I have two fathers. The first was Nigerian, and came to Britain to study as an overseas student. He was in a relationship with my mum but disappeared as soon as he found out she was pregnant with me. The last time she saw him was the day she told him she was expecting his child.

My second father, who I call Dad, was a white dockworker who met my mum in Hull, east Yorkshire, when I was a toddler. She was Irish, a single parent and had a brown baby – three social stigmas in the 1960s. Dad was regularly reminded of this, in the crudest of ways, by his work colleagues: Hull was a city in which, at that time, outsiders of any kind were rare. Yet despite this, my mum and dad got married and, when I was six, he legally adopted me. He became my dad, not my stepdad, and I still carry his surname.

As a role model, you could argue he wasn’t the best: his job was fairly dead-end, and he had no great desire for me to continue at school beyond 16, saying regularly that I should simply find manual work, in the way he and his father had done (and, no doubt, generations of his family before that, too). It was my mother who was always pushing for me to get a strong education, to go to a good school and, after that, to university. Yet his wages helped put a roof over our heads, he took me to swimming lessons, to my first football matches and drove us on family holidays. Right until my parents separated, in my late teens, he was there. He, not my birth father, was the one who taught me what being a dad really means.

Despite all Dad’s love and care – which, being a child, I never fully appreciated at the time – I grew up with a deep sense of shame about being born “out of wedlock” and of not knowing my “real” father. In that era, there were so many negative perceptions of single motherhood and illegitimacy. In fact, it was not till after graduating, moving to London and gaining my first job – at black newspaper the Voice – that I realised my story was more common than I’d imagined. Many colleagues had been raised by their mothers alone; for some, of mixed-parentage like me, this meant by their white parent.

Joseph Harker and his dad. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

I was happy to know I wasn’t alone, and to talk to others in similar situations. And it certainly helped me accept there was no reason to feel shame. But at the same time, I wondered at the potential damage caused by the lack of fathers in so many lives.

This was the 1980s, when UK black culture was dominated by the Caribbean and, in particular, Jamaican identity. It concerned me that there was such an acceptance of this model of parenting; that somehow the menfolk could impregnate women and then disappear or, at best, play a minor, semi-detached role in their child’s upbringing.

My childhood had given me two models of fatherhood and it was clear which was preferable. The security of having two parents in a committed relationship, all of us living under one roof, provided a solid building block for everything I did; be it schoolwork, friendships or any outside activities. I’m not some puritanical tyrant who believes that all parents must be married, or that loveless or, worse, abusive relationships must be tolerated for the sake of the children. But I do feel fathers, especially black fathers, should be encouraged to play a full role in the lives of their children. And I’m not sure that’s happening.

Look at the figures: according to the Office for National Statistics (based on the 2011 census), black parents with dependent children are more likely than any other ethnic group to be single. In fact, there are as many lone-parent black homes as there are black married and cohabiting-couple households combined. By comparison, five times more Asian households with dependent children are headed by a married couple than by a lone parent. And for white people, it’s two-and-a-half times that.

Added to this, centuries of brutality – first through slavery, then through colonialism and most recently via the racism of the state and its enforcers – have targeted black men, above all. This at worst has left them dead or incarcerated; yet far more likely, it has left them unable to provide for their families due to low wages or high unemployment. While the black man has been brutalised, subjugated or humiliated (a common story from Africa to the Americas to Europe), the black mother has been left to take care of the home, to be responsible for the children and, in many cases, for the household income, too.

The tale of the strong black woman has been told for generations. The superwoman who can do it all. This is a positive story: in times of hardship and often, over the years, destitution, we need to cling to the idea that we have the innate power and energy to overcome all obstacles and win through. Yet not only does this place an unrealistic expectation on black women, it also leaves little place for the role of black men in the home. Is the black mother so strong she needs no help? Is the black father to be a peripheral figure?

For some black men it has been a win-win. You can call yourself a “baby father”, which implies you have some role in your child’s life, yet this can be as little as you like. This can leave the child feeling disconnected from this key figure in its life. Recent history has taught us that, in this vacuum, children can often be attracted to gangs as their proxy father-figure – learning all the wrong lessons about being a man.

In the past few years, there has been heated discussion about this issue: whether black fathers really are absent from families; and if so, whether it’s really a problem. Barack Obama, when a presidential candidate in 2008, weighed in with his own thoughts: “Too many fathers [are] missing from too many lives and too many homes.” He was attacked for this by, among others, the black US writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, who countered: “From the White House on down, the myth holds that fatherhood is the great antidote to all that ails black people.”

Coates, though, is using a straw-man argument: no one claims better fatherhood would eradicate racism. The argument is simply that in dealing with systemic discrimination, stronger black families would have greater resilience.

For all the talk about strong mothers, in the modern world – especially in the west – parenting is a crucial job and one person, however gifted, will struggle to do it by themselves. Homework alone needs constant monitoring, as does ensuring teachers are doing the best for your child. Simply getting your child to school is never enough. After-school activities take a lot of time to organise each week.

Then there’s the quality time with your child: in the park, at the movies, meeting friends and family. All the things that give a youngster a sense of being cared for, part of a strong unit in which they can feel secure. Which brings us to that crucial element of any child’s upbringing: love. It’s clear that being loved is a hugely influential element of how a child forms its identity, its sense of value and self-worth. Yet many black children are raised to be “tough” rather than loved; the Caribbean or African father who uses a belt to beat his errant child is legendary (although, let’s not forget, it’s been part of western fatherhood, too). But in today’s village-less world, resilience should instead be built up from strong, tender relationship bonds.

Thankfully, it seems the message is getting through that men should be bearing more responsibility. Recently we’ve seen more and more media stories giving a positive message about black fatherhood. In one, 23-year-old Cameron Scott-Marchant told the Guardian: “I know what it’s like to grow up without a dad. It’s not easy and it’s not easy for the mum either. How could I walk away? ... I don’t want that for my girlfriend.” Sylvester Alebioshu, the father of an adult son, Samuel, told Buzzfeed: “I feel responsible for how [my son] turns out as a man ... It’s important that your child knows you, and you know your child. This is why I spend so much time with him.”

Stories such as these give me hope for the future.

For years, the conventional wisdom was that the mistakes of one generation are passed down to the next: that the children of a “broken home” are destined to carry on the cycle of pain and hurt. And yet, as I’m starting to see with some younger black men today, the absence of a father can create in them a will to correct the injustice; to ensure the same mistakes are not repeated; and to ensure their own children do not miss out on what they themselves did.

For the sake of our future generations, we need this new father figure to replace the old one.

•This is an edited extract from Safe: On Black British Men Reclaiming Space edited by Derek Owusu, which will be published by Orion Publishing on 7 March. To order a copy for £14.95, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846