The Role of the Father in Child Development, 5th Edition

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F I F T H

E D I T I O N

THE ROLE OF THE

FATHER IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT

Edited by

MICHAEL E. LAMB

The Role of the Father in Child Development Fifth Edition

The Role of the Father in Child Development Fifth Edition

Edited by

Michael E. Lamb University of Cambridge

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

1 This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Copyright # 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. Published simultaneously in Canada. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If legal, accounting, medical, psychological or any other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. In all instances where John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is aware of a claim, the product names appear in initial capital or all capital letters. Readers, however, should contact the appropriate companies for more complete information regarding trademarks and registration. For general information on our other products and services please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. For more information about Wiley products, visit our website at www.wiley.com. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: The role of the father in child development/edited by Michael E. Lamb. – 5th ed. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-470-40549-9 (cloth) 1. Fathers. 2. Father and child–United States. 3. Paternal deprivation–United States. 4. Single-parent families–United States. I. Lamb, Michael E., 1953HQ756.R64 2010 306.8740 2–dc22 2009041484

Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents Contributors Preface 1

How Do Fathers Influence Children’s Development? Let Me Count the Ways Michael E. Lamb

vii ix

1

2

Fatherhood and Masculinity Joseph H. Pleck

3

Paternal Involvement: Revised Conceptualization and Theoretical Linkages with Child Outcomes Joseph H. Pleck

58

The Development and Significance of Father–Child Relationships in Two-Parent Families Michael E. Lamb and Charlie Lewis

94

4

5

Fathers, Marriages, and Families: Revisiting and Updating the Framework for Fathering in Family Context E. Mark Cummings, Christine E. Merrilees, and Melissa Ward George

6

Fathers, Children, and Divorce Paul R. Amato and Cassandra Dorius

7

Custody and Parenting Time: Links to Family Relationships and Well-Being After Divorce William V. Fabricius, Sanford L. Braver, Priscila Diaz, and Clorinda E. Velez

8

Fathers in Fragile Families Marcia J. Carlson and Sara S. McLanahan

9

Stepfathers’ Lives: Exploring Social Context and Interpersonal Complexity William Marsiglio and Ramon Hinojosa

10

Fathers From Low-Income Backgrounds: Myths and Evidence Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda and Karen E. McFadden

27

154

177

201

241

270 296

v

vi CONTENTS

11

Gay Fathers Susan Golombok and Fiona Tasker

12

Fathering in Japan, China, and Korea: Changing Contexts, Images, and Roles David W. Shwalb, Jun Nakazawa, Toshiya Yamamoto, and Jung-Hwan Hyun

13

Fathers, Families, and Children’s Well-Becoming in Africa A. Bame Nsamenang

14

Fathers’ Roles in Hunter-Gatherer and Other Small-Scale Cultures Barry S. Hewlett and Shane J. Macfarlan

15

Fatherhood in the Context of Immigration Roni Strier and Dorit Roer-Strier

16

Including Fathers in Clinical Interventions for Children and Adolescents Vicky Phares, Ariz Rojas, Idia B. Thurston, and Jessica C. Hankinson

319

341

388

413 435

459

17

Fathers of Children With Developmental Disabilities Elaine E. MacDonald and Richard P. Hastings

486

18

Father Involvement and Public Policies Natasha J. Cabrera

517

19

Fathers, Work, and Family Policies in Europe Margaret O’Brien and Peter Moss

551

20

Changing Policies Regarding Separated Fathers in Australia Patrick Parkinson

578

Author Index

615

Subject Index

644

Contributors

Paul R. Amato Department of Sociology Pennsylvania State University Sanford L. Braver Department of Psychology Arizona State University Natasha J. Cabrera Department of Human Development University of Maryland Marcia J. Carlson Department of Sociology University of Wisconsin-Madison E. Mark Cummings Department of Psychology University of Notre Dame Priscila Diaz Department of Psychology Arizona State University Cassandra Dorius Department of Sociology Pennsylvania State University William V. Fabricius Department of Psychology Arizona State University Melissa George Department of Psychology University of Notre Dame

Susan Golombok Centre for Family Research Faculty of Politics, Psychology, Sociology, and International Studies University of Cambridge Jessica C. Hankinson Department of Psychology University of South Florida Richard P. Hastings Department of Psychology Bangor University Barry S. Hewlett Department of Anthropology Washington State University Ramon Hinojosa HSR&D/RR&D Rehabilitation Outcomes Research Center REAP, North Florida/South Georgia Veterans Health System, Gainesville, FL Jung-Hwan Hyun Department of Child Care and Education Seoul Theological University Michael E. Lamb Department of Social and Developmental Psychology University of Cambridge vii

viii CONTRIBUTORS

Charlie Lewis Department of Psychology University of Lancaster

Vicky Phares Department of Psychology University of South Florida

Elaine E. MacDonald Saint Michael’s House Dublin

Joseph H. Pleck Department of Human Development and Family Study University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

Shane J. Macfarlan Department of Anthropology Washington State University William Marsiglio Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law University of Florida Karen E. McFadden Department of Applied Psychology New York University Sara S. McLanahan Department of Sociology Princeton University Christina Merrilees Department of Psychology University of Notre Dame Peter Moss Thomas Coram Research Unit Institute of Education Jun Nakazawa Faculty of Education Chiba University A. Bame Nsamenang Human Development Resource Centre University of Yaounde at Bamenda Margaret O’Brien Centre for Research on the Child and Family University of East Anglia Patrick Parkinson Sydney School of Law University of Sydney

Dorit Roer-Strier School of Social Work Hebrew University of Jerusalem Ariz Rojas Department of Psychology University of South Florida Clorinda Schenck Department of Psychology Arizona State University David W. Shwalb Department of Psychology Southern Utah University Roni Strier School of Social Work University of Haifa Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda Department of Applied Psychology New York University Fiona Tasker Department of Education Birkbeck College, London Idia B. Thurston Department of Psychology University of South Florida Toshiya Yamamoto Department of Human Behavior and Environment Sciences Waseda University

Preface of The Role of the Father in Child Development appears nearly 35 years after the first edition was published in 1976. The intervening decades have been marked by extensive research, thoughtful scholarly reconceptualization of fatherhood and father-child relationships, and widespread public debate about the meaning and importance of fatherhood in drastically changing social landscapes. As a result, this edition bears little resemblance to the four earlier volumes with the same name. Instead, it contains a series of integrative summaries and reviews that represent the vibrant and productive scholarship that has done so much to illuminate our understanding of fatherhood and the many ways in which fathers can influence their children’s development. One feature of the contemporary scholarly landscape, in comparison with that which existed in 1976, is close attention to the broader social context. Whereas contributors to the first edition focused narrowly on biological fathers and father-child dyads, the contributors to later editions have increasingly placed fathers in the context of family systems and subsystems, in which the relationships with and attitudes of mothers and siblings also play crucial roles. By the third edition, there was also widespread recognition of the variety of roles that fathers played in their families, with the relative salience of these roles varying across time and (sub)cultural context. Meanwhile, changing patterns of partnering and child-bearing have creating a new landscape of relationships and paternal roles, with scholars and researchers broadening their focus from biological fathers in ‘intact’ two-parent families to include step-fathers (married and unmarried), resident and non-resident bio-fathers, adoptive fathers, and gay fathers. Other features of this latest edition are concerns with cultural variability alongside recognition that the middle-class North American fathers who initially attracted the attention of social scientists and commentators are a small minority, and increased attention to social policy issues in a variety of countries. Strikingly, the authors hail from five continents, with only South America unrepresented. Also noteworthy are the disciplinary backgrounds of the contributors: Whereas the first volume was written entirely by psychologists, this edition includes contributions written by psychologists, sociologists, educationalists, social policy specialists, anthropologists, social workers, and legal scholars.

T

HIS FIFTH EDITION

ix

x PREFACE

All of the chapters in this anthology were written especially for the volume, whose size and scope attest to the amount social scientists have learned about father-child relationships, especially in the last few decades. Each of the contributors has made seminal contributions to our collective understanding of the specific topic about which she or he has written, and together they have painted a rich and highly nuanced account of fatherhood and paternal influences, beginning with two chapters that provide a broad overview and examine the seldom-examined links between the concepts of masculinity and fatherhood. Several later chapters focus on the normative processes whereby paternal behavior and family dynamics shape children’s development, while others examine the effect of variations in paternal involvement in both intact and divorced families or focus on the special social and psychological circumstances that shape relationships, family climate, and child development. The unique challenges, opportunities, and circumstances faced by step-fathers, divorced and divorcing fathers, non-resident fathers, gay fathers, and fathers whose children have special psychological or psycho-educational needs are also examined. A further group of contributors examine cultural variations in perceptions of fatherhood and the ways in which fathers perform their roles, as well as the policies increasingly adopted by developed countries to foster and facilitate the constructive engagement of men in their children’s lives, when they live with them and when they do not. The resulting collection of chapters constitutes a truly comprehensive and up-to-date summary of contemporary scholarship concerning fathers, fatherhood, father-child relationships, and paternal influences around the world. The collection will be of special interest to clinical, developmental, and social psychologists and their students, as well as policy makers, psychiatrists, social workers, family lawyers, and other mental health professionals. In the face of an exploding scholarly literature, this unprecedented collection provides a timely, unique, and definitive integration of recent scholarship and research. It will surely shape conceptions of and research on fatherhood for years to come. Michael E. Lamb Cambridge January 2010

CHAPTER 1

How Do Fathers Influence Children’s Development? Let Me Count the Ways MICHAEL E. LAMB

I

claimed that psychology became a science in the second half of the 19th century, led in part by continental (mostly German) research on perception, psychophysics, and memory, Galton’s attempts to measure intelligence and establish the importance of heredity, and William James’s efforts to create a coherent theoretical edifice, which might guide the derivation of empirical answers to age-old philosophical questions. For those who study the development of personality and social behavior, however, the key figure was Freud, who pioneered the close study of pathology as a medium through which to elucidate psychological functioning and spawned a plethora of admirers and critics who constructed much of the popular and scientific psychology we encounter in books such as this. For example, we owe Freud credit for the proposition, now widely viewed as an article of faith, that childhood experiences shape subsequent personality and behavior, although Freud himself only shifted the focus from late childhood and early adolescence to infancy very late in his life. Similarly, it was Freud who placed special emphasis on the formative importance of parent–child relationships, although the specific mechanisms he considered have since been widely discredited. Furthermore, although Freud (and the cohort of psychoanalysts and psychodynamic theorists he inspired) published prodigiously from just before the turn of the nineteenth century to the time of the Second World War, the scientific study of social, personality, and developmental psychology really took off in the postwar period, initially dominated by social learning theorists who rejected Freud’s theoretical architecture even as they embraced many of the related beliefs and concepts, including those regarding the importance of parent–child relationships, although neo-analysts played a central role in the construction of attachment theory, which dominates parts of developmental psychology to this day. T IS OFTEN

1

2 HOW DO FATHERS INFLUENCE CHILDREN’S DEVELOPMENT? LET ME COUNT

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Developmental psychology changed from a discipline dominated by theoretical analysis to one dominated by empirical research, much of it initially conducted in North America, in the years following World War II. This is often viewed as a politically conservative era, dominated by policies designed to put into the past the rigors and horrors of both the Depression and the two world wars by creating a new age of affluence and opportunity. In practice, this involved championing the ‘‘traditional’’ nuclear family, dominated by a breadwinning father and a home-making, child-rearing mother, often housed some distance from either parent’s biological or metaphorical roots. Not surprisingly, psychologists embraced these values of the society in which they were reared and lived, so their initial empirical forays into research on children’s early development were dominated by mothers—as informants, as the cofocus of observations, and as the ‘‘socializing’’ figures about whom they theorized. Where fathers did enter the picture, their roles were often represented through the eyes and voices of their partners, or they were judged against the models of family function developed by family theorists who shared similar societal assumptions. In such a context, it was easy (if exaggeratedly provocative) to entitle my first essay on the subject: ‘‘Fathers: Forgotten Contributions to Child Development’’ (Lamb, 1975). Three and a half decades later, the scholarly landscape has changed dramatically. Thousands of professional articles have explored the ways in which fathers affect their children’s development, and the contributors to this anthology provide a thorough and readable summary of our contemporary understanding. My goal in this introductory chapter is to sketch some of the overarching themes that dominate the book.

FATHERS AND THEIR ROLES WHAT DO FATHERS DO? It seems logical to begin this anthology by examining definitions and descriptions of fathering. What roles do fathers play in family life today? What taxonomies might effectively characterize fathers’ activities with and commitments to their children? What do fathers do when they are available to their children, and why they do what they do? In this regard, a fuller conceptualization of fathers’ roles and the origins of their ‘‘prescribed’’ responsibilities is warranted. As several contributors illustrate in this volume, historical, cultural, and familial ideologies inform the roles fathers play and undoubtedly shape the absolute amounts of time fathers spend with their children, the activities they share with them, and perhaps even the quality of the relationships between fathers and children. In earlier times, fathers were viewed as all-powerful patriarchs who wielded enormous power over their families (Knibiehler, 1995) and vestiges of these notions continued until quite recently. According to Pleck and Pleck (1997), for example, Euro-American fathers were viewed primarily as moral teachers during the colonial phase of American history. By popular consensus, fathers were primarily responsible for ensuring that their children grew

Fathers and their Roles 3

up with an appropriate sense of values, acquired primarily from a study of the Bible and other scriptural texts. Around the time of industrialization, however, the primary focus shifted from moral leadership to breadwinning and economic support of the family. Then, perhaps as a result of the Great Depression, which revealed many hapless men as poor providers, social scientists came to portray fathers as sex role models, with commentators expressing concern about the failures of many men to model masculine behavior for their sons. Throughout the 20th century, fathers were urged to be involved (Griswold, 1993), and following feminist and scholarly critiques of masculinity and femininity, there emerged in the late 1970s a concern with the ‘‘new nurturant father,’’ who played an active role in his children’s lives. As Elizabeth Pleck (2004) explained, however, popular and scholarly discussions of fatherhood have long dwelled on the importance of involvement—often defined by successful breadwinning—and the fear of inadequate fathering. In contrast to earlier conceptualizations of fathers’ roles, often focused quite narrowly on breadwinning, and later discussions focused narrowly on ‘‘involvement,’’ researchers, theorists, and practitioners no longer cling to the simplistic belief that fathers ideally fill a unidimensional and universal role in their families and in their children’s eyes. Instead, they recognize that fathers play a number of significant roles—companions, care providers, spouses, protectors, models, moral guides, teachers, and breadwinners—whose relative importance varies across historical epochs and subcultural groups. Only by considering fathers’ performance of these various roles, and by taking into account their relative importance in the socioecological contexts concerned, can fathers’ impact on child development be evaluated. Unfortunately, theorists and social commentators have tended in the past to emphasize only one paternal role at a time, with different functions attracting most attention during different historical epochs. Focusing on fathers’ behavior when with their children, much of the observational and survey data collected by developmental and social psychologists in the 1970s and early 1980s (e.g., Lamb, 1977) suggested that mothers and fathers engage in rather different types of interaction with their children, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries like the United States (see Chapter 4). These studies have consistently shown that fathers tend to ‘‘specialize’’ in play, whereas mothers specialize in caretaking and nurturance, especially (but not only) in relation to infants. Although such findings seem quite reliable, the results have often been misrepresented, and have led to overly stereotypical and unidimensional portrayals of fathers as play partners. Compared with mothers, fathers indeed spend a greater proportion of their time with children engaged in play, but they still spend most of their time with children engaged in other activities. In absolute terms, most studies suggest that mothers play with their children more than fathers do, but because play (particularly boisterous, stimulating, emotionally arousing play) is more prominent in father–child interaction, paternal playfulness and relative novelty may help make fathers especially salient to their children (Lamb, Frodi, Hwang, & Frodi, 1983). This enhanced salience may increase fathers’ influence more than would be expected based on the amount of time they spend with their children.

4 HOW DO FATHERS INFLUENCE CHILDREN’S DEVELOPMENT? LET ME COUNT

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However, comparative studies, in which fathers’ interactions are contrasted with those of mothers, typically focus on mean level differences in parenting activities, and often obscure other common patterns of parent– child interaction. By highlighting the predominant qualities of fathers and mothers, they may promote narrow views of fathers’ and mothers’ roles, thereby failing to capture similarities in the meaning or degree of influence parents exert on their children. In fact, both fathers and mothers encourage exploration during play with their infants (Power, 1985), alter their speech patterns to infants by speaking slowly and using shorter phrases (DaltonHummel, 1982; Golinkoff & Ames, 1979; Rondal, 1980), respond to their infants’ cries and smiles (Berman, 1980), even when otherwise engaged (Notaro & Volling, 1999), and adjust their behaviors to accommodate developmental changes in their infants’ competencies (Belsky, Gilstrap, & Rovine, 1984; Crawley & Sherrod, 1984). Sensitive fathering—responding to, talking to, scaffolding, teaching and encouraging their children to learn—predicts children’s socio-emotional, cognitive, and linguistic achievements just as sensitive mothering does (e.g., Conner, Knight, & Cross, 1997; Easterbrooks & Goldberg, 1984; Shannon, Tamis-LeMonda, London, & Cabrera, 2002; Van IJzendoorn & De Wolff, 1997). Such findings suggest that fathers can and do engage with their children in many different ways, not only as playmates, and that they are more than role models for their children. The broader, more inclusive conceptualization of fathers’ roles recognizes the appreciable variation that exists both within and between fathers. Most individual fathers assume numerous roles in their families (including breadwinner, playmate, guide, caregiver), although fathers differ with respect to the relative importance of these diverse roles. FATHERS’ INFLUENCES

ON

CHILDREN

A second line of research on fatherhood examines fathers’ effects on children and the pathways through which those effects are exerted. Which aspects of child development are influenced most, at what ages, under which circumstances, and why? Three types of studies have been designed to explore this topic: correlational studies, studies of father absence and divorce, and studies of involved fathers. Here, we review these research methods and then examine direct and indirect effects of fathering on child development. Correlational Studies Many of the earliest studies of paternal influences were designed to identify correlations between paternal and filial characteristics. The vast majority of these studies were conducted between 1940 and 1970, when the father’s role as a sex role model was considered most important; as a result, most studies were focused on sex role development, especially in sons (for reviews, see Biller, 1971; Lamb, 1981). The design of these early studies was quite simple: Researchers assessed masculinity in fathers and in sons, and then determined how strongly the two sets of scores were correlated. To the great surprise of most researchers, however, there was no consistent correlation between the two constructs, a puzzling finding because it seemed to violate a guiding assumption about the crucial

Fathers and their Roles 5

function served by fathers. If fathers did not make their boys into men, what role did they really serve? It took a while for psychologists to realize that they had failed to ask: Why should boys want to be like their fathers? Presumably, they should only want to resemble fathers whom they liked and respected, and with whom their relationships were warm and positive. In fact, the quality of father–son relationships proved to be a crucial mediating variable: When the relationships between masculine fathers and their sons were good, the boys were indeed more masculine. Subsequent research even suggested that the quality of the father–child relationships was more important than the masculinity of the father (Mussen & Rutherford, 1963; Payne & Mussen, 1956; Sears, Maccoby, & Levin, 1957). Boys seemed to conform to the sex role standards of their communities when their relationships with their fathers were warm, regardless of how ‘‘masculine’’ the fathers were, even though warmth and intimacy have traditionally been seen as feminine characteristics. A similar conclusion was suggested by research on other aspects of psychosocial adjustment and on achievement: Paternal warmth or closeness appeared beneficial, whereas paternal masculinity appeared to be irrelevant (Biller, 1971; Lamb, 1981; Radin, 1981). By the 1980s, it had thus become clear that fathers and mothers influence children in similar ways by virtue of nurturant personal and social characteristics (see Chapter 4). Research summarized in this volume by Golombok and Tasker (Chapter 11) goes even further, indicating that the sexual orientation of homosexual fathers does not increase the likelihood that their children will be homosexual, effeminate, or maladjusted. As far as influences on children are concerned, in sum, very little about the gender of the parent seems to be distinctly important. The characteristics of the father as a parent rather than the characteristics of the father as a male adult appear to be most significant, although some scholars and social commentators continued to underscore the crucial importance of distinctive maternal and paternal roles into the late 1990s (Biller, 1994; Blankenhorn, 1995; Popenoe, 1996). Studies of Father Absence and Divorce While the whole body of research that is here termed correlational was burgeoning in the 1950s, another body of literature comprising studies in which researchers tried to understand the father’s role by examining families without fathers was developing in parallel. The assumption was that, by comparing the behavior and personalities of children raised with and without fathers, one could—essentially by a process of subtraction—estimate what sort of influences fathers typically had on their children’s development. The early father-absence and correlational studies were conducted in roughly the same era; not surprisingly, therefore, the outcomes studied were very similar and the implications were similar and consistent with popular assumptions as well (see Adams, Milner, & Schrepf, 1984; Biller, 1974, 1993; Blankenhorn, 1995; Herzog & Sudia, 1973; Whitehead, 1993, for reviews): Children—especially boys—growing up without fathers seemed to have ‘‘problems’’ in the areas of sex role and gender-identity development, school performance, psychosocial adjustment, and perhaps in the control of aggression.

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Two related issues arising from the father-absence research must be addressed when evaluating these conclusions. First, one must critically examine the concept of father absence when applied to children whose parents have separated or divorced: Fathers cannot be assumed to be psychologically and emotionally absent just because the parents are separated/divorced and the men no longer live with their partners. Second, even when researchers accept the conclusion that there are differences between children raised in families with the father ‘‘present’’ and those raised in families with the father ‘‘absent,’’ they must ask why those differences exist and how they should be interpreted. Second, it is important to remember that the existence of differences between groups of children growing up with and without fathers does not mean that every child growing up without a coresident father has problems in the aspect of development concerned, or that all children whose fathers live with them develop appropriately. One cannot reach conclusions about the status of individuals from data concerning groups simply because there is great within-group heterogeneity. This again forces us to ask why such heterogeneity exists among children in fatherabsent families: Why do some children appear to suffer deleterious consequences as a result of father absence, while others do not? More broadly, the question is: What accounts for group differences between children in fatherabsent and father-present contexts, and what accounts for the impressive within-group variance? Researchers and theorists first sought to explain the effects of father absence on boys by noting the absence of male sex role models in singleparent families. In the absence of a resident male parental model, it was assumed that boys could not acquire strong masculine identities or sex roles and would not have models of achievement with which to identify (Biller, 1974, 1993). The validity of this interpretation is weakened by the fact that many boys without coresident fathers seem to develop quite normally so far as sex role development and achievement are concerned. Clearly, some factors other than the absence of a male sex role model may be at least as important as (if not more important than) the availability of a sex role model in mediating the effects of father absence on child development. What might these factors be? In a conceptual and empirical extension of research on the effects of father absence, many researchers initiated studies in the early 1980s designed to explore more carefully the ways in which divorce might influence children’s development. The results of these studies have underscored the many ways in which the absence of coresident fathers influences children (Hetherington & Kelly, 2002). First, there are the cancerous effects of predivorce and postdivorce marital conflict (Kelly, 2000; see also Chapter 5). Because most single-parent families are produced by divorce, and since divorce is often preceded and accompanied by periods of overt and covert spousal hostility, parental conflict may play a major role in explaining the problems of ‘‘fatherless’’ children. Second, there is the absence of a coparent—someone to help out with child care, perhaps participate in tough decisions, and to take over when one parent needs a break from the incessant demands of child care. Following divorce, children consistently do better when they

Fathers and their Roles 7

are able to maintain meaningful relationships with both parents unless the levels of interparental conflict remain unusually high (see Chapter 7; Kelly, 2000; Lamb & Kelly, 2009). Children of divorce are often affected by the perceived, and often actual, abandonment by one of their parents and the reduced availability of the other (see chapter 7; Lamb, 1999; Lamb & Kelly, 2009; Thompson & Laible, 1999). Third, there is the economic stress that frequently accompanies single motherhood (Pearson & Thoennes, 1990). The median and mean incomes of single women who head households are significantly lower than in any other group of families, and the disparity is even larger when one considers per-capita income rather than household income (Glick & Norton, 1979; Horn, 1995; O’Hare, 1995). Fourth, the tremendous economic stress experienced by single mothers is accompanied by emotional stress occasioned by a degree of social isolation and continuing (though diminished) social disapproval of single or divorced mothers and children (Hetherington, Cox, & Cox, 1982). Amato and Dorius (Chapter 6) provide a succinct and exceedingly clear summary of the most recent survey research on the effects of divorce on children, Carlson and McLanahan (Chapter 8) examine the characteristics and dynamics of fragile families, and Marsiglio and Hinojosa (Chapter 9) explore the little studied role of stepfathers. In sum, the evidence suggests that paternal nonresidence (previously known as ‘‘father absence’’) may be harmful not because a sex role model is absent, but because many paternal roles—economic, social, emotional—are inadequately filled in these families. Once again, the evidence suggests that recognition of the father’s multiple roles as breadwinner, parent, and emotional partner is essential for understanding how fathers influence children’s development. Similarly, the evidence suggests that the absence of a male sex role model is not important when explaining the effects of fatherhood or father absence (see Chapter 2). Research on Involved Fathers. In the 1980s, several researchers sought to identify the effects of increased paternal involvement on children. In most of these studies, researchers compared the status of children in ‘‘traditional’’ families with that of children whose fathers either shared or took primary responsibility for child care (Lamb, Pleck, & Levine, 1985; Radin, 1994; Russell, 1983, 1986); other researchers examined the correlates of varying levels of paternal engagement (Koestner, Franz, & Weinberger, 1990; Mosely & Thomson, 1995). The results were remarkable consistent. Children with highly involved fathers were characterized by increased cognitive competence, increased empathy, fewer sex-stereotyped beliefs, and a more internal locus of control (Pleck, 1997; Pruett, 1983, 1985; Radin, 1982, 1994). Again, the question that has to be asked is ‘‘Why do these sorts of differences occur?’’ Three factors are probably important in this regard (Lamb, Pleck, Charnov, & Levine, 1985). First, when parents assume less sex-stereotyped roles, their children have less sex-stereotyped attitudes themselves about male and female roles. Second, particularly in the area of cognitive competence, these children may benefit from having two highly involved parents rather than just one. This assures them the diversity of stimulation that comes from

