Tuesday, January 13, 2004

By John Hayes, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

When the woman he'd had a child with told him she didn't want any part in raising the girl, Larry D. Davis took it in stride.

When Allegheny County told the Homewood man that he couldn't raise Latosha alone, he successfully fought the system.

When his wages were attached to pay support for a child that he was raising at his home, he fought the ruling and won.

	Larry Davis says the legal system is not set up to accommodate a single father raising a child, as he does with his daughter Latosha. (Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette) Click photo for larger image.

But the thing that really freaks him out, he says, is biology.

"A single guy raising a pre-teen daughter?" He shakes his head and laughs. "Believe me, brother, there's a lot to learn."

Fortunately, Davis, 43, is a fast learner. As a result of his efforts on behalf of fathers like him, he is a winner of one of seven local Jefferson Awards given for community service. On Jan. 29 at the Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland, he and the others will receive a medallion, and Kaufmann's will donate $1,000 in his honor to the Coalition for Fathering Families, the group he co-founded.

Davis is primary caregiver for Latosha, now 12, and the father of four children with two other women. He said that fact and a criminal conviction when he was a young man have probably contributed to the legal problems he's encountered. But he believes the bigger problem is that the system is skewed toward mothers.

When he sought advice and assistance from government agencies and community groups, he found that most were set up to help women pry paternity support from delinquent fathers, and tended to overlook the concerns of faithful fathers.

"Maybe I'm ahead of the curve," says Davis, leaning forward on a folding chair on the small front porch of his Homewood row house. "But when it's a guy who desperately wants the responsibility of raising a child alone, the system isn't set up to handle that. All the laws and the support groups and the relief agencies haven't caught up with the phenomenon of the male-run single-parent family."

	This is the fifth of seven profiles of Jefferson Award winners. Previous articles Alice Kulikowski: Ex-nun brings discipline, heart to construction projects (1/13/04) Dr. Randall Kolb: Tending to homeless is rewarding to doctor (1/8/04) Terri Watson: Hard-working volunteer isn't slowed by disability (1/7/04) Holly McGraw: Her creative ways made Duquesne students achieve (1/6/04) The 2003 Jefferson Awards: Seven winners honored for their public service (1/4/04)

In 1991, Davis began hosting meetings for groups of fathers in similar circumstances. Their stories sounded disturbingly similar and the problem, he found, was widespread.

The legal challenges facing single fathers can daunting. Some divorced and even married fathers say men are more likely to be denied unsupervised access to their children on little more than accusations that they represent a physical threat. And they say government agencies are less likely to challenge birth mothers for paternity support.

Davis' informal gatherings of displaced fathers attained greater stature in 1995 when he merged his Coalition for Fathering Families with the National Congress for Fathers and Children, with chapters scattered across the United States. The national group lobbies lawmakers for the rights of unwed and divorced fathers, marches in parades, teaches anger management classes, provides counseling for dads and includes men and women interested in strengthening families.

"I know that he's worked real hard to be able to be with me," says Latosha. "Even when I do something bad or make a mistake, he's always here for me."

The father-daughter relationship was strained, and Davis' custody was again threatened, during a well-publicized case in which Latosha told her principal that she was afraid to go home after getting in trouble in school. For nearly 40 days in late 2002, Latosha was housed in a series of foster homes with no hospital report alleging abuse or criminal charges leveled against Davis.

"They didn't even bother to ask. That's what gets me," says Davis. "They put all these wheels in motion to take a child from her home before checking out her story. The idle word of a child, that's all it takes to take a child away from her father. I understand that they're trying to protect these kids, but protect them from whom? A parent who loves them? I think it's time to protect kids from their own mistakes and from a system that leaps before it looks."

"I was scared," says Latosha. "That's why I lied. I was scared I'd get in trouble if they told [my dad] and I didn't want them to tell him so I said he'd hit me with a pipe. But I didn't think all that would happen. ... I learned my lesson."

Davis proudly shows off several walls plastered with press clippings, letters of reference, thank-you notes, handouts, event listings and photographs detailing his struggle to keep his daughter and the fathers' support group and parenting hot line that he runs from his small home. With no outside funding, the coalition operates on donations collected by Davis and volunteers.

"The hardest thing to handle," he says, "is, ironically, a thing that every father of a growing girl has to deal with. She's growing up, she's not a little girl anymore.

"When I walked into the bathroom to check on her, like I'd done a thousand times, and she covered up in the tub and yelled, 'Dad, get out of here,' I swear I broke down and cried like a little baby. My girl is becoming a woman."

The Coalition for Fathering Families hot line can be reached at 412-731-5551.

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