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Journal Article The article focuses on the low-income fathers and the role of laws and legislations of the court regarding the absence of fathers in the low-income families. Even though low-income fathers are included in the general research on absent fathers, they may face various problems and challenges related to paternal engagement during and after court actions. Various barriers to the paternal engagement discussed include relational, structural and role barriers. (Author abstract)
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Journal Article Results of a qualitative study of low-income men's experience with the provider role are reported here. This study explored how 47 low-income men construct, express, and negotiate their identities as fathers and providers, and perceived barriers presented by the provider role. Overall, fathers consistently expressed the need to redefine the provider role in to include social and emotional components. Additionally, fathers articulated the many barriers and social pressures they experience as a result of the provider role, and how these barriers create an environment that is detrimental to…
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Journal Article This study examined the factors associated with higher levels of paternal involvement among nonresidential, Black fathers from low-income neighborhoods. Participants were 110 fathers of children up to the age of 10. Participants completed psychometrically sound measures of social support, religiosity, family-of-origin father closeness, coparenting relationship quality, psychological well-being, conviction history since the birth of the child, and paternal involvement. A simultaneous multiple regression indicated that better psychological well-being and coparenting relationship quality and…
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Journal Article Substantial declines in employment and earnings among disadvantaged men may be exacerbated by child support enforcement policies that are designed to help support families but may have the unintended consequence of discouraging fathers' employment. Disentangling causal effects is challenging because high child support debt may be both a cause and a consequence of unemployment and low child support order compliance. We used childbirth costs charged in unmarried mothers' Medicaid-covered childbirths, from Wisconsin administrative records, as an exogenous source of variation to identify the…
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Journal Article An historic number of women in the United States have children outside of marriage, and with more than one father, yet little research has examined the association between family process and women's childbearing decisions. Using a subsample of unmarried women from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (n = 2028), a study of primarily low-income unmarried parents, we conducted discrete-time survival analysis models to predict whether women had another child with the focal child's father (same-father birth) or with a new father (new-father birth). Father involvement was measured by…
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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-…
