We employed meta-analytic methods to pool information from 63 dealing with nonresident fathers and children's well-being. Fathers' payment of child support was positively associated with measures of children's well-being. The frequency of contact with nonresident fathers was not related to child outcomes in general. Two additional dimensions of the father-child relationship-feelings of closeness and authoritative parenting-were positively associated with children's academic success and negatively associated with children's externalizing and internalizing problems. Do nonresident fathers contribute anything of value, other than money, to their children's lives? Based on the social science research conducted to date, one might be inclined to answer this question negatively. Amato (1993) summarized 32 of divorce that reported data on contact with noncustodial fathers and children's well-being. Of these studies, lS found that contact was associated significantly and positively with children's well-being, seven found that contact was associated significantly and negatively with children's well-being, and 10 found no significant association. Mixed results such as these have led many social scientists to reach pessimistic conclusions about the importance of nonresident fathers. For example, Seltzer (1994) noted that large national surveys consistently show an absence of association between nonresident fathers' visits and children's well-being (p. 256). Similarly, McLanahan and Sandefur (1994) stated that studies based on large, nationally representative surveys indicate that frequent father contact has no detectable benefits for (p. 98). Because of this lack of evidence, Furstenberg and Cherlin (1991) were cautious about drawing any firm conclusions about the psychological benefits of contact with noncustodial parents for children's adjustment in later life (p. 72). In contrast to the weak evidence for visitation, evidence is stronger for fathers' payment of child support. Reviews of the literature by Furstenberg and Cherlin (1991), McLanahan and Sandefur (1994), Seltzer (1994), and others consistently point out the importance of increasing the number of child support awards made to single mothers, raising the amount of awards, and enforcing awards more strictly. All these recommendations are based on the assumption that nonresidential fathers' economic contributions not only increase children's standard of living, but also improve children's health, educational attainment, and general well-being. Many empirical support this assumption (e.g., Furstenberg, Morgan, & Allison, 1987; King, 1994; McLanahan, Seltzer, Hanson, & Thomson, 1994). Why does research suggest beneficial effects on children when nonresident fathers pay child support, yet fail to suggest beneficial effects when nonresident fathers visit their children? These results appear to contradict a substantial body of research showing that positive father involvement in two-parent households contributes to children's development, well-being, and attainment. (See the chapters in Lamb, 1997, for reviews.) It is possible that nonresident fathers are less salient figures than resident fathers in the lives of children. But this conclusion clashes with qualitative showing that many children in single-mother households think highly of their fathers and wish for more frequent contact (Amato, 1987; Funder, 1996; Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980). Indeed, it may be useful to begin with the assumption that nonresident fathers have the potential to benefit children and then to consider why existing have failed to provide supporting evidence. This way of framing the problem suggests the possibility that researchers have focused their attention on the wrong dimension of father involvement. The majority of have measured frequency of visitation. But frequency of contact may be less important than other relationship dimensions, such as the strength of the emotional tie between children and fathers. …
Determinants of fathers participation in child care and household chores are examined in an interview study of 160 US caucasian middle-class mothers and fathers. This study examines maternal employment status as well as several aspects of mothers work patterns as potential determinants of paternal participation. Several aspects of fathers work patterns are also examined. 4 other parental categories of determinants of paternal participation include: 1) family structure 2) parental sex-role attitudes 3) parental socialization and 4) sociodemographic factors. Results indicate that maternal employment moderates the relationship between particular determinants and particular forms of paternal involvement. The effect of childs age and sex on fathers participation was significant for total interaction time and solo interaction time for the total sample and for fathers with nonemployed wives. In families with elementary-school-aged children fathers absolute participation is highest when the cildren are at the young end of the age range and decreases as the children mature presumably as children grow in independence and allow the father to respond to his preferences rather than to the demands of the family situation. In dual-earner families the mothers attitude toward the male role is also a major predictor of fathers participation. In families with nonemployed wives fathers attitudes toward the quality of fathering they received as youngsters is the most consistent predictor of participation. These findings support earlier research suggesting that fathers tend to compensate for perceived deprivation rather than initiate their fathers patterns.
