Tasha Alston is sharing new narratives of Black fatherhood

Growing up, Tasha Alston saw all the ways her father, stepfather, grandfather, uncles, brothers and other Black men in her neighborhood were present and engaged in their children’s lives: They read to their kids, they walked them to school, they provided material and spiritual resources. She also saw these same men challenged by unemployment and incarceration, and often made invisible when it came to offering solutions on how to strengthen families and communities.

These observations of urban life in 1980s upstate New York launched much of the assistant professor of medicine’s professional trajectory — she became someone who not only saw a problem but also someone who wanted to solve it.

Alston soon leaned into social work, earning a bachelor’s degree from Siena College and a master’s degree from Clark Atlanta University.

One of the gaps in understanding the role of Black fathers happens in social work and professional training, said Alston. Not many schools offer training on how to work with fathers.

 “Fathers are foundational to the family unit,” she said, “and we need to be intentional on working with fathers and family planning goals, ensuring that professionals are prepared for this.”

While studying in Atlanta, Alston noticed, all too often, when colleagues and other professionals talked about plans to strengthen the Black community, fathers were “absent” from the conversation on treatment and solutions.

This was a problem, and she resolved to address it.

That resolve took Alston to graduate school at University of Georgia, Athens, where she earned a PhD in educational psychology. Her study focused on the experiences of 10 African American fathers of school-age children in the Atlanta area. She discovered that while the men may not have been involved with traditional avenues of school engagement, such as parent-teacher associations, they were vested in their children’s education, often seeing it as a bridge to a better life. Alston’s study also showed that Black fathers’ engagement with their children happened largely outside of the school environment, and it ranged from tutoring to modeling positive values and behavior.

“Research shows,” said Alston, “that Black fathers are among the most engaged with their children compared to their white and Hispanic counterparts — but that is not often the narrative that is shared.”

Since that first study, the researcher in Pitt’s Center for Research on Health Care has written papers and books, including the recently published “Health, Parenting, and Community Perspectives on Black Fatherhood: Defying Stereotypes and Amplifying Strengths,” which is co-authored and co-edited by Alston, Brianna Lemmons of Baylor University, and Latrice Rollins of Morehouse School of Medicine.

The book will launch alongside a panel discussion on Black fatherhood in Alumni Hall on March 31, 4-7 p.m. Panelists — including community leaders from Pittsburgh’s Healthy Start Inc, University of Pittsburgh faculty and other experts in Black fatherhood research and family well-being — will discuss the contributions of African American fathers to parenting, health and education in families and in community. Space is limited, so register now.