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Journal Article African American paternal grandmothers serve an important role in influencing teenage fathers’ involvement with their children in that grandmothers’ support of their sons’ fathering practices is associated with increased father involvement. We used qualitative data from 53 paternal grandmothers to compare satisfaction with teenage sons’ fathering practices with their expectations for ideal fathering and identify reasons for inconsistencies between the two. Paternal grandmothers characterized three practices (providing financial support, being attentive, and performing day-to-day care) that…
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Journal Article Including fathers is the next frontier for infant mental health. In this article, the authors describe the inclusion of fathers as equal partners in Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), an evidence-based treatment for young children experiencing or at risk for mental health problems following exposure to violence and other adversities. The authors present two vignettes in which the father's participation in treatment was pivotal to successful outcomes for the child, and they illustrate some of the considerations, complexities, concerns and rewards of engaging and working with fathers. They…
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Journal Article Because fathers are clearly important to family well-being, including fathers in services for families seems a straightforward idea. How hard can it be? Yet across health, education, and welfare services it is still mothers who attend and engage on behalf of their infants and children/ The Family Action Centre, located on the east coast of Australia, has been addressing the need for father-inclusive practice examples. The story of their progress over the last decade includes the national context of changing gender expectations in families, funding strategies for father-inclusive practice, and…
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Journal Article Child support is a critical source of income, especially for the growing proportion of children born to unmarried mothers. Current social policy supports custodial parent employment (e.g., the Earned Income Tax Credit [EITC] and other work supports have largely taken the place of an entitlement to cash assistance for single mothers of young children). Given many single mothers' limited earnings potential, child support from noncustodial fathers is also important. This raises questions about the effects of child support on custodial mothers' labor supply, and whether policies that increase…
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Journal Article This paper analyses how men who were delinquent as adolescents experience themselves as fathers. The men who took part in a longitudinal study, all in their 40s, had severe adjustment problems as teenagers, and thus have a past that causes uncertainty about their parenting abilities in the present. The paper analyses the men’s affective investments in their ways of being fathers. Four analytical categories that address the men’s fathering experiences were identified as significant in the interviews. First unsettling relations and distance from their own children, which for many of the men…
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Journal Article There has been a recent drive for increased father involvement in the policy context. The Healthy Child Programme puts a strong emphasis on parenting support, specifically concentrating on supporting strong couple relationships, engaging with fathers, and supporting the transition to parenthood for first-time parents. Health visitors are ideally placed to support fathers as well as mothers, and should therefore have a strong understanding of the notion of fatherhood and the changing trends, in order to provide appropriate support and deliver effective services to fathers. This paper is the…
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Journal Article When their children are born, most unmarried parents have high expectations for the future, but they are particularly vulnerable to financial and relationship instability. Their children are disproportionately likely to experience negative health and wellbeing outcomes, in part because of low father involvement. We provide an overview of the findings in this area, drawing primarily from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study and two studies conducted by the Child and Family Research Partnership at The University of Texas at Austin. We conclude that father involvement is largely a…
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Journal Article The current study examined low-income, unmarried, nonresidential fathers’ engagement in co-parenting with the child's mother. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 71 fathers attending nine different fatherhood programs in five cities that serve low-income, primarily unmarried, nonresidential fathers. The results revealed that co-parenting in this sample of fathers is a multidimensional construct that includes both negative and positive components. Our results also point to specific behaviors or indicators that seem to be unique to this population of fathers and mothers and that…