Abstract This longitudinal study of forty‐four families explored fathers’ as compared to mothers’ specific contribution to their children's attachment representation at ages 6, 10, and 16 years. In toddlerhood, fathers’ and mothers’ play sensitivity was evaluated with a new assessment, the sensitive and challenging interactive play scale (SCIP). Fathers’ SCIP scores were predicted by fathers’ caregiving quality during the first year, were highly consistent across 4 years, and were closely linked to the fathers’ own internal working model of attachment. Qualities of attachment as assessed in the Strange Situation to both parents were antecedents for children's attachment security in the Separation Anxiety Test at age 6. Fathers’ play sensitivity and infant–mother quality of attachment predicted children's internal working model of attachment at age 10, but not vice versa. Dimensions of adolescents’ attachment representations were predicted by fathers’ play sensitivity only. The results confirmed our main assumption that fathers’ play sensitivity is a better predictor of the child's long‐term attachment representation than the early infant–father security of attachment. The ecological validity of measuring fathers’ sensitive and challenging interactive play behavior as compared to infant proximity seeking in times of distress is highlighted. Findings are discussed with respect to a wider view on attachment in that both parents shape their children's psychological security but each in his or her unique way.
This paper uses the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine children's involvement with their fathers in intact families as measured through time spent together. Our findings suggest that although mothers still shoulder the lion's share of the parenting, fathers' involvement relative to that of mothers appears to be on the increase. A “new father” role is emerging on weekends in intact families. Different determinants of fathers' involvement were found on weekdays and on weekends. Fathers' wages and work hours have a negative relationship with the time they spend with a child on weekdays, but not on weekends. Mothers' work hours have no effect on children's time with fathers. On weekends, Black fathers were found to be less involved and Latino fathers more involved with their children than are White fathers. The weekday‐weekend differential suggests that a simple gender inequality theory is not sufficient in explaining the dynamics of household division of labor in today's American families.
Abstract Objective: To assess whether mothers and fathers have a higher long term risk of death, particularly from cardiovascular disease and cancer, after the mother has had pre-eclampsia. Design: Population based cohort study of registry data. Subjects: Mothers and fathers of all 626 272 births that were the mothers' first deliveries, recorded in the Norwegian medical birth registry from 1967 to 1992. Parents were divided into two cohorts based on whether the mother had pre-eclampsia during the pregnancy. Subjects were also stratified by whether the birth was term or preterm, given that pre-eclampsia might be more severe in preterm pregnancies. Main outcome measures: Total mortality and mortality from cardiovascular causes, cancer, and stroke from 1967 to 1992, from data from the Norwegian registry of causes of death. Results: Women who had pre-eclampsia had a 1.2-fold higher long term risk of death (95% confidence interval 1.02 to 1.37) than women who did not have pre-eclampsia. The risk in women with pre-eclampsia and a preterm delivery was 2.71-fold higher (1.99 to 3.68) than in women who did not have pre-eclampsia and whose pregnancies went to term. In particular, the risk of death from cardiovascular causes among women with pre-eclampsia and a preterm delivery was 8.12-fold higher (4.31 to 15.33). However, these women had a 0.36-fold (not significant) decreased risk of cancer. The long term risk of death was no higher among the fathers of the pre-eclamptic pregnancies than the fathers of pregnancies in which pre-eclampsia did not occur. Conclusions: Genetic factors that increase the risk of cardiovascular disease may also be linked to pre-eclampsia. A possible genetic contribution from fathers to the risk of pre-eclampsia was not reflected in increased risks of death from cardiovascular causes or cancer among fathers. What is already known on this topic Maternal and fetal genes (including those inherited from the father) may contribute to pre-eclampsia, which occurs in 3-5% of pregnancies One set of candidate genes for pre-eclampsia is the maternal genes for thrombophilia, which may increase the mother's risk of death from cardiovascular disease What this study adds Women who have pre-eclampsia during a pregnancy that ends in a preterm delivery have an eightfold higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease compared with women who do not have pre-eclampsia and whose pregnancy goes to term Fathers of pregnancies in which pre-eclampsia occurred have no increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease These results are compatible with maternal genes for thrombophilia having an effect on the risk of pre-eclampsia and of death from cardiovascular disease
BACKGROUND: Recently, there has been a growing awareness of the importance of the roles of fathers in understanding normative developmental processes. Increased attention has been given to the roles of fathers in the area of clinical child research and therapy. However, the presence of fathers in research and treatment in pediatric psychology has not been fully examined. OBJECTIVE: To explore the status of including fathers in both research and treatment in the area of pediatric psychology. METHOD: An extensive review of published research. RESULTS: The findings suggest that pediatric psychology research lags even farther behind clinical child research in including fathers in research designs and analyzing for maternal and paternal effects separately. There is also a concomitant lack of inclusion of fathers in family-based interventions in pediatric psychology. CONCLUSION: These patterns are discussed, with an emphasis on strategies to increase the inclusion of fathers in research and treatment of pediatric psychology issues. Future directions for researchers and clinicians are also included.