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interacting with people who have different behavioral styles. A third important issue has to do with the family context in which these children are raised. In each of the studies cited above, a high degree of paternal involvement made it possible for both parents to do what was rewarding and fulfilling for them. It allowed fathers to satisfy their desires for closeness to their children while permitting mothers to have adequately close relationships with their children and to pursue career goals. In other words, increased paternal involvement may have made both parents feel much more fulfilled. As a result, the relationships were probably much warmer and richer than might otherwise have been the case. One can speculate that the benefits obtained by children with highly involved fathers is largely attributable to the fact that high levels of paternal involvement created family contexts in which the parents felt good about their marriages and the child care arrangements they had been able to work out. In all of these studies, fathers were highly involved in child care because both they and their partners desired this. The effects on children appeared quite different when fathers were forced to become involved, perhaps by being laid off from work while their partners were able to obtain or maintain their employment (Johnson & Abramovitch, 1985). In such circumstances, wives may have resented the fact that their husbands could not support their families while the husbands resented having to do ‘‘women’s work’’ instead of providing for their families financially (Johnson & Abramovitch, 1988; Russell, 1983). Not surprisingly, this constellation of factors appeared to have adverse effects on children, just as the same degree of involvement had positive effects when the circumstances were more benign. Evidently, the extent of paternal involvement may have been much less significant (so far as the effects on children are concerned) than the reasons for high involvement and the parents’ evaluations thereof. Direct and Indirect Effects. Research on paternal influences has also moved beyond correlational studies and studies of ‘‘absence’’/divorce or enhanced involvement to explore the pathways through which fathers ultimately affect their children. Fathers affect their children directly and indirectly, and both pathways are key to a comprehensive understanding of fatherhood, as Lamb and Lewis elaborate in Chapter 4. Fathers influence their children directly through their behavior and the attitudes and messages they convey. The direct effects of fathering are especially salient when fathers’ and mothers’ interactions differ. Because fathers typically spend less time with their children, for example, many are less familiar with their children’s language competencies and thus more likely to speak in ways that ‘‘challenge’’ children’s linguistic and pragmatic abilities. Specifically, when talking to their young children, fathers use more directives, requests for clarification, wh- questions, references to past events, imperatives and contentless utterances than mothers do (e.g., Leaper, Anderson, & Sanders, 1998; Tomasello, Conti-Ramsden, & Ewert, 1990). Because these more complex forms of speech place greater linguistic demands on children, fathers are thought to serve as a ‘‘bridge to the outside world’’ (Ely, Berko-Gleason, Narasimhan, & McCabe, 1995; Mannle & Tomasello, 1987). Thus, fathers’

Fathers and their Roles 9

unique communicative styles directly teach children about the linguistic and communicative demands of social exchanges. Much of the research described in this book is concerned with the ways in which children are directly affected by caretaking, teaching, play, maltreatment, and neglect by their fathers, even though fathers obviously play multiple roles and affect their children’s development in many ways other than via direct interaction as well. Specifically, fathers affect children indirectly, through their effects on other people and social circumstances that bear on children’s development. For example, economic support of the family constitutes an indirect but important way in which fathers contribute to the rearing and emotional health of their children. Furthermore, economic support (or the lack of it) is one of the ways in which noncustodial fathers influence their children’s development (see Chapters 6 and 7). A second important indirect source of influence stems from the father’s role as a source of emotional and instrumental support to the other people, principally mothers, involved in the direct care of children (see Chapter 4). The father’s function as a source of emotional support tends to enhance the quality of mother–child relationships and thus facilitate positive adjustment by children. Conversely, when fathers are unsupportive and marital conflict is high, children may suffer (Cummings, Goeke-Morey, & Raymond, 2004; see also Chapter 5). Fathers can also affect the quality of family dynamics by being involved in child-related housework, thus easing the mothers’ workloads (Pleck, 1983, 1984). Paternal involvement in housework exemplifies another manner in which fathers influence children—by providing models of behavior that children can either emulate or eschew. Many of the behavior patterns acquired in childhood are the result of lessons derived from observing others and adjusting one’s behavior accordingly. Recognition that indirect patterns of influence are pervasive and perhaps more important than direct learning represents another of the major conceptual revolutions marking the 30 years of scholarship since the first edition of this anthology was prepared. Whereas some contributors to the first edition provocatively proposed that some paternal influences might be mediated indirectly (the chapter by Lewis and Weinraub, 1976, was especially noteworthy in this regard), the extraordinary importance of indirect influences is now recognized universally. Indeed, almost every contributor to this volume underscores the extent to which fathers and children must be viewed as parts of complex social systems (notably, the family) in which each person affects each other reciprocally, directly, and indirectly. From this vantage point, of course, appraising the father’s impact is much more difficult, both conceptually and statistically, but the newer perspectives promise much greater validity and, ultimately, generalization. Also of importance in the quest for understanding direct and indirect pathways is a focus on how different aspects of father involvement codetermine developmental outcomes in children. As yet, researchers have done a better job of exploring single paths of influence than at modeling interrelations among multiple aspects of fathering and child outcomes (TamisLeMonda & Cabrera, 2002). For example, Graham and Sellers (2002) attempted to disentangle the beneficial effects of child support payments

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and other potential influences on children’s academic achievement. They noted that child support payments predicted child outcomes better than other sources of income did, but did not account for all of the variance, suggesting that the payment of child support does not simply have a direct impact on child development. Rather, fathers who pay child support may be more committed or dedicated to their children, may have better relationships with their children’s mothers, may visit their children more often, or may have the capacity and therefore the tendency to support them. Only by exploring these potential pathways will researchers be able to explain better when, why, and how fathers matter to their children and families. THE ESSENCE

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FATHERHOOD?

Most chapters in this book focus on the ways in which fathers affect child development, and on the ways in which their influences can be optimized. In Chapter 2, however, Pleck probes the ‘‘essential’’ features of fatherhood, particularly the assumption that, because fathers are by definition male parents, their masculinity must be of defining significance. Many scholars have emphasized paternal masculinity in their analyses of fatherhood and father–child relationships (Biller, 1971, 1994; Blankenhorn, 1995; Popenoe, 1996; but see Silverstein & Auerbach, 1999), but Pleck shows convincingly not only that the identification of fatherhood with masculinity is ill-convinced, but also that the two constructs are effectively orthogonal. As mentioned several times in the present chapter, there is no evidence that children ‘‘do better’’ psychologically when they have more masculine fathers, or that gender differences between mothers and fathers are of great psychological significance to children. As Pleck makes clear, the continuing focus on masculine features of fatherhood in both scholarly and popular articles and books says more about the need to create unique role for men in the family than about well-documented empirical research. Of course, unlinking the concepts of masculinity and good fathering does not in any way diminish the fact that fathers can have major influence, for good or ill, on their children’s development; the other chapters in this book powerfully document the extent to which fathers affect their children’s development in numerous contexts and cultures. In some contexts, paternal masculinity is important because it is so defined by the individuals and communities involved, but as Pleck concludes, we should not decide from this that fathers’ masculinity is necessarily an important factor of what makes them significant to their partners and children. SUMMARY Viewed together, the research and scholarship summarized here have significantly advanced our understanding of paternal influences. First, fathers and mothers seem to influence their children in similar rather than dissimilar ways. Contrary to the expectations of many developmental psychologists, the differences between mothers and fathers appear much less important than the similarities. Not only does the description of

Fathers and Social Policy 11

mothering largely resemble the description of fathering (particularly the version of ‘‘involved’’ fathering that has become increasingly prominent in the late 20th century), but the mechanisms and means by which fathers influence their children appear very similar to those that mediate maternal influences on children. Stated differently, students of socialization have consistently found that parental warmth, nurturance, and closeness are associated with positive child outcomes regardless of whether the parent involved is a mother or a father. The important dimensions of parental influence are those that have to do with parental characteristics rather than gender-related characteristics. Second, as research has unfolded, psychologists have been forced to conclude that the characteristics of individual fathers—such as their masculinity, intellect, and even their warmth—are much less important, formatively speaking, than are the characteristics of the relationships that they have established with their children. Children who have secure, supportive, reciprocal, and sensitive relationships with their parents are much more likely to be well adjusted psychologically than individuals whose relationships with their parents—mothers or fathers—are less satisfying. Likewise, the amount of time that fathers and children spend together is probably much less important than what they do with that time and how fathers, mothers, children, and other important people in their lives perceive and evaluate the father–child relationship. Third, it is clear that fathers play multifaceted roles in their children’s lives and thus influence their children in diverse ways that may vary from family to family, depending on the aspirations and expectations of individual parents, their communities, and their cultures (see Chapters 12 through 15). When studying fathers’ influences on children, therefore, it is important not to focus narrowly on any single facet of paternal behavior or on narrow conceptions of fathering or fatherhood. Finally, we have come to see that the family context is often at least as important as the individual relationships within the family. Fathers must thus be viewed in the broader familial context; positive paternal influences are more likely to occur not only when there are supportive father–child relationships, but when the fathers’ relationships with their partners, ex-partners, and presumably other children, establish and maintain positive familial contexts. FATHERS AND SOCIAL POLICY For more than two decades, scholars have bemoaned the extent to which policy makers have ignored fathers when developing policies and programs designed to enhance children’s opportunities (Lamb, 1986). While social (especially family) policies remain matricentric in most countries, we can observe significant changes in the amount of attention paid to fathers, and these changes have profoundly affected the contents of this book. By way of illustration, note that policy making was almost unmentioned in the first edition of this anthology (Lamb, 1976), which likely attracted the attention of few policy makers. By contrast, applied and policy issues are discussed in

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almost all of the chapters that follow, and are the focus of several (Chapters 18 through 20). In part, the increased attention paid to fathers by policy makers can be attributed to growing awareness of the ways in which fathers directly and indirectly affect children’s development. Indeed, policy makers have probably been more attentive to the importance of indirect effects than most developmental and clinical psychologists. Specifically, they have recognized that single mothers often live in economically precarious circumstances, with many at least partially dependent on government programs. In that context, many policy makers have sought to emphasize fathers’ breadwinning responsibilities in the hopes of shifting economic costs from the state to individual men. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many nonresident fathers proved elusive, impecunious, or evasive of their responsibilities, leading policy makers to better recognition of the fact that fathers were more likely to embrace their breadwinning responsibilities if they were more psychologically committed to their children. Coupled with changing popular emphasis on the psychological benefit of greater paternal nurturance, the importance of harmonious partner relationships, and the benefits of warm father–child relationships, promote closer relationships between fathers and their children. These policies and programs are quite diverse: They range from opportunities for fathers to be involved in prenatal courses and present at childbirth to the provision of parental and paternal leave schemes that allow (even promote) fathers’ involvement in the direct care of their children, and other legal practices that seek to keep fathers psychologically and financially involved in their children’s lives even when they (no longer) live together. Interestingly, similar policies have been embraced by governments of quite different political persuasions, although the more costly schemes, especially those that involve income replacement while fathers are caring for young or sick children, have been embraced only by countries (especially in Europe) with strong social democratic traditions; the Nordic countries have blazed a trail in this respect for more than three decades (Lamb & Levine, 1983; see also Chapter 19). By contrast, more conservative countries such as the United States, Japan, Korea, and China have yet to develop apparently costly programs, although the grassroots pressure may be building in some of these countries, where the age-old emphasis on the distinction between family and societal responsibilities is beginning to blur a little (see Chapters 12 and 18). In this regard, recent policy changes in Australia are significant because they were promoted by a politically conservative government on the grounds both that existing practices were manifestly unfair to fathers, mothers, and children and that new programs would ultimately pay for themselves by reducing the need for economic support of children whose fathers had financially abandoned them and for special services for children who had been psychosocially and educationally damaged by their adverse family experiences (see chapter 20). To date, no other countries have been persuaded by Australia’s experiences, but it may still be too early to tell. Apart from government programs and policies, many of the contributors describe changing practices in various sectors, all responsive to an increasing

Outline of the Book 13

emphasis on the significance of father–child relationships. For example, Cummings and his colleagues (Chapter 5) documented the harmful effects of marital conflict on children’s psychosocial adjustment and emphasize, as do Phares and her colleagues (Chapter 16), the need to provide adequate clinical support to both couples and children, mindful of the evidence that such services are more likely to be beneficial when fathers (as well as mothers) are fully engaged. Indeed, the need to include fathers appropriately is a constant refrain, whether talking about marital distress (Chapter 5); marital dissolution (Chapters 7 and 20) and the establishment of new child-rearing households (Chapter 9); fragile and low-income families (Chapters 8 and 10); immigrant fathers and families (Chapter 15); psychological pathology or distress (Chapter 16); the stresses of raising children who have mental, educational, or physical disabilities (Chapter 17); or government policy more generally (Chapters 18 and 19). Even in Africa, where the ravages of disease and poverty are still prominent, governments increasingly recognize the need to reinforce traditional beliefs in the social and economic roles played by fathers (Chapter 13). Of course, hunter-gatherers and members of other small-scale cultures do not have government policies, and the roles played by fathers vary widely (Chapter 14). Noting that father absence appears to pose a significant risk to children in industrialized countries but not to those in small-scale cultures, Hewlett and MacFarlane wonder whether this can be attributed to the declining importance of kith-and-kin relationships in industrial countries. If true, this would suggest that policy makers will need to continue placing emphasis on father-friendly and father-focused policies in the years ahead. OUTLINE OF THE BOOK In Chapter 2, Joseph Pleck carefully analyzes the widespread belief that fathers’ roles and patterns of influence on children’s development are intricately linked to their masculinity. As Pleck shows, the concepts of both fatherhood and masculinity are complex, but the basic notion implicit in most discussions of ‘‘the essential father’’ posit rather generally that children benefit from uniquely male contributions to their early experiences. As earlier editions of this book have made clear, and as Pleck systematically demonstrates, there is little empirical support for any of six interlinked ideas, including the central beliefs that there are systematic and formatively important gender differences in parenting, and that both the patterns of paternal involvement and fathers’ effects on their children are attributable to their maleness or masculinity. Instead, Pleck opines, ‘‘good fathering’’ is one of several factors promoting positive child adjustment, but is not essential, unique, or specifically masculine. Pleck’s conclusion is wholly consistent with views of fathers, fatherhood, and paternal influences that have been increasingly apparent from the third edition of this anthology, but Pleck’s magisterial and systematic analysis of once-dominant notions conclusively documents the fatal weaknesses of the assumptions, many of Freudian or psychodynamic origin, that guided a generation of scholarship and popular thought about fatherhood and the

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significance of father–child relationships. As Pleck points out in his conclusion, our improved understanding of fatherhood highlights a number of questions, many quite novel, that need to be addressed as we pursue a fuller understanding of the ways in which fathers influence their children’s development. Pleck then turns his attention, in Chapter 3, to paternal involvement, a concept to which Pleck and his colleagues first drew attention 25 years ago (Lamb, Pleck, Charnov, & Levine, 1985, 1987). Here, too, years of intensive research have made necessary revisions of the ways in which scholars conceptualize paternal involvement; Pleck explores both the reasons why the concept was originally conceived and operationalized and the pressing need, given changes in both society and scholarly traditions, to understand paternal involvement differently in the future. In particular, the chapter articulates a broader vision of paternal involvement that places emphasis on participation in the types of activities and interaction that promote child adjustment and well-being and makes explicit references to the concepts of warmth, responsiveness, or sensitivity and supervision/control that are also central to the broader body of research on parenting. This updated notion of paternal involvement has emerged unheralded in the literature over the past several years as researchers have shifted from asking how much parenting fathers and mothers do to questions about the ways in which they influence children’s development. Pleck’s reconceptualization of paternal involvement also provides a framework within which paternal involvement is viewed less as a commodity and more as a facet of broader family processes and relationships, within which fathers both influence and are influenced by their children. Similar questions about what fathers do with and for their children are at the heart of Lamb and Lewis’s chapter on father–child relationships in two-parent families (Chapter 4). As made clear in this chapter, there is increasing evidence that the transition to fatherhood is a profound experience for many new fathers that triggers fascination about the new children and considerable introspection about the associated new roles and responsibilities, not only in relation to the newborns, but also in relation to their partners and other family members. For a variety of reasons, both social and psychological, most fathers spend less time relating to their infants than mothers do, becoming somewhat less sensitive as a result, but almost all infants in two-parent families nevertheless develop emotional attachments to both of their parents at about the same time. Consistent with the literature reviewed by Pleck in Chapter 2, the same features of mothering and fathering (especially warmth, sensitivity, involvement, and—increasingly with age—control) affect the quality and psychological significance of the two child–parent attachments. Likewise, although many researchers initially emphasized differences between the behavioral styles of mothers and fathers, subsequent research has made clear that many of these differences (including the ‘‘special’’ identification of fathers with playful companionship) are not universal, have been exaggerated even in societies where they do occur, and are not ‘‘essential’’ features of unique father–child relationships. Indeed, the nature and extent of fathers’ influences on children’s development and

Outline of the Book 15

well-being are determined by the same factors that determine the nature, extent, and impact of mother–child relationships, and there is substantial evidence that paternal influences need to be viewed in the context of a network of family relationships, as noted earlier in this chapter, as well as in later chapters (e.g., Chapter 5). Interestingly, however, whereas mothers appear to play more significant roles during childhood and adolescence, with filial adjustment and wellbeing influenced more by the qualities of mother– than of father–child/ adolescent relationships, fathers continue to have significant influences on adjustment that, for reasons that are not well understood, become increasingly important as offspring move into adulthood, underscoring the need to view relationships in dynamic life-span perspective. The value of viewing fathers in the context of a network of relationships within the family system is the central focus of Chapter 5, which revisits and further elaborates a framework introduced in the third and fourth editions of this anthology. Each revision of the model has been informed by a burgeoning body of evidence, much of it conducted by Cummings and his colleagues, documenting the ways in which fathers influence children’s development and adjustment, depending on the nature and quality of their marital or partner relationships. This view is consistent with increasing recognition of the extent to which influences on child development can be both direct (e.g., father to child) and indirect (e.g., father influences mother, who in turn influences the child), a notion articulated by Lewis and Weinraub (1976) in the first edition. More broadly, however, Cummings and his colleagues illustrate the ways in which child development must be viewed in the context of multifaceted family systems, within which dyadic relationships are part of transcendent and broader systems of relationships. Using sophisticated statistical procedures to analyze data gathered in longitudinal studies, the chapter not only documents the harmful effects of marital conflict (and, by corollary, the beneficial effects of marital harmony), but also explores the effects of fathers’ psychological functioning on family systems and, subsequently, on child adjustment. Such findings nicely underscore the recognition that a considerable proportion, perhaps the majority, of the influence that fathers have on children’s development is mediated via complex social systems such as the family. When marital or partner conflict becomes intolerable, it remains common for parents to separate, and there is a voluminous literature on the extent to which divorce or parental separation affects children’s adjustment. As Amato and Dorius point out in Chapter 6, there is considerable evidence that children who have experienced the separation of their parents appear less well adjusted than peers whose parents are still together on a variety of dimensions, although it is much less clear exactly why these differences emerge. I have argued elsewhere (Lamb, 2002a, 2002b; Lamb & Kelly, 2009) that the differences are attributable to a variety of factors, including economic hardship; partner conflict before, during, and after separation; and stresses on or disruptions of important child–parent relationships. Amato and Dorius discuss a considerable amount of evidence, mostly obtained from the sophisticated analyses of data derived from representative surveys, documenting

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the importance of such factors. Amato and Dorius also go considerably beyond previous discussions, underscoring the complexity of the processes involved, noting that divorce can have positive effects on child adjustment when partner conflict is especially intense and intractable, for example, and that the association between continued paternal involvement and child adjustment may be bidirectional, with involvement being promoted by good adjustment and vice versa. Consistent with the conceptualization of paternal involvement advanced by Pleck in Chapter 3, furthermore, Amato and Dorius note that children’s postdivorce adjustment is not reliably affected by whether they have contact with their nonresident fathers but is influenced by the extent to which fathers actively participate in child rearing, both before and after the separation. Paternal separation and divorce are also the focus of Chapter 7, in which the focus shifts from a sociological analysis of large representative surveys to the more intensive examination of smaller numbers of families. As with the other contributors to this book, Fabricius and his colleagues recognize the need to view children’s development and adjustment in the context of a complex network of psychologically important relationships. More than most other researchers, however, Fabricius and his colleagues have sought children’s views of their parents, and their studies have poignantly documented the extent to which many children and adolescents experience psychological pains as a result of separations that attenuate the youths’ ability to maintain close and meaningful relationships with both of their parents. Recognizing these experiences and their often enduring effects on adjustment, Fabricius and colleagues have conducted a number of important studies exploring the policies and practices that can minimize the extent to which fathers disengage from their children after separation as well as the benefits that follow when, instead, divorced or separated fathers maintain psychologically significant roles in their children’s lives. Such findings, are of course, entirely consistent with the effects documented by Amato and Dorius in their analyses of survey data. Whereas previous chapters have focused either on two-parent families or their aftermath, the fragile families examined by Carlson and McLanahan in Chapter 8 occupy a different, if somewhat amorphous, demographic space. Specifically, the parents they have been studying over time were not married when the study began, although almost all were romantically involved and many were living together. During the next few years, many of the couples married (arguably consolidating their commitment to one another) while others broke off their relationships, and the researchers have been at pains to identify predictions of transitions of either type. Carlson and McLanahan show that early indicators of parental health checks or childbirth predicted both the presentation of the parental dyad and continued paternal involvement even when the parents’ relationship deteriorated, although coresidence remained the most reliable correlate of paternal involvement. Studies such as Carlson and McLanahan’s Fragile Family Study are especially important in light of evidence that, throughout the developed world, increasing proportions of children are born to unmarried mothers. In such contexts, it is crucially important to understand the diverse roles

Outline of the Book 17

that fathers can play in their children’s lives in such circumstances. Such studies may be informative regarding the design of policies that promote children’s well-being and adjustment in the varied contexts in which many are raised today. When parents separate or divorce, it is very common for one or both of them to repartner, creating situations in which their children live at least part of the time with parents as well as step parents. As noted especially by Amato and Dorius (Chapter 6), Fabricius et al. (Chapter 7), and Carlson and McLanahan (Chapter 8), most children tend to reside primarily with their mothers following separation, and therefore it is men who are most likely to be coresident stepfathers while stepmothers host shorter visits by their new partners’ children from previous relationships. As Marsiglio and Hinojosa (Chapter 9) observe, however, increases in the numbers of stepfathers have not been matched by increases in our scholarly understanding of their roles and importance, notwithstanding Marsiglio’s own pioneering work on this topic (Marsiglio, 1995, 2004a, 2004b, 2005). In part, the slow scholarly progress may be attributable to a lack of clarity about the definition of stepfatherhood, particularly when, as in increasing number of cases, the men may not be married to the women whose children are in question, or when the two adults are no longer romantically involved. From the men’s point of view, furthermore, stepfatherhood involves understanding and fitting into a complex web of competing relationships, loyalties, and routines that can constitute a psychological and social minefield. Those who navigate these complexities successfully can establish psychologically significant and supportive relationships with their stepchildren while also helping to maintain harmonious and better resourced households that are themselves beneficial. However, stepfamilies can be both unstable and problematic child-rearing environments, with many stepfathers remaining uncertain of their responsibilities with regard to their stepchildren. Clearly, considerably more research is needed to elucidate the key conceptual issues. Both Amato and Dorius (Chapter 5) and Carlson and McLanahan (Chapter 8) point out that unmarried, divorced, and/or single mothers and their children tend to live in households that are less affluent or even impoverished. Nevertheless, Tamis-LeMonda and McFadden (Chapter 10) take issue with the popular presumption that, in light of these demographic differences, low-income fathers are necessarily much less involved with or committed to their children. In reality, they argue, there is compelling evidence that lowincome fathers (members of a heterogenous category indeed!) are no more likely to shirk their parental responsibilities than more affluent peers, although they certainly face more challenges discharging these responsibilities; that many seek to avoid inflicting on their children some of the harsh conditions they experienced as children; and that as a result, many delay or avoid marriage because they feel uncertain of their ability to support their families economically, rather than because they do not value marriage and the associated commitments. Tamis-LeMonda and McFadden’s chapter is all the more powerful because they reveal how easy it is for policy makers, clinicians, and scholars to have their interpretations and conclusions distorted by biased beliefs and assumptions.

