In Their Own Voices: How Men Become Fathers Essay Review of Involved Fathering and Mens Adult Development: Provisional Balances by Rob Palkovitz1

Recent research on fatherhood and families, as well as sociocultural develop-ments of the last decade, have highlighted the critical role that fathers play in their childrens development; the multidimensional nature of father involvement; the importance of the mother-father relationship in creating a positive and healthy envi-ronment for children; from a policy perspective, these developments have begun to question policies that focus solely on fathers provisioning role [for a review see Cabrera, Tamis-LeMonda, Bradley, Hofferth, & Lamb, 2000]. One of the conse-quences of this extensive body of work is the blurring between biology and social prescriptions of fatherhood, thus challenging Margaret Meads assertion that motherhood is a biological necessity, but fatherhood is a social invention. Research is needed to answer the questions regarding who are fathers? What do they do? How are they involved with their children? How is their involvement related to childrens development? What are the barriers they face to be the fathers they would like to be? Studies on how fathers relationships with their partners mediate their involvement with, and impact on, their childrens well-being have been accumulating since the 1960s. The early body of research focused mainly on fathers in two-parent families, with an emphasis on middle-class families, and hence, provided an empirical data base that generally excluded low-income and minority men. On-going studies of the last decade have begun to remedy this situa-tion by focusing on fathers in low-income and minority families [Cabrera, Brooks