Black Fathering and Mental Health

This edited volume is the first work purposefully designed to amplify the voices of Black men in communicating their mental health needs and challenges while fathering in their families and communities. Dr. Michael Hannon has convened a group of Black fathers and aspiring fathers, who are also professional counselors, and they offer unique and untapped perspectives about the needs, challenges, and victories of Black fathering across the family life cycle in the context of an anti-Black world. In each chapter, the contributors offer counselors and other mental health professionals a resource to assist them in providing culturally relevant and responsive support to Black fathers at various points across the family life cycle and more comprehensively understand the circumstances that might prompt-and prevent-Black fathers to seek counseling support.


"Dr. Michael Hannon and his colleagues have broken new ground with a unique and timely contribution to the literature of Black fathering and anti-racism. Through their lived experience as sons and fathers, combined with their education and experience as mental health counselors, they are transparent, vulnerable, proud, reflective, articulate, committed, engaged Black men who thoroughly disrupt the racist trope of the absent Black father. Their lived experiences are diverse and reflective of the broad spectrum of family constellations in our society. I read this manuscript as an Arab American, having raised two Biracial Black children with special needs. The fears expressed about their children experiencing the dangers of racism and white supremacy resonated deeply in my heart from when I held my children for the first time. Each contributor includes reflections on how counseling helped or could have helped their fathering. Hannon's concluding chapter is actionable recommendations for counselors and other mental health professionals for working with Black fathers. In sum, this book will instruct and inspire the