BACKGROUND: Despite robust evidence of fathers' impact on children and mothers, engaging with fathers is one of the least well-explored and articulated aspects of parenting interventions. It is therefore critical to evaluate implicit and explicit biases manifested in current approaches to research, intervention, and policy. METHODS: We conducted a systematic database and a thematic hand search of the global literature on parenting interventions. Studies were selected from Medline, Psychinfo, SSCI, and Cochrane databases, and from gray literature on parenting programs, using multiple search terms for parent, father, intervention, and evaluation. We tabulated single programs and undertook systematic quality coding to review the evidence base in terms of the scope and nature of data reporting. RESULTS: After screening 786 nonduplicate records, we identified 199 publications that presented evidence on father participation and impact in parenting interventions. With some notable exceptions, few interventions disaggregate 'father' or 'couple' effects in their evaluation, being mostly driven by a focus on the mother-child dyad. We identified seven key barriers to engaging fathers in parenting programs, pertaining to cultural, institutional, professional, operational, content, resource, and policy considerations in their design and delivery. CONCLUSIONS: Barriers to engaging men as parents work against father inclusion as well as father retention, and undervalue coparenting as contrasted with mothering. Robust evaluations of father participation and father impact on child or family outcomes are stymied by the ways in which parenting interventions are currently designed, delivered, and evaluated. Three key priorities are to engage fathers and coparenting couples successfully, to disaggregate process and impact data by fathers, mothers, and coparents, and to pay greater attention to issues of reach, sustainability, cost, equity, and scale-up. Clarity of purpose with respect to gender-differentiated and coparenting issues in the design, delivery, and evaluation of parenting programs will constitute a game change in this field.
BACKGROUND: Pediatric anticipatory guidance has been associated with parenting behaviors that promote positive infant development. Maternal postpartum depression is known to negatively affect parenting and may prevent mothers from following anticipatory guidance. The effects of postpartum depression in fathers on parenting is understudied. OBJECTIVE: Our purpose with this work was to examine the effects of maternal and paternal depression on parenting behaviors consistent with anticipatory guidance recommendations. METHODS: The 9-month-old wave of data from a national study of children and their families, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, provided data on 5089 2-parent families. Depressive symptoms were measured with a short form of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Interviews with both parents provided data on parent health behaviors and parent-infant interactions. Logistic and linear regression models were used to estimate the association between depression in each parent and the parenting behaviors of interest. These models were adjusted for demographic and socioeconomic status indicators. RESULTS: In this national sample, 14% of mothers and 10% of fathers exhibited levels of depressive symptoms on the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale that have been associated with clinical diagnoses, confirming other findings of a high prevalence of postpartum maternal depression but highlighting that postpartum depression is a significant issue for fathers as well. Mothers who were depressed were approximately 1.5 times more likely to engage in less healthy feeding and sleep practices with their infant. In both mothers and fathers, depressive symptoms were negatively associated with positive enrichment activity with the child (reading, singing songs, and telling stories). CONCLUSIONS: Postpartum depression is a significant problem in both mothers and fathers in the United States. It is associated with undesirable parent health behaviors and fewer positive parent-infant interactions.
This review summarizes research concerning the relation between paternal factors and child and adolescent psychopathology. When compared with mothers, fathers continue to be dramatically underrepresented in developmental research on psychopathology. However, findings from studies of children of clinically referred fathers and nonreferred samples of children and their fathers indicate that there is substantial association between paternal characteristics and child and adolescent psychopathology. Findings from studies of fathers of clinically referred children are stronger for fathers' effects on children's externalizing than internalizing problems. In most cases the degree of risk associated with paternal psychopathology is comparable to that associated with maternal psychopathology. Evidence indicates that the presence of paternal psychopathology is a sufficient but not necessary condition for child or adolescent psychopathology.
