Table t3.

The Problem of Serial Mating in the Negotiation of Fatherhood Rights

Challenges and Examples
1.	The decline in a man’s relationship with his child when he moves on to another partner
	I have another child by another female [not a Healthy Families–enrolled woman], and me and my daughter have a good relationship but it’s just not like me and my son. Actually, it’s because me and my son’s mother is together, so naturally I would be with my son more, but again I like kinda like strayed from my daughter being as though me and her mother never really got along. It’s just a different situation. (Thomas)
2.	The child’s mother’s new partner does not want the child’s father coming around
	A related problem of serial mating by a child’s parents is when the child stays with the mother and the mother takes on a new partner. If the father then wants to spend time with his child, it can create tension between him and the mother’s new mate. A description of this type of scenario is provided by James:
	Yeah, he [new boyfriend of child’s mother] get mad but it’s nothing that he can do. What can he do? He told her to tell me to stop calling and coming down there to see my daughter, and like I told her as long as my daughter live there, ain’t nobody going to stop me from seeing my daughter, and ain’t nobody going to stop me from spending time with her. If he don’t like it, all he got to do is just leave and come back when I’m gone . . . he felt as though that she was disrespecting because she was sitting downstairs talking to me about the baby, cause my daughter’s birthday party is next Monday. We sitting down there, me and her and the baby, we down there trying to figure out what we going to get the baby for her party and who we inviting and all this. But he feel as though she disrespecting him by sitting down talking to me. He fail to realize that she putting our daughter before him and that’s one thing he don’t like is her putting my daughter before him. I rather her put my daughter before him than put him before my daughter, I have told her that.