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Alvin Thomas researches Black men and their role in family and community development

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Updated: Feb 10

By Delia O’Hara Date created: July 19, 2023



Photo credit: Shalicia Johnson, ArrowStar Photography
Photo credit: Shalicia Johnson, ArrowStar Photography

Alvin Thomas, PhD, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW), researches Black families, and especially the development of Black men and their role in their families and communities.

Thomas, who heads up the Resilient Youth Lab in the School of Human Ecology at UW, addresses the artifacts of structural racism—discrimination, violence, incarceration, police brutality—as a fact of life for Black people. Their neighborhoods may be dangerous and bereft of services many Americans take for granted; their family structures, parenting practices, and peer relations may be stressed; but he sees them all as potential assets that can be put to work for the good of the individual.

“There’s this old adage that it takes a village to raise a child, and that is what we are finding in the research,” Thomas says. While jobs, improved schools, and some other resources have to come from outside, “we can provide some of the support ourselves that we’re looking for.”

Take Black fathers, for example. Thomas finds plenty of good things to say about them in his Black Fatherhood Podcast, now in its second year.

The stereotype is that Black fathers shy away from involvement with their families, but by some measures, they’re actually more engaged than other American dads. All American fathers care for their children far more now than they did a couple of generations ago—eight hours a week, compared with less than three hours in 1965. But one study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (PDF, 371KB) showed that 70% of Black fathers bathed, dressed, or diapered their children every day, or helped them use the toilet, compared with 60% of White fathers.

“Black fathers were more involved in those activities than any other group, hands down,” Thomas says.

Supporting Black fathers


Some of Thomas’s research is dedicated to identifying ways to help Black fathers be more effective partners, parents, and community members.

He and UW colleague Tova Walsh, PhD, assistant professor in the School of Social Work, are partnering with the Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based African American Breastfeeding Network (AABN) to interview Black fathers and mothers, exploring the impact of the couples’ relationships on mothers’ mental health, and of new dads’ day-to-day involvement with parenting. A particular goal is improving health outcomes for young Black mothers. Black women have 2.5 times the rate of maternal mortality (PDF, 292KB)as White women in this country, and depression and other mental health issues are thought to contribute to that disparity.

Some young dads and fathers-to-be in the study spoke passionately about their desire to be involved with their families. One told an interviewer he gets up every morning between 4 and 6 a.m. to do “straight dad stuff,” and that the first thing his partner sees when she wakes up is a spotless house.

Indeed, the study showed that forging a “high-quality” relationship made a big difference in new mothers’ mental health and well-being. And to an extent, not surprisingly, a strong relationship with their partners encouraged these young men to engage more meaningfully with their children as well. That in turn lightened their partners’ loads and led, again, to better mental health for young mothers.

“We have this huge resource at our fingertips” in these young fathers, Thomas says.

But they need support. Black dads may not have grown up with effective models of good parenting, or even have friends or mentors they can bounce ideas off. Thomas and his colleagues are hoping to help remedy that. The AABN, for example, recently launched a Father2Father Empowerment Group that brings expectant or new fathers together with experienced dads so they can ask questions and find support. Five young dads were in Father2Father’s inaugural cohort, and the group hopes to have around 15 young dads in its second cohort.

In a 2021 study, Thomas’s team explored how therapists might identify and eliminate obstacles to fathers attending family therapy, and what training might help those therapists. Fathers are not as likely to attend family therapy as mothers are, especially if the dads don’t live with their families, yet they may have a lot to offer in those sessions. Thomas stresses that clinicians need to create a climate where fathers will be able have positive clinical interactions—accommodating their schedules, making meetings more interactive, whatever it takes to assure that “father engagement becomes more commonplace, rather than a welcomed exception.”

Parents can help children turn away from violence


Good parenting can have a huge impact across a child’s life, Thomas says. One study he did found that Black boys who witness physical violence are more likely to resort to violence than those who don’t. However, the attitudes of those boys’ peers and parents can make a difference in their actions. Hearing positive messages from their parents about avoiding violence can go a long way toward protecting those children exposed to violence from harming others.

Thomas was born and raised in the Caribbean island nation of Saint Lucia, and taught elementary, middle, and high school for nine years, beginning at age 16, seeing “all the potential challenges that come with living in high-poverty areas,” he says. “And I thought, ‘Somebody really needs to do something to help these kids.’”

He got a scholarship to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, graduating summa cum laude, and obtained a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Michiganin Ann Arbor. At Michigan, he became a fellow of the International Max Planck Research School on the Life Course, an experience he says expanded his world view, as well as his knowledge of human ecology “across the lifespan.”

Thomas has begun a new research focus, examining Blacks’ experiences in the digital space, especially those of young people. A recent study he participated in shows that encountering negative racist remarks, images, or behaviors online, where such encounters may be “less personal and more diffused” than in-person confrontations, can lead some young Black and Latino men to begin to develop “critical consciousness,” that is, the ability to recognize and resist negative attitudes like racism. Instead of chalking these attacks up to their own failings, the study says, these young men begin to recognize an unfair system that targets them for inferior treatment—and to fight against it.

Past research has shown that self-esteem can help young people cope with bad situations, arming them with confidence that they can change their circumstances, and perhaps even the system. What Thomas found “mind-blowing” about his recent study, though, was that the very distress that study subjects felt when they encountered racism online seemed to help them view the attacks they were experiencing in a more critical and self-affirming way.

“Turning something negative into a positive takes some very, very difficult work,” he says, adding that young people shouldn’t have to do that level of work just to live at peace in the world. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger: That is definitely not the story. You want to avoid negative experiences as much as possible.”


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