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Wealth inequality in the United States has increased tremendously over the last several decades and has potentially serious repercussions for disparities in child well-being. Household debt, a key component of wealth, may also play a role in such disparities. In this study, the authors explore the associations of parents’ unsecured debt with children’s socioemotional well-being. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, the authors compare the associations of mothers’ unsecured household debt, fathers’ unsecured household debt, and fathers’ child support arrears with…

Homeless, noncustodial fathers who struggle to maintain housing also struggle to occupy the role of father. This article presents a review and evaluation of a program for homeless noncustodial fathers that provides housing and encourages their occupancy to the role of parent. The program posits that engagement with children in the role of father cannot be achieved without stable housing and the men's establishment of paternity, sense of competence in parenting, social support, and therapeutic counseling. The findings identified through a focus group with homeless noncustodial fathers…

There are some father’s attributes that might influence his child’s Financial Literacy, among others Father-Child Age Gap, Father’s Income Level, Father’s Education Level, Father’s Job Type. Financial Education Course also becomes the independent variable as another factor that might influence the Financial Literacy. This research helps proving which factor is more significantly influencing the children’s Financial Literacy, between the father’s attributes and financial education course. A questionnaire survey is conducted to 204 respondents of university students in four universities in…

To address the problem of fathers’ absence from children's lives and the difficulty of paternal engagement, especially among lower income families, government agencies have given increasing attention to funding father involvement interventions. Few of these interventions have yielded promising results. Father involvement research that focuses on the couple/coparenting relationship offers a pathway to support fathers’ involvement while strengthening family relationships. Relevant research is reviewed, and an exemplar is provided in the Supporting Father Involvement intervention and its…

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…

In this paper, evidence from the Current Population Survey examining the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on parental status and gender inequalities in employment in the United States is presented. Findings show that the drop in the employment rate in post-outbreak months was largely driven by mass layoffs and not by workers quitting their jobs. Results from fixed-effects regression models show a strong fatherhood premium in the likelihood of being laid off for post-outbreak months compared to mothers, men without children, and women without children. Results also indicate that the “…

To help unmarried parents improve their coparenting relationship, this National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse (NRFC) spotlight on research provides a quick look at findings from a recent journal article, “Harder Being Without the Baby”: Fathers’ Coparenting Perspectives in Responsible Fatherhood Programming (Randles, 2020).

The research drew on interviews and focus groups conducted with 64 low-income fathers who participated in a federally funded responsible fatherhood program in California. The program is referred to as “DADS” in the article and in this spotlight.

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Drawing on theories of masculinities, this article analyzes how a U.S. government-funded responsible fatherhood program utilized a political discourse of hybrid masculinity to shape disadvantaged men’s ideas of successful fathering. Using data from three sources that uniquely traces how this discourse traveled from policy to program implementation—including analysis of the curriculum, in-depth interviews with 10 staff, and in-depth interviews and focus groups with 64 participating fathers—"hybrid fatherhood” is theorized. As a discourse of paternal involvement that incorporates…

Healthy Families New York (HFNY) is an evidence-based home visiting program for expectant and new parents in socioeconomically disadvantaged families at elevated risk for child maltreatment and other adverse outcomes. HFNY makes concerted efforts to promote a father-inclusive culture and increase engagement of fathers in all aspects of home visiting. This study describes fathers’ participation in HFNY and examines how fathers’ participation relates to program retention and to father–child co-residency and father involvement. Program data were extracted from HFNY’s data management system.…

Paternal involvement in the lives of their children has a positive influence on child and family outcomes, including breastfeeding rates, sleep training, nutrition and exercise, and developmental outcomes. Much of the research on paternal involvement, however, focuses on Caucasian fathers of middle and high socioeconomic status (SES). Within an urban, primarily Latino, lower SES community, we seek to involve and empower fathers through education on common child rearing topics.

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