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Journal Article Developmental research has highlighted the importance of fathers for children’s early academic success, and growing evidence suggests that children living in poverty may benefit the most from positive father involvement. Using a subsample of children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), this study examined direct and mediated pathways from family poverty to children’s preschool achievement. Analyses revealed that poverty had a more consistent negative association with fathers’ parenting than mothers’ parenting and fathers’ parenting was a more consistent…
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Journal Article We identify multiple predictors of five types of father involvement in 167 low- to moderate-income two-parent Mexican American families with fifth-grade children. Analyses show that fathers' egalitarian gender attitudes and mothers' education are associated with higher levels of father involvement. Fathers are more involved in monitoring and interacting with children when families place more emphasis on family rituals, they are more involved in supervising children when mothers are employed more hours, and they perform more housework when mothers earn more and the family is under economic…
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Journal Article By age 3, children from privileged families have heard 30 million more words than children from underprivileged families. Longitudinal data on 42 families examined what accounted for enormous differences in rates of vocabulary growth. Children turned out to be like their parents in stature, activity level, vocabulary resources, and language and interaction styles. Follow-up data indicated that the 3-year-old measures of accomplishment predicted third grade school achievement.
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Journal Article According to Sheldon Danziger and David Ratner, changes in the labor market over the past thirty-five years, such as labor-saving technological changes, increased globalization, declining unionization, and the failure of the minimum wage to keep up with inflation, have made it more difficult for young adults to attain the economic stability and self-sufficiency that are important markers of the transition to adulthood. Young men with no more than a high school degree have difficulty earning enough to support a family. Even though young women have achieved gains in earnings, employment, and…
Other, Brief
This inaugural publication of the Family Policy Institute of Oklahoma provides a brief assessment of the status of Oklahoma's children using five different indicators representing serious challenges to their well-being: child safety, child poverty, educational success, teen births, and youth substance abuse. Findings indicate: there were over 11,000 cases of child abuse and neglect confirmed in 2013 in Oklahoma; 1 in 4 Oklahoma children lived in poverty in 2011; Oklahoma's high school graduation rate is been 72-78%; Oklahoma ranks 2nd for teen births in the United States at 47.3%; and…
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Journal Article In a prospective, longitudinal investigation we examined fathers' engagement in learning activities with their children in early childhood in relation to children academic performance in 5th grade. Participants were 602 low-income, ethnically diverse biological fathers and their children from the National Early Head Start evaluation study. Fathers reported on their engagement with children in learning activities as well as their residency when children were two years, three years, and of preschool age; children were assessed on receptive language, reading and math skills in 5th grade.…
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Journal Article Self-regulation ability is an important component of school readiness and predictor of academic success, but few studies of self-regulation examine contributions of fathering to the emergence of self-regulation in low-income ethnic minority preschoolers. Associations were examined between parental child-oriented parenting support and preschoolers' emerging self-regulation abilities in 224 low-income African American (n = 86) and Latino (n = 138) children observed at age 30 months in father-child and mother-child interactions to determine unique predictions from fathering qualities. Child-…
Other
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…
Other
This brief uses the 1997 National Survey of America's Families (NSAF) to examine the characteristics of poor nonresident fathers who do not pay child support. We find that these fathers face similar labor market barriers to those faced by the poor mothers, but the fathers have far fewer opportunities to increase their chances of labor market success. We conclude with suggestions about ways to help redress the balance of opportunity.
Other
According to the 1997 National Survey of America's Families, 2.6 million nonresident fathers have family incomes below the poverty line and most of them face multiple employment barriers, including a criminal record, lack of a high school education, relatively little recent work experience, and poor health. Although these employment barriers are similar to those faced by poor custodial mothers, poor nonresident fathers are significantly less likely than poor custodial mothers to participate in training, education, and job search activities as well as income security programs. Given that…