The purpose of this study was to describe the sleep patterns and fatigue of both mothers and fathers before and after childbirth. The authors used wrist actigraphy and questionnaires to estimate sleep and fatigue in 72 couples during their last month of pregnancy and 1st month postpartum. Both parents experienced more sleep disruption at night during the postpartum period as compared to the last month of pregnancy. Compared to fathers, with their stable 24-h sleep patterns over time, mothers had less sleep at night and more sleep during the day after the baby was born. Sleep patterns were also related to parents' work status and type of infant feeding. Both parents self-reported more sleep disturbance and fatigue during the 1st month postpartum than during pregnancy. Mothers reported more sleep disturbance than fathers, but there was no gender difference in ratings of fatigue. At both time points, fathers obtained less total sleep than mothers when sleep was objectively measured throughout the entire 24-h day. Further research is needed to determine the duration of sleep loss for both mothers and fathers, to evaluate the effect of disrupted sleep and sleep loss on psychosocial functioning and job performance, and to develop interventions for improving sleep patterns of new parents.
In this study, time diary data are used to assess trends in mothers’ and fathers’ child care time from the mid‐1960s to the late 1990s. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the results indicate that both mothers and fathers report spending greater amounts of time in child care activities in the late 1990s than in the “family‐oriented” 1960s. For mothers, there was a 1965–75 decline in routine child care time and then a 1975–98 rebound along with a steady increase in time doing more developmental activities. For 1998 fathers report increased participation in routine child care as well as in more “fun” activities. The ratio of married mothers’ to married fathers’ time in child care declined in all primary child care activities. These results suggest that parents have undergone a behavioral change that has more than countered family change that might otherwise have reduced time with children.
Father-child and mother-child engagements were examined longitudinally in relation to children's language and cognitive development at 24 and 36 months. The study involved a racially/ethnically diverse sample of low-income, resident fathers (and their partners) from the National Early Head Start evaluation study (n=290). Father-child and mother-child engagements were videotaped for 10 min at home during semistructured free play, and children's language and cognitive status were assessed at both ages. Fathers' and mothers' supportive parenting independently predicted children's outcomes after covarying significant demographic factors. Moreover, fathers' education and income were uniquely associated with child measures, and fathers' education consistently predicted the quality of mother-child engagements. Findings suggest direct and indirect effects of fathering on child development.
This study compares the prosodic modifications in mothers' and fathers' speech to preverbal infants in French, Italian, German, Japanese, British English, and American English. At every stage of data collection and analysis, standardized procedures were used to enhance the comparability across data sets that is essential for valid cross-language comparison of the prosodic features of parental speech. In each of the six language groups, five mothers and five fathers were recorded in semi-structured home observations while speaking to their infant aged 0;10-1;2 and to an adult. Speech samples were instrumentally analysed to measure seven prosodic parameters: mean fundamental frequency (f0), f0-minimum, f0-maximum, f0-range, f0-variability, utterance duration, and pause duration. Results showed cross-language consistency in the patterns of prosodic modification used in parental speech to infants. Across languages, both mothers and fathers used higher mean-f0, f0-minimum, and f0-maximum, greater f0-variability, shorter utterances, and longer pauses in infant-directed speech than in adult-directed speech. Mothers, but not fathers, used a wider f0-range in speech to infants. American English parents showed the most extreme prosodic modifications, differing from the other language groups in the extent of intonational exaggeration in speech to infants. These results reveal common patterns in caretaker's use of intonation across languages, which may function developmentally to regulate infant arousal and attention, to communicate affect, and to facilitate speech perception and language comprehension. In addition to providing evidence for possibly universal prosodic features of speech to infants, these results suggest that language-specific variations are also important, and that the findings of the numerous studies of early language input based on American English are not necessarily generalisable to other cultures.
