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Journal Article Contemporary research on fathering emphasizes the significance of a quality father-child relationship in a child's development and well-being. Scholars have suggested that connecting with and communicating with children are critical to a healthy relationship. This study explores the influence of communication and connection on father-child relationships through a structural equation model using the LISREL program. Data were taken from the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), and a sample of 362 father-adolescent dyads was studied. Results provide support for the importance of…
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Journal Article The stepfather relationship provides a source of potential conflict in remarriage families, because the mother and partner may have different interests in the well-being of children from a prior union. Using three different theoretical perspectives-biology, sociology, and selection-this paper examines the engagement, availability, participation, and warmth of residential fathers in married biological parent, unmarried biological parent, married stepparent, and cohabiting father families. The data come from 2,531 children and their parents who were interviewed during the 1997 wave of the Child…
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Journal Article Paternal disengagement has been identified as a key risk factor for Canadian children. Prior to this study, the specific barriers to paternal engagement facing immigrant and refugee fathers had not been studied or identified, nor had strategies been developed to ensure that the needs of this population are met in new and existing services. The design of specialized services for immigrant and refugee fathers, as well as the successful integration of immigrant and refugee fathers into existing services, requires that practitioners gain an understanding of fatherhood from a cross cultural…
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Journal Article This study explores how aspects of a father's religiousness are related to the type and quality of involvement with his children. Factors that potentially confound or explain the connection between religiousness and fathering are also examined. Multiple measures of religiousness and father-child ties are considered in a series of bivariate and multivariate regression models. The sample of 810 fathers comes from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS). Results indicate that religious fathers are more involved fathers and that they report higher quality…
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Journal Article This study of 2,722 British adolescents aged 14-18 years explored whether paternal involvement can protect against low levels of well-being even when maternal involvement and risk and protective factors are controlled for. Results showed that although both father and mother involvement contributed significantly and independently to offspring happiness, father involvement had a stronger effect. Furthermore, the association between father involvement and happiness was not stronger for sons than for daughters. There was no evidence suggesting that family disruption weakens the association…
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Journal Article Family practitioners who provide divorce education programs should be aware that a child in a sole-custody household (especially one headed by the father) is highly likely to lack insurance coverage for access to health care services for healthy development. Examining 543 divorce records in New Hampshire, the author analyzed coverage across divergent family types following custody negotiations and found that a child in a sole-custody household was at higher risk for lacking coverage than was one in a shared-custody household. These results were confirmed by a chi-square test and logical…
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Journal Article The role of the father or father figure is critically important to the task of taking our African American boys from boyhood into manhood. The vacuum of this required fathering role has had a devastating impact on our urban communities and it is time that we fill this role. In America today no other community has been harder impacted by the growing trend of father absence than the African American community. Statistics have been quoted that the percentage of father absence homes is as high as 60%. However, these statistics do not reflect the number of fathers who are physically present in the…
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Journal Article Recent statistics reveal that children living apart from their fathers are at an increased risk of suffering negative outcomes. One study found that the rate of child abuse in single-parent families is nearly twice the rate of child abuse in two-parent households (Federal Interagency Forum, 1997). Another study, after controlling for various variables, revealed that boys who grew up outside of intact marriages were, on average, more than twice as likely as other boysto end up in jail (Harper and McLanahan, 1998).These findings have sparked increased interest in the critical role of fathers…
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Journal Article Nonresidential parents are in a precarious position as by definition they are outside of the family residence after divorce and hence often perceived as outside of the family system. Semi-structured qualitative telephone interviews with 36 nonresidential parents living 50 or more miles from their children revealed social and institutional systems provide both assistance and barriers to parents following divorce.The challenge of continuing with their identity and role as a parent and family member was shown through their interactions with schools, religious institutions, and work places, as…
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Journal Article This study examines the role of biological and social fathers in the lives of low-income African American adolescent girls (N= 302). Sixty-five percent of adolescents identified a primary father; two thirds were biological and one third were social fathers. Adolescents reported more contentious and less close relationships with biological than with social fathers. Multivariate regression analyses indicated that daughters' perceptions of anger and alienation from fathers was related to greater emotional and behavioral problems for adolescents, whereas perceptions of trust and communication…
