Book Review: Lost and Found: Young Fathers in the Age of Unwed Parenthood

Lost and Found: Young Fathers in the Age of Unwed Parenthood, by Paul Florsheim and David Moore, Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780190865016, 2020, 415 pages, $29.95.

    Lost and Found: Young Fathers in the Age of Unwed Parenthood examines the modern era of young fatherhood. The authors present 23 young fathers, using their own words, to describe their lives as expectant and new parents. The fathers live in Chicago and Salt Lake City, providing the reader with a diversity of parenting experiences. The authors demonstrate that young parents need to have a solid co-parenting relationship with mutual warmth and good communication, to provide a solid foundation for the child. They illustrate that the strong co-parenting relationship benefits all members of the new family, whether the parents remain in a romantic relationship or not. Florsheim and Moore engage the reader by providing insight into lived experiences of young fathers, as well as by describing concepts such as adolescent and emerging adulthood development, the strains of poverty and limited education, employment and unemployment challenges, and the impact of extended family and religious traditions.

    Lost and Found will have a home on the shelf of social work students, practitioners, and professors in multiple areas of interest. For social workers who work with families, Florsheim and Moore provide insight into the lives of young fathers and suggest innovative methods of engaging them in the prenatal months. Family social workers both in public child welfare and in community practice who are primarily trained with a focus on the mother and the child, will be inspired by the words and experiences of the young fathers. For social workers interested in human development, the book traces the impacts of poverty, deprivation, family violence, parent absenteeism and racism on the lives of boys and young men. Social workers who are researchers, or are students of research, will find this vast study of more than 1,000 young parents to be an excellent example of research methods, complete with recruitment and retention strategies, the use of research assistants, the importance of a thorough grounding in the literature, and the path from gathering data to innovating new interventions.  

    Lost and Found is a highly readable book about fatherhood studies and the experiences of young men who are often marginalized in modern U.S. society. It provides a historic perspective and an introduction to important evidence that will sharpen the reader’s perspective on the importance of fathers for young families and society at large. Readers can apply deepened knowledge and positive attitudes about young fathers in their current practice and in future program design.

Reviewed by Maureen Holland, MSW, Associate Professor, Social Work Program Director, Elms College, Chicopee, Massachusetts.