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Pervasive negative beliefs about low-income fathers are dwarfed by the prejudices faced by gay fathers, as Golombok and Tasker point out in Chapter 11. As these authors observe, it is hard to know how many gay fathers there are, in part because, until recently, gay men typically became fathers in heterosexual relationships before ‘‘coming out’’ as homosexual, following which many had limited contact with their children. Although there has been relatively little research on gay fathers, it is clear that their situation has changed greatly in recent years, with increasing number of gay men becoming fathers after acknowledging their sexual orientations, in part because there is increasing acceptance of same-sex lifestyles and same-sex parenting in many but by no means all societies today. To date, few researchers have been able to study the relationships between gay fathers and their children, but there is compelling evidence, from studies of lesbian mothers and their children, that same-sex parenting is not associated with psychological maladjustment in children, and that children’s adjustment in same-sex households is affected by exactly the same factors—the quality of parent–child relationships, the degree of partner harmony or conflict, and the amount of social and economic support and security—as the adjustment of children with heterosexual parents. And just as there is evidence that children do not need masculine or male-typed parents in order to thrive psychologically, furthermore, it seems clear that they do not need heterosexually oriented parents of either or both genders. Most of the research on fathers, fatherhood, and father–child relationships has been conducted in Western industrial countries, particularly in North America and western Europe, even though the majority of fathers in the world do not live in such societies. In the next few chapters, therefore, the focus shifts to the direct and indirect effects of culture on fathering and its impact. In the first of these chapters, Shwalb, Nakazawa, Yamamoto, and Hyun (Chapter 12) discuss fathers in East Asia. Their focus falls on fathers in three quite different cultures/countries (China, Japan, and Korea) whose combined population (1.5 billion) comprises nearly a quarter of the world’s current population. Entanglements between the three cultures over many centuries have created some shared traditions, not least the impact of a Confucian ideology, which placed father–son relationships at the centre of the family. The strict Confucian father dominated Shwalb’s and his colleagues’ accounts of these three cultures in the fourth edition of this anthology, but major changes now seem to have taken place throughout the region. Some of these changes reflect the adoption of Western researchers’ questions and approaches, while others reflect the broader impact of Western cultural influences in an increasingly global culture, where televised media and the omnipresent Internet have affected the beliefs and presumptions of many East Asian societies. In particular, the studies described by Shwalb and his colleagues portray cultures in which fathers are adjusting to changing demands and expectations, as well as demographic trends that may make daughters, rather than sons, more valuable in the long run. As in the Western countries discussed in other chapters, modern fathers in China, Japan, and Korea are encouraged to become more directly involved in their children’s

Outline of the Book 19

lives, although there is, as yet, little objective or reliable evidence of the extent to which fathers’ behavior has changed in this direction. Even less systematic research has been conducted on African as on East Asian fathers, as Nsamenang makes clear (Chapter 13), even though Africa accounts for a fifth of the world’s population and was, quite literally, the place where humans, and the human way of live, evolved. Contemporary Africa of course comprises more than 50 countries within which hundreds of cultural groups continue to exist with varying degrees of contact and varying degrees of exposure to colonizing cultures or religions. Despite this considerable diversity, fatherhood is highly regarded and respected in most societies, with infertility lowering the status of men in society. Beyond fecundity, however, there has been little research on the behavior and responsibilities of African fathers, who are often recognized as the head of their families, even though widespread unemployment ensures that many are unable to provide for their families adequately. In his chapter, Nsamenang calls, not only for considerable research on the diverse perceptions and performances of fathering and fatherhood throughout Africa, but also for attempts by policy makers, including international nongovernmental agencies, to design their interventions in ways that recognize and enable men’s commitment to and involvement in their families. The focus on African fathers continues in Chapter 14, in which Hewlett and MacFarlane examine fathers’ roles in hunter-gatherer and other small-scale cultures, many of which are in Africa and Oceania. Many of the studies reviewed here have adopted adaptationist perspectives, especially on the biological or reproductive bases of father involvement and the extent to which context dramatically shapes paternal behavior—topics that have received little attention in the preceding chapters. Other cited studies focus on core cultural ideologies, and beliefs and practices that powerfully influence perceptions of fatherhood. Indeed, the extent to which these factors affect parental roles and expectations is easy to overlook when researchers focus only on their native cultures; their importance becomes more clearly apparent when different cultures and societies are examined. For that reason, Hewlett and MacFarlane’s discussion of small-scale cultures has wide import. Following this analysis, these authors also ask why fathers’ presence and involvement appears to be so important to the psychological well-being of children in affluent industrialized countries while children in small-scale cultures appear to thrive psychologically despite wide variation in the behavioral styles and availability of their fathers. Their provocative conclusion is that father involvement is important in those affluent societies precisely because they are characterized by family contexts that, because children are reared in relative isolation, removed from extended networks of kin and family, deviate dramatically from those experienced, not only by children in most cultures, but also throughout most of our species’ history (Hrdy, 2009). Questions about core cultural values and beliefs also play a central role in Strier and Roer-Strier’s analysis of fatherhood in the context of immigration (Chapter 15). In our increasingly integrated world, immigration has

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become a way of life for millions, with one or both parents frequently moving from one country to another in search of better economic opportunities and/or greater freedom. Studies of immigrant fathers have frequently compared them unfavorably to peers who do not migrate, but Strier and RoerStrier underscore the strengths demonstrated by many of these men as they encounter and overcome a range of barriers impeding their progress in new host countries. Clearly, immigration has diverse effects on men, depending on both their initial and subsequent circumstances, and as a result, the effects on father–child relationships and children’s adjustment are poorly understood. We do know, of course, that considerable numbers of children experience such a degree of psychological maladjustment, whether or not their parents or families migrate, and the roles that fathers play in clinical interventions for these children and adolescents are the focus of Chapter 16. As Phares and her colleagues observe, children are more likely to have psychological difficulties when either of their parents have psychological problems, although there has been much more research on the association with mothers’ than with fathers’ psychopathology. In some cases, the similarities between parents and children are genetically mediated, whereas in other cases the parents’ psychopathology affects the quality of their parental behavior, which in turn affects the children’s problems. The latter mechanism is important because (as many researchers have now demonstrated; see Gunlicks and Weissman, 2008), treatment of the parents’ problems can bring about improvements in their children’s behavior. Fathers are much less likely than mothers to be involved in clinical interventions for their children and adolescents, and there is some evidence that interventions are more effective when both parents are involved. Phares and her colleagues argue that the incremental value of paternal involvement is less than might have been expected because many of the family- or parentbased interventions were developed with mothers in mind. In addition to this problem, researchers need to address the reasons why men appear less willing to be involved in clinical interventions, as well as the reasons why many practitioners are less successful in doing so. Phares and colleagues discuss the existing research and offer several suggestions about ways in which these problems could and should be overcome. Techniques that might help promote fathers’ participation in the lives and treatment of their children are also at the heart of MacDonald and Hastings’s discussion of children with developmental disabilities (Chapter 17). Here, deinstitutionalization and the increased popularity of family systems theory have fostered efforts to ensure that fathers’ play significant roles in caring for children with disabilities, promoting a number of studies examining the ways in which fathers respond to diagnosis by recognizing the impact on their roles and responsibilities’ as well as on the psychological stresses recognized by these men. Overall, the evidence suggests that the most effective interventions are those that support each parent as an individual, as a partner, and as a member of the family; begin as soon as possible after diagnosis; and pay explicit attention to each parent’s emotional responses. Like Phares et al.,

Outline of the Book 21

MacDonald and Hastings also note that female-dominated professions often appear insensitive to the specific concerns that fathers may have, underscoring the need for professionals to examine the unintended messages they may be communicating to their clientele. Policies and services for wider groups of fathers, not only those whose children have psychological problems or developmental disabilities, are the focus of the last three chapters. In the first of these, Cabrera (Chapter 18) focuses on public policies and programs in the United States and Canada. As she points out, policy makers in North America appeared to discover fathers in the 1990s, and, as a result, there have been significant changes over the past decade and a half. Progress was initially slow because fathers (as opposed to men) had been invisible for so long, but once efforts were made to identify the specific needs and barriers faced by fathers in diverse circumstances, policies were reexamined. Perhaps the most important realization has been the fact that children in poverty are disproportionally unlikely to live with their fathers; this has in turn promoted many efforts (accompanied by varying degrees of ideological baggage) to promote fathers’ commitment to and involvement in the lives of their children on the grounds that this may promote children’s well-being, directly and indirectly. The most important relevant policy initiatives of the Clinton and Bush administrations are critically examined and evaluated by Cabrera. She also highlights differences between the United States, where married and unmarried, resident and nonresident fathers have all been the focus of some policies, and Canada, where policies have tended to focus on men who are or have been married to the children’s mothers. In both cases, evaluations have been disappointing, especially because the focus has been on individual policies, rather than the network of policies and practices. Family policies in Europe then came under scrutiny in Chapter 19. Here, O’Brien and Moss report that the European Commission has promoted several policies to promote fathers’ active involvement in their children’s lives while also promoting gender equality at home and at work. In many countries, parental leave schemes have been especially important, with recent years witnessing a shift from policies that allow parents to divide generous paid leave benefits between the two parents to policies, pioneered in the Scandinavian countries, that offer targeted benefits to mothers and fathers as well as some months that can be taken by either parent. Such arrangements have understandably led to increased take-up by fathers, but long-term effects on paternal involvement or gender equality have yet to be assessed. In addition, as O’Brien and Moss observe, paternal leave and flexible work schemes must be viewed and promoted as a part of a more holistic suite of policies that include high-quality and affordable child care as well as regulation of the amounts of paid work that can be demanded, so that some men, especially those in low-income families, are not forced to work such long hours that their family time is unnecessarily constricted. In the final chapter, Parkinson (Chapter 20) discusses the dramatic policy initiatives introduced by the Australian government between 2003 and 2008. Perhaps no other country has attempted so complete an overhaul of an entire

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suite of policies and programs in an attempt to create a coherent set of policies designed to promote the welfare and well-being of children whose parents are contemplating separation. Changes were prompted by concerns that existing policies did not serve the interests of children, mothers, or fathers because they did not limit the amount of acrimony or violence, while disenfranchising and alienating many fathers and impoverishing many mothers and their children. The new policies thus seek to provide support and guidance from early in the process (ideally reducing acrimony and perhaps even averting some separations), while insisting on continued financial contributions to children’s support from both parents and one ensuring that, wherever appropriate, children have opportunities to maintain meaningful relationships with both of their parents. The evolutionary (or revolutionary) process described by Parkinson might be a model for many other countries particularly because, as Parkinson observes, the initial findings suggests that the new system is considerably better for children than the system it replaced (Parkinson & Cashmore, 2009). REFERENCES Adams, P. L., Milner, J. R., & Schrepf, N. A. (1984). Fatherless children. New York: Wiley. Belsky, J., Gilstrap, B., & Rovine, M. (1984). The Pennsylvania Infant and Family Development Project: 1. Stability and change in mother–infant and father– infant interaction at one, three, and nine months. Child Development, 55, 692– 705. Berman, P. W. (1980). Are women more responsive than men to the young? A review of developmental situational variables. Psychological Bulletin, 88, 668–695. Biller, H. B. (1971). Father, child, and sex role. Lexington, MA: Heath. Biller, H. B. (1974). Paternal deprivation: Family, school, sexuality, and society. Lexington, MA: Heath. Biller, H. B. (1993). Fathers and families. Westport, CT: Auburn House. Biller, H. B. (1994). The father factor. New York: Pocket Books. Blankenhorn, D. (1995). Fatherless America. New York: Basic Books. Conner, D. B., Knight, D. K., & Cross, D. R. (1997). Mothers’ and fathers’ scaffolding of their 2-year-olds during problem-solving and literacy interactions. Journal of Developmental Psychology, 15, 323–338. Crawley, S. B., & Sherrod, R. B. (1984). Parent–infant play during the first year of life. Infant Behavior and Development, 7, 65–75. Cummings, E. M., Goeke-Morey, M. C., & Raymond, J. (2004). Fathers in family context: Effects of marital quality and marital conflict. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (4th edition, pp. 196–221). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Dalton-Hummel, D. (1982). Syntactic and conversational characteristics of fathers’ speech. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 11, 465–483. Easterbrooks, M. A., & Goldberg, W. A. (1984). Toddler development in the family: Impact of father involvement and parenting characteristics. Child Development, 55, 740–752. Ely, R., & Berko-Gleason, J., Narasimhan, B., & McCabe, A. (1995). Family talk about talk: Mothers lead the way. Discourse Processes, 19, 201–218. Glick, P. C., & Norton, A. J. (1979). Marrying, divorcing, and living together in the U. S. today. Population Bulletin, 32(5, whole issue).

References 23 Golinkoff, R. M., & Ames, G. (1979). A comparison of fathers’ and mothers’ speech with their young children, Child Development, 50, 28–32. Graham, J. N., & Sellers, A.H. (2002). Nonresident fathers and their children: Child support and visitation from an economic perspective. In C. S. Tamis-LeMonda & N. Cabrera (Eds.), Handbook of father involvement (pp. 431–453). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Griswold, R. L. (1993). Fatherhood in America. New York: Basic Books. Gunlicks, M. L., & Weissman, M. M. (2008). Change in child psychopathology with improvements in parental depression: A systematic review. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 47, 379–389. Herzog, R., & Sudia, C. E. (1973). Children in fatherless families. In B. M. Caldwell & H. N. Ricciuti (Eds.), Review of child development research (Vol. 3, pp. 141–232). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hetherington, E. M., Cox, M., & Cox, R. (1982). Effects of divorce on parents and children. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), Nontraditional families (pp. 233–288). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Hetherington, E. M., & Kelly, J. (2002). For better or for worse. New York: Norton. Horn, W. F. (1995). Father facts. Lancaster, PA: National Fatherhood Initiative. Hrdy, S. B. (2009). Mothers and others. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Johnson, L. C., & Abramovitch, R. (1985). Unemployed fathers: Parenting in a changing labour market. Toronto: Social Planning Council. Johnson, L. C., & Abramovitch, R. (1988). Parental unemployment and family life. In A. Pence (Ed.), Ecological research with children and families: From concepts to methodology (pp. 49–75). New York: Teachers College Press. Kelly, J. B. (2000). Children’s adjustment in conflicted marriage and divorce: A decade review of research. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 39, 963–973l. Knibiehler, Y. (1995). Fathers, patriarchy, paternity. In M. C. P.van Dongen, G. A. B. Frinking, & M. J. G. Jacobs (Eds.), Changing fatherhood: An interdisciplinary perspective (pp. 201–214). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Thesis. Koestner, R., Franz, C., & Weinberger, J. (1990). The family origins of empathic concern: A 26-year longitudinal study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 709–717. Lamb, M. E. (1975). Fathers: Forgotten contributions to child development. Human Development, 18, 245–266. Lamb, M. E. (Ed.) (1976). The role of the father in child development. New York: Wiley. Lamb, M. E. (1977). Father–infant and mother–infant interaction in the first year of life. Child Development, 48, 167–181. Lamb, M. E. (1981). Fathers and child development: An integrative overview. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (Rev. ed., pp. 1–70). New York: Wiley. Lamb, M. E. (Ed.) (1986). The father’s role: Applied perspectives. New York: Wiley. Lamb, M. E. (1999). Noncustodial fathers and their impact on the children of divorce. In R. A. Thompson & P. Amato (Eds.), The post-divorce family: Research and policy issues (pp. 105–125). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Lamb, M.E. (2002a). Noncustodial fathers and their children. In C. S. Tamis-LeMonda & N. Cabrera (Eds.), Handbook of father involvement: Multidisciplinary perspectives (pp. 93–117). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Lamb, M. E. (2002b). Placing children’s interests first: Developmentally appropriate parenting plans. Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law, 10, 98– 119.

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Lamb, M. E., Frodi, M., Hwang, C. P., & Frodi, A. M. (1983). Effects of paternal involvement on infant preferences for mothers and fathers. Child Development, 54, 450–452. Lamb, M. E., & Kelly, J. B. (2009). Improving the quality of parent–child contact in separating families with infants and young children: Empirical research foundations. In R. M. Galazer-Levy, Z. Kraus, & J. Galatzer-Levy (Eds.), The scientific basis of child custody decisions (2nd ed., pp. 187–214). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Lamb, M. E., & Levine, J. A. (1983). The Swedsih parental insurance policy: An experiment in social engineering. In M. E. Lamb & A. Sagi (Eds.), Fatherhood and family policy (pp. 39–51). Hillsdale NJ: Erlbaum. Lamb, M. E., Pleck, J. H., Charnov, E. L., & Levine, J. A. (1985). Paternal behavior in humans. American Zoologist, 25, 883–894. Lamb, M. E., Pleck, J. H., Charnov, E. L., & Levine, J. A. (1987). A biological perspective on paternal behavior and involvement. In J. B. Lancaster, J. Altmann, A. S. Rossi, & L. R. Sherrod (Eds.), Parenting across the lifespan: Biosocial perspectives (pp. 111–142). Hawthorne, NY: Aldine. Lamb, M. E., Pleck, J. H., & Levine, J. A. (1985). The role of the father in child development: The effects of increased paternal involvement. In B. B. Lahey & A. E. Kazdin (Eds.), Advances in clinical child psychology (Vol. 8, pp. 229–266). New York: Plenum. Leaper, C., Anderson, K. J., & Sanders, P. (1998). Moderators of gender effects in parents’ talk to their children: A meta-analysis. Developmental Psychology, 34, 3–27. Lewis, M., & Weinraub, M. (1976). The father’s role in the child’s social network. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (pp. 157–184). New York: Wiley. Mannle, S., & Tomasello, M. (1987). Fathers, siblings, and the bridge hypothesis. In K. E. Nelson & A.von Kleek (Eds.), Children’s language (pp. 23–42). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Marsiglio, W. (1995). Stepfathers with minor children living at home: Parenting perceptions and relationship quality. In W. Marsiglio (Ed.), Fatherhood: Contemporary theory, research, and social policy (pp. 211–229). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Marsiglio, W. (2004a). Stepdads: Stories of love, hope, and repair. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Marsiglio, W. (2004b). When stepfathers claim stepchildren: A conceptual analyses. Journal of Marriage and Family, 66, 22–39. Marsiglio, W. (2005). Contextual scenarios for stepfathers’ identity construction, boundary work, and ‘‘fatherly’’ involvement. In W. Marsiglio, K. Roy, & G. L. Fox (Eds.), Situated fathering: A focus on physical and social spaces (pp. 73–97). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Mosely, J., & Thomson, E. (1995). Fathering behavior and child outcomes: The role of race and poverty. In W. Marsiglio (Ed.), Fatherhood: Contemporary theory, research, and social policy (pp. 148–165). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Mussen, P. H., & Rutherford, E. (1963). Parent–child relations and parental personality in relation to young children’s sex-role preferences. Child Development, 34, 589–607. Notaro, P. C., & Volling, B. L. (1999). Parental responsiveness and infant–parent attachment: A replication study with fathers and mothers. Infant Behavior and Development, 22, 345–352. O’Hare, W. P. (1995). KIDS COUNT Data Book. New York: Annie Casie Foundation. Parkinson, P., & Cashmore, J. (2009). The voice of the child in family law disputes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

References 25 Payne, D. E., & Mussen, P. H. (1956). Parent–child relations and father identification among adolescent boys. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 52, 358–362. Pearson, J., & Thoennes, N. (1990). Custody after divorce: Demographic and attitudinal patterns. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 60, 233–249. Pleck, E. (2004). Two dimensions of fatherhood: A history of the good dad–bad dad complex. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (4th ed., pp. 32–57). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Pleck, E., and Pleck, J. H. (1997). Fatherhood ideals in the United States: Historical dimensions. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (3rd ed., pp. 33–48). New York: Wiley. Pleck, J. H. (1983). Husbands’ paid work and family roles: Current research issues. In H. Lopata & J. H. Pleck (Eds.), Research in the interweave of social roles: Vol. 3. Families and jobs. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Pleck, J. H. (1984). Working wives and family well-being. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Pleck, J. H. (1997). Paternal involvement: Levels, sources and consequences. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (pp. 66–103). New York: Wiley. Popenoe, D. (1996). Life without fathers. New York: Free Press. Power, T. G. (1985). Mother– and father–infant play. Child Development, 56, 1514–1524. Pruett, K. D. (1983). Infants of primary nurturing fathers. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 38, 257–277. Pruett, K. D. (1985). Children of the fathermothers: Infants of primary nurturing mothers. In J. D. Call, E. Galenson, & R. L. Tyson (Eds.), Frontiers of infant psychiatry (Vol. 2, pp. 375–380). New York: Basic Books. Radin, N. (1981). The role of the father in cognitive, academic, and intellectual development. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (Rev. ed., pp. 379–428). New York: Wiley. Radin, N. (1982). Primary caregiving and role-sharing fathers. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), Nontraditional families: Parenting and child development (pp. 173–204). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Radin, N. (1994). Primary-caregiving fathers in intact families. In A.E. Gottfried & A.W. Gottfried (Eds.), Redefining families: Implications for children’s development (pp. 11–54). New York: Plenum. Rondal, J. A. (1980). Fathers’ and mothers’ speech in early language development. Journal of Child Language, 7, 353–369. Russell, G. (1983). The changing roles of fathers? St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Russell, G. (1986). Primary caretaking and role-sharing fathers. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The father’s role: Applied perspectives (pp. 29–57). New York: Wiley. Sears, R. R., Maccoby, E. E., & Levin, H. (1957). Patterns of child rearing. Evanston, IL: Peterson. Shannon, J., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., London, K., & Cabrera, N. (2002). Beyond rough and tumble: Low-income fathers’ interactions and children’s cognitive development at 24 months. Parenting: Science and Practice, 2, 77–104. Silverstein, L. B., & Auerbach, C. F. (1999). Deconstructing the essential father. American Psychologist, 54, 397–407. Tamis-LeMonda, C.S., & Cabrera, N. (Eds.) (2002). Handbook of father involvement: Multidisciplinary perspectives. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Thompson, R. A., & Laible, D. J. (1999). Noncustodial parents. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), Parenting and child development in ‘‘nontraditional’’ families (pp. 103–123). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

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Tomasello, M., Conti-Ramsden, B., & Ewert, B. (1990). Young children’s conversations with their mothers and fathers: Difference in breakdown and repair. Journal of Child Language, 17, 115–130. Van IJzendoorn, M. H., & DeWolff, M. S. (1997). In search of the absent father—metaanalyses of infant–father attachment: A rejoinder to our discussants. Child Development, 68, 604–609. Whitehead, B. D. (1993, April). Dan Quayle was right. Atlantic Monthly, 47–84.

CHAPTER 2

Fatherhood and Masculinity JOSEPH H. PLECK

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between fatherhood and masculinity, this chapter introduces the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model as a conceptual framework. This model distinguishes fatherhood as a parental status from fatherhood as parenting behavior and identity. It also differentiates between masculinity as male gender status and masculinity as males’ masculinity orientation. Using this model, I systematically analyze the potential interrelationships between these dual aspects of fatherhood and masculinity and their complex possible connections to child outcomes and to outcomes for fathers themselves. The chapter then considers the dominant idea in public discourse about fatherhood and masculinity: the ‘‘essential father’’ hypothesis. The paternal essentiality thesis holds that fathers make an essential, unique, and, more specifically, uniquely male contribution to child development. Framing the essentiality hypothesis in the context of the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model suggests that paternal essentiality entails six component ideas: (a) gender differences in parenting, (b) associations between father presence and child outcomes, (c) the mediation of those associations specifically by paternal involvement, (d) the attribution of paternal presence effects to father’s maleness, (e) the uniqueness of fathering’s effects on child outcomes, and (f) the association of paternal masculinity orientation to paternal involvement and child outcomes. A review of research in each of these six areas reveals highly qualified or modest support at best. I then suggest an alternative interpretation: The ‘‘important father’’ hypothesis. This view holds that good fathering is one of many factors promoting good child outcomes, having positive consequences independent of other influences such as good mothering, and having these consequences in ways not necessarily linked to fathers’ masculinity. Though O ANALYZE LINKAGES

The work reported here was supported by the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture, under Project No. ILLU-45–0366 to Joseph H. Pleck.

27

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being one of many sources of positive development rather than being alldeterminative, good fathering is no less important on that account. I argue that the paternal importance hypothesis does not signify a demotion in our assessment of fathering’s value for children’s development. Rather, it brings our understanding of the potential impact of good fathering in line with the way researchers understand the effects of most other influences on positive outcomes. The Fatherhood–Masculinity Model identifies many other possible intersections between fatherhood and masculinity besides hypotheses about paternal essentiality or importance. As an illustrative example, the chapter reviews research on masculinity-related dynamics in the connection between fatherhood and generativity. These investigations suggest that fathers’ masculinity influences this linkage in a complex manner, revealing some ways in which parenting and generativity may be more closely linked in men than in women, but other respects in which they may be less strongly related. The chapter concludes with recommendations for future research and practice. Some restrictions in the chapter’s scope should be acknowledged. This chapter focuses on fatherhood and masculinity primarily in the North American context, as the literature even for this limited setting is extensive. Also, in the North American and British academic contexts, the legitimacy of applying concepts of masculinity to nonmajority males is contested (Connell, 2005; Schrock & Schwalbe, 2009), a debate not addressed here. THE FATHERHOOD–MASCULINITY MODEL Fatherhood and masculinity potentially intersect in multiple ways (Marsiglio & Pleck, 2005). As an analytic framework for systematically considering their interrelationships, this section introduces the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model. This framework systematically describes a broad set of the possible linkages between fatherhood and masculinity in relation to child outcomes as well as in relation to outcomes for fathers themselves. Due to the many connections entailed in the model, it is presented in three steps. Conceptual distinctions between two components of fatherhood and between two aspects of masculinity are initially introduced, and relationships among the four resulting concepts are analyzed. Child outcomes are then added to the model, followed by outcomes for fathers themselves. FATHERHOOD

AND

MASCULINITY

Figure 2.1 depicts the first subsection of the model, concerning the associations between fatherhood and masculinity. This part of the model makes a key distinction between fatherhood as a parental status and as parenting, and a further distinction between masculinity as paternal male gender status and as masculinity orientation. Fatherhood as a Parental Status and as Parenting. In scholarly writing, the term fatherhood is used in two different ways that are important to distinguish. First, many researchers use the term to refer to fatherhood as a parental status.

The Fatherhood–Masculinity Model 29 Parental status Child presence, #, spacing, biological and/or social

B

E

A C

F G

D Paternal male gender status

Parenting

Paternal masculinity orientation

Denotes a moderator effect

Figure 2.1

Fatherhood and Masculinity.

This can be interpreted narrowly as fertility status, that is, being a biological father or not. It can also be interpreted broadly as well to include men who function as ‘‘social fathers’’ to children who are not their biological offspring by virtue of adoption, being a stepparent, or taking parental responsibility for a child in other ways. Fatherhood as parental status includes not only whether one is a father, but also other dimensions such as the father’s age at becoming a parent; his total number of children (parity); the spacing of his children; and whether he has only biological children, only social children, or both. In recent research, there has been particular interest in influences on the timing of first fatherhood, in the consequences of fatherhood timing, and in linkages between the fatherhood transition and other role transitions (Astone, Dariotis, Sonenstein, Pleck, & Hynes, in press; Dariotis, Pleck, Astone, & Sonenstein, in press). Scholars also use the term fatherhood in a second sense to refer to fathers’ parenting of their biological or social children, conveyed by the term fathering. Most research on fatherhood in the human development and family studies field concerns fathering in this sense. The most widely used construct in the study of men’s fathering is paternal involvement (Lamb, Pleck, Charnov, & Levine, 1985, 1987; Pleck, Lamb, & Levine, 1985). In research practice, the involvement concept has come to encompass not only fathers’ amount of interaction with their child, but also their warmth–responsiveness and their control, expressed especially in monitoring and decision making (see Chapter 3). In this chapter, the terms fathering and parenting refer to involvement in this broader sense, as well as to paternal identity, fathers’ self-meanings in the father role (LaRossa & Reitzes, 1993; Maurer, Pleck, & Rane, 2001). In summary, the broader term fatherhood will be used here to denote both fathers’ parental status and their parenting. Masculinity as Paternal Male Gender Status and as Masculinity Orientation. The term masculinity is also used in two different ways. Male gender status refers to a person’s being male rather than female. In the biogenetic perspective, male

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gender status results from having the XY chromosome. In the social constructionist interpretation, it refers to being in one of two, dichotomous, socially defined, and socially constructed gender categories, which, although based on biological sex, are socially construed and elaborated. Masculinity orientation, by contrast, refers to variations within the male gender status category. It concerns variations among the persons holding male gender status in the extent to which they have male gender-typed characteristics or attitudes, or put more simply, in how ‘‘masculine’’ they are. In this chapter, masculinity will be used as the broad term incorporating both male gender status and masculinity orientation. In this usage, all biological and social fathers are members of the male gender status category. Fathers can vary, however, in their masculinity orientations. Fathers’ potentially essential and unique contribution to child development, to be analyzed in detail in a later section, concerns masculinity in both senses: the effect on children of having a parent who is male (gender status), and the effect of having a male parent who is more rather than less masculine (masculinity orientation). It should be noted that researchers have interpreted masculinity orientation in two different ways: masculinity as a male’s gender-typed personality disposition or constellation of traits, and masculinity as a male’s attitudes and beliefs about how men actually are, and how they should be (Thompson, Pleck, & Ferrera, 1992). Since the 1970s, the first conception has been operationalized with measures such as the Bem Sex Role Inventory (Bem, 1974; see Lenney, 1991, for a review), yielding scores for an individual’s masculinity (M) and femininity (F). The second conception is operationalized with measures of attitudes about men’s ideal and actual characteristics (Marcell, Ford, Pleck, & Sonenstein, 2007; Pleck & O’Donnell, 2001; Pleck, Sonenstein, & Ku, 1993a, 1993b, 1994a, 1994b). To illustrate the central distinction between the two interpretations, according to the former, high or strong masculinity orientation is shown by a male reporting that he is, for example, assertive; according to the latter, it is shown by a male saying that he thinks males should be assertive. Within the second interpretation concerning attitudes, a further important distinction is between attitudes about how women and men are or should be different from each other (often labeled as attitudes toward gender or toward women) and attitudes specifically about men’s roles (see Pleck et al., 1994a, regarding why the distinction is important). Research linking fatherhood and masculinity orientation has used both approaches. Gender studies also employs a third interpretation, masculinity as a ‘‘performance’’ or ‘‘script,’’ interpreted as not an intra-individual phenomenon but as existing inherently only in interactions among individuals (Larson & Pleck, 1999). However, this third conception has not been widely used in fatherhood research. Linkages Between Fatherhood and Masculinity. The first linkage in Figure 2.1 concerns the relationship between parental status and parenting (path A). Being a parent is a precondition for parental behavior (excluding preparatory behaviors), and generally brings about major changes in parental identity. (This and most other linkages in the figures have been studied empirically, but relevant research will generally not be cited in this discussion.) For

