matisa Wilbon, Co-Chair, Moynihan Institute for Fatherhood Research and Policy

We tell fathers to show up. How? We tell them to be present and to provide. We tell them to communicate, be consistent, and stay involved. You know, to take responsibility. 

Great.

I believe fathers should be accountable to their children. I believe presence and consistency matter: Healthy father involvement can change a child’s life trajectory. But as a sociologist working in father engagement, I think we have to ask another question: Have we built systems that actually make it possible for fathers to show up?

Responsible fatherhood isn’t only an individual issue. It’s also a family systems issue impacted by workplaces, housing, communities, and public policy. None of that removes personal responsibility. Instead, it gives us a fuller picture of what responsibility actually requires.

Why We Have to Look Beyond the Individual

Sociology teaches us to examine the relationship between individual behavior and the social environment in which that behavior occurs. People make choices, but they make those choices inside institutions, relationships, workplaces, communities, and policies — systems that can either expand or restrict what becomes possible.

Recent research on predominantly Black fathers facing socioeconomic disadvantage underscores this point. Fathers in a 2026 study published in Family Process described fatherhood as an evolving identity shaped not only by their commitment to their children but also by structural challenges like incarceration, financial instability, trauma, co-parenting relationships, social support, and cultural identity. 

When a father struggles to remain consistently involved, this is often the easiest explanation: He just didn’t show up. Sometimes that may be true, but sometimes it’s only part of the story. The sociological question is: What else is happening around him?

What If the System Doesn’t See Fathers?

A 2026 study conducted in Atlanta by Dr. Latrice Rollins and colleagues offers a striking example.

Researchers examining homelessness response systems found significant gaps in how fathers — particularly Black fathers — were identified and served. Among fathers identified in Atlanta’s homelessness management system, 93% were Black and 53% were single. Researchers found limited data about fathers, limited focus on documenting and serving them, and significant barriers to accessing resources. They also noted that homelessness systems have often been structured around maternal caregiving in ways that can make father-led families more difficult to recognize and serve. 

Think about what that means. A father can be present. He can be trying. He can identify himself as a caregiver. And still encounter a system that is not designed to recognize him fully in that role. This creates an important distinction for researchers, policymakers, and the broader culture: Institutional invisibility can look like individual disengagement.

If our systems don’t ask the right questions, collect the right data, design the right services, or recognize fathers as caregivers, then we may eventually look at the outcomes and conclude that fathers are simply absent.

But what if the system contributes to the absence we are measuring? That’s a much harder question, and it’s one we need to be willing to ask.

Workplaces Shape Fatherhood, Too

We often talk about family life and work life as though they are two separate worlds when they aren’t. Workplace expectations directly shape how parents are able to participate in family life.

A 2026 Pew Research Center study by Dr. Rachel Minkin and colleagues found a sizable gap between the flexibility working parents say would help them and the flexibility they actually have: 71% said the ability to choose when they work their required hours would be highly helpful, yet only 25% reported having a great deal or fair amount of that flexibility.

Imagine a father working a job with unpredictable scheduling. He wants to attend the parent-teacher conference. He wants to pick up his child, make the doctor’s appointment, and spend consistent time with his child. He wants to participate in a fatherhood program and is trying to maintain child support.

This isn’t an issue of motivation. It’s a collision between two institutions: family and work. And both have expectations. The family says, “Be present.” The workplace says, “Be available.” Sometimes those expectations fit together, and sometimes they don’t.

That doesn’t mean the father has no responsibility. It means we should stop pretending responsibility is exercised under identical conditions.

How Co-Parenting Impacts Dad’s Involvement

Fatherhood also happens within relationships.

A father may no longer be in a romantic relationship with his child’s mother, but he’s still part of a parenting system that either supports healthy involvement or makes it more difficult.

This is why I believe we have to move beyond simply asking if the father’s involved. We also need to ask:

• What does the co-parenting relationship look like?
• Are parents communicating directly?
• Are children being used as messengers?
• Is information being shared?
• Are unresolved relationship wounds driving parenting decisions?
• Can both parents separate the end of the romantic relationship from the continuation of the parenting relationship?

Again, none of this absolves fathers of responsibility. A father is accountable for his behavior, but healthy father engagement does not occur in isolation. 

It happens inside a family system.

Responsibility and Opportunity Belong in the Same Conversation

This is where I think conversations about fatherhood sometimes become unnecessarily polarized. One side emphasizes personal responsibility; the other emphasizes structural barriers.

I don’t believe we have to choose. Both can be true:

• A father can need to take greater responsibility and encounter institutional barriers.
• A co-parent can need healthier boundaries, and the family may need stronger support.
• An organization can encourage fathers to participate and unintentionally create policies that make participation difficult.
• A community can value fathers and still operate from assumptions that position mothers as primary or default caregivers.

The question isn’t whether it’s the father or the system, but how individual choices and institutional conditions interact to produce the outcome we are seeing.

That’s a sociological question, and I believe we need to ask it much more often.