The expectation for fathers to be more involved with parenting their children and pitching in at home are higher than ever, yet broad social, political, and economic changes have made it more difficult for low-income men to be fathers. In It's a Setup, Timothy Black and Sky Keyes ground a moving and intimate narrative in the political and economic circumstances that shape the lives of low-income fathers. Based on 138 life history interviews, they expose the contradiction that while the norms and expectations of father involvement have changed rapidly within a generation, labor force and state support for fathering on the margins has deteriorated. Tracking these life histories, they move us through the lived experiences of job precarity, welfare cuts, punitive child support courts, public housing neglect, and the criminalization of poverty to demonstrate that without transformative systemic change, individual determination is not enough. Fathers on the social and economic margins are setup to fail.

In It's a Setup, Timothy Black and Sky Keyes show that socially and economically marginalized fathers embrace involved fatherhood. Tracking these life histories, Black and Keyes move us through the lived experiences of job precarity, welfare cuts, punitive child support courts, public housing neglect, and the criminalization of poverty to demonstrate that without transformative systemic change, individual determination is not enough: for fathers on the social and economic margins, it's a setup.

Black and Keyes present a well-researched, qualitative study examining the experiences of fatherhood among 138 marginalized men in Connecticut ... The authors thus disrupt the hegemonic discourse surrounding fathers as "sole provider[s]," which has permeated public policies and perceptions of fatherhood. They present a fuller picture of the socioeconomic factors shaping fatherhood, which demands a reconceptualization of the idea today.