The Fatherhood–Masculinity Model 31

example, the timing of parenthood, the number of children someone has and their spacing, and whether they are biological and/or social children can influence how parents act and how they think of themselves as parents. Reciprocally, holding particular self-conceptions about what being a parent means can influence whether and when individuals have children, how many, and whether the children are biological and/or social. Parents’ behavioral and identity experience with earlier children also potentially affects their subsequent parenthood decisions. The left side linkages in the model bring fathers’ male gender status into focus. First, male gender status influences the circumstances in which parenthood occurs (B). For example, on average, men have first children at an older age than women do. In addition, men are more likely to have stepchildren than are women. According to the next linkage (C), male gender status may moderate the linkages between parental status and parenting just discussed. As examples, becoming a parent as a teen (or late in life), having many children or few, or having social children may have a different impact on parental involvement and identity in men than they do in women. Reciprocally, the consequences of being more (or less) engaged as a parent with one’s first child may affect subsequent parenthood decisions differently for men than for women. Likewise, having strong parental identity may promote first parenthood and later parenthood to a greater degree, or lesser degree, among men than it does among women. Fathers’ male gender status potentially influences their parenting (D). That is, the socially constructed and/or biosocial concomitants of being male may influence a man’s involvement with his child as well as the nature of his paternal identity. The right side of Figure 2.1 depicts fatherhood–masculinity linkages involving masculinity orientation. In contrast to male gender status, masculinity orientation is potentially malleable. Therefore, some linkages involving masculinity orientation entail reciprocal influence. Becoming a parent and the circumstances under which a man does so, and masculinity orientation, may influence each other reciprocally (E). That is, having a biological child may make a male feel more masculine, while simultaneously having a more traditional masculinity orientation may promote higher fertility. Next, masculinity orientation can moderate the linkage between men’s parental status and their parenting (F). For example, having a first birth as a teen may be associated with different kinds of fathering among males who hold more traditional beliefs about masculinity than among males with less traditional beliefs. Finally, a father’s parenting may be influenced by his masculinity orientation and vice versa (G). FATHERHOOD, MASCULINITY,

AND

CHILD OUTCOMES

Figure 2.2 adds child outcomes to the model. (Linkages not related to child outcomes and already discussed in Figure 2.1 are shown with dotted lines but not labeled.) A primary way that a father’s male gender status may influence his child is by virtue of influencing his parental behavior, that is, an indirect or mediated effect (D, H). However, it is also possible that the child is directly influenced by her father’s male gender (D3). In this linkage, being directly

32 FATHERHOOD

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MASCULINITY Parental status child presence, #, spacing, biological and/or social

D Paternal male gender status

G Parenting G2

D2

Paternal masculinity orientation

H D3

Denotes a moderator effect

G3

Child outcomes

Figure 2.2 Fatherhood, Masculinity, and Child Outcomes. Note: For labeling of linkages involving parental status, see Figure 2.1.

influenced by fathers’ male gender status refers to the direct consequences of living with or having frequent contact with a parent who has male gender status, that is, a father. In the social context that so many children do not live with a father, or do not have a relationship with their nonresident father, simply having a father with whom one lives or has a relationship can have a significant meaning to the child and to those around her, influencing her behavior as a result. The linkage between paternal male gender status and child outcomes (D3) is shown as bidirectional because the child’s behavior could influence whether the father lives with her or how much contact he has with her; for example, in the presence of other factors promoting father absence, a child’s acting out could tip the balance toward absence. Another form potentially taken by the D3 linkage is that having a resident parent who is male could have a direct modeling effect on sons’ sex-typed behavior. Finally, the father’s male gender may function as a moderator of the child’s perceptions of her father’s parenting; that is, the same parental behavior may be perceived differently by the child depending on the parent’s gender (D2). For example, discipline on the part of fathers may have stronger effects than when mothers show the same behavior. While fathers’ parenting influences the child, there is also potential reciprocal influence (H). Father involvement research is beginning to shift away from conceptualizing paternal involvement as behavior that fathers in effect ‘‘dispense’’ to their children, toward viewing it as an inherently relational process between father and child embedded in a broader pattern of family interaction (see Chapter 3). Further, paternal male gender status may moderate the effect of this reciprocal influence of child on father (D2). For example, if a child has a high level of interest in sports, fathers may increase their engagement in sports-promoting behaviors more than mothers do. These patterns of linkages raise the possibility that fathers’ male gender status may have evocative effects: fathers’ maleness may influence their behavior with

The Fatherhood–Masculinity Model 33

their child (D), in turn affecting their child (H), as well as influence their child directly (D3); their child’s behavior in response may reinforce those paternal behaviors (H). Fathers’ masculinity orientation can also have a direct influence on their parenting (G). More masculine fathers may parent in different ways, and think about themselves differently as fathers, than less masculine fathers. In addition, masculinity orientation can directly influence the child, for example, sons’ direct modeling of their fathers’ levels or forms of masculinity orientation (G3). Fathers’ masculinity orientation may also have an indirect influence mediated by fathers’ parenting behavior (G, H). Further, masculinity orientation potentially moderates the influence of fathers’ parenting on the child, in that the same paternal behavior or identity may be experienced differently by the child, depending on how masculine she perceives her father to be (G2). In the reciprocal direction, children’s behavior can influence fathers’ masculinity orientations; for example, children’s gendertyped behavior can reinforce fathers’ gender-typed behavior (G3). Another possible dynamic is that fathers’ masculinity orientations moderate the influence of children’s behavior on fathers; for example, a son excelling at football will have a different impact on fathers who hold the high valuation of male competence in football that is part of some North American conceptions of masculinity, than on fathers who do not (G2). FATHERHOOD, MASCULINITY, CHILD OUTCOMES,

AND

FATHER OUTCOMES

Figure 2.3 depicts the final linkages in the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model involving parent outcomes in addition to child outcomes. (For simplification, the linkages discussed in Figures 2.1 and 2.2 not concerning parent outcomes are omitted.) Possible parental outcomes include psychological well-being, life satisfaction, generativity, marital or relationship satisfaction, and Parental status J

I

K1 Paternal male gender status

Parenting

L1 K2

L2

L3

K3 Parent outcomes

K4

Paternal masculinity orientation

L4

M

Denotes a moderator effect

Figure 2.3

Child outcomes

Fatherhood, Masculinity, Child Outcomes, and Father Outcomes.

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socioeconomic status attainment (earnings, education). Parental status and these outcomes can reciprocally influence each other (I); for example, early childbearing and low status attainment may affect each other mutually. Among parents, the association of parenting behavior and identity with parent outcomes may also be reciprocal (J); for example, being more involved as a parent and psychological well-being may each promote the other. Bringing in gender status, paths K1 and K2 denote that the relationship between parental status and adult outcomes, and between parenting and adult outcomes, can differ for men and women. Among men, these linkages are also moderated by masculinity orientation (L1, L2). Path K3 indicates that there are average gender differences in adult outcomes (e.g., men earn more than women). These adult outcomes and children’s outcomes may influence each other; for example, parental psychological distress and adolescent problem behaviors can have a reciprocal relationship (M). This linkage may potentially be weaker, or stronger, among fathers than among mothers (K4). In parallel, among men, reciprocal influence may exist between masculinity orientation and fathers’ adult outcomes (L3); for example, masculinity attitudes and relationship satisfaction may be interrelated (Pleck et al., 1993b). Masculinity orientation may also affect the extent to which fathers’ outcomes and children’s outcomes are interconnected (L4). In summary, the broad set of potential linkages between fatherhood and masculinity identified in the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model provides the structure for a comprehensive research program on their interrelationship. The model also establishes a broader context in which to consider the notion that fathers make an essential and unique contribution to child development by virtue of their masculinity, to which we now turn. THE ESSENTIAL FATHER HYPOTHESIS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE FATHERHOOD–MASCULINITY MODEL The idea that fathers, by virtue of being male, make an essential and unique contribution to child development has existed in the social sciences since at least the 1940s (Pleck, 1981). This notion is clearly established in contemporary public discourse about fathers: At the time of this writing, an Internet search on ‘‘fathers’’ and ‘‘essential’’ jointly yielded 5.35 million pages; searching on ‘‘fathers’’ and ‘‘unique’’ produced 4.97 million pages. Blankenhorn (1995) and Popenoe (1996) provide the most concerted recent formulations of this thesis. As Silverstein and Auerbach (1999, p. 197) summarize this notion in their critical analysis, ‘‘Fathers are understood as having a unique and essential role to play in child development, especially for boys who need a male role model to establish a masculine gender identity.’’ In my view, this ‘‘essential father’’ (EF) hypothesis can be formulated at a broad level as a sequence of three linked ideas. First, fathers make a contribution to children’s development that is essential. Second, fathers make a contribution that is unique; what makes fathers’ contribution essential is precisely that it is unique. Third, fathers make a contribution that is uniquely male and uniquely masculine; that is, fathers’ contribution is unique specifically because fathers are males and have masculine characteristics.

The Essential Father Hypothesis in the Context of the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model 35

It is useful to analyze where the EF hypothesis ‘‘fits’’ within the network of potential connections depicted in the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model. Doing so makes evident, first, that there are many possible associations between fatherhood and masculinity not addressed in the hypothesis. The essentiality thesis concerns only those fatherhood–masculinity linkages connected to child outcomes (Figure 2.2). In particular, the EF hypothesis does not address potentially important connections concerning the interrelation between men’s parental status and their fathering behavior (Figure 2.1) and among fatherhood, masculinity, and fathers’ adult outcomes (Figure 2.3) analyzed in other parts of the model. Second, the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model’s Figure 2.2 makes it possible to specify systematically the possible processes involved in fathers’ potentially essential, unique, masculine contribution to child development. One primary pathway of possible influence is that being male may be associated with distinctive parenting behaviors (path D in Figure 2.2), which in turn affect the child’s development (H). In addition, the same parental behavior may have distinctive effects on the child when exhibited by fathers compared to mothers (the moderator effect on path H denoted by path D2). Simply having a resident father or having significant contact with a nonresident one could also have a direct effect (D3). Finally, variations among fathers in their masculinity orientation may also play a role, in that fathers’ having more masculine behaviors or attitudes may influence child outcomes, in particular, children’s sex typing, directly (path G3), indirectly via effects on paternal behavior (G,H), and via moderating the influence of paternal behavior on the child (G2). It is important to note that for the direct linkages involved in the EF hypothesis (D, H, D3, G, G3), the hypothesis assumes that influence is unidirectional, whereas in the broader model all but one of these paths (D) are considered bidirectional. AREAS

OF

RESEARCH RELEVANT

TO THE

ESSENTIAL FATHER HYPOTHESIS

Research is available concerning many but not all of these possible pathways of influence. Six areas of research are most relevant: The first concerns gender differences in parenting behavior. Next considered are three topics regarding the effects of father presence (coresidence) vs. absence: the association between father presence and positive child outcomes, the mediating role of paternal involvement in this association, and the extent to which the effects of paternal presence can be attributed specifically to fathers’ male gender. Next considered is the uniqueness of fathering’s effects, relative to the effects of mothering. The final area reviewed is the association of paternal masculinity orientation to fathers’ parenting and to child outcomes. 1. Gender Differences in Parenting. The most well-established difference in parenting by parental gender is that fathers on average spend less total time with their children than mothers do (Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004). This gender difference, however, does not have clear implications for the essential father hypothesis one way or the other. Although fathers’ lower engagement time could mean that fathers’ contribution to development is smaller than

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mothers’, it could alternatively create a context in which fathers’ behaviors have a disproportionately high impact on the child. The aspect of gender differences in parenting central to the EF hypothesis is, instead, differences in the nature of fathers’ and mothers’ parental behavior. Reviews of this literature conclude that significant average differences do exist on many dimensions of parenting (Collins & Russell, 1991; Leaper, Anderson, & Sanders, 1998). And many fathers clearly view their parental behavior as different from mothers’. As Doucet (2006) observed in a recent qualitative study, ‘‘It is as though fathers look across [the] metaphorical gender divide to what women are doing and then co-construct their own actions in relation, sometimes in reaction, to those maternal decisions and movements’’ (p. 220). However, three important qualifications are required about average gender differences in parenting: average differences by parental gender are not large, within-gender variation is substantial, and as a result the overlap in fathers’ and mothers’ distributions on parenting variables is considerable. As Collins and Russell (1991, p. 109) put it, Differences in mother–child and father–child interactions . . . do not appear to be as marked as most theories imply. [For example,] observation studies in middle childhood show that many fathers were highly nurturant (e.g., by demonstrating affection) and typically participated in caregiving as frequently as mothers did, when both parents were present. Further, self-report studies in adolescence show that mothers are equally as likely as fathers to discuss school performance and future career goals.

Leaper et al.’s (1998) meta-analysis of parental gender differences in parents’ use of language with their children is especially useful because it goes beyond simply reporting whether average differences are statistically significant or not, but also provides estimates of effect sizes for various dimensions of parental speech. Effect size refers to expressing the differences found between mothers’ and fathers’ means in standard deviation units (d). Across studies, mothers tended to talk more (d ¼ 0.26), use more supportive (d ¼ 0.23) and negative (d ¼ 0.13) speech, and use less directive (d ¼ 0.19) and informing (d ¼ .15) speech than did fathers. According to standard criteria for interpreting effect sizes (>0.8 for large effects, >0.5 for medium effects, >0.2 for small effects, and effects < 0.2 considered negligible; Rosenthal, Rosnow, & Rubin, 2000), only two of the five domains meet the criterion to be considered even small effects. These low effect sizes imply that overlap between fathers and mothers is substantial. For example, according to the normal curve, the effect size of 0.23 for supportive speech in mothers’ favor means that 41% of fathers nonetheless show more supportive speech than does the average mother. Overlap would be considerable even if effect sizes were substantially higher: for example, if d ¼ 0.5, 31% of fathers would show greater support than the maternal average, and if d ¼ 0.8, 21% of fathers would be more supportive. The average gender difference in parenting receiving most attention is fathers’ greater engagement in play. Paquette (2004) proposed a well-known

The Essential Father Hypothesis in the Context of the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model 37

theory of the ‘‘father–child activation relationship’’ as the unique essence of fathering, elaborating on this difference. However, other researchers who have investigated parental play note that despite the differences in typical play style, there is also considerable overlap in how fathers and mothers play with infants and children . . . [M]ost types of parent–infant play occur with both fathers and mothers and with similar amounts of affection, object play, physical play, and conventional play interaction. . . . [F]athers’ play varies from quiet didactic or pretend play with toys to rowdy rambunctious physical play. Paquette is correct that fathers tend to engage in more physical idiosyncratic play, but that is not the only way they play or the only way they contribute to their children’s development (Roggman, 2004, p. 2004; see also Tamis-LeMonda, 2004).

Pleck and Masciadrelli’s (2004, Table 3) retabulation of time diary data about parental time from the 1997 Child Development Supplement (CDS; Yeung, Sandberg, Davis-Kean, & Hofferth, 2001) of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics provides additional insight into parental gender differences in play. Yeung et al. provide data about the somewhat broader category of ‘‘play/companionship’’ as well as caregiving and teaching activities. Retabulating these data, play/companionship was the single largest component of fathers’ engagement, 35% of their total engagement time (though it was not the majority of fathers’ engagement since it was less than 50%). And fathers’ play proportion was higher than mothers’ (29%). Nonetheless, it was noteworthy that play was also the largest single component of mothers’ engagement, higher than the proportion of their time in caregiving (22%). Because mothers spent more total engagement time than fathers with their children, mothers’ absolute amount of time in play was actually slightly higher than fathers’ (0.79 vs. 0.69 hours/day). With children aged 9–12, play was again the largest component of both fathers’ and mothers’ time; for children of this age, fathers’ absolute level of play time was higher than mothers, but only marginally so (0.57 vs. 0.52 hours/day). It is possible that parental gender differences in behavior are more marked when one examines parental behavior with boys and parental behavior with girls separately. However, Lytton and Romney’s (1991) review of differences in parental socialization by gender concluded that of 19 socialization areas, North American fathers (and mothers) differentially behave toward sons and daughters in only one: encouragement of sex-typed activities. In a subsequent review of the extent to which mother–son, mother–daughter, father–son, and father–daughter relationships are distinct, Russell and Saebel (1997) concluded that ‘‘the literature that was surveyed contained many claims and assumptions about the distinctness of relationships in the four dyads, but the empirical evidence in support of these claims and assumptions was limited’’ (p. 111). A reasonable conclusion is that average differences by gender do exist in at least some dimensions of parental behavior. However, when found, these differences are not large in magnitude, and the overlap between fathers’ and mothers’ distributions is sizeable. The pattern of results suggests that if the EF

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hypothesis is valid, it is less likely to operate via fathers’ showing a unique repertory of parental behaviors, and more likely to operate via the parental behaviors shared in common by fathers and mothers having distinctive effects when exhibited by fathers. The later subsection on the uniqueness of fathering’s effects evaluates the relevant evidence. 2. Associations Between Father Presence and Child Outcomes. Reviewed here is research comparing outcomes in children, adolescents, and adults who grew up in a two-parent family, including a father and mother for all of their childhood and adolescence (hereafter referred to as father presence), and those growing up with a single mother for at least some period during childhood and adolescence (father absence). Amato and Dorius (Chapter 6) and Amato and Gilbreth (1999; see also Chapter 7) discuss studies focusing on the effects of nonresident fathers’ level of involvement on child outcomes. Both father absence and father presence occur in varying contexts (e.g., divorce vs. never-married father absence; biological vs. stepfather presence), although in making comparisons between father presence and absence, much research aggregates across these contexts. Nonetheless, the evidence is incontrovertible that there is a simple bivariate association between growing up in a two-parent family including a father and mother during childhood and adolescence and numerous positive later outcomes (McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994; Sigle-Rushton & McLanahan, 2004). For example, in bivariate analysis with no controls using a national survey, 14% percent of those raised by single mothers lived below the poverty line as adults, compared to 7% of those raised by two biological parents (Lang & Zagorsky, 2001). While the majority of children raised by single mothers were not poor as adults, the difference in poverty rates between the two groups is substantial. What is controversial is exactly why these bivariate associations occur and what they mean. The first matter to be addressed is that families with and without resident fathers differ in many sociodemographic background characteristics such as race–ethnicity and socioeconomic status that are also associated with child outcomes. In addition, since divorce and separation are a common context for paternal nonresidence, families without resident fathers may have differed from families with resident fathers in level of parental conflict prior to the divorce or separation, another factor related to child outcomes. These background characteristics are thus ‘‘selection factors’’ potentially accounting for the observed differences in children’s outcomes. Thus, at issue is whether father presence and child outcomes have an independent association, an association that persists net of selection, that is, when differences in prior background are taken into account. In a review of research using a variety of methods to address selection (statistical control, longitudinal analysis with predisruption measures of outcomes, sibling models, incorporating state-level divorce policies as contextual variables), Sigle-Rushton and McLanahan (2004) conclude that when selection is taken into account, associations between father presence and child outcomes ‘‘become smaller, sometimes statistically insignificant’’ (p. 127). Sarkadi, Kristiansson, Oberklaid, and Bremberg’s (2008) recent review of longitudinal studies of the effects of fathering on child development offers

The Essential Father Hypothesis in the Context of the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model 39

illustrations. This review included four studies of father presence–absence that controlled for socioeconomic background. Crockett, Eggebeen, and Hawkins (1993), using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY 1979), reported no effects on cognitive development. Vaden-Kiernan, Ialongo, Pearson, and Kellam (1995) found that first-grade father presence predicted low aggression in fourth to sixth grade among boys only, as reported by teachers but not parents. Sarkadi summarizes Flouri and Buchanan’s (2002) analysis of the U.K. National Child Development Study as finding effects of father absence at age 7 on trouble with the police at age 16 for girls, but the outcomes in that publication are actually age 16 relationship quality with parents and age 33 partner relationship quality, with early father absence exerting influence only on the former; Flouri’s (2005, p. 105) monograph does include the stated finding, however. Sarkadi et al. describe the fourth study, Carlson (2006), as providing the strongest evidence for the beneficial influence of father presence, yielding ‘‘general positive effects.’’ However, a careful review of the report suggests that the results are more mixed. This investigation used later data from the NLSY 1979 dataset analyzed by Crockett et al. (1993) to compare children living with continuously married parents to children in several contexts in which the child lives away from her biological father, of which two are of particular interest here: living with a divorced single mother, and living with a never-married single mother. With no controls, both father-absent groups fare significantly worse on all four outcomes studied (externalizing, delinquency, negative feelings, and internalizing), perhaps the finding on which Sarkadi et al. based their conclusion. With socioeconomic status (SES) and other controls, however, differences involving children of divorced single mothers became only marginally significant (p < 0.10) for three of the four outcomes; for the outcome still significant, negative feelings, d ¼ 0.14 (the effect size was 0.14 of a standard deviation). Differences involving children of never-married single mothers became nonsignificant for two of the four outcomes; for the outcomes remaining significant, delinquency and negative feelings, effect sizes were d ¼ 0.25 and 0.14. Using standard criteria for interpreting effect sizes (Rosenthal et al., 2000), only the effect for delinquency among children of never-married mothers meets the 0.20 threshold for being considered a nonnegligible effect, albeit only a small one. In the studies attempting to address selection, Sigle-Rushton and McLanahan (2004) note that it is difficult to rule out the possibility that selection factors that the researchers did not observe could account for the differences that remain. These authors also note that it is potentially problematic that children with a cohabiting stepfather fare worse than children with two married parents, since both kinds of families have fathers present. However, cohabiting stepfathers may be less involved (Berger, Carlson, Bzostek, & Osborne, 2008). It could be argued that without marriage, cohabiting stepfathers have lesser authority and involvement. Carlson’s study, however, finds that children with married stepfathers show more externalizing behaviors and more negative self-feelings than children with continuously married parents, with SES and mothering controlled.

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Since paternal death is less subject to selection factors than overall paternal absence (though not entirely free of selection), Sigle-Rushton and McLanahan (2004) suggest that perhaps the strongest evidence of the negative effects of father absence is the association of paternal death with more negative child outcomes. However, these effects are weak (Lang & Zagorsky, 2001); in addition, the question arises whether the effect observed is uniquely connected to the dynamics involved in loss of a parent through death as opposed to paternal absence more generally. In addition, they note that the weak evidence from paternal death is mitigated by findings that children with resident cohabiting fathers can be as disadvantaged as children with single mothers. Balancing all this evidence together, Sigle-Rushton and McLanahan suggest that ‘‘selection appears to account for some but not all of the difference in child outcomes’’ (p. 129). In summary, independent associations between father presence and child outcomes are less consistent and smaller in magnitude than they are sometimes represented (e.g., National Fatherhood Initiative, 2007). Nonetheless, in some studies, being raised with a father present is associated with some positive child outcomes to some degree, net of selection. In addition, the effects of father presence appear to be contextualized; that is, they vary according to parents’ marital status and according to fathers’ biological or step relationship to the child. Some subgroups of father-present children show no better outcomes than father-absent children, suggesting that having a resident male parent per se does not have an overall effect. Thus, the evidence provides only qualified and limited support for the effects of paternal presence entailed by the essentiality perspective. 3. Mediation of the Association Between Father Presence and Child Outcomes by Paternal Behaviors. The EF hypothesis implies not just that father presence is associated with positive outcomes net of selection; it also requires that fathers’ involvement behaviors mediate the linkage between father presence and child outcomes. That is, data need to show that father presence promotes child outcomes because presence is linked to how fathers behave as parents, which in turn influences child outcomes. A first issue to address is that the link between father presence and child outcomes has other possible mediators besides fathers’ parenting. A particularly important example is family income. In addition to being a selection factor for father absence (both marital disruption and unmarried parenthood), low income can also function as a mediator of the effects of father absence: As a result of absence of a father, the child’s family has lower income and fewer of the resources that income provides. Another possible mediator is mothers’ behavior. Father presence potentially has positive effects on her parenting that could promote good child outcomes. (For further analysis of fathering’s indirect effects via mothers, see Chapter 5.) The existence of these other possible mediators of the link between father presence and child outcomes implies that to assess the role of paternal behavior as a mediator, these other mediational processes need to be controlled for, since they are not part of the EF hypothesis. The statement that ‘‘fathers make an essential contribution to child development’’ is not usually

The Essential Father Hypothesis in the Context of the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model 41

understood to mean ‘‘because their earnings provide greater family income than would be the case without a father’’ or ‘‘because they promote mothers’ parenting.’’ Rather, the hypothesis of paternal essentiality connotes that fathers make a unique contribution to development specifically because of how they themselves act as parents. These other possible mediator effects thus need to be controlled by including family income and mothers’ parenting as predictors. If they are not controlled, the mediational role of fathers’ parenting may be overestimated. Carlson’s (2006) study discussed earlier using the NLSY 1979 provides perhaps the best available analysis concerning the extent to which the effects of father presence are mediated specifically by fathers’ level of involvement. Although nonresident biological fathers are less involved with their children on average than are resident biological fathers, there is sufficient variation within each group and sufficient overlap between the groups to test this possible mediation. Carlson’s analysis tested this mediation in two ways. The most important comparisons contrast the children of continuously married parents to children living with a divorced single mother, and to children living with a never-married single mother. As noted earlier, with no background variables controlled, both father-absent groups show significantly poorer scores on the outcomes examined: internalizing behavior, delinquency, negative feelings, and internalizing behavior. When level of father involvement is controlled, all effects become nonsignificant (Carlson’s model 2 vs. model 1), meeting the key formal test for mediation: an initially significant effect becoming nonsignificant when the mediator is added to the model. This initial analysis suggests that the effects of father presence are fully mediated by level of father involvement. However, the more rigorous test of mediation includes controls for family income and other background factors (her model 5 vs. 4). As discussed above, these controls are necessary to at least partially take selection effects into account. But to evaluate paternal involvement as a mediator, controlling for family income is even more important because doing so also takes into account this variable’s possible mediator role, yielding a more precise estimate of the mediational effects specifically of paternal parenting. In the models with these controls, Carlson notes that all the coefficients representing effects of father presence on outcomes are lower when father involvement is included in the models than when it is not. However, the formal test for mediation (a significant effect becoming nonsignificant when the mediator is added) is met for only one of the outcomes, negative feelings, albeit for both father-absent groups. For another outcome, delinquency in children of unmarried mothers, mediation is clearly disconfirmed, as this group continues to show significantly more delinquent behavior than children of continuously married parents after level of paternal involvement is controlled. Thus, the more stringent test of mediation confirms mediation of the association between father presence and child outcomes for only one of four outcomes studied. Altogether, when other possible mediational effects are taken into account, there is only limited research confirmation that the effects of paternal presence on child outcomes are mediated specifically by fathers’ paternal involvement.

