Eight young fathers take turns introducing themselves. They say their names, a bit about why they are here, and how many children they have.
Some are here for the first time, others have been here before. All have chosen to be here on this fatherhood class on this rainy, dreary Wednesday morning in Frayser.
“I don’t want to be like my dad. I want to be there for my kids,” says a 35-year-old man with seven children, including six daughters.
“I want to correct the mistakes I made in the beginning,” says another man, 34, who has two sons.
“My baby mama and me,” says the next young father who stops himself mid-sentence and smiles.
“Your who?” says Mike Arnold, one of the two facilitators in this class at Pursuit of God Church on North Watkins.
The young man laughs. He has inadvertently violated one of the two unwritten rules in the class that meets every week for eight weeks.
The first rule is to avoid using profanity. “This is a house of God,” Arnold explains.
The second rule is to avoid using the term “baby mama.”
“The reality is that your children will not be babies forever, but you will be a co-parent for the rest of your life,” says Arnold, a church pastor and 53-year-old father of four. “We believe that if we change our language, we change our relationship with our kids and their mothers.”
That’s the goal of AFIRM, or A Father’s Involvement Really Matters. It’s a new Memphis-based program that is a key part of Tennessee’s effort to reform welfare reform.
AFIRM is one of seven pilot programs established across the state “to test innovative ways to support Tennessee families with low incomes to increase economic mobility and well-being.”
Each of the pilots is receiving $25 million in federal TANF funds over four years. TANF stands for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
State officials believe that one or more of the Tennessee Opportunity Pilot Programs will become a model for TANF reform here and across the country. The state has contracted with MEF Associates of Virginia, the Urban Institute in Washington, and Vanderbilt University to measure and evaluate “the implementation, effectiveness, and cost” of the seven nonprofit pilot programs by 2026.
Clarence Carter, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Human Services, is particularly keen on AFIRM. The department has set aside an additional $10 million to support a statewide Fatherhood Grant Program.
“We’re not that far removed from a time when, in order for a mother and child to receive public assistance, there could not be a man in the home,” says Carter, a Republican who ran the TANF program in the first Trump administration.
Welfare programs initially only helped single women or widows with children. Rules changes in recent decades included men, but the federal government’s more than 80 public welfare programs still contain marriage penalties, reducing or eliminating a family’s benefits as incomes rise.
“We have to address some of the root causes that drive people into the safety net, and one of the biggest root causes is the breakdown of the family. Public policy literally helped drive men away from their families, and they still do. And I believe we are being visited by the results of this failed public policy.”
About 40 percent of the children in Memphis and Shelby County are born to unwed mothers. More than half live in fatherless homes.
It’s not just an issue in Memphis. The U.S. has the world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households.
Almost a quarter of U.S. children under the age of 18 live with one parent and no other adults (23%), more than three times the share of children around the world who do so (7%), according to the Pew Center.
Nearly 20 million U.S. children (almost 1 in 4) live in a home without a resident father.
Children from fatherless homes are more likely to be poor, become involved in drug and alcohol abuse, drop out of school, and suffer from health and emotional problems. Boys are more likely to become involved in crime. Girls are more likely to become pregnant as teens. Single-parent families are five times more likely to live in poverty.
“A lot of the chaos we see in Memphis and Shelby County and elsewhere is the result of fathers not being involved in their children’s lives,” says Carol Jackson, executive director of Families Matter, a 20-year-old faith-based nonprofit that manages AFIRM.
Faith-based programs are eligible for countless federal and state grants, but constitutional restraints require that grant funds not be used for specifically religious activities such as worship, prayer, devotional study or proselytizing.
Jackson says her work and the work of others at AFIRM are motivated by their faith, but they aren’t there to convert anyone.
“We’re trying to help fathers understand that they are part of the solution,
that their presence and guidance matters,” she says. “Many of them have never seen a dad that was involved in a child’s life. A father who loves his child will take care of his child, but so many young men have no point of reference for how to be a father. That’s why we’re here.”
“Being a better man means being responsible”
The fathers in the room take turns responding to various statements from Arnold and his fellow father-facilitator, MeiAngelo Taylor.
Men and women are equally capable of caring for children.
All agree.
“We can do everything for a child a woman can do except give birth and breast feed,” Arnold says.
Fathers should stop hugging and saying ‘I love you’ to their sons when they become teens.
Some disagree.
“If he’s mine, I don’t care how old he is, I got to hug him,” says one young father.
You become more of a man once you’ve fathered a child?
Opinions vary.
“Being a father is just one aspect of being a man,” says one young father.
DeAndre McLakes, 32-year-old father of five, looks at it another way.
“Any male can make a baby,” he says, “but it takes a man to do the things a father should do for their children — talk to them, love them, protect them, provide for them, stuff like that.”
McLakes, a disabled veteran, joined the Army after he graduated from high school.
“My father wasn’t there, my mother was battling with her addictions,” he says. “I didn’t feel loved or wanted. I was suicidal. I figured, at least if I die in uniform, my family will be taken care of and everyone will see me as a hero.”
McLakes is 34 now. He has four children with his current wife. He wants them to see him as a hero. He joined the AFIRM program because he’s trying to gain custody of his first child.
“Before I had a child I was just taking care of myself,” he says. “Now I’m taking care of someone else. This makes me not a perfect man but a better man.”
Taylor, the co-facilitator and a married father of five adult children, agrees.
“Being a better man means being responsible,” Taylor says. “Are you working? Can you afford to take care of that child? Are you with the mother of that child? Too often we go from boyhood to fatherhood and we skip manhood.”
“Healthy marriage and relationship education”
AFIRM’s mission is to test the impact of parenting and co-parenting education, and “the effects of healthy marriage and relationship education on labor market outcomes and economic well-being
The program, run by Families Matters Inc., serves Shelby County fathers ages 18 and up with low incomes who have a newly established or pending child-support cases.
AFIRM’s partners include Maximus, a child-support collection agency that is paid to provide tracking systems, case management support, and employment services. Fathers who participate in AFIRM must be current in their child support payments.
The program also partners with Shelby County Juvenile Court and the Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy’s office.
“This is important work,” says Ernest Brooks, Mulroy’s associate deputy district attorney and senior policy adviser. “AFIRM is working to change the trajectory of a family’s life by re-engaging the father in the lives of the children.”
Many of the fathers who participate in AFIRM are referred by the the DA’s office or the court, but their participation in AFIRM is voluntary.
Brooks inspired McLakes to join the program. He also helped McLakes expunge a charge of unlawful possession of a weapon from his record. “Mr. Brooks has helped me beyond my expungement,” McLakes says. “He has helped me to grow as a man.
The program includes job training and placement, an 8-week parenting and fatherhood workshop, co-parenting agreements, and referrals to legal support services for child support matters, expungements, driver’s license reinstatements, and traffic ticket payments.
Since the program began in early 2023, more than 700 fathers have participated.
Participants can earn cash payments as they attain certain “milestones.”
For example, men who complete eight weeks of fatherhood training earn $1,000. So far, 210 men have done so.
Men who sign non-binding “co-parenting agreements” with their child’s mother earn another $1,000. So far, 66 agreements have been signed.
Participants also can earn payments for maintaining a job for 30, 60, 90 and 120 days; completing various job training, certificate or education programs.
AFIRM has made $462,200 in milestone payments and spent another $439,609 on supportive services such as tuition and help with transportation, rent, and utilities.
“My second week here, I cried in front of grown men,” McLakes says. “Another brother started crying with me. We stood up and hugged. I’m not familiar with that but it felt good. I’m going to keep coming back. This is a safe haven. God’s moving through this program.”
Models for reforming TANF
State officials believe that AFIRM and other pilot programs will become a models for TANF reform here and across the country.
Loopholes in the 1996 TANF law allowed states to accumulate billions of dollars in unspent TANF funds. Tennessee was holding $800 million in unspent TANF funds, the largest surplus in the country.
In 2021, legislators approved the Tennessee TANF Opportunity Act. Among other things, it directed the state to use surplus TANF funds to establish pilot programs to test and prove different “theories of change” — strategies to “help families to become stable and move beyond the need for safety net benefits in the long-term.”
The seven pilot programs were launched in 2023.
“From the beginning, we have been focused on creating a conservative, thoughtful way to put those (unspent) dollars into play to help the Tennesseans who need them,” Carter says.
But safety net advocates say the pilots, while well-intentioned, are redirecting funds that should go directly to poor families with children in the form of cash assistance.
“The point of TANF is to give emergency funds to families in crisis to give them a path out of poverty,” says Michele Johnson, executive director of the Tennessee Justice Center, a Nashville nonprofit that advocates for poor and under-resourced families.
Tennessee spends about 25 percent of its annual TANF funding on basic cash assistance — higher than the national average of 22 percent. But the number of Tennessee families with children receiving TANF cash assistance has plummeted from more than 100,000 to under 10,000 since the mid-1990s.
“It seems like the state is looking for more ways to reduce direct cash assistance to poor families,” said Jane Dimnwaobi of the Tennessee Justice Center. “But study after study shows that direct cash assistance is the most effective way to help lift families out of deep poverty.”
Jackson agrees that direct cash assistance is vital to help a distressed family through a financial emergency, say a sudden job loss or major medical expense.
On the other hand, she says emergency funds aren’t enough. She has seen families go from one emergency to the next unable to find ways to sustain themselves in the long run.
“When we are able to assist a father in supporting his children long term, then those TANF funds have been used wisely,” she says.
Fatherhood training
AFIRMS’s fatherhood training sessions are divided into seven topics:
- Fatherhood Today
- Manhood
- Communication
- Anger Management/Conflict Resolution
- Values
- Understanding Child Support
- Relationships
“Half the men in this county have grown up without a father at home,” Arnold says. “They’ve never seen a caring man and they’ve rarely seen a man sharing responsibility for children.”
“That’s why these classes are so important,” Taylor says. “So much of the anger we see in young men comes from them not having a father in their life.”
During the training sessions, fathers are encouraged to begin talking to their co-parents about establishing a co-parenting agreement. Arnold, Taylor and other facilitators guide couples through the process. The agreement is not legally binding.
“It’s a plan for how you are going to raise your children together, even if you are not together,” Arnold explains.
The plan describes how co-parents will communicate with each other, who will have custody and visitation rights, and how decisions will be made regarding the child’s education, extracurricular activities, medical care, and religious and cultural upbringing.
Co-parents are encouraged to sign the agreement in person in the presence of a facilitator.
Roberto Mullen and Valissia Reynolds signed their co-parenting agreement a few months ago. They have two children together. They haven’t been together in years.
“Before, he was like, ‘She doesn’t want me, then I don’t want to take care of her kids,'” says Reynolds, 30, who went to court to get child support. “Now, if I ask for help, he’s there when I need him. I see him trying to change. It’s good to see my girls interacting with their dad.”
The AFIRM program and process have “given me a different perspective to see all this from her point of view. Being a father is not like the movies,” says Mullen, 38, who works as a master technician at an auto repair company. “If she’s struggling mentally or physically, then it’s going to affect my daughters.”
Mullen and Reynolds attended AFIRM’s monthly “graduation” ceremony last month at Second Presbyterian Church. Nearly 50 young fathers received certificates, milestone payments, and rounds of applause.
“We are so proud of these young men, these young fathers,” Jackson says. “Our children depend on them. Our community depends on them.”