In most families today, childcare remains divided unequally between fathers and mothers. Scholars argue that persistence of the gendered division of childcare is due to multiple causes, including values about gender and family, disparities in paid work, class, and social context. It is likely that all of these factors interact, but to date researchers have not explored such interactions. To address this gap, we analyze nationally representative time-use data from Australia, Denmark, France, and Italy. These countries have different employment patterns, social and family policies, and cultural attitudes toward parenting and gender equality. Using data from matched married couples, we conduct a cross-national study of mothers’ and fathers’ relative time in childcare, divided along dimensions of task (i.e., routine versus non-routine activities) and co-presence (i.e., caring for children together as a couple versus caring solo). Results show that mothers’ and fathers’ work arrangements and education relate modestly to shares of childcare, and this relationship differs across countries. We find cross-national variation in whether more equal shares result from the behavior of mothers, fathers, or both spouses. Results illustrate the relevance of social context in accentuating or minimizing the impact of individual- and household-level characteristics.
Previous literature suggests a tenuous link between fathers' care of children and maternal employment and earnings. This study shows that the link is stronger when measures of caregiving capture fathers' increased responsibility for children. The analysis of time diary data from 6,572 married fathers and 7,376 married mothers with children under age 13 indicates that fathers (1) engage in more "solo" care of children when their wives are employed, (2) are more likely to do the kind of child care associated with responsibility for their children when their wives spend more time in the labor market, and (3) participate more in routine care when their wives contribute a greater share of the couple's earnings. In addition, the "father care" to "mother care" ratio rises when mothers contribute a greater share of household earnings.
Parental depression was assessed using the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) in 216 families with children with autism and/or intellectual disability (ID), and in 214 control families. Mothers with children with autism had higher depression scores (mean = 11.8) than mothers of children with ID without autism (mean = 9.2), who in turn, had higher depression scores than fathers of children with autism (mean = 6.2), fathers of children with ID without autism (mean = 5.0), and control mothers (mean = 5.0) and fathers (mean = 4.1). Forty-five per cent of mothers with children with ID without autism and 50% of mothers with children with autism had elevated depression scores (BDI > 9), compared to 15-21% in the other groups. Single mothers of children with disabilities were found to be more vulnerable to severe depression than mothers living with a partner.
Abstract Why do fathers matter? Recent conceptual and theoretical advances regarding father–child relationships have demonstrated that fathers affect children's outcomes both directly and indirectly. To attain a complete developmental account of the ecologically rich contexts of child development, in this article, we recommend best practices regarding the conceptualization and assessment of father–child relationships that reflect contemporary family life. We also discuss conceptual and measurement issues pertaining to father–child relationships in different family configurations, including those with resident and nonresident fathers. We conclude with recommendations that can help developmental researchers advance our understanding of fathering, parenting, and children's development.
Handbook of Father Involvement: Multidisciplinary Perspectives edited by Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda and Natasha Cabrera Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002, 658 pp, $150.00. This book is intended to whet the appetite for those who may have even a remote interest in father involvement. The book’s subtitle, “Multidisciplinary Perspectives,” holds true to form. It provides a necessary framework for understanding key theory concerning research and policy in various scientific disciplines from demography to public policy and everything in between. The book is divided into six sections: (1) The Demography of Fathers, (2) Father Involvement and Child Development, (3) Father Involvement: Sociological and Anthropological Perspectives, (4) Father Involvement: Evolutionary Perspectives, (5) Father Involvement: Economic Perspective, and (6) Father Involvement: Social Policy and Intervention. Each section contains several chapters that focus on a specific aspect of the overall section topic, which are written by experts in various disciplines. The book opens by discussing the methodological, measurement, and study design issues relevant to father involvement research. It provides an in-depth view of the critically important challenges facing researchers of all disciplines who are interested in this topic. First on the list is how father should be defined. Should the definition be restricted to biological fathers or broadened to include father figures and step-fathers? Other issues discussed are how father involvement should be measured, whether adoption of measures previously used in research regarding mothers is appropriate, and what analytical framework should be used in interpreting data. The first section focuses on providing a demographic profile of fathers and an analysis of the time that fathers spend with their children, based on United States national data. On average, fathers spend about 65% to 75% (3.9—4.5 hours per day) as much time with their children as mothers, who spend about 6 hours per day with their children. However, as the authors in the opening chapter point out, the quality of the time fathers (or mothers) spend with children may be just as important, but is quite challenging to measure. Contrary to past popular beliefs, infants and children do form attachments with their fathers