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Journal Article This pilot study combined narrative and quantitative data to explore the factors enabling and motivating singleAfrican American fathers to take full custody of one or more of their children. The size and selection of the sample does not allow for generalization, since most of the men were college-educated and financially stable. The findings indicated a distinction between enabling and motivating factors. Factors that appeared to enable full custody included employment and secure housing, as they were present for all of the fathers before they took custody. Adult age at the time of their…
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Journal Article Written for lawyers, judges, and child welfare professionals, this article considers the parental role of men who batter their spouses and partners. Parenting styles of batterers, their impact on the relationship between the mother and child, and the risk for children living in a violent home are discussed. Post-separation issues and litigation tactics used by batterers in child custody cases and other legal processes are identified, including threats made to the mother, failure to pay child support, manipulation of children, and income advantage. The article also profiles programs that work…
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Journal Article Approximately 1.7 million men were incarcerated during 1997, many of whom were fathers. The impact of paternal imprisonment is especially significant for African Americans who are disproportionately represented in the prison system. Although prevailing public opinion considers African American fathers to be uninvolved in the lives of their children, research has found that unmarried black men are more likely to spend time with their children and maintain attachments than unmarried men of other races. This article describes the barriers to paternal involvement for African American men in…
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Journal Article The importance of fathers in their children's upbringing is increasingly recognised in child and youth care practice. Yet professional interventions in families often focus on men as problems. The experiences of fathers in community settings are applied to a child and youth care context. Workers are challenged to consider the role fathers play in their children's lives and how CYC principles might provide a basis for including men in their thinking about their work with children, youth, and their families. (Author abstract)
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Journal Article Nonresidential parents are in a precarious position as by definition they are outside of the family residence after divorce and hence often perceived as outside of the family system. Semi-structured qualitative telephone interviews with 36 nonresidential parents living 50 or more miles from their children revealed social and institutional systems provide both assistance and barriers to parents following divorce.The challenge of continuing with their identity and role as a parent and family member was shown through their interactions with schools, religious institutions, and work places, as…
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Journal Article Previous longitudinal research has shown that parental monitoring is a powerful predictor of child outcomes. Children from families with low levels of monitoring are particularly at risk for antisocial behavior, difficulties in school, and related problems. We studied whether parental monitoring--as reported by mothers/stepmothers, fathers/stepfathers, interviewers, and teachers--differs across two-parent biological families, stepmother families, and stepfather families. Two-parent biological families were hypothesized to have higher levels of monitoring than stepparent families. Controlling…
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Journal Article Most policies that legislate father involvement with nonresident children treat men as if they have obligations to only one set of children. This paper describes the complexity of nonresident fathers' parenting circumstances and assesses whether and how parenting configurations are associated with the fathers' involvement with nonresident children. We find that nonresident fathers often have parenting obligations within and outside their current residences, and that the complexity of these obligations may result in less economic support to and visitation with nonresident children. Our results…
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Journal Article This article examines the contribution of economic circumstances, neighborhood context, and cultural factors to explaining race/ethnic differences in fathering in two-parent families. Data come from the 1997 Child Development Supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a nationally representative sample of children younger than age 13. Black children's fathers exhibit less warmth but monitor their children more, Hispanic fathers monitor their children less, and both minority groups exhibit more responsibility for child rearing than White fathers. Economic circumstances contribute to…
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Journal Article This study examines 40 fathers' narratives of arranging and planning for young children from Midwest and Southwest U.S. samples. Arranging and planning is seen as an aspect of the responsibility component of Lamb, Pleck, Charnov, and Levine's (1985) widely used three-part conceptualization of paternal involvement. Based on four themes observed, different types of paternal "responsibility identifies" are distinguished: 1) deferred-responsibility identity, 2) conjoint-responsibility identity, 3) mixed deferred/conjoint-responsibility identity, and 4) contextualized solo-responsibility identity…
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Journal Article This study explored the relationships between maternal gatekeeping, mothers' perceptions of father competence, mothers' attitudes about the father role, and amount of father involvement. The sample consisted of 30 nonresidential and 72 residential fathers. The results of path analysis revealed that residential status of the father had a direct link to mothers' gatekeeping behavior. Father competence was indirectly and directly linked to amount of father involvement with children. Gatekeeping mediated the relationship between father competence and involvement. Maternal gatekeeping was…
