red dot icon
Journal Article As the male prison population increases, so too does the number of children with fathers in prison. The negative impact of fatherlessness on children has been well documented. While parenting education is often seen as an effective tool to improve the quality of family relationships and foster positive outcomes for children, fathers in prison frequently are ignored or excluded from parenting programs. This mixed method study examined the impact of short term parenting education on fathers in prison who were enrolled in a 3-day parenting class. A simple experimental design was coupled with…
red dot icon
Journal Article This article provides the first individual-level estimates of the change over time in the probability of nonresidence for initially resident fathers in the United States. Drawing on the 1968-1997 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we used discrete-time event history models to compute the probabilities of nonresidence for six 5-year periods. Our sample consists of men (N = 1,388) who are coresident with their biological children at the time of birth. We found that the observed probability of nonresidence doubled over the three decades of the study period, but not linearly. The risk…
red dot icon
Journal Article Using data from the June 1980 Current Population Survey, Morgan, Lye, and Condran (1988) reported that families with a daughter have a higher divorce risk than families with a son. They attribute this finding to the higher involvement of fathers in raising a son, which in turn promotes marital stability. We investigate the relation between gender composition of children and parents' divorce risk with cross-national data from the Fertility and Family Survey. These data, which cover 16 European countries, Canada, and the United States, do not support a general hypothesis that sons contribute…
red dot icon
Journal Article Stricter child support enforcement may reduce unwed childbearing by raising the costs of fatherhood. The authors investigate this hypothesis using a sample of young women from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, to which they add information on state child support enforcement. Models of the probability of a teenage premarital birth and of teenage premarital pregnancy and pregnancy resolution provide tentative evidence that during the early 1980s, teens living in states with higher rates of paternity establishment were less likely to become unwed mothers. This relationship is stronger…
red dot icon
Journal Article Research on fathers in Early Head Start (EHS) has provided an opportunity to study fathers from low-income families. We examined father-toddler social toy play in relation to EHS enrollment, fathers' psychosocial well-being, and children's developmental outcomes in a sample of 74 father-toddler dyads. Overall, our results show that father-toddler social toy play was more complex among fathers in an EHS program than among those in a comparison group. Greater complexity in father-toddler social toy play predicted better cognitive and social developmental outcomes for young children,…
red dot icon
Journal Article This paper presents four contemporary types of American manhood: (a) the new, involved father, (b) the good provider, (c) the deadbeat dad, and (d) the paternity-free man. These four types are compared, contrasted, and contextualized with related data from the classic Middletown studies of the 1920s and 1930s. The significance and implications of the trend toward paternity-free manhood are discussed, and directions for future research are suggested. (Author abstract).
red dot icon
Journal Article This article is based on an in-depth qualitative study of efforts by an Early Head Start program to include fathers in program activities with the aim of supporting and strengthening their involvement in their children's lives. Since this program employs a home-visiting model of service delivery, our focus is on the work and experiences of home-visiting staff. Our key findings concern the evolutionary development of program thinking and practice regarding fathers and father involvement; barriers or challenges to father involvement; and successful strategies for engaging fathers on both a…
red dot icon
Journal Article The purpose of this study was to evaluate and compare the utility of unidimensional and multidimensional models of the construct of father involvement and to provide measurement advice for researchers. Participants were 1,139 two-parent families from the 1997 Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID-CDS). Results from Structural Equation Modeling procedures supported the conceptualization of paternal involvement as a multidimensional construct, consisting of distinct domains of involvement. In particular, paternal cognitive monitoring was not related to the…
red dot icon
Journal Article The primary purpose of this report was to investigate the correlates of attachment security with fathers and the concordance of mother-infant and father-infant attachment as measured by the Attachment Q-set (AQS, Waters, 1987). Sixty fathers and mothers of 14-month old infants independently described their child using the 90-item AQS and completed questionnaires about their involvement in and attitudes toward child-rearing and self-esteem. Mother-child interactions were observed in a play situation. Fathers reporting greater engagement in child caretaking activities described their children…
red dot icon
Journal Article One way to examine the relationship between work roles and family roles for fathers is to study the day-to-day connections of their work and family experiences. The present study applied an ecological perspective to explore how daily work experiences are differentially associated with fathering experiences at home. Data for these analyses were from the National Study of Daily Experiences, which asked fathers to report about engagement with their children on workdays, including quantity of time spent with children and whether or not fathers provided their children with emotional support or…