and, thus, fathers do contribute to their children’s development. The central theme of the second section focuses on father involvement and its relationship with child development outcomes. Palkovitz informs the reader that many research studies have established that father involvement is associated with positive child development outcomes, but causality has been much more difficult to determine. Much debate exists regarding whether father involvement directly influences child development outcomes (e.g., academic achievement, language skills, etc.) or is mediated by other factors, such as a harmonious relationship among parents and family members that is facilitated by the father’s involvement. Palkovitz skillfully uses a quote by Parke and Brott (1996) that summarizes what most researchers agree upon: “Fathers matter. And they matter a lot.” Sections 3 and 4 wonderfully illustrate how the ways in which fathers “matter” to their children can differ among groups based on differing cultural values. Until this point, the book exclusively deals with father involvement within the United States and uses data collected in the United States. However, the authors of these sections demonstrate to the reader that various perspectives regarding father involvement exist within the United States, as well as in other countries. The authors introduce us to the cultures of the Tswana and Okavango Delta peoples of Botswana, English-speaking Caribbean fathers, and fathers in the “’hood,” the American inner city. Different cultural communities have different needs, and this may influence their views of important child outcomes and the roles that fathers have to play. Sections 5 and 6 address the economic issues that influence father involvement and the policy implications. Economic theory suggests that a poor economy and negative labor market forces can discourage father involvement. In addition, programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (AFDC/TANF) and court-ordered child support may also discourage father involvement. AFDC/TANF eligibility criteria require that families who receive assistance not have a man living in the household. Fathers who participate in court-ordered child support may be resentful of the process and may feel less inclined to be involved. In the last section, the authors provide a cogent argument regarding the need to intervene on behalf of fathers, children, and their families to create policies that promote father involvement, rather than maintaining those that discourage involvement. Not only do the authors call for changes in national policy, they offer suggestions for change. For example, fathers who are cohabitating with the child and the mother would not be required to enter into a court-ordered child-support agreement. Another example would be to raise the income test eligibility for AFDC/TANF to include two-parent families. This book was easy to read and was not peppered with a lot of specialized jargon. Although I enjoyed this book tremendously, there are two topics that received little, if any, attention: fathers who are single parents and religious influences on father involvement. Perhaps, this is because there is little research on these topics. I hope consideration will be given to including these topics in the next edition.
Contents: C.S. Tamis-LeMonda, N. Cabrera, Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Father Involvement: An Introduction. L.A. Roggman, H.E. Fitzgerald, R.H. Bradley, H. Raikes, Methodological, Measurement, and Design Issues in Studying Fathers: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Part I: S.L. Hofferth, The Demography of Fathers. D.J. Hernandez, P.D. Brandon, Who Are the Fathers of Today? S.L. Hofferth, J. Pleck, J.L. Stueve, S. Bianchi, L. Sayer, The Demography of Fathers: What Fathers Do. Part II: M.E. Lamb, Father Involvement and Child Development. M.E. Lamb, Infant-Father Attachments and Their Impact on Child Development. R. Palkovitz, Involved Fathering and Child Development: Advancing Our Understanding of Good Fathering. R.D. Parke, D.J. McDowell, M. Kim, C. Killian, J. Dennis, M.L. Flyr, M.N. Wild, Fathers' Contributions to Children's Peer Relationships. M.E. Lamb, Nonresidential Fathers and Their Children. Part III: L.M. Burton, Sociological and Anthropological Perspectives on Fatherhood: Traversing Lenses, Methods, and Invisible Men. D.J. Eggebeen, Sociological Perspectives on Fatherhood: What Do We Know About Fathers From Social Surveys? R.L. Jarrett, K.M. Roy, L.M. Burton, Fathers in the Hood: Insights From Qualitative Research on Low-Income African-American Men. N. Townsend, Cultural Contexts of Father Involvement. J.L. Roopnarine, Father Involvement in English-Speaking Caribbean Families. Part IV: F. Marlowe, Father Involvement: Evolutionary Perspectives. J. Bock, S.E. Johnson, Male Migration, Remittances, and Child Outcome Among the Okavango Delta Peoples of Botswana. D. Waynforth, Evolutionary Theory and Reproductive Responses to Father Absence: Implications of Kin Selection and the Reproductive Returns to Mating and Parenting Effort. S.C. Josephson, Fathering as Reproductive Investment. Part V: I. Garfinkel, Father Involvement: Economic Perspectives. P. England, N. Folbre, Involving Dads: Parental Bargaining and Family Well-Being. W. Sigle-Rushton, I. Garfinkel, The Effects of Welfare, Child Support, and Labor Markets on Father Involvement? J.W. Graham, A.H. Beller, Nonresident Fathers and Their Children: Child Support and Visitation From an Economic Perspective. Part VI: J. Brooks-Gunn, S. McLanahan, Father Involvement: Social Policy and Intervention. M.J. Carlson, S.S. McLanahan, Fragile Families, Father Involvement, and Public Policy. N. Cabrera, J. Brooks-Gunn, K. Moore. J. West, K. Boller, C.S. Tamis-LeMonda, Bridging Research and Policy: Including Fathers of Young Children in National Studies. T.J. Nelson, S. Clampet-Lundquist, K. Edin, Sustaining Fragile Fatherhood: Father Involvement Among Low-Income, Noncustodial African-American Fathers in Philadelphia. R.B. Mincy, H.W. Pouncy, The Responsible Fatherhood Field: Evolution and Goals. C.S. Tamis-LeMonda, N. Cabrera, Closing Chapter: Cross-Disciplinary Challenges to the Study of Father Involvement.
This article defines responsible fathering, summarizes the relevant research, and presents a systemic, ecological framework to organize research and programmatic work in this area. A principal finding is that fathering is influenced, even more than mothering, by contextual factors in the family and community. Key Words: coparental relationship, fathers, father-child relationship, family relations and dynamics, divorce, parenting. For more than a century, American society has engaged in a sometimes contentious debate about what it means to be a responsible parent. Whereas most of the cultural debate about mothers has focused on what, if anything, mothers should do outside the family, the debate about fathers has focused on what fathers should do inside the family. What role should fathers play in the everyday lives of their children, beyond the traditional breadwinner role? How much should they emulate the traditional nurturing activities of mothers, and how much should they represent a masculine role model to their children? Is fatherhood in a unique crisis in late twentieth century America (Blankenhorn, 1995; Doherty, 1997; Griswold, 1993; LaRossa, 1997; Popenoe, 1996)? The recent upsurge of interest in fathering has generated concern among supporters of women's and mothers' rights that the emphasis on the important role of fathers in families may feed longstanding biases against female-headed single-parent families, that services for fathers might be increased at the expense of services for single mothers, and that the profatherhood discourse might be used by the fathers' rights groups who are challenging custody, child support, and visitation arrangements after divorce. On the other hand, feminist psychologists have recently argued for more emphasis on fathering and have suggested that involved, nurturing fathers will benefit women as well as children (Phares, 1996; Silverstein, 1996). Only an ecologically sensitive approach to parenting, which views the welfare of fathers, mothers, and children as intertwined and interdependent, can avoid a zero-sum approach to parenting in which fathers' gains become mothers' losses. These cultural debates serve as a backdrop to the social science research on fathering because researchers are inevitably influenced by the cultural context within which they work (Doherty, Boss, LaRossa, Schumm, & Steinmetz, 1993). In their recent reanalysis of the historical trends of American ideals of fatherhood, Pleck and Pleck (1997) see the emerging ideal of fatherhood in the late twentieth century as father as equal coparent. (From 1900 to 1970, the dominant cultural ideal was the genial dad and sex role model, and from 1830 to 1900, the distant breadwinner.) Research on fathering, then, has attained prominence in the social sciences during an era of historically high expectations of men's involvement in the everyday lives of their children. Not surprisingly, a good deal of that research has compared levels of fathers' involvement with mothers' involvement because mothers have become the benchmark for norms for fathering (Day & Mackey, 1989). This post-1970s interest in fathering has been fueled by the reappraisal of family roles for women and by unprecedented demographic changes in the American family. In other words, scholarly, professional, and public policy interest in fathering has crystallized during the time that the foundation of traditional fathering-the physically present father who serves as the unique family breadwinner-has been eroding rapidly. With more than half of mothers in the work force, with new marriages breaking up at a rate of 50%, and with nearly one third of births to single women, the landscape of fathering has been altered substantially (Bumpass, 1990; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1994a). Sociological and historical work on fathering makes it clear that fathering (at least beyond insemination) is fundamentally a social construction. …