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4. Attributing Paternal Presence Effects to Fathers’ Male Gender. To the extent that paternal presence promotes positive child outcomes, and that these effects are mediated by paternal behaviors, a final issue about paternal presence effects needs to be addressed. Can these effects be attributed to fathers being male? The question may sound odd, but arises in the following way. In their critical analysis of the EF hypothesis, Silverstein and Auerbach (1999) noted an important confound in the traditional comparison of fatherpresent two-parent families and single-mother-headed families. In this comparison, two effects are mixed together: the effect of being raised by a father or not, and the effect of being reared by two parents or one parent. Any poorer outcomes in children raised by single mothers could therefore result either from not having a male parent, or from being raised by only one parent instead of two. To elucidate the effects of having a male parent or not, comparisons are needed between pairs of family structures that hold constant the number of parents, but vary in whether they include a male parent. Several such comparisons are possible: single fathers and single mothers; two-parent lesbian families and two-parent gay male families; and two-parent heterosexual families and two-parent lesbian families. Of these three possible comparisons, the largest body of research is available for the third. These investigations provide little support for the notion that children of two lesbian parents show poorer developmental outcomes than do children in two-parent heterosexual families (see reviews in Patterson & Chan, 1999; Stacey & Biblarz, 2001; see also Chapter 11). An important limitation of this body of research is the widespread use of convenience samples. These samples make it difficult to rule out the possibility that the absence of differences might result from lesbian families whose children function better being more likely to volunteer for research, particularly if it is evident to potential participants that the project concerns lesbian families. However, this line of research includes one set of studies (Wainright, Russell, & Patterson, 2004; Wainright & Patterson, 2006, 2008) with a sample that was particularly rigorously drawn, the large-scale representative sample of adolescents and their families in the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health). A subset of 44 families in the survey included two parents, both female, who identified themselves as being in a marriage-like relationship. A comparison subsample of 44 families with two married heterosexual parents was selected, matched on the target adolescent’s and parents’ other characteristics. The two groups of adolescents were then compared on self-esteem, anxiety, depression, grade point average, trouble in school, school connectedness, autonomy, and neighborhood integration, with inclusion of other predictors of these outcomes to increase the statistical power of the comparisons by family structure. No significant differences were observed between the two groups of adolescents, with the exception that children of two lesbian parents reported higher neighborhood integration (Wainright, Russell, & Patterson). Subsequent analyses focusing on peer relations, substance use, and delinquency likewise found no differences (Wainright & Patterson, 2006, 2008).

The Essential Father Hypothesis in the Context of the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model 43

Altogether, this evidence suggests that in the differences found in father absence research between two-parent mother-father families and singlemother families are likely due to the former including two parents rather than due to their including a male parent. This suggests that the effects of father presence in two-parent heterosexual families should not be attributed to the fathers’ maleness, contrary to the EF hypothesis. 5. The Uniqueness of Fathering’s Effects. To consider the uniqueness of paternal contributions to development, we now shift attention away from research on the effects of father presence vs. absence on child outcomes, to research on the influence of variations in fathering behavior among children of resident fathers. The influence of father involvement on children is perhaps the single most frequently studied topic in the fatherhood field, and has been investigated with increasingly advanced statistical methodologies. The more rigorous the research, the fewer effects are found. Nonetheless, the most sophisticated recent studies provide some evidence of direct causal influences on children’s development (see chapter 3). This section focuses on just one methodological issue in this research that has substantive implications for the EF hypothesis: the extent to which the effects of fathering are independent of the effects of mothering. So that this issue can be considered in depth, the discussion here does not take into account other methodological concerns such as selection and the possible reciprocal influence of child outcomes on paternal involvement (see review in Chapter 3). The need to take maternal influences into account in research on paternal influences on development is now well recognized (Amato & Rivera, 1999; Pleck, 1997; Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004). The reason is that fathering and mothering variables are usually relatively strongly positively correlated with each other. For example, levels of paternal and maternal involvement are positively associated, even when child age and gender as well as parental background characteristics are controlled (Aldous, Mulligan & Bjarnason, 1998; Amato & Rivera, 1999; Harris & Ryan, 2004; Ishii-Kuntz & Coltrane, 1992; Pleck & Hofferth, 2008). The quality of fathers’ and mothers’ relationships with their child (King & Sobolewski, 2006) and their parental styles (Martin, Ryan, & Brooks-Gunn, 2007; Simons & Conger, 2007; TamisLeMonda, Shannon, Cabrera, & Lamb, 2004; Winsler, Madigan, & Aquilino, 2005) are also correlated. Thus, if mothering is not controlled, when links are found between fathering and child outcomes, it is possible that only mothering influences child outcomes, and fathering appears to be linked to outcomes only because it is correlated with mothering. Those effects would be attributed to fathering in the model because mothering is not included as a predictor. By adding mothering variables, however, one can assess whether fathering has an ‘‘independent’’ effect, that is, independent of the effect of mothering. Framed another way, the analysis can determine whether fathering accounts for ‘‘unique variance’’ in child outcomes beyond that explained by mothering.

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When proponents of the EF hypothesis assert that fathers’ contributions to child development are unique, however, they use this term in a sense that goes beyond the statistical meaning. Fathers’ influence also has to be distinct from mothers’ in the sense of not being substitutable or replaceable by mothers’. That is, it must be the case that for children whose fathers do not provide a particular influence, mothers’ providing it will not have the same effect. The paternal essentiality hypothesis thus implies that paternal influences are unique not only in the sense of statistical independence, but also in the sense of nonsubstitutability. The difference between these two senses of uniqueness can be illustrated in research on the consequences of fathering on child outcomes that takes mothering into account. For example, in the ethnically diverse National Early Head Start Evaluation, Tamis-LeMonda and colleagues (2004) analyzed the link between observational composite measures of supportive parenting (sensitivity, positive regard), and cognitive stimulation at 24 months with the Bayley Mental Development Index (MDI) and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) at 36 months, with paternal and maternal sociodemographics controlled. Fathers’ supportive parenting had effects on these outcomes independent of mothers’. This study also reports the unique variances explained. Fathers’ supportive parenting uniquely predicted 7% of the variance in the MDI, and 8% in the PPVT, compared with 13% and 10% uniquely explained by mothers’ supportive parenting. Another analysis of these data conducted by Ryan, Martin, and BrooksGunn (2006) addresses whether the effects of fathering are also unique in the second sense, not being substitutable or replaceable by the effects of mothering. Ryan et al. classified fathers and mothers as supportive or nonsupportive based on a median split on the supportiveness variable for both genders combined. Children’s average MDI scores at 36 months were then presented graphically for four parenting combinations (exact means not given): A: both father and mother supportive, about 95; B: unsupportive father, supportive mother, about 90; C: supportive father, unsupportive mother, about 90; and D: both parents unsupportive, about 85. Uniqueness in the sense of statistical independence is illustrated by the comparisons between groups A and B, and between groups C and D. The A vs. B comparison shows the effect of father supportiveness with the level of mother supportiveness held constant (in this case, high), as does C vs. D (maternal supportiveness constant at low). Both comparisons suggest that with mother supportiveness controlled, father supportiveness is associated with about a five-point increment in MDI. However, the extent to which the effects of paternal and maternal supportiveness are replaceable by each other is indicated by the comparison of groups B and C. Here, the effect of having only a supportive father and the effect of having only a supportive mother appear to be interchangeable, each making about a five-point difference. If fathers do not provide support, mothers’ provision of support has the same effect on child outcomes. Overall, the study finds that it is better to have two supportive parents than only one, but if a child has only one, the effects of father supportiveness and mother supportiveness are equivalent. Martin, Ryan, and Brooks-Gunn’s (2007)

The Essential Father Hypothesis in the Context of the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model 45

analysis of later outcomes at age 5 replicated these results, leading the authors to conclude that ‘‘among children with one supportive parent, the sex of that parent was inconsequential’’ (p. 423). Overall, the preponderance of evidence indicates that fathers’ behaviors have effects on child outcomes that are statistically independent of mothers’, and account for unique variance beyond that explained by mothers’ behaviors (although a minority of studies do find only maternal influences). However, these father effects appear to be equivalent to and interchangeable with those of mothers, rather than being completely distinct from them. Thus, current research does not support the notion that fathers have unique, nonsubstitutable effects on child outcomes in the sense implied by the EF hypothesis. 6. Influence of Paternal Masculinity Orientation on Fathering and on Child Outcomes. A final implication of the EF hypothesis concerns the influence of fathers’ masculinity orientation on their parenting and on child outcomes. As indicated in the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model, gender orientation can be operationalized either as gender-typed personality characteristics (with current measures yielding separate scores for masculinity [M] and femininity [F]), or as attitudes about masculinity. We consider here the associations of father involvement to both aspects of masculinity, and then the links of child outcomes to both. Several cross-sectional comparisons find that involved fathers are more likely to be androgynous, that is, high in both M and F (Palkovitz, 1984; Rosenwasser & Patterson, 1984–1985; Sanderson & Sanders-Thompson, 2002), or in F (Russell, 1983, 1986). However, other cross-sectional studies find no associations (DeFrain, 1979; Lamb, Frodi, Hwang, & Frodi, 1982; Levant, Slattery, & Loiselle, 1987; Radin, 1994). Longitudinal studies also yield mixed results (Grossman, Pollack, & Golding, 1988; Kurdeck, 1998; Radin, 1994). Research operationalizing masculinity as beliefs about what men should be like have not found it related to involvement (Barnett & Baruch, 1987; Bonney, Kelley, & Levant, 1999). Many more studies have examined the link between fathering and broader attitudes about gender egalitarianism, with mixed results (for detailed review, see Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004). Turning to influences of masculinity on child outcomes, Mussen’s (1961; Mussen & Rutherford, 1963) older research focused on masculinity as gendertyped personality characteristics. In Mussen’s studies, consistent with the models of gender socialization of his time, parents were regarded as the primary if not sole influence on development, and among males, high masculinity was interpreted as an indicator of positive adjustment (Pleck, 1981). In these analyses, paternal masculinity was unrelated to sons’ adolescent adjustment, or even to sons’ masculinity. In contemporary investigations, siblings, peers, other adults, and media are regarded as additional potential influences on development that need to be assessed and taken into account in evaluating parental influence. These influences can be interrelated in complex ways. For example, in Katz and Ksansnak’s (1994) cross-sectional analysis of gender socialization influences in 9- to 17-year-olds found that children’s perceptions of parents’ gender

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atraditionality (both fathers’ and mothers’) loaded on the same socialization factor as same-sex friends’ gender atraditionality (labeled social environment flexibility). However, children’s desired similarity to their opposite-sex parent was part of a different factor (termed cross-sex socialization influence), on which desired similarity to opposite-sex grandparent, teachers, and media characters also loaded. In boys as well as girls, both socialization factors predicted a measure of self-flexibility in gender orientation, and the first predicted tolerance of gender atraditionality in others. But since both socialization factors incorporated nonparental as well as parental influences, and the parental influences included both mothers and fathers, the study did not provide evidence of a unique effect of fathers’ masculinity orientation on children’s gender outcomes. A more recent example is Crouter, Whiteman, McHale, and Osgood’s (2007) longitudinal study using a cohort of children from ages 7 to 19, focusing on factors influencing trajectories of change in children’s gender attitudes. Fathers’ and mothers’ gender attitudes were correlated (r ¼ 0.42). Analyses revealed that boys with more traditional parents maintained quite traditional attitudes across middle childhood and well into adolescence until about age 15, at which point their attitudes gradually became even more traditional. In contrast, boys with less traditional parents demonstrated a pronounced curvilinear pattern: initially highly traditional, becoming less so, and then becoming traditional again. Girls showed somewhat different patterns, and patterns for both boys and girls varied according to whether they were first-borns or second-borns. These recent studies of associations between paternal masculinity orientation and child outcomes suggest two conclusions. First, fathers’ and mothers’ gender-typed characteristics, as well as their gender-related attitudes, may be empirically correlated both with each other and with gender socialization influences from other sources such as peers, other adults, and media. These intercorrelations do not rule out the possibility that paternal gender-typed characteristics or attitudes could have independent effects on children’s gender-related or other outcomes. However, these intercorrelations do make independent paternal effects less likely, and in any event indicate that establishing independent effects for paternal gender orientation necessitates controlling for these other correlated gender socialization influences. Second, these results suggest that any effects observed for paternal masculinity are likely to be restricted to specific contexts defined by such factors as birth order and child gender. In overview, the available research does not yield consistent confirmation of the association between fathers’ masculinity orientation and their fathering encompassed in the EF hypothesis. Likewise, in research on child outcomes, independent effects of paternal masculinity orientation that are generalizable across contexts have not been documented. EVALUATING

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ESSENTIAL FATHER HYPOTHESIS

To summarize the six areas of research relevant to the essential father hypothesis, first, statistically significant average differences by gender clearly

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do exist for some dimensions of parental behavior. However, these differences are not large in size, and the overlap between fathers’ and mothers’ distributions is considerable. Second, being raised in a two-parent family including a father (father presence) is associated with positive child outcomes to some degree net of selection factors, but these associations are less consistent and smaller in magnitude than they are sometimes represented. In addition, the strength of the paternal presence effect varies by context (fathers’ biological or step relationship to the child, marital status), with some subgroups of father-present children showing no better outcomes than fatherabsent children, suggesting that having a resident male parent per se does not have an effect across contexts. Third, there is only limited support for the notion that fathers’ parental involvement behaviors are the specific mediator of the relationship between paternal presence and good child outcomes. Fourth, comparisons between children reared in two-parent families with male and female parents and children raised in two-parent families with two lesbian parents fails to find differences favoring the former. Thus, the limited effects of father presence in two-parent compared to single-mother families cannot be attributed to the father’s being male, as opposed to being a second parent. Fifth, in research in which paternal and maternal influences are investigated simultaneously, there is evidence that fathers’ behaviors have effects on child outcomes that are statistically independent of mothering, and account for unique variance beyond that explained by mothers’ behaviors. However, these effects are equivalent and interchangeable with each other, rather than being distinctive in the sense of being nonsubstitutable. Sixth, the observed associations of fathers’ gender-typed personality characteristics and gender-related attitudes to fathers’ parenting and child outcomes are inconsistent and not generalizable across varying contexts. In reviewing research in any area, ‘‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.’’ New research could yield more substantiation for paternal essentiality than exists currently. With this caveat in mind, the most reasonable conclusion from a review of the research available in these six areas is nonetheless that support for the paternal essentiality hypothesis is highly qualified and modest at best. AN ALTERNATIVE FORMULATION: THE IMPORTANT FATHER HYPOTHESIS In broad terms, the EF hypothesis holds that fathers’ make a contribution to child development that is essential, unique, and uniquely masculine. In my view, of all the deficiencies in the research support for paternal essentiality, two are most critical. The first failing is that the research concerning the uniqueness of fathering’s effects (fifth topic above) does not support the notion that fathers make a contribution to development that is distinct from mothers, in the sense of fathers’ influence not being substitutable by mothers’. The second key weakness is that investigations attempting to link fathers’ influence on development specifically with their masculinity orientation provide little substantiation, as shown in research on the associations of fathers’ masculinity orientation with child outcomes and with fathers’ parenting (sixth topic). Reinforcing both points, in research comparing child

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outcomes in two-parent heterosexual families with two-parent lesbian families (fourth topic), the effects of having a second parent besides the biological mother are not found to vary according to the second parent’s gender. Thus, current evidence does not support the notion that fathers’ influence on child development is a uniquely masculine one. I propose an alternative way to think about fathers’ contributions to development that does not require problematic assumptions about essential and uniquely masculine effects: Good fathering makes an important contribution to development. The response of some, even some other fatherhood researchers, to this material has been ‘‘so, you are saying that fathers make no difference whatsoever,’’ but there is a middle ground between fathers’ being absolutely essential and their being completely irrelevant. The ‘‘paternal importance’’ hypothesis is supported by findings from some methodologically rigorous research that good fathering has significant associations with positive development that are statistically independent of the effects of good mothering and of other factors such as SES. These studies’ use of designs that take into account possible selection effects and potential reciprocal influence help make the case that the associations found reflect causal effects (see Chapter 3). In this alternative hypothesis, good fathering is considered one of many important influences on positive development. The fact that fathering is not all-determinative does not mean that it is irrelevant. Indeed, the paternal importance hypothesis is consistent with the way that contemporary researchers think about influences on positive outcomes in most domains. Cardiovascular health provides a good example. Low cholesterol, normal blood pressure, diet, exercise, appropriate weight, and not smoking are all significant predictors of not having heart disease. Promoting every one of them is desirable. However, no single one of these factors is ‘‘essential’’ for cardiac health in a literal sense. (Many heart attack patients have normal cholesterol, or normal blood pressure, and so forth; some, in fact, have no risk factors at all other than family history, gender, and age.) Rather, each variable represents a risk factor or supportive factor in heart health, statistically associated with it, and with some evidence that modifying each improves health outcomes. To some, saying that fathers are important for positive child development, rather than saying that they are essential, is demotion in our assessment of fathering’s effects. In my view, it simply represents bringing our understanding of the impact of good fathering in line with the way researchers understand the effects of influences on positive outcomes in most other domains. OTHER LINKAGES IN THE FATHERHOOD–MASCULINITY MODEL: MASCULINITY DYNAMICS IN THE RELATION BETWEEN FATHERHOOD AND GENERATIVITY AS AN ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE This chapter introduced the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model as an analytical framework for the full range of their possible interrelationships. This broader perspective makes evident that the potential linkages encompassed in the EF

Other Linkages in the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model 49

hypothesis include only a small subset of the possible interconnections between fatherhood and masculinity. Once the EF hypothesis is ‘‘decentered’’ as the sole focus of attention, one realizes that in a broader perspective fatherhood–masculinity connections include the potential linkages of gender status and gender orientation to any parenting variable and child outcome. Fatherhood–masculinity relationships also include the possible moderating effects of gender status and gender orientation on associations between any pair of parenting constructs, and on linkages between any parenting variable and any other psychosocial construct. One example can be discussed here. In research on the consequences for men of being a father and of being involved as a father, an important current direction focuses on effects on fathers’ psychosocial generativity (Masciadrelli & Pleck, 2003; Palkovitz, 2002). Generativity is important because it is related to psychological wellbeing, both theoretically and empirically (e.g., Erikson, 1964; Peterson & Klohnen, 1995; Stewart, Ostrove, & Helson, 2001; Vaillant, 1977). Erikson (p. 130) remarked, ‘‘Parenthood is, for most, the first, and for many, the prime generative encounter.’’ Three kinds of research potentially provide insight into masculinity-related dynamics influencing how fatherhood promotes—or does not promote—generativity. One line of investigation concerns whether the link between generativity and parenthood differs for men and women (path K1 in Figure 2.3). Some research finds that being a parent is associated with aspects of generativity among men but not women, at least using some measures (McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1992). However, other studies find more consistent linkages among women than among men (Peterson & Klohnen, 1995; Peterson & Stewart, 1996). Also relevant is Snarey, Son, Kuehne, Hauser, and Vaillant’s (1987) observation that the circumstances of parenthood influenced the impact of being a father on generativity. Initially infertile men who later became fathers (either through adoption or medical procedures allowing them to become birth fathers) were rated as exhibiting higher levels of societal generativity than fertile, biological fathers. No parallel comparison is available for women. A second topic is how connections between parental behavior and generativity compare for fathers and mothers (path K2). The most well-known research documenting links between parenting behavior and generativity focused on fathers (Snarey, 1993). With level of psychosocial development prior to parenthood and other factors controlled, positive paternal engagement, particularly supporting the child’s socioemotional development, explained 14% of the variance in men’s midlife generativity. Other studies also suggest that play and social involvement, but not routine caregiving, are linked to generativity (Bailey, 1992; 1994; Christiansen & Palkovitz, 1998; McKeering & Pakenham, 2000). Two studies find no parallel relationships for mothers (Bailey, 1994; McKeering & Pakenham). In a third study with a large African-American subsample, parental role-modeling activities were associated with generativity in both genders (Hart, McAdams, Hirsch, & Bauer, 2001; see also Caldwell & White, 2006, on Black fathers’ generativity). A final line of research concerns the association between generativity and parental identity. Two available studies yield inconsistent results. On the one hand, Christiansen and Palkovitz (1998) find a strong association between

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fathers’ generativity and paternal identity, operationalized as belief in the importance of the role of the father for child development. In multivariate analyses including paternal identity, paternal behavior, and other potential predictors such as global psychosocial identity, paternal identity emerged as the strongest predictor of paternal generativity. On the other hand, however, McKeering and Pakenham (2000) observed no relationship between societal generativity and parental identity in either gender in their Australian sample. No studies were located examining this association among mothers. Two opposing theoretical perspectives provide a standpoint from which to interpret the complex pattern of similarities and differences by gender observed in these three areas. According to one, because high involvement in parenting is less socially normative for men than women, when men do it, parenting has more influence on their generativity (cf. Maurer et al., 2001). The alternative view is that because parenting is more central to women’s identities, variations in parental experience should have stronger associations with generativity for them than for men. The extent to which either argument holds true may, of course, vary according to what aspect of parenthood is examined, and according to social context. Overall, research on fatherhood and generativity, framed in a gender perspective, provides one example of a fatherhood–masculinity linkage unrelated to the EF hypothesis worth further consideration. The role of gender-related dynamics in the connections between other psychosocial constructs and parenting experience, and in the connections among parenting variables, merit more investigation. IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH AND PRACTICE The following are perhaps the most important recommendations for future research and practice to be derived from this chapter’s consideration of multifaceted linkages between fatherhood and masculinity. 1. The essential father hypothesis has dominated discussion of the linkages between fatherhood and masculinity. Only modest support is found for this view of fathering’s essential, unique, masculine effects. Given the centrality of paternal essentiality in the public understanding of fatherhood, as well as the intrinsic importance of the issues involved, research relevant to the hypothesis clearly should and will continue. Scholars should pursue each of the six component lines of investigation identified here, using new designs and analytical techniques. In addition, researchers should also critically analyze this chapter’s conceptual formulation of the research implications of the notion that fathers’ contributions are essential. If subsequent work yields better formulations of what the concept of paternal essentiality means, the chapter’s intent will have been realized, even if the conclusions drawn about paternal essentiality differ from those offered here. 2. The Fatherhood–Masculinity Model identifies numerous other interconnections between fatherhood and masculinity that have received far less

Implications for Research and Practice 51

attention than the linkages encompassed in the EF hypothesis. Fathers’ gender status and gender orientation potentially influence any parenting variable. These aspects of fathers’ masculinity may also moderate the relationship between any pair of parenting constructs, and the relationship between any parenting variable and any other psychosocial concept. Opportunities abound for important new research. 3. It is especially important that future research on fatherhood and masculinity employ more diverse samples. This includes addressing racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and sexual orientation diversity, as well as giving greater attention to other industrial societies and to developing countries (e.g., Chuang & Moreno, 2008; Connor & White, 2006; Klinth, 2008; other chapters in this volume). 4. For fatherhood practitioners, the chapter’s conclusions about the EF hypothesis present potential challenges. Many fathers find the idea that fathers’ contributions to child development are essential and unique an inspirational and motivating one. In a cultural context in which fathers’ contributions are often not socially valued as much as mothers’, for many fathers this belief may be the only one available with which to construct a narrative justifying or explaining why they should be involved. And for many fatherhood practitioners themselves, the idea of paternal essentiality may be central in providing a rationale for their work. It is important to recognize that what the term essential means in public discourse about fatherhood is not necessarily the same as its traditional literal meaning. Indeed, its literal sense is shifting to signify only ‘‘important.’’ Although dictionaries define essential as ‘‘indispensable; requisite: as in, water is essential to life’’ (Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, 1962), Microsoft Word’s thesaurus now includes important as a possible synonym. In my experience, the large majority of both fathers and fatherhood practitioners who use the term essential to characterize fathering’s effects actually use this language to express just that they think fathering is ‘‘really important,’’ corresponding to the paternal importance hypothesis. To believe that fathering is essential to positive child development, in the traditional literal sense, one must think that it is impossible for a child raised without a father to develop successfully. Most who say ‘‘fathers are essential’’ know of disconfirming examples, and thus do not mean this. In my opinion, the word essential is not going to go away in public discourse about fathers, but both practitioners and fathers do not need to get ‘‘stuck’’ on it. In addressing issues of masculinity with fathers, practitioners can offer understandings of the term that meet fathers’ needs for support. 5. Of the other potential linkages between fatherhood and masculinity relevant to practitioners, a particularly important one concerns how masculinity influences the connection between fatherhood and employment. One of the clearest ways that gender influences the experience of parenthood is that following a birth, especially a first birth, fathers’ labor force participation generally increases, while mothers’ decreases, a phenomenon so obvious that its theoretical significance may be

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overlooked. The masculinity process underlying fathers’ part of this pattern has important practical implications, especially in a cultural context in which many fathers do not fulfill their obligations for financial support in situations of divorce or not having married the child’s mother. Responsible fatherhood programs are as effective as they are in large part because they can make use of most fathers’ understanding that, as males, they have a particular obligation to provide economic support for their children. Responsible fatherhood programs can develop additional ways of building on fathers’ understanding of their economic role in terms of their masculinity. Fatherhood programs more generally can consider additional ways that they can take advantage of fathers’ positive constructions of masculinity to help support fathers in all their important paternal roles. REFERENCES Aldous, J., Mulligan, G. M., & Bjarnason, T. (1998). Fathering over time: What makes the difference? Journal of Marriage and the Family, 60, 809–820. Amato, P. R, & Gilbreth, J. (1999). Nonresident fathers and children’s well-being: A meta-analysis. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61, 557–573. Amato, P. R., & Rivera, F. (1999). Paternal involvement and children’s behavior. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61, 375–384. Astone, N., Dariotis, J., Sonenstein, F., Pleck, J. H., & Hynes, K. (in press). Men’s work efforts and the transition to fatherhood. Journal of Family and Economic Issues. Bailey, W. T. (1992). Psychological development in men: Generativity and involvement with young children. Psychological Reports, 71, 929–930. Bailey, W. T. (1994). Fathers’ involvement and responding to infants: ‘‘More’’ may not be ‘‘better.’’ Psychological Reports, 74, 92–94. Barnett, R. C., & Baruch, G. B. (1987). Determinants of fathers’ participation in family work. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 49, 29–40. Bem, S. (1974). The measurement of psychological androgyny. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 155–162. Berger, L., Carlson, M., Bzostek, S., & Osborne, C. (2008). Parenting practices of resident fathers: The role of marital and biological ties. Journal of Marriage and Family, 70, 625–639. Blankenhorn, D. (1995). Fatherless America: Confronting our most urgent social problem. New York: Basic Books. Bonney, J. F., Kelley, M. L., & Levant, R. F. (1999). A model of fathers’ behavioral involvement in child care in dual-earner families. Journal of Family Psychology, 13, 401–415. Caldwell, L., & White, J. (2006). Generative fathering: Challenges to Black masculinity and identity. In M. Connor & J. White (Eds.), Black fathers: An invisible presence in America (pp. 53–70). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Carlson, M. (2006). Family structure, father involvement, and adolescent behavioral outcomes. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68, 137–154. Christiansen, S. L., & Palkovitz, R. (1998). Exploring Erikson’s psychosocial theory of development: Generativity and its relationship to paternal identity, intimacy, and involvement in childcare. Journal of Men’s Studies, 7, 133–156. Chuang, S., & Moreno, R. (Eds.). (2008). On new shores: Understanding immigrant fathers in America. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

References 53 Collins, A., & Russell, G. (1991). Mother–child and father–child relatonships in middle childhood and adolescence: A developmental analysis. Developmental Review, 11, 99–136. Connell, R. W. (2005). Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press. Connor, M., & White, J. (Eds.). (2006). Black fathers: An invisible presence in America. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Crockett, L., Eggebeen, D., & Hawkins, A. (1993). Father’s presence and young children’s behavioral and cognitive adjustment. Journal of Family Psychology, 14, 355–377. Crouter, A., Whiteman, S., McHale, S., & Osgood, D. (2007). Development of gender attitude traditionality across middle childhood and adolescence. Child Development, 78(3), 911–926. Dariotis, J. K., Pleck, J. H., Astone, N. M., & Sonenstein, F. L. (in press). Pathways of early fatherhood, marriage, and employment: A latent class growth analysis. Demography. DeFrain, J. (1979). Androgynous parents tell who they are and what they need. Family Coordinator, 28, 237–243. Doucet, A. (2006). Do men mother? Fathering, care, and domestic responsibility. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Erikson, E. H. (1964). Insight and responsibility. New York: Norton. Flouri, E. (2005). Fathering and child outcomes. Chichester, UK: Wiley. Flouri, E., & Buchanan, A. (2002). What predicts good relationships with parents in adolescents and partners in adult life: Findings from the 1958 British Birth Cohort: Journal of Family Psychology, 16, 196–198. Grossman, F. K., Pollack, W. S., & Golding, E. (1988). Fathers and children: Predicting the quality and quantity of fathering. Developmental Psychology, 24, 82–91. Harris, K., & Ryan, S. (2004). Father involvement and the diversity of family context. In R. Day & M. Lamb (Eds.), Conceptualizing and measuring father involvement (pp. 293–319). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Hart, H. M., McAdams, D. P., Hirsch, B. J., & Bauer, J. J. (2001). Generativity and social involvement among African-American and White adults. Journal of Research in Personality, 35, 208–230. Ishii-Kuntz, M., & Coltrane, S. (1992). Predicting the sharing of household labor: Are parenting and housework distinct? Sociological Perspectives, 35, 629–647. Katz, P., & Ksansnak, K. (1994). Developmental aspects of gender role flexibility and traditionality in middle childhood and adolescence. Developmental Psychology, 30 (2), 272–282. King, V., & Sobolewski, J. (2006). Nonresident fathers contributions to adolescent well-being. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68, 537–557. Klinth, R. (2008). The best of both worlds? Fatherhood and gender equality in Swedish paternity leave campaigns, 1976–2006. Fathering, 6, 20–38. Kurdeck, L. A. (1998). Prospective predictors of parenting satisfaction for fathers and mothers with young children. Journal of Family Psychology, 12, 56–65. Lamb, M. E., Pleck, J. H., Charnov, E. L., & Levine, J. A. (1985). Paternal behavior in humans. American Zoologist, 25, 883–894. Lamb, M. E., Pleck, J. H., Charnov, E. L., & Levine, J. A. (1987). A biosocial perspective on paternal behavior and involvement. In J. B. Lancaster, J. Altman, & A. Rossi (Eds.), Parenting across the lifespan: Biosocial perspectives (pp. 111–142). New York: Academic Press. Lamb, M. E., Frodi, A. M., Hwang, C. P., & Frodi, M. (1982). Varying degrees of paternal involvement in infant care: Attitudinal and behavioral correlates. In M. E.

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Lamb (Ed.), Nontraditional families: Parenting and child development (pp. 117–138). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Lang, K., & Zagorsky, J. (2001). Does growing up with a parent absent really hurt? Journal of Human Resources, 36, 253–273. LaRossa, R., & Reitzes, D. (1993). Symbolic interactionism and family studies. In P. G. Boss, W. J. Doherty, R. LaRossa, W. R. Schumm, & S. K. Steinmetz (Eds.), Sourcebook of family theories and methods: A contextual approach (pp. 135–162). New York: Plenum. Larson, R., & Pleck, J. H. (1999). Hidden feelings: Emotionality in boys and men. In D. Bernstein (Ed.), Gender and motivation: The Nebraska Symposium on Motivation 1998 (pp. 25–74). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Leaper, C., Anderson, K., & Sanders, P. (1998). Moderators of gender effects on parents’ talk to their children: A meta-analysis. Developmental Psychology, 34, 3–27. Lenney, E. (1991). Sex roles: The measurement of masculinity, femininity, and androgyny. In J. Robinson, P. Shaver, & L. Wrightsman (Eds.), Measures of personality and social psychological attitudes (pp. 573–660). New York: Academic Press. Levant, R. F., Slattery, S. C., & Loiselle, J. E. (1987). Fathers’ involvement in housework and child care with school-aged daughters. Family Relations, 36, 152–157. Lytton, H., & Romney, D. (1991). Parents’ differential socialization by gender: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 109, 267–296. Marcell, A., Ford, C., Pleck, J. H., & Sonenstein, F. L. (2007). Masculine beliefs, parental communication, and adolescent males’ health care use. Pediatrics, 119(4), e966–975. Marsiglio, W., & Pleck, J. H. (2005). Fatherhood and masculinities. In R.W. Connell, J. Hearn, & M. Kimmel (Eds.), The handbook of studies on men and masculinities (pp. 249–269). Martin, A., Ryan, R., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2007). The joint influence of mother and father parenting on child cognitive outcomes at age 5. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 22, 423–439. Masciadrelli, B., & Pleck, J. H. (2003, November). Men, generativity, and fathering: What experiences are necessary? Presented at the National Council on Family Relations, Vancouver. Maurer, T. W., Pleck, J. H., & Rane, T. R. (2001). Parental identity and reflected appraisals: Measurement and gender dynamics. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 63, 309–321. McAdams, D. P., & deSt. Aubin, E. (1992). A theory of generativity and its assessment through self-report, behavioral acts, and narrative themes in autobiography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 1003–1015. McKeering, H., & Pakenham, K. I. (2000). Gender and generativity issues in parenting: Do fathers benefit more than mothers from involvement in child care activities? Sex Roles, 43, 459–480. McLanahan, S., & Sandefur, G. (1994). Growing up with a single parent: What hurts, what helps. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mussen, P. (1961). Some antecedents and consequents of masculinity of interests in adolescence. Psychological Monographs, 75(2), 1–24. Mussen, P., & Rutherford, E. (1963). Parent–child relations and parental personality in relation to young children’s sex-role preferences. Child Development, 34, 589–607. National Fatherhood Initiative (2007). Father facts (5th ed.). Gaithersville, MD: National Fatherhood Initiative. Palkovitz, R. (1984). Parental attitudes and father’s interactions with their 5-monthold infants. Developmental Psychology, 20, 1054–1060.

References 55 Palkovitz, R. (2002). Provisional balances: Involved fathering and men’s adult development. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Paquette, D. (2004). Theorizing the father-child relationship: Mechanisms and developmental outcomes. Human Development, 47, 193–219. Patterson, C., & Chan, R. (1999). Families headed by gay and lesbian parents. In M. Lamb (Ed.), Parenting and child development in ‘‘nontraditional’’ families (pp. 191– 219). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Peterson, B. E., & Klohnen, E. C. (1995). Realization of generativity in two samples of women at midlife. Psychology and Aging, 10, 20–29. Peterson, B. E., & Stewart, A. J. (1996). Antecedents and contexts of generativity motivation at midlife. Psychology and Aging, 11, 21–33. Pleck, J. H. (1981). The myth of masculinity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pleck, J. H. (1997). Paternal involvement: Levels, sources, and consequences. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (3rd ed., pp. 66–103). New York: Wiley. Pleck, J. H., & Hofferth, S. (2008). Mother involvement as an influence on father involvement with early adolescents. Fathering, 6, 267–286. Pleck, J. H., Lamb, M. E., & Levine, J. A. (1985). Facilitating future change in men’s family roles. Marriage and Family Review, 9(3–4), 11–16. Reprinted in R. A. Lewis, & M. Sussman (Eds.), Men’s changing roles in the family (pp. 11–16). New York: Haworth Press (1986). Pleck, J. H., & Masciadrelli, B. (2004). Paternal involvement in U.S. residential fathers: Levels, sources, and consequences. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (4th ed., pp. 222–271). New York: Wiley. Pleck, J. H., & O’Donnell, L. N. (2001). Gender attitudes and health risk behaviors in African-American and Latino early adolescents. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 31, 93–100. Pleck, J. H., Sonenstein, F. L., & Ku, L. C. (1993a). Masculinity ideology and its correlates. In S. Oskamp, & M. Costanzo (Eds.), Gender issues in contemporary society (pp. 85–110). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Pleck, J. H., Sonenstein, F. L., & Ku, L. C. (1993b). Masculinity ideology: Its impact on adolescent males’ heterosexual relationships. Journal of Social Issues, 49(3), 11–29. Pleck, J. H., Sonenstein, F. L., & Ku, L. C. (1994a). Attitudes toward male roles among adolescent males: A discriminant validity analysis. Sex Roles, 30(7/8), 481–501. Pleck, J. H., Sonenstein, F. L., & Ku, L. C. (1994b). Problem behaviors and masculinity ideology in adolescent males. In R. D. Ketterlinus, & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Adolescent problem behaviors (pp. 165–186). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Popenoe, D. (1996). Life without father: Compelling new evidence that fatherhood and marriage are indispensable for the good of children and society. New York: Free Press. Radin, N. (1994). Primary-caregiving fathers in intact families. In A.E. Gottfried, & A.W. Gottfried (Eds.), Redefining families: Implications for children’s development (pp. 55–97). New York: Plenum. Roggman, L. (2004). Do fathers just want to have fun? Human Development, 47, 228– 236. Rosenthal, R., Rosnow, R., & Rubin, D. (2000). Contrasts and effect sizes in behavioral research. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Rosenwasser, S. M., & Patterson, W. (1984–1985). Nontraditional male: Men with primary child care/household responsibilities. Psychology and Human Development, 1, 101–111. Russell, A., & Saebel, J. (1997). Mother-son, mother-daughter, father-son, and fatherdaughter: Are they distinct relationships? Developmental Review, 17, 111–147.

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Russell, G. (1986). Primary caretakers and role sharing fathers. In M.E. Lamb (Ed.), The father’s role: Applied perspectives (pp. 29–60). New York: Wiley. Russell, G. (1983). The changing role of fathers. St. Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press. Ryan, R., Martin, A., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2006). Is one good parent good enough? Patterns of mother and father parenting and child cognitive outcomes at 24 and 36 months. Parenting, 6, 211–228. Sanderson, S., & Sanders-Thompson, V. L. T. (2002). Factors associated with perceived paternal involvement in childrearing. Sex Roles, 46, 99–111. Sarkadi, A., Kristiansson, R., Oberklaid, F., & Bremberg, S. (2008). Fathers’ involvement and children’s developmental outcomes: A systematic review of longitudinal studies. Acta Pædiatrica, 97, 153–158. Schrock, D., & Schwalbe, M. (2009). Men, masculinity, and manhood acts. Annual Review of Sociology, 35, 277–296. Sigle-Rushton, W., & McLanahan, S. (2004). Father absence and child well-being: A critical review. In D. Moynihan, T. Smeedling, & L. Rainwater (Eds.), The future of the family (pp. 116–155). New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Silverstein, L. B., & Auerbach, C. F. (1999). Deconstructing the essential father. American Psychologist, 54, 397–407. Simons, L., & Conger, R. (2007). Linking mother-father differences in parenting to a typology of family parenting styles and adolescent outcomes. Journal of Family Issues, 28, 212–242. Snarey, J. (1993). How fathers care for the next generation: A four-decade study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Snarey, J., Son, L., Kuehne, V. S., Hauser, S., & Vaillant, G. (1987). The role of parenting in men’s psychosocial development: A longitudinal study of early adulthood infertility and midlife generativity. Developmental Psychology, 23, 593–603. Stacey, J., & Biblarz, T. (2001). (How) does the sexual orientation of parents matter? American Sociological Review, 66, 159–183. Stewart, A. J., Ostrove, J. M., & Helson, R. (2001). Middle aging women: Patterns of personality change from the 30s to the 50s. Journal of Adult Development, 8, 23–37. Tamis-LeMonda, C. (2004). Conceptualizing fathers’ roles: Playmates and more. Human Development, 47, 220–227. Tamis-LeMonda, C., Shannon, J., Cabrera, N., & Lamb, M. (2004). Fathers and mothers at play with their 2- and 3-year olds: Contributions to language and cognitive development. Child Development, 75, 1806–1820. Thompson, E. H., Jr., Pleck, J. H., & Ferrera, D. L. (1992). Men and masculinities: Scales for masculinity ideology and masculinity-related constructs. Sex Roles, 27 (11/12), 573–607. Vaden-Kiernan, N., Ialongo, N., Pearson, J., & Kellam, S. (1995). Household family structure and children’s aggressive behavior: A longitudinal study of urban elementary children. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 23, 553–568. Vaillant, G. E. (1977). Adaptation to life. Boston: Little, Brown. Wainright, J. L. & Patterson, C. J. (2006). Delinquency, victimization, and substance use among adolescents with female same-sex parents. Journal of Family Psychology, 20, 526–530. Wainright, J. L., & Patterson, C. J. (2008). Peer relations among adolescents with female same sex parents. Developmental Psychology, 44, 117–126. Wainright, J., Russell, S., & Patterson, C. (2004). Psychosocial adjustment, school outcomes, and romantic relationships of adolescents with same-sex parents. Child Development, 75, 1886–1898.

References 57 Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language (1962). Cleveland, OH: World. Winsler, A., Madigan, A. L. & Aquilino, S. A. (2005). Correspondence between maternal and paternal parenting styles in early childhood. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 20(1), 1–12. Yeung, W. J., Sandberg, J. F., Davis-Kean, P. E., Hofferth, S. L. (2001). Children’s time with fathers in intact families. Journal of Marriage and Family, 63, 136–154.

CHAPTER 3

Paternal Involvement Revised Conceptualization and Theoretical Linkages with Child Outcomes JOSEPH H. PLECK

F

increasingly recognizing the need for theory to guide research (Day & Lamb, 2004; Marsiglio, Amato, Day, & Lamb, 2000; Pleck, 2007). This chapter’s objective is to advance theory concerning paternal involvement in two ways. First, I propose a revised conceptualization of the construct of paternal involvement. The reconceptualization includes three primary components: (a) positive engagement activities, (b) warmth and responsiveness, and (c) control. It also includes two auxiliary domains: (d) indirect care, and (e) process responsibility. The primary components reflect the predominant ways that involvement is actually operationalized in most current fathering research. Use of these core dimensions also integrates investigation of father involvement more closely with the broader field of parenting research. The auxiliary domains clarify the two distinct aspects of the original responsibility component. Data on the empirical interrelationships among the five components, their levels, and the extent to which these levels have changed in recent decades are then reviewed. Second, the chapter considers why and how, from a theoretical viewpoint, components of father involvement might have direct positive influences on child development. At the outset, recent empirical research on these influences is reviewed, identifying some important recent methodological advances. The most rigorously designed studies provide some evidence for direct paternal effects among both resident and nonresident fathers. Then, several possible sources for theorizing paternal influences are examined. I develop a ‘‘parental capital’’ framework for understanding the possible direct influences of the paternal involvement and its components on child outcomes. ATHERHOOD SCHOLARS ARE

The work reported here was supported by the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture, under Project No. ILLU-45–0366 to Joseph H. Pleck.

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This parental capital model employs concepts from social capital theory, parental style research, and Bronfenbrenner’s ecological perspective. Some restrictions in scope should be noted. Although the chapter includes some material on nonresident fathers when available, most of the data referenced pertains to married fathers in residential contexts. Chapters 6 and 7 in this volume thoroughly review current research on nonresident and divorced fathers. In addition, most of the chapter’s empirical material concerns fathers who are heterosexual, did not have a first child as a teen, are not disabled, and live in the United States. It is the chapter’s hope, however, that the theoretical ideas advanced may have relevance to other fathers (see other chapters in this volume for coverage of diverse father groups). A REVISED CONCEPTUALIZATION OF PATERNAL INVOLVEMENT Prior to the introduction of the involvement construct in the mid-1980s, the paternal variable studied most frequently was fathers’ presence (coresidence) in the child’s household. Other aspects of paternal behavior and children’s relationships with their fathers received some attention such as fathers’ role in children’s cognitive, social, and moral development, fathers’ interaction style, and infant attachment to fathers (see Lamb, 1976, 1981). However, existing research did not address how large a part fathers play in the care and socialization of their children—in simple terms, how much fathers do as parents. How much fathers actually did had become a matter of growing social concern by the early 1980s (Pleck, 1997; Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004). In this scientific and cultural context, Lamb, Pleck, Charnov, and Levine (1985; Pleck, Lamb, & Levine, 1985) proposed a conceptualization of paternal involvement, encompassing three components: (a) paternal engagement (direct interaction with the child, in the form of caretaking, or play or leisure); (b) accessibility (availability) to the child; and (c) responsibility, defined as making sure that the child is taken care of as well as arranging for resources for the child. RECENT OPERATIONALIZATIONS

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The construct of paternal involvement (hereafter termed the Lamb-Pleck conceptualization) was subsequently widely used. However, as researchers operationalized it, they interpreted it in new ways. This parallels how the conceptualizations of other behavioral science constructs such as self-esteem, attachment, marital adjustment, and social class have shifted over time. As an illustration, Hofferth’s (2003) analysis of influences on paternal involvement in the 1997 Child Development Supplement (CDS) of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) operationalized residential fathers’ involvement with four measures: (a) time spent with the child (coded from time diaries); (b) warmth (sample items: frequency of hugging the child, telling the child they love him or her); (c) monitoring and control (having rules about the child’s activities, food, whereabouts, and homework, and discussing these rules); and (d) responsibility (coded from responses to questions about to what extent each parent performed eight tasks: bathing children and

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changing diapers, disciplining children, choosing children’s activities, buying children’s clothes, driving children to activities, selecting a pediatrician and making appointments, selecting a child care program or school, and playing with the child). Carlson’s (2006) analysis of resident and nonresident biological fathers in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) 1979 provides a second example. Beginning in 1990, adolescent children of women in the 1979 panel reported about their relationship with their biological fathers. Paternal involvement was assessed by a composite of seven items: talking over important decisions with my father, father listening to my side of an argument, father knowing whom I am with when I am not at home, father missing events or activities that are important to me (reverse coded), father and I sharing ideas or talking about what really matters to me, father spends enough time with me, and I feel close to him. These seven items loaded strongly on a single factor, and ‘‘represent a single construct of high-quality father involvement’’ (p. 142). The measures used in these two studies, and many others, have some correspondence to the Lamb-Pleck conceptualization, but also vary from it in important ways. For example, it is difficult to logically relate having rules for the child’s behavior (Hofferth) or father–child closeness (Carlson) to Lamb and Pleck’s three components. The following sections analyze how the operationalization of father involvement came to its present point, and propose a revised conceptualization. THE FOCUS ON ENGAGEMENT, AND THE SHIFT IN ITS INTERPRETATION ENGAGEMENT TIME TO POSITIVE ENGAGEMENT ACTIVITIES

FROM

TOTAL

From the outset, paternal involvement research focused primarily on the engagement component. The other two domains received far less attention. In addition, ‘‘involvement’’ was often used as a synonym for just the engagement component. (In rhetoric, employing the term for the whole to refer to a part is called synecdoche, e.g., ‘‘Brazil won the soccer match.’’) One reason both occurred was that engagement was more like existing concepts in human development, while accessibility and responsibility may have seemed less important and more difficult to investigate. When the latter two components were operationalized, their meaning was sometimes stretched, for example, interpreting accessibility as fathers’ being resident in the household as opposed to nonresident (Sarkadi, Kristiansson, Oberklaid, & Bremberg, 2008), a phenomenon which had been already conceptualized for many decades as father presence vs. absence. Lamb et al.’s (1985) original presentation may have inadvertently contributed to the blurring of the distinction between engagement and involvement. They introduced the broader involvement construct by noting the traditional focus of developmental psychology on ‘‘direct rearing activities,’’ then saying that ‘‘consistent with this, our focus here is on the amount of time spent in activities involving the child. . . . We focus here on the amount of time spent in activities involving the child because they are the ones undergoing particular change today.’’ They then defined involvement’s engagement component as ‘‘the father’s direct contact with his child, through

A Revised Conceptualization of Paternal Involvement 61

caretaking and shared activities’’ (p. 884). The authors stated immediately following that the responsibility component did not involve time. Nonetheless, the initial passage may have made it seem that the more inclusive concept of paternal involvement, not just engagement, concerned time and interaction. For clarity, this chapter will adhere to the distinction between engagement and the broader construct. Also, Lamb et al. originally termed the first component interaction, but Lamb (1987) relabeled it as engagement, the current usage that is followed here. As work with the engagement construct proceeded, there was an important shift in exactly how paternal engagement time was conceptualized. Fathering research gradually shifted from conceptualizing paternal engagement as all the time a father spends interacting with his child, of whatever nature, to conceptualizing it as the subset of the kind of more interactive activities that potentially promote child development. Put succinctly, the field progressed from defining engagement as fathers’ total interaction time in a content-free sense, to defining it as fathers’ positive engagement activities. This shift can be traced in the changing role of time use methodology in paternal engagement research. As suggested by Lamb et al.’s language, time use research played a major part in the formulation of engagement, reflecting Pleck’s (1985) experience with this method. In the typical time diary format, adults recorded what they did in the preceding 24 hours, with respondents describing their activities in their own words. These activities were then coded in highly specific categories (96 in early time use studies). Analyses typically aggregated these detailed codes into ‘‘basic child care’’ (consisting of baby care, child care, medical care—kids) and ‘‘other child care’’ (helping/teaching, reading/talking, indoor and outdoor playing, babysitting/other, and travel related to child care). Basic and other child care were then summed as ‘‘total child care’’ time (Pleck, p. 36). Particularly important, publications typically reported results for fathers using only the total time measure. Lamb et al.’s (1985) review of research on levels of paternal engagement did cite numerous findings from smaller scale studies using observational methods and focusing on narrower categories of paternal interaction. But it also included results about fathers’ total engagement from diary studies, which implicitly defined engagement as all the time in which a father reported he was doing something with his children, with no restriction as to the type of activity. In later discussions of engagement, the time diary approach for assessing total engagement garnered disproportionate attention from both proponents (Pleck, 1997; Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004; Pleck & Stueve, 2001) and critics (Hawkins & Palkovitz, 1999; Palkovitz, 1997) alike. Two factors contributed to the subsequent focus on fathers’ total engagement time from time use research. First, the major diary studies used national or other large-scale representative samples, so that their results could be generalized to populations. Second, time diary methodology was coming into widespread use in the social sciences more generally. The U.S. national diary study conducted in 1965–1966 as part of the Multinational Study of Time use was replicated in later years, then succeeded by the American Time Use Study (ATUS), an ongoing component of the Bureau of the Census’s Current

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Population Survey; the Panel Study of Income Dynamics collected time diaries for children in its Child Development Supplement in 1997 and 2001; and European countries began ongoing time use survey programs (Sullivan, Coltrane, McAnnally, & Altintas, 2009). The availability of the measure of total paternal engagement typically reported from diary data made it possible to make both cross-time and cross-national comparisons (e.g., Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004; Sullivan & Coltrane, 2008). However, this total engagement measure had important disadvantages. Most time use studies collected data from and about adults. If a father had more than one child, the diary data were coded for his time with all his children rather than with individual children. For some research purposes, fathers’ time with all children was germane, for example, in research on gender equity in marriage (as reflected in comparisons of wives’ and husbands’ total paid and family work time in two-earner families) as well as research on predictors of paternal engagement (e.g., Pleck, 1985). However, fathers’ time with all his children cannot be appropriately used to assess the influence of paternal involvement on child outcomes, which necessarily should focus on individual children (cf. Amato & Rivera, 1999). Later studies, by collecting diaries about children’s time use, did obtain data about fathers’ engagement with a specific focal child (Sandberg & Hofferth, 2001; Yeung, Sandberg, Davis-Kean, & Hofferth, 2001), so this issue could be addressed. But there was a more important problem. Analyses of fathers’ total amount of interaction with individual children provided little evidence indicating that it was significantly linked with developmental outcomes (Cabrera, Tamis-LeMonda, Bradley, Hofferth, & Lamb 2000; Pleck, 1997). Further, some critics argued, based on these results as well as conceptual grounds, that engagement should be conceptualized in a much broader way encompassing fathers’ thoughts, affects, perceptions, and beliefs, rather than with just ‘‘ticks and clicks’’ (Hawkins & Palkovitz, 1999; Palkovitz, 1997). The operationalization of paternal engagement did shift away from total interaction time, but these new measurement approaches emerged for pragmatic reasons, not because of this empirical evidence or these conceptual critiques. The cost and respondent burden of collecting time diaries (not to mention coding them) was too high for routine research use. This disadvantage is heightened when one considers that diaries for multiple days are needed to assess characteristic patterns of time use. Briefer self-report measures of engagement, gauging periods longer than a single day, were necessary. To meet this need, researchers developed measures asking fathers about specific activities with children, either in terms of the frequency of the activity, or how the activity was shared between father and mother. In U.S. national datasets, the first major example was the set of seven paternal engagement items in the 1987 National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH). Fathers of younger children reported the frequency of outings away from home, playing at home, and reading, and fathers with older children responded about leisure activities, working on projects or playing at home, having private talks, and helping with reading and doing homework, on a scale ranging from never or rarely to almost every day (Marsiglio, 1991). In the NSFH, fathers reported their activities with all their children combined,

A Revised Conceptualization of Paternal Involvement 63

but this kind of measure was easily adapted to apply to engagement with a particular child. In contrast to total engagement time, activity measures like these often did have positive correlates with developmental outcomes. Pleck (1997; Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004) made the interpretation that the reason these activity assessments, in contrast to total engagement, were associated with child outcomes was because they focused on the kinds of more interactive parenting activities that potentially promote child development. As studies of fathering increasingly adopted such activity frequency measures, time use researchers themselves less often analyzed only fathers’ total time with children or a child, and more often distinguished different kinds of engagement time, and reported results for them in detail. For example, Yeung et al.’s (2001) major analysis of fathers’ time use in the 1997 CDS examines play/companionship, teaching, and caregiving separately. Particularly significant, Bianchi, Robinson, and Milkie (2006, p. 68) relabeled what 1980s time diary research blandly termed fathers’ ‘‘other child care’’ (component codes described above) as their ‘‘interactive’’ or ‘‘enrichment’’ time with their children. They also narrowed this summary category to include only helping/teaching, reading/talking, and indoor/outdoor playing. The older ‘‘other child care’’ category had also included the activity codes for babysitting/other and child care travel (combining these with teaching, reading, and playing had always seemed odd). These codes were now shifted to the other child care category, previously termed ‘‘basic child care’’ and now renamed as ‘‘routine’’ activities. Particularly important, Bianchi et al. report fathers’ time in the two categories separately. If the two categories had been defined and labeled in the 1980s as Bianchi et al. did later, and if detailed data for those categories had been easily available then, Lamb and Pleck might well have distinguished the two types of engagement. Had that happened, other researchers might have zeroed in on engagement’s more interactive forms much earlier than they did. Overall, the relationship between time use methods and paternal engagement has come full circle. Time use research, and the way that it typically defined and reported father’s engagement in the 1980s, contributed to the initial conceptualization of engagement as fathers’ total time spent with his children or a particular child. Some critics proposed radically broadening engagement and the larger construct of involvement to include thoughts, affects, perceptions, and beliefs. Since critics noted the limitations of fathers’ total activity time as a predictor of their children’s outcomes, it is noteworthy that they proposed defining involvement more broadly, rather than the perhaps more obvious alternative of defining the engagement component more narrowly. Measures of the latter did emerge and come into widespread use, but for pragmatic rather than conceptual reasons. THE INCLUSION

OF

QUALITATIVE PARENTING DIMENSIONS

Warmth and Responsiveness. In addition to focusing on potentially development-promoting activities rather than all interaction time, the interpretation of engagement expanded in another way as well. As illustrated in Hofferth’s (2003) and Carlson’s (2006) research, operationalizations of engagement now frequently include paternal warmth and/or responsiveness to the child. This

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qualitative dimension of fathering is investigated as a distinct domain by itself (Hofferth) or as part of a composite involvement measure (Carlson). Pleck (1997; Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004) also documented the ways that numerous questionnaire fathering measures developed around the same time as the engagement construct combined warmth or responsiveness with father’s positive activity frequency. Control. Also exemplified in Hofferth’s (2003) and Carlson’s (2006) studies, recent studies of father involvement increasingly include measures falling within the broad domain of parental control. One aspect is paternal monitoring, reflected in knowing the child’s whereabouts (and in some recent literature referred to specifically as knowledge). In addition, fathers’ participation in decision making about the children is also increasingly included (Pleck & Hofferth, 2008). Researchers typically interpret monitoring and decision making as operationalizations of Lamb and Pleck’s responsibility component. The Convergence of Paternal Involvement and Authoritative Parental Style. Those familiar with research on parental style will immediately recognize warmthresponsiveness and control as the two factors in Maccoby and Martin’s (1983) interpretation of the dimensions underlying Baumrind’s (1967) parental style categories, with authoritative parental style combining the two. (A recent development in parental style research is the distinction between two kinds of control, behavioral and psychological, e.g., Stolz, Barber, and Olson (2005).) As researchers operationalized paternal involvement subsequent to Lamb and Pleck’s formulation, how did items or measures assessing these two dimensions come to be included together with reports of positive activity frequency? The simple answer is that beginning in the 1990s, research in human development and family studies increasingly made use of public-use national datasets like the NLSY and NSFH. When the researchers designing these datasets selected parenting measures to include besides activity engagement, they selected items from existing instruments. Because of its centrality in parenting research, existing measures focused on the component dimensions of parental style. When researchers interested in paternal involvement turned to these datasets, researchers used these measures, ‘‘shoe-horning’’ them into the construct of paternal involvement. Thus, the incorporation of warmthresponsiveness and control measures into paternal involvement was to some extent driven by availability and opportunity. As the paternal involvement construct began to include elements of authoritative parental style, the concept of authoritative parental style simultaneously has started to incorporate the involvement construct’s engagement dimension, as originally formulated by Lamb and Pleck in terms of time. For example, Marsiglio et al. (2000, pp. 1182–1183) use the term authoritative parenting for the configuration of ‘‘spending time with children (emphasis added), providing emotional support, giving everyday assistance, monitoring children’s behavior, and noncoercive disciplining.’’ Carlson (2006, p. 138) links parental style to engagement time in saying, ‘‘Time spent together provides parents the opportunity to demonstrate the warmth and support, and appropriate control and monitoring, that are intrinsic to authoritative

A Revised Conceptualization of Paternal Involvement 65

parenting.’’ Steinberg’s work on parental style has also described authoritativeness with language connoting engagement, for example, Lanborn, Mounts, Steinberg, and Dornbusch’s (1991, p. 1053) referring to the aspect of authoritative parental style usually referred to a warmth-responsiveness as ‘‘acceptance/involvement.’’ Since both the involvement construct and the parental style construct are intended to address broad dimensions of parenting, their conceptual convergence is perhaps not surprising. RESPONSIBILITY Many researchers interpreted responsibility to mean only monitoring the child’s activities and decision making about the child, but these were already well established as parenting constructs in their own right. The responsibility component of paternal involvement meant something different. Lamb et al. (1985, p. 884) defined responsibility as referring ‘‘not to the amount of time spent with or accessible to children, but to the role father takes in making sure that the child is taken care of and arranging for resources to be available for the child (emphasis added). For example, this might involve arranging for babysitters, making appointments with pediatricians and seeing that the child is taken to them, determining when the child needs new clothes, etc.’’ This definition refers to responsibility as both a process (‘‘making sure the child is taken care of’’) and to indirect care, a type of activity (‘‘arranging for resources to be available’’). (For evaluations of existing responsibility measures, see Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004). Indirect Care. To address this aspect of responsibility first, indirect care refers to activities undertaken for the child, but not involving interaction with the child, with the exception of providing economic support. As Lamb et al. explained the omission of breadwinning, ‘‘although [it] may also be very important, we explicitly exclude from consideration breadwinning. . . . We focus here on the amount of time spent in activities involving the child because they are the ones undergoing particular change today, and because psychologists have yet to consider paternal behavior in more comprehensive fashion’’ (p. 884). Provision of economic support had been previously identified as an aspect of fathering, and was already being studied. The intent of the involvement construct was to identify new dimensions of fathering that appeared to be changing and that previously received little attention. Consideration of existing research suggests that indirect care falls into two subcategories. The first can be termed material indirect care, purchasing and arranging goods and services for the child. Some research labels these behaviors child-related work (Hossain, 2001; Kelley, 1997). The specific indirect care activity receiving most research attention has been making child care arrangements (Leslie, Anderson, & Branson, 1991; Peterson & Gerson, 1992). Fathers’ arrangement of their children’s health care has also been a research focus (Bailey, 1991; Isacco & Garfield, in press; Moore & Kotelchuk, 2004). Stueve and Pleck (2001; Pleck & Stueve, 2004) assessed this form of indirect care with an open-ended question asking parents to describe meaningful or important experiences ‘‘arranging and planning things for’’ their child,

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‘‘things like making doctor’s and dentist’s appointments, arranging childcare or transportation, and educational planning.’’ Factors interpretable as this aspect of indirect care have emerged in factor analyses of broad sets of paternal parenting measures (Beitel & Parke, 1998; Bruce & Fox, 1997; Deutsch, Servis, & Payne, 2001). Other work independent of Lamb and Pleck’s formulation has identified a second broad category of indirect care, social indirect care, referring to promoting the child’s community connections. In this domain, Parke, McDowell, Kim, Killian, Dennis, and Wild (2004) have emphasized the critical importance of fathers’ ‘‘managerial’’ role in their children’s friendships. Fathers’ advocacy with social institutions on behalf of their children can also be interpreted as form of social indirect care (Lareau, 2003; Small & Eastman, 1991). Doucet (2006, 2009) refers to social indirect care as fathers’ ‘‘community responsibility.’’ Process Responsibility. This aspect of responsibility is illustrated in Coltrane’s (1996, p. 54) observation that ‘‘in most families, husbands notice less about what needs to be done, and wait to be asked to do various chores and require explicit directions if they are to complete the tasks successfully . . . most couples continue to characterize husband’s contributions to housework and child care as ‘helping their wives.’’’ Process responsibility involves taking initiative and monitoring what is needed. It is illustrated by Walzer’s (1996) concepts of ‘‘parental consciousness’’ and ‘‘mental baby care’’ (worrying, processing information about what to expect, and managing the division of labor). Paternal responsibility is one of the major themes in Doucet’s (2006, 2009) work. In her explications of fathers’ community responsibility (noted above as social indirect care) and emotional responsibility (referring primarily to caregiving), Doucet includes both behavior and process responsibility. However, she gives special emphasis to the latter. A father in her research aptly summed up the essence of process responsibility as ‘‘seeing the need’’ as opposed to ‘‘filling the need’’ (p. 219). Doucet also employs a classification of fathers as assistants, partners, or managers in these domains, which in effect places them on a continuum of process responsibility. A REVISED CONCEPTUALIZATION

OF

PATERNAL INVOLVEMENT

To summarize, researchers have generally operationalized Lamb and Pleck’s mid-1980s formulation of paternal involvement in ways going beyond their conceptualization. The initial formulation’s engagement component, grounded in time use methodology, focused on all interaction time with the child, but subsequent research increasingly assessed engagement as a narrower set of more highly interactive paternal activities, and time diary investigators themselves increasingly concentrated on time in narrower activity categories rather than total time. Fatherhood researchers have also increasingly added warmth-responsiveness and control to their assessments of paternal involvement. Indirect care and process responsibility have received

A Revised Conceptualization of Paternal Involvement 67

some attention, although far less. Accessibility has been studied least of all (but see Bianchi et al., 2006; Yeung et al., 2001). Building on this history, I propose here a revised conceptualization of paternal involvement that includes three primary components: (a) positive engagement activities, interaction with the child of the more intensive kind likely to promote development; (b) warmth and responsiveness; and (c) control, particularly monitoring and decision making. The revised involvement conceptualization also includes two auxiliary domains: (d) indirect care, activities done for the child that do not entail interaction with the child, in the forms of material indirect care (purchasing and arranging goods and services for the child) as well as social indirect care (fostering community connections with peers and institutions), but excluding breadwinning; and (e) process responsibility, referring to a father’s monitoring that his child’s needs for the first four components of involvement are being met, as distinct from the extent to which the father meets those needs himself. The first of the primary components, positive engagement activities, is a modified form of engagement as originally formulated. The explicit inclusion of the second and third domains, the qualitative dimensions underlying authoritative parental style, helps integrate the paternal involvement construct (and by extension, fathering research) with the broader field of parenting research. In addition to mirroring how paternal engagement is actually operationalized in most current investigations, the three primary components are compatible with those proposed in other recent reviews such as Palkovitz’s (2007) thematic analysis of ‘‘things that matter in fathering’’ (affective climate, behavioral style, and relational synchrony), Hawkins, Amato, and King’s (2007) concept of ‘‘active fathering,’’ and Sarkadi et al.’s (2008) concept of ‘‘effective engagement.’’ The preponderance of future research on father involvement will likely continue to focus, as it does now, on only the three core dimensions. Giving prime attention to these core involvement components is legitimate in light of the volume of past parenting research concerning the importance of these parental behaviors, especially the second and third. It is also appropriate in view of how much more there is to be learned about them. The revised conceptualization includes indirect care as the first of two auxiliary components. Indirect care has been investigated far less frequently than the three primary involvement domains, but researchers are showing increasing interest in it. Lamb and Pleck’s formulation emphasized purchasing goods and arranging services for the child, termed here material indirect care. More recent research has particularly attended to the father’s role in fostering the child’s peer relations and community connections and their advocacy on behalf of the child, social indirect care. Process responsibility is the final component of paternal involvement. Existing quantitative and qualitative research is limited in extent, but nonetheless suggests that process responsibility holds promise for further investigation. Lamb and Pleck’s combining process responsibility and indirect care under the term responsibility may have obscured how conceptually distinct the two phenomena are.

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APPLICATION

OF THE INVOLVEMENT

CONSTRUCT

TO

MOTHERING

When Lamb and Pleck proposed the paternal involvement construct in the mid-1980s, they offered it as a conceptual tool for the study of fatherhood. In formulating involvement and its component domains, they did not reference the parenting dimensions that had previously been studied in mothers. In subsequent research, the relationship between paternal involvement and mothers’ parenting has been framed in two ways. First, reflecting the concept’s origins, many researchers consider it to apply uniquely and only to fathers. Stolz et al. (2005) aptly critique this approach: We once studied primarily mothers and called their behaviors ‘‘parenting’’ without considering whether we had accurately portrayed fathers, but now we often study only fathers and call their behaviors ‘‘fathering’’ without considering whether . . . those behaviors are similar when enacted by mothers (p. 1076).

A second approach uses the involvement construct for the study of mothers’ parenting as well as fathers’, treating this conceptual generalization as not necessitating particular justification. The incorporation of the qualitative dimensions underlying parental style into the paternal involvement construct has accelerated this application of the involvement construct to mothering. As reviewed in a later section, much of this research takes as its objective to investigate empirically whether involvement has the same correlates in mothers as in fathers, and to analyze the independent contribution of each to child outcomes. A researcher such as myself who primarily studies fatherhood is perhaps not well positioned to formally propose that the construct of paternal involvement—either Lamb and Pleck’s original formulation, the reconceptualization offered here, or other proposals yet to be offered—should be applied to mothers as well as fathers. Research in human development and family studies, however, appears to be moving in this direction. Using the same measures for involvement for both mothers and fathers requires careful attention to issues of similarity of factor structure (Finley, Mira, & Schwartz, 2008) and of measurement equivalence (Adamsons & Buehler, 2007). With these caveats, applying the involvement construct to both mothers and fathers makes possible a systematic exploration of gender differences and similarities in the levels, sources, and consequences of mothers’ and fathers’ behavior that offers opportunities to increase our understanding of parenting.

COMPONENTS OF PATERNAL INVOLVEMENT: INTERRELATIONSHIPS, LEVELS, AND CHANGE OVER TIME This section first examines how the five paternal involvement domains are interrelated with each other. It then discusses recent research on fathers’ levels of involvement, and the extent to which these levels have changed in recent decades. The data referenced primarily concern residential fathers, though some information about nonresident fathers is included.

Components of Paternal Involvement 69

INTERRELATIONSHIPS AMONG COMPONENTS The question is frequently raised whether paternal involvement should be interpreted as unidimensional or multidimensional. At the outset, it is helpful to frame the dimensionality issue in the context of the evolution of the involvement construct. First, the dimensionality question has not primarily concerned whether the three domains in Lamb and Pleck’s mid-1980s formulation comprise a single factor. Lamb and Pleck’s formulation of interaction, accessibility, and responsibility as distinct domains did not logically require that they be intercorrelated and, if anything, implied that they may be relatively independent. Since most research focuses on engagement alone, the question on most researchers’ minds is whether the engagement component by itself is unidimensional or multidimensional. Second, researchers increasingly operationalized involvement to include warmth-responsiveness and control. The inclusion of these dimensions in engagement along with positive engagement activities has made the dimensionality question more salient. The largest body of research concerning dimensionality does in fact concern the three primary involvement components. Many, but not all, analyses indicate that the three components are moderately interrelated. Several formal analyses of the factor structure of relatively small numbers of indicators across the three domains suggest that they comprise a single dimension, and analyses using larger sets of indicators find that most indicators do. Carlson (2006) found in the NLSY 1979 that adolescents’ reports concerning seven areas that ranged from the father attending important events and spending enough time with me (positive activity engagement), my feeling close to him (warmth), his listening to my side of an argument (responsiveness), and his making decisions concerning me (decision making) all loaded strongly on a single factor. Pleck and Hofferth’s (2008) confirmatory factor analysis of six of these items (excluding spending enough time) found they comprised a single latent variable, although the coefficient for decisions was lower than for the other items. Nonetheless, they found that a one-factor measurement model had significantly better model fit than a two-factor model. Coley and Medeiros (2007) likewise found a single latent dimension in nonresident fathers. In a study using a broader pool of measures in the CDS, Schoppe-Sullivan, McBride, and Ho (2004) found multiple distinct first-order factors underlying the involvement variables. These investigators also found that all first-order factors except cognitive monitoring loaded on a single second-order factor, but monitoring remained separate as a second-order dimension. Skinner, Johnson, and Snyder (2005) also found multiple latent factors underlying these kinds of items, as did Finley et al. (2008). Other analyses concern only the first two involvement components, with measures of control not included. Numerous studies have employed fathering measures that combine the two spheres; those measures having adequate internal reliability indicates that activity frequency and warmth-responsiveness must be at least moderately positively correlated (Pleck, 1997; Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004). In addition, using the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health), Cookston and Finlay (2006) found a single

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latent factor encompassing four activity frequency items, five communication frequency items, and five warmth-closeness items for resident fathers. However, Hawkins et al. (2007), using a smaller group of items in these domains in the same dataset, found that they did not comprise a single latent factor for resident fathers, though they did for nonresident ones. Ryan, Martin, and Brooks-Gunn’s (2006) factor analysis in an observational study with toddlers likewise found that activity engagement and warmth-responsiveness were aspects of the same dimension, but other studies have found them only weakly correlated (Brown, McBride, Shin, & Bost, 2007). Overall, evidence about the dimensionality of the three primary involvement components is mixed. The extent of interrelationship or independence among the three components appears to vary as a function of the exact item text, the number of items, and the samples used. Researchers should analyze the dimensionality of the involvement measures used in their particular studies, and when the data suggest multiple dimensions, they should be analyzed separately. Another way to evaluate whether multiple dimensions should be distinguished within the three primary involvement domains is to ascertain whether they have the same covariates. In Hofferth’s (2003) analysis of the CDS, paternal engagement time, warmth, control, and a composite of indirect and direct care (labeled responsibility in her analysis) were treated as separate variables on a priori grounds. Although the four measures of involvement had some predictors in common (reporting that one’s own father was involved, and having positive attitudes about fathers’ role), most predictors for the four measures did not overlap. For example, fathers’ work hours was significantly negatively associated with engagement time and the indirect-direct care composite, but not with warmth or control. Having attended parenting classes predicted high control, but not the other fathering dimensions. Shifting to associations with outcomes, a comparison of two analyses using Add Health data is particularly valuable. As noted earlier, Cookston and Finlay (2006) found a single latent factor underlying fathers’ activity frequency, communication frequency, and warmth-closeness. They further found that this paternal involvement factor (with mother involvement controlled) predicted concurrent and subsequent lower delinquency and lower depression, and concurrent lower alcohol use. Using the same dataset but analyzing the three components of involvement separately, Goncy and Van Dulmen (in press), however, found that while paternal communication and warmthcloseness predicted lower concurrent alcohol use and fewer co-occurring risky behaviors (e.g., driving when drinking), activity frequency did not (again with the parallel dimensions of maternal involvement controlled). The available evidence is more limited concerning the interrelations of indirect care and process responsibility with the primary involvement components and with each other. McBride and Mills’s (1993) measure of process responsibility is significantly correlated with fathers’ level of engagement time, but only in two-earner families. Several factor analyses of paternal parenting items yielded separate factors distinguishing indirect care and process responsibility from each other, as well as from the three core involvement domains (Beitel & Parke, 1998; Bruce & Fox, 1997; Deutsch

Components of Paternal Involvement 71

et al., 2001). The balance of evidence suggests that process responsibility and indirect care are empirically independent, and are not consistently related to the primary spheres of involvement. In summary, some studies suggest that the three primary involvement components (paternal positive activity engagement, warmth-responsiveness, and control) are moderately related to each other, and comprise a single factor. However, control is somewhat less strongly associated with the other two components than the latter are to each other, and a number of analyses find multiple latent factors underlying these components. In addition, these components often have different covariates. It is evident that researchers should analyze the measurement structure of the instruments they use, and if distinct components have adequate psychometric properties, it is recommended that they be analyzed separately. Nonetheless, if measurement models suggest a single factor, or items need to be combined across these involvement domains to obtain adequate reliability, analyses with the resulting composite paternal involvement measures can still inform future research. Although evidence bearing on indirect care and process responsibility is more limited, the data available suggest that they should be treated as dimensions of paternal involvement that are distinct from each other as well as independent of the three primary components. LEVELS

AND

CHANGE OVER TIME

Presented here are data concerning levels of the five components of paternal involvement among resident fathers. For information on nonresident fathers’ contact with their children and how it has changed in recent decades, see Amato, Myers, and Emery (2009). Amato and Dorius (Chapter 6) and Fabricius, Braver, Diaz, and Schenck (Chapter 7) provide other information about nonresident fathers’ involvement. Positive Activity Engagement. My prior reviews of levels and secular change in residential fathers’ paternal engagement focused on fathers’ total interaction time spent with their children (Pleck, 1997; Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004). Consistent with the reconceptualization of engagement as positive activity engagement, however, this section focuses on data concerning this subset of fathers’ total interaction with their children. Child Trends’ (2006) Charting parenthood: A statistical portrait of fathers and mothers in America provides illustrative data for specific positive engagement activities from large-scale representative samples. For example, in the 1997 CDS, the percentage of fathers in two-parent families who played board games or puzzles with their child aged 3 to 5 at least once a week was 43%; looked at books together, 60%; talked about family, 79%; and played sports or outdoor activities, 81% (values reported as integers in Child Trends, p. 149). Comparable proportions for mothers were 55, 79, 84, and 71%. Thus, fathers reported these positive engagement activities nearly as frequently as mothers do, with the exception that sports and outdoor activities were more frequent in fathers. Further tabulations are also provided for children aged 6 to 9 and 10 to 12, and are also broken out by parents’ sociodemographic

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characteristics. Using another dataset, the 2000 National Survey of Parents, Bianchi et al. (2006, pp. 79–83) report on the proportions of fathers engaging in seven interactive activities, as well as average number of engagement days per week for each activity. As discussed earlier, Bianchi et al. (2006) modified the subcategories for fathers’ total engagement time that had been previously used in time diary analysis, creating a subcategory, ‘‘interactive’’ or ‘‘enrichment’’ activities with their children (helping/teaching, reading/talking, and indoor and outdoor playing), that corresponds to positive engagement activities. Particularly valuable, they reanalyzed the major U.S. time diary studies going back to 1965 to construct a time series for this measure from 1965 to 2000. In 2000, U.S. married resident fathers with children under 18 spent an average of 2.4 hours/week (20.4 minutes/day) in interactive activities (if they had more than one child, this means with all their children combined). Married fathers’ interactive activity time was about 72% of married mothers’ 3.3 hours/week (28.2 minutes/day). (In interpreting these relatively low figures, recall that they concern time with children in all households with children up to age 17. The older the child, the less time spent in these activities by fathers and mothers (Yeung et al., 2001), so that these averages are depressed by the inclusion of families with older children.) Fathers’ 2000 interactive engagement time was 94% higher than its 1965 level of 1.3 hours/week, with most of the increase occurring since 1985. However, mothers’ interactive activities increased over the same period to a greater degree (from 1.5 to 3.3 hours/week). As a result, the ratio of fathers’ to mothers’ interactive activities dropped somewhat over the 35-year period, from 80% to 72% (Bianchi et al., 2006, p. 66). Wang and Bianchi’s (2009) brief report from the most recent national diary study, the 2003–2004 ATUS, suggests that fathers’ interactive activities have risen since 2000 to 3.0 hours/week (26.2 minutes/day); data on mothers are not reported. To put fathers’ positive activity engagement time in the context of all their time spent with their children, U.S. married fathers in 2000 spent an additional 4.1 hours/week (35.1 minutes/day) in ‘‘routine’’ child care activities. They also reported an additional 26.5 hours/week (3.8 hours/day) in other time when their children were present but which was not coded as interactive or routine care activities (corresponding to accessibility), yielding 33.0 hours/ week (4.7 hours/day) in total time spent with their children (Bianchi et al., 2006, pp. 64, 72). Fathers’ routine activity time and other time increased markedly between 1965 and 2000, much more so than did mothers’, so that the ratio of fathers’ to mothers’ routine activity time increased, as did the ratio for other time. Overall, fathers spent 64.7% as much total time with children as mothers did in 2000, compared to 44.7% as much time in 1965. This increasing proportion was due only to fathers’ increase relative to mothers in routine activities and other time with children. As just noted, the ratio of fathers’ to mothers’ interactive activities declined somewhat. Bianchi et al. also summarize paternal time use data from 1965 to 2000 for Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, France, and the United Kingdom. The data reported concern ‘‘child care time,’’ a category broader than interactive activities, but narrower than the combination of interactive and routine

Components of Paternal Involvement 73

activities (compare Bianchi et al., 2006, pp. 160, 64). U.S. fathers’ total child care time in 2000 is lower, and has increased less since 1965, than in all of these other industrial countries except France. British fathers showed both the highest 2000 level and greatest increase, having had the lowest level in 1965. French fathers demonstrated a relatively high level in 1965, dipping in the late 1980s, and with little net increase by 2000 (for other cross-national comparisons, see Sullivan & Coltrane, 2008). Warmth-Responsiveness. Child Trends’ (2006) Charting parenthood provides illustrative data for this involvement component as well. In the 1997 CDS, among resident fathers of children under age 13, the proportion reporting hugging or showing affection to his child every day was 73%; telling his child he loves him/her, 62%; and telling his child he appreciated something he/she did, 37%. Comparable maternal percentages were 87, 85, and 55%. Paternal expression of warmth were negatively related to the child’s age, for example, 90% of fathers of 0- to 2-year-olds hugged every day (98% of mothers), while 50% of fathers of 10- to 12-year-olds did so (74% of mothers) (Child Trends, p. 143). No data providing insight into possible change over time in fathers’ warmth-responsiveness were located for this review. In the 1996 Add Health survey, adolescents rated how close they felt to their father and mother on a 5-point scale (1 = not close at all, 5 = extremely close). Results with this measure are particularly valuable because they are available for nonresident as well as resident fathers, and among subgroups of resident fathers. Focusing first on families with two resident parents, boys report equal closeness to their fathers and mothers (both 4.3 on the 5-point scale), while girls describe some less closeness to their fathers (4.0) than mothers (4.3). Both genders report lower levels of closeness with resident stepfathers (3.6, 3.5). Boys and girls also characterize relationships with nonresident biological fathers as even less close (3.1, 2.9). Relationships with single resident fathers are about as positive as those with resident fathers in two parent families (Child Trends, 2006, p. 142). Bianchi et al. (2006) report further national data about fathers and mothers praising their children, laughing with them, and hugging or kissing them from the 2000 National Survey of Parents, showing statistically significant but quite small parental gender differences. Control. The CDS provides results regarding parental limit setting for three activities for children aged 3 to 12: how much time spent watching TV per day, what TV programs to watch, and who the child spends time with. The percentages of fathers reporting setting such limits often or very often are 40, 61, and 40%, compared to mothers’ 48, 71, and 51%. However, Black fathers set these limits more often than do Black mothers, for example, 60% compared to 52% regarding who the child spends time with (Child Trends, 2006, p. 140). Black fathers are also reported to be more likely to have sole responsibility for disciplining the child (10%) than are white fathers (3%). In 32% of Hispanic families, fathers are reported to have sole responsibility, although they report limit setting less frequently than do fathers in other racial–ethnic groups (Child Trends, pp., 138, 140). The 2000 National Survey of Parents provides

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other data about the proportions of fathers and mothers who are aware of their children’s whereabouts almost all of the time, again showing significant but small gender differences (Bianchi et al., 2006). No data concerning change over time appear to be available. Indirect Care. In large-scale representative samples, only scattered data have been reported about fathers’ levels of indirect care. In the CDS, of the eight items in Hofferth’s (2003) scale labeled responsibility, five are indirect care tasks. For the individual items, distributional data have been reported only for selecting a child care program, preschool, or school, consistent with this being the most frequently studied aspect of indirect care. The CDS response categories correspond to mother only, mother–father shared, father only, or someone else. It is noteworthy that fathers and mothers in the CDS sample reported the division of labor for this indirect care task quite differently. Of fathers, 60% reported sharing this task, 34% said that the mother did it, and 7% indicated they did it alone (percents rounded to integers in the source report). Among mothers, however, only 38% described selecting child care or school as a shared task, 60% said they did it alone, and 2% indicated the father did it (Child Trends, 2006, p. 139). Thus, fathers report their degree of participation in this indirect care task at a much higher level than mothers rate it. But even in fathers’ reports, 34% reported no involvement in this activity. No data are available concerning change over time. Process Responsibility. In data from small nonrepresentative samples, fathers’ levels of process responsibility are substantially lower than mothers’ (Baruch & Barnett, 1986; McBride & Mills, 1993). Measures of process responsibility have not been used in large representative samples or replicated over time in smaller samples. However, representative sample data exist over several decades concerning the proportion of fathers of preschool children who experience, on a regular basis, extended periods of time during which they are likely to have high process responsibility for their child: being the primary child care arrangement for their preschool children under age 5 during employed mothers’ hours of work, referred to here as paternal care (O’Connell, 1993). In the most recent available data, from spring 2005, 20.5% of married employed mothers report that the father is the primary care provider. In addition, 9.0% of divorced and separated mothers do so, as do 13.9% of never married mothers (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008a). Casper (1997) reports detailed analyses of factors associated with paternal care, showing that most such fathers are employed, primarily full time, and additionally that paternal arrangements are more common in families with two or more preschoolers, are most common in the Northeast and least common in the South, and are less common in families living in suburbs rather than urban or rural areas. Although most paternal care fathers are employed, paternal care is more likely among the unemployed. Thus, the paternal care rate fluctuates somewhat with the unemployment rate (Casper & O’Connell, 1998). Regarding change over time, Presser (1989) cites evidence that paternal care for children during mothers’ working hours increased between 1965 and

Theoretical Linkages between Paternal Involvement and Child Outcomes 75

1985. The overall paternal care rate (for employed mothers of all marital statuses combined) in the most recent 2005 data, 17.2%, is somewhat higher than it was in 1985, 15.7%, with a spike up to 20.0% during the 1991 recession (U.S. Census, 2008b). Overall, data on paternal care for preschool children of employed mothers suggests that a substantial minority of fathers have a high level of process responsibility—about one in five married fathers, and at least one in ten unmarried fathers in 2005. In addition, if the paternal care rate is used as an indicator, fathers’ level of process responsibility gradually increased between 1965 and 1985, and since 1985 has varied in tandem with paternal unemployment. Overview. Average levels of fathers’ positive activity engagement can be characterized in multiple ways. The proportions of resident fathers with young children who engage in various specific interactive engagement activities at least once a week are relatively high both in absolute terms and relative to mothers. Using ‘‘interactive’’ activity time as an indicator, married fathers with children under 18 spent about 2.4 hours/week in positive activity engagement in 2000, about 72% of mothers’ level, and spent 3.0 hours/week in 2003–2004. On various indicators, relatively high proportions of fathers evidence warmth-responsiveness and appropriate control behaviors with their children. The ratios of fathers’ rates of these behaviors to mothers’ rates is generally higher than the ratio of fathers’ to mothers’ interactive activity time. Few systematic data are available regarding fathers’ levels of indirect care, with the exception of selecting and arranging child care. Fathers report their degree of participation to be much higher than mothers rate it; 66% of fathers reported they selected the child care arrangements either jointly or alone, but only 40% of mothers reported this. Data on process responsibility are likewise limited. However, using as an indicator the father being the primary care provider during employed mothers’ working hours, a substantial minority of fathers has significant process responsibility for the child, even if they are not married to the child’s mother. Data on change over time are available for positive engagement activities (showing marked increases in absolute levels) and for one indicator of process responsibility (suggesting no change), but not for the three other dimensions of paternal involvement. THEORETICAL LINKAGES BETWEEN PATERNAL INVOLVEMENT AND CHILD OUTCOMES When Lamb and Pleck formulated the paternal involvement construct in the mid-1980s, they cautiously put forward that in at least some circumstances, involvement might have positive consequences for children, mothers, and fathers themselves. For the child, they suggested possible positive effects only if the father and mother wanted the father to be involved, a reasonable qualification. However, they did not go further to explicate why and how, from a theoretical viewpoint, father involvement could have positive influences, especially on children’s development. Existing research

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has tended to simply assume it should, without specifying underlying theoretical mechanisms (Pleck, 2007). Analysis of the conceptual linkages between paternal involvement and child outcomes is needed in order to promote theory development in its own right, as well as to identify mediators of involvement’s effects that can be investigated in future research (Palkovitz, 2002). This section first briefly reviews current non-intervention research concerning the association between paternal involvement and child outcomes (for reviews of fathering intervention programs, see McBride & Lutz, 2004; Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004). Then, following a review of possible sources for theoretical linkages between involvement and child outcomes, I develop a ‘‘parental capital’’ framework for understanding why and how components of paternal involvement might have direct positive influences on child outcomes. DIRECT INFLUENCES OF PATERNAL INVOLVEMENT CURRENT EVIDENCE

ON

CHILD OUTCOMES:

Direct father-to-child effects are by no means the only mechanism potentially linking involvement and child outcomes: Paternal involvement may affect children’s development via its indirect effects on mothers and on siblings (Chapter 5), and fathers and children may influence each other reciprocally. However, in any analysis of how paternal involvement influences child outcomes, direct father-to-child effects are nonetheless of paramount interest. For convenience, in the following discussion, the term involvement will be used to refer to only the three primary components. This review focuses on effects of paternal involvement on outcomes in middle and later childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, hereafter generally referred to as child outcomes. For research on the consequences of involvement for infant and early childhood, see Chapter 4. No research on the linkages of paternal indirect care and process responsibility with child outcomes were located for this review. Future research should address this gap. Outside the scope of paternal involvement but nonetheless important, Amato (1998) provides evidence about the independent effects of paternal breadwinning on child outcomes. In studying the possible influence of the three primary domains of paternal involvement on developmental outcomes, the first step is investigating the degree to which those domains and child outcomes are independently associated. Amato and Rivera (1999; see also Marsiglio et al., 2000) noted that stronger and more consistent associations between resident fathers’ paternal involvement and child outcomes are found in research that is methodologically less rigorous than in studies that are more rigorous. These reviewers emphasized two design criteria as essential to establish association: employing ‘‘different-source’’ data on involvement components and child outcomes, and controlling for maternal involvement. Sarkadi et al. (2008) more recently reviewed 24 longitudinal studies, in which socioeconomic status (SES) was controlled in 18, of which 12 also controlled for maternal involvement, although not all had different-source data. All of the latter found positive associations with one or more of the

Theoretical Linkages between Paternal Involvement and Child Outcomes 77

three core involvement components in at least some subgroups (for example, boys). Of these 12 studies, 5 were analyses reported in separate journal publications employing the same dataset, the National Child Development Study (Flouri, 2005), focusing on outcomes at successively later ages. Thus, these 12 studies include only 8 with independent samples. Nonetheless, Flouri’s analyses are valuable in showing the persistence of the positive correlates of early paternal involvement evident during childhood and adolescence through age 33. For resident fathers, evidence from research meeting the two standards continues to accumulate suggesting that positive activity engagement, warmth-responsiveness, and control are empirically associated with positive child outcomes. Tabulating the research included in Amato and Rivera (1999) and Parke (2002), and adding several further investigations, Pleck and Masciadrelli (2004) concluded that 10 of 14 studies showed positive associations with involvement. Subsequent to Pleck and Masciadrelli’s summary, additional confirming studies include Carlson (2006); Chang, Halpern, and Kaufman (2007); Cookston and Finlay (2006); Flouri (2005); Martin, Ryan, and Brooks-Gunn (2007); Ryan, Martin, and Brooks-Gunn (2006); Stolz, Barber, and Olsen (2005); and Tamis-LeMonda, Shannon, Cabrera, and Lamb (2004). However, McBride, Dyer, Liu, Brown, and Hong (2009) fail to find support. In addition, positive associations between these aspects of involvement and child outcomes are generally observed among nonresident fathers (Amato & Gilbreth, 1999; Marsiglio et al., 2000), although simple frequency of contact and payment of child support are examined as predictors of child outcomes far more frequently. Recently Emerging Design Criteria. Some of the studies included in prior reviews or just noted that employ different-source data and control for maternal involvement, and that find positive associations between involvement and child outcomes, nonetheless have other limitations. A number of these investigations are cross-sectional, thus establishing only that involvement and outcomes are associated (Marsiglio et al., 2000). Of the research that is longitudinal, many studies lack either or both of two additional important design features. First, to establish that paternal involvement has a causal influence, a longitudinal design needs to address possible ‘‘selection effects.’’ Estimating the association between time 1 involvement and time 2 child outcomes, with controls only for maternal involvement and sociodemographics, cannot exclude the possibility that the observed association results from selection. That is, other variables that were not controlled in the model could predict both involvement and outcomes (albeit assessed at different times), so that the fathers who are more involved at time 1 differ from fathers who are less involved in other respects, and those other characteristics rather than their level of involvement influence the time 2 child outcomes. In essence, one can never have certainty that all relevant selection variables have been controlled, and some may not even be observable. A variety of techniques is used to address this problem. As applied to paternal involvement effects, one common procedure with two-wave data is

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to control for the earlier measure of the child outcome in assessing influences on the same outcome measured later (sometimes called autoregression). The underlying premise is that the two assessments of the outcome include in common a stable component of that outcome. By controlling for the time 1 outcome in studying factors impacting on the time 2 outcome, one is in effect controlling for the stable component of the time 2 child outcome, and all the predictors of that stable component including those that were not observed. Other methods analyzing change in two-wave data can also be used, and with three or more waves of data, more advanced techniques such as growth curve modeling are available. Second, research estimating the effect of father involvement on child outcomes needs to allow for the possibility that child outcomes reciprocally influence father involvement. One procedure is the cross-lagged design, which uses time 1 measures of each variable to predict the time 2 measure of the other, and also takes into account the degree of stability in each over time and their correlation at each point in time. Another technique is growth curve modeling with time-varying covariates, in which change in one variable can be used to predict change in the other and vice versa. Because of the use of multiple time points with these methods, selection issues are also minimized. Several of the most recent longitudinal studies cited above do use these methods to address selection by itself, or to handle reciprocal causation as well. Notably, some of these focus on nonresident fathers. All employ differentsource data for father involvement and child outcomes, although not all control for maternal involvement. Using resident fathers in Add Health, and controlling for maternal involvement and sociodemographics, Cookston and Finlay (2006) initially modeled delinquency, depression, and alcohol among adolescents at average age 15 (wave 2) as a function of a composite of the three primary paternal involvement components assessed a year and a half earlier (wave 1), finding substantial effects in expected directions for all three outcomes. When wave 1 measures of the outcomes were added to the models as controls, significant effects persisted for delinquency and depression, thus providing evidence that the longitudinal associations found were not due to unobserved selection factors. Using growth curve modeling with the NLSY 1979, Chang et al. (2007) found that paternal involvement was inversely related to both internalizing and externalizing behaviors in adolescents. Many of Flouri’s (2005) analyses approximate an autoregression design by controlling for earlier outcomes that, although not identical to later outcomes, are cognate to them, for example, controlling for behavior problems at age 7 in modeling trouble with the police at age 16. These analyses generally find effects of paternal involvement in at least one gender. Hawkins et al. (2007) employed a full cross-lagged design in studying externalizing behavior, internalizing behavior, and academic achievement as outcomes. In resident fathers, they found evidence for both father effects (on children) and child effects (on fathers), but for nonresident fathers, they found only the latter. These analyses did not control for maternal involvement. Coley and Medeiros (2007) used both lagged ordinary least squares regression models with time-varying predictors and individual fixed-effects

Theoretical Linkages between Paternal Involvement and Child Outcomes 79

regression models investigating nonresident father involvement and delinquency in a representative sample of low-income, predominantly minority adolescents. These investigators found that increases in father involvement predicted decreases in adolescent delinquency, thus establishing father effects. Results also provided mixed evidence for child effects. Adolescent delinquency did not predict subsequent changes in father involvement. However, the two measures covaried such that as adolescent delinquency increased, father involvement did as well. Coley and Medeiros’s interpretation was nonresident fathers may increase their involvement in the face of adolescent problem behavior. This analysis did not control for mothers’ involvement. In a second study, Coley, Votruba-Dzal, and Schindler (2009) analyzed resident parents’ involvement and adolescent sexual risk behaviors using the NLSY 1997. This research employed growth curve modeling, and the measures of each parent’s individual involvement were limited to knowledge about the adolescents’ friends and activities. Increases in neither mothers’ nor fathers’ knowledge predicted increased sexual risk, although increases in shared family activities did. In addition, increases in adolescent sexual risk taking predicted increased father knowledge but not mother knowledge. Overview and Outstanding Research Issues. Research on the effects of paternal involvement on child outcomes has benefited from major methodological advances in recent years. Prior reviews suggested two essential design standards in research on paternal influences: different-source data on involvement and outcomes, and controlling for maternal involvement. In the most recent studies, two additional methodological criteria have in effect now emerged: research (a) should address selection more fully than simply controlling for sociodemographics and other observable variables, and (b) should also take reciprocal causation into account. The studies just reviewed meeting these additional criteria provide the best current nonexperimental evidence concerning the causal influence of the core components of paternal involvement on child outcomes. However, the results of all the available investigations, whether supporting paternal effects on child outcomes or not, require some qualification. Cookston and Finlay (2006) document paternal influence with selection and maternal involvement addressed, but without taking into account reciprocal causation. The potential weakness is not that time 2 outcomes could have caused time 1 paternal involvement, but rather that allowing a causal path from time 1 outcomes to time 2 involvement in the model could have altered the estimate of effect of time 1 involvement on time 2 outcomes. Chang et al. (2007) likewise control for maternal involvement but do not address reciprocal influence. Flouri (2005) also does not address reciprocal causation, and in addition only approximates autoregression. Incorporating reciprocal causation, Coley and Medeiros (2007) substantiate father effects for nonresident fathers, and Hawkins et al. (2007) do so for resident fathers, but maternal involvement was not controlled. Coley et al.’s (2009) design includes maternal involvement and reciprocal causation, observing no father effect, but the paternal involvement measure concerned only fathers’ knowledge

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about the child, a salient parenting dimension in relation to adolescent sexual behavior, but nonetheless only one aspect of one of the three primary components of father involvement. None of these investigations meets every desirable design standard, and also assesses the primary components of paternal involvement broadly. Nonetheless, in the majority of the analyses that satisfy most of the standards, direct father effects are documented. This confirmation occurs in three of the four studies employing resident father samples (Chang et al., 2007; Cookston & Finlay, 2006; Flouri, 2005; Amato et al., 2009, resident father subsample). Paternal effects are also evident in one of the two studies of nonresident fathers (Coley & Medeiros, 2007). Thus, the most methodologically rigorous studies that are currently available provide some evidence for independent, direct paternal effects. Several broad issues are salient as research moves forward. First, research should adopt additional advanced analytical methods. For example, in analyses using two-parent families, controlling for maternal influence certainly provides better estimates of the independent effects of paternal involvement than analyses that do not. However, including maternal and paternal involvement as independent predictors does not take into account the interdependence between the two parents’ involvement, due to parents being nested within couples. Multilevel dyadic analysis procedures would address this (Kenney, Kashy, & Cook, 2006). It would also be valuable to give more attention to couple profiles of involvement (McBride, Dyer, & Laxman, 2009), rather than analyze paternal and maternal influence as independent or interdependent effects. Propensity score matching (Rosenbaum & Rubin, 1985) offers a way of minimizing selection issues in the association between paternal involvement and developmental outcomes that has not yet been employed. Use of mixture modeling (Muthen, 2004; Muthen & Muthen, 2000), a person-centered rather than variable-centered approach, tests the possibility that paternal involvement influences child outcomes in varying ways, and describes these patterns in a manner that goes beyond testing moderator effects or predictors of random slopes. Using this method in a study of the consequences of paternal incarceration, Dyer (2009) identified multiple distinct classes, with incarceration having negative effects on the child in some, positive effects in others, and no effects in yet other classes; the analysis further identified differential predictors of membership in these classes. Second, positive effects of paternal involvement should be studied in a more contextualized manner. Although some research finds associations between core involvement spheres and developmental outcomes, a nontrivial number of studies do not. The associations found are often restricted to particular outcomes and/or restricted to specific subgroups (Sarkadi et al., 2008). Thus, future research should pay more heed to Lamb et al.’s (1985) early caution that positive effects of paternal involvement may occur only in specific contexts. Third, pathways of influence other than direct father-to-child effects should receive more attention. This review has already emphasized child-to-father influence as possible confound in estimating father effects. Taking these childto-father influences further, in addition to the possibility that high involvement

Theoretical Linkages between Paternal Involvement and Child Outcomes 81

represents a response to positive child outcomes in some contexts, it could also be a reaction to negative ones in others, as has been suggested in some studies (DeLuccie, 1996; McBride et al., 2009). These reciprocal processes between father and child raise the possibility of varying patterns of evocative effects (e.g., paternal involvement may lead to good child outcomes, which reinforce paternal involvement); alternatively, negative outcomes could promote high involvement, which in turn either can improve or harm the child’s functioning, depending on the nature of the involvement. In addition to reciprocal father-child effects, paternal involvement can influence the child indirectly via effects on mothers (see Chapter 5), as well as through its impact on the child’s sibling relationships. Not taking these indirect effects into account leads to overestimation of the direct influence of paternal involvement on child outcomes; that is, the apparent direct effects may actually include indirect maternal and sibling effects as well. Finally, reciprocal influence between father and child is not just a process to be statistically taken into account to yield more valid estimates of direct father-to-child effects. The issues raised by reciprocal influence are more than data-analytic. They necessitate a more fundamental reconsideration of the implicit assumption that paternal involvement is a behavioral configuration that fathers in effect ‘‘dispense’’ to varying degrees to their children, who may respond with positive or negative changes in their own functioning, but not in ways that influence their fathers’ behavior. In the alternative family process or transactional view, paternal involvement is not an exogenous paternal behavior but a relational process between father and child that is embedded in other family relationships. THEORY LINKING PATERNAL INVOLVEMENT POTENTIAL SOURCES

AND

DEVELOPMENTAL OUTCOMES:

This section now considers four possible sources for theory concerning exactly why paternal involvement components could or should influence developmental outcomes in children: attachment theory, parental style research, Bronfenbrenner’s concept of proximal process, and social capital theory. For an analysis of the theoretical view that fathers influence child development specifically by virtue of their masculinity, see Pleck (2007; and Chapter 2). Attachment Theory. Attachment theory was utilized in the study of fathering for almost two decades prior to Lamb and Pleck’s work, beginning with Kotelchuk (1967, 1976). Using attachment theory, one could argue paternal involvement promotes child development because father involvement promotes secure infant attachment (to the father), which in turn promotes good child outcomes through the processes hypothesized by attachment theorists (Cassidy, 1999). There is, in fact, evidence that positive activity engagement and warmth-responsiveness generally have a statistically significant but small association with infant–father attachment (Brown et al., 2007; Lamb, 2002; Chapter 4). Paquette (2004) has used attachment theory as the starting point for his broad conceptualization of the ‘‘father-child

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activation relationship’’ as the essential mechanism for paternal effects on children. Attachment theory, however, has limitations as a basis for conceptualizing why father involvement can have positive effects. First, although the consequences of secure attachment for the developing individual are viewed as lasting until at least the young adult years, the period during which parental involvement is viewed as directly influencing attachment is restricted to the child’s earliest years. The theory thus does not provide a basis for viewing paternal (or maternal) involvement with older children and on adolescents as influential. Related to its focus on children’s early years, the attachment model has little role for parents’ control behaviors, of increasing importance in parenting with older children and adolescents. Of course, for a conceptualization of paternal involvement to be of value, it need not necessarily address paternal influence at all stages of children’s development; perhaps different concepts are needed for different stages. Nonetheless, a model of paternal influences primarily applicable only in infancy and early childhood would not meet the theoretical needs of most fatherhood researchers. Second, although attachment theory is well established within the field of human development, it is nonetheless controversial. In addition to strong adherents, it has its share of critics (Vaughn & Bost, 1999). Overall, attachment theory is too narrow in scope as well as in its acceptance within developmental science to provide the fundamental theoretical basis for interpreting why paternal involvement might lead to positive developmental outcomes. Parental Style Research. As discussed earlier, the warmth-responsiveness and control dimensions in parental style have been included in many researchers’ operationalizations of paternal involvement, and authoritative parental style is now increasingly formulated to include engagement. It is thus logical to consider the parental style framework (Baumrind, 1967; Maccoby & Martin, 1983) as a basis for theorizing why paternal involvement is linked to child outcomes. Compared to attachment, the parental style approach has broader applicability across children’s development, particularly because its control dimension becomes more salient in parenting as children get older. Parental style and its component dimensions also have broader acceptance in developmental science. The limitation of parental style, however, is that researchers using the construct have been relatively inexplicit about exactly why features of authoritative parental style promote good developmental outcomes. The theoretical perspective considered next provides one possible answer. Bronfenbrenner’s Concept of ‘‘Proximal Process.’’ Bronfenbrenner (1979, 1986, 1994) proposed an ecological perspective on human development that has become highly influential. His model is perhaps most well known for making distinctions among different ecological levels or systems as they bear on the child’s development: the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem. However, in my view, another idea in Bronfenbrenner’s theory is equally or more important, his conceptualization of exactly

Theoretical Linkages between Paternal Involvement and Child Outcomes 83

what about microsystem relationships, the key developmental arena, promote development: ‘‘proximal process.’’ Bronfenbrenner (1994, p. 1644) describes proximal process in the first of his two formal ecological propositions: Human development . . . takes place through a process of progressively more complex, reciprocal interactions between an active, evolving, biopsychological human organism and the persons, objects, and symbols in its immediate environment. . . . Such enduring forms of interaction . . . are referred to as ‘‘proximal processes’’

Bronfenbrenner analogized proximal process to a ping-pong game between the child and his or her microsystem partners, but one in which the movement of the ball back and forth becomes increasingly complex, and in which the more mature microsystem partner gradually introduces move complex ‘‘moves’’ that stimulate the development of reciprocally more complex countermoves by the child. These enduring patterns of reciprocal, increasingly complex interaction with significant others (both adult and peer) are ultimately what ‘‘drive’’ development. In this view, development is an inherently relational process, rather than an activity taking place within the individual. Belsky’s (1984) widely used process model of parenting can be interpreted as applying Bronfenbrenner’s concepts. Belsky specifies particular mesosystem and exosystem influences on the child via their influence on parents (marital relations, parents jobs, parents’ social support network), and emphasizes ‘‘sensitive parenting, that is attuned to the needs of the child’’ (p. 85) as the key process in parent–child relations that promotes development. Cabrera, Fitzgerald, Bradley, and Roggman’s (2007) ‘‘dynamics’’ model of paternal influences is also compatible. The three primary domains in the revised conceptualization of paternal involvement can be interpreted in proximal process terms. The kinds of contact occurring in positive activity engagement are contexts for proximal process interactions. The responsiveness component of the warmth-responsiveness dimension involves reciprocal interaction, explicitly one of the defining characteristics of proximal process. Control, when combined with responsiveness, necessarily leads to a great deal of reciprocal, increasingly complex interaction, especially as children grow into adolescence. These connections between the core involvement domains and Bronfenbrenner’s proximal process concept provide theoretical linkages between these domains and positive child outcomes. Social Capital Theory. The concept of social capital (Coleman, 1988) is increasingly used in developmental science (Amato, 1995, 1998; Entwisle & Astone, 1994; Furstenberg, 1996; Furstenberg & Hughes, 1995). Coleman identified two kinds of family-based ‘‘capital’’ provided by parents that facilitate optimal development: financial capital and social capital. Financial capital denotes material resources provided to children such as food, shelter, goods, and services, including education. Relabeling it as parental financial capital underlines its sources within the family.

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According to Coleman, the second type of family-based capital promoting child development is social capital, taking two forms. He calls the first ‘‘family social capital,’’ referring to the parenting behaviors promoting the child’s cognitive-social development, school readiness, and educational aspirations—in effect, parental socialization. The second form is ‘‘community social capital.’’ Community social capital is, however, rooted in the family, as it refers to the linkages that parents provide children to the larger world (a) by serving as advocates for them in schools and other settings; (b) by sharing their own social networks with their children, for example, getting a friend to help the child or to give the adolescent a job; and (c) by sharing their knowledge of how to negotiate entry into the adult world, for example, knowing whom to call or how to act on a job interview. The second and third subtypes become increasingly more important as the child moves through adolescence and early adulthood. To help reinforce parents’ specific role in these two forms of social capital, it is helpful to modify Coleman’s terms. Replacing family social capital with parental socialization social capital makes clear that the concept refers specifically to parental socialization behaviors. Relabeling community social capital as parental community social capital highlights that parents provide access to this community social capital. Entwisle and Astone (1994) use the distinction between parental socialization social capital and parental community social capital as a basis for hypothesizing that at different points in development, different aspects of parents’ socioeconomic status may be especially relevant to parental influence on child outcomes. Parents’ income and education (the former influencing their levels of family-based material capital, and the latter influencing family socialization social capital) may be more consequential for early development. By contrast, parents’ employment status and occupation (which help determine their level of community social capital) may be more influential later in development (cf. Leydendecker, Harwood, Comparini, & Yalcinkaya, 2005). AN INTEGRATION: THE PARENTAL CAPITAL MODEL Social capital theory, with its allied concept of financial capital, provides the basis for a ‘‘parental capital’’ framework for theorizing the direct influences of paternal involvement components on child outcomes. The concepts underlying authoritative parental style and the concept of proximal process are incorporated within this framework. Table 3.1 summarizes the connections between the five paternal involvement components and the multiple forms of fathers’ parental capital, and shows connections with these other concepts. First to be considered are the three cells at the intersection of the three primary involvement components (columns 1–3) and parental socialization social capital (row B). According to the model, parents’ performance of the three components—fathers’ positive engagement activities, warmth-responsiveness, and control—in their direct socializing interaction with their child is interpreted as potentially fostering good developmental outcomes because these components entail aspects of authoritative parental style and proximal

85

b

a

C3. Sharing knowledge about entry into the adult world

C2. Provision of network access

Proximal process

Proximal process

Proximal process

Proximal process

Social IC: fostering nonpeer community connections

Social IC: fostering nonpeer community connections

Process responsibility refers to the father’s monitoring to ensure that the child’s needs for the first four components of parental involvement are being met. Fathers’ breadwinning is part of provision of financial capital, but is not included as a component of indirect care. See discussion in text.

C. Parental community social capital

C1. Advocacy

Proximal process

Social IC: fostering peer relations Proximal process

Proximal process

4. Indirect care (IC)

B. Parental socialization social capital

3. Control (authoritative parental style)

Material IC: purchasing and arranging goods and services

2. Warmthresponsiveness (authoritative parental style)

A. Financial capitalb

Fathers’ Parental Capital

1. