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Journal Article The present study was designed to shed light on the relation between parenting stress, father's alcohol use, child characteristics and father's engagement and availability. The study cohort comprised 821 fathers of preschool children in Finland. Parenting stress and child's mood, acceptability and demandingness were related to father's engagement to the preschooler and to the extent of the father's availability. Parenting stress began a cycle of alcohol abuse and child-negative characteristics, and eventually led to a decrease in joint father-child activities, father's feeling of…
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Journal Article This research links residence with biological and nonbiological married and unmarried parents to the cognitive achievement and behavioral problems of children aged 3-12, controlling for factors that make such families different. The data were drawn from the 1997 Child Development Supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Achievement differences were not associated with father family structure per se, but with demographic and economic factors that differ across families. In contrast, behavioral problems were linked to family structure even after controls for measured and unmeasured…
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Journal Article This journal issue discusses the findings from the Early Head Start Father Studies, a series of studies that investigated activities that fathers engage in with their infants and toddlers, how fathers express responsibility for their children, and the types of social, human, and financial capital that fathers afford their children. In the studies, fathers were also asked questions on how men perceive the father role, their experiences with the own fathers, and the support they need to be a father. Specifically, articles in the issue discuss: the project's methods and research questions; low-…
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Journal Article The objective of this study was to gain a better understanding of how low-income fathers of young children think about their role as fathers. We conducted a qualitative inquiry into the beliefs of fathers of 24-month-old children about what "good fatherhood" means to them. The 575 open-ended interviews, collected in 14 Early Head Start Fathers of Toddlers Qualitative Interview Substudy sites around the United States were analyzed using NUD*IST qualitative software to code and categorize the various roles fathers identified as important to them and their children. Four broad types of roles…
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Journal Article This study examined parenting patterns in a sample of low-income couples and the impact of those patterns on young children's cognitive outcomes. Interactions between 237 mothers, fathers, and their 2-year-old children were examined among coresident mothers and fathers or father figures who participated in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project's Father and Child Interaction During Toddlerhood Study (FACITS). Scores on 6 parenting scales were entered into K-means cluster analyses to determine whether different parenting patterns emerged by gender. Analyses of covariance were…
This chapter identifies developmental factors associated with positive fathering among 179 young, high-risk fathers who made a better than expected adjustment to parenthood. Results found that despite significant individual and social disadvantages, these fathers developed relational capacities associated with positive parenting. These capacities include a growth-oriented perspective on the co-parenting relationship, a commitment to shared responsibility for taking care of the co-parenting relationship, and a willingness to empathize with their co-parenting partners. Case studies illustrate…
