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Journal Article Using data on 189 adolescents who have a living biological father and a resident stepfather, we examined the effects of children's relationships with both fathers on child outcomes. Interview data from mothers and stepfathers provide an assessment of two types of child outcomes, internalizing and externalizing problems. Interviews with the children themselves provide data about the child's relationships with the mother, stepfather, and biological father. Results show a significant positive association between quality of relationship with stepfathers and child outcomes. Relationships with…
The purpose of this paper is to identify what we currently do and do not know about the contributions of fathers' involvement in very young children's lives. Specifically, we provide an overview of the relationship between father involvement and behavioral and cognitive outcomes among young children. Second, we identify aspects of father involvement that should be measured in the early years of a child's life that would help us understand and facilitate the beneficial effects of father involvement on school outcomes. Third, we describe variations in father involvement along the continuum…
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Journal Article Interviews with forty 10- and 11-year-old children (24 boys and 16 girls) investigated the effects of parents' division of child care responsibilities on children's self-esteem, their relationships with parents, and their gendered ideas and preferences. Children whose fathers participated relatively more in the emotional side of parenting (e.g., comforting) showed greater preferences for "feminine" activities and had higher self-esteem than children whose fathers were less involved. Children whose fathers performed a higher proportion of the "work" of parenting (e.g., transporting, planning…
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In recent years, increased attention has been focused on the roles of fathers and their importance to the health and well-being of families; those roles and the policies and programs that could strengthen them were explored at the June First Tuesdays discussion moderated by Robert Lerman of the Urban Institute. Freya Sonenstein of the Urban Institute discussed strategies for improving the productive and social health of young men and that could prevent or at least delay unwed fatherhood. Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute discussed how young men fare in school, and…
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Journal Article Previous studies have revealed that marital status is an important predictor of birth outcomes, with unmarried mothers having a higher probability than married mothers of delivering low birthweight babies. However, research on the impact of different mother-father relationships among unwed parents is virtually non-existent and little is known about whether and how father involvement affects birth outcomes. In this study, we use the sample of unwed patents in the 7-cities baseline Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing data to examine the effect of parents relationship status and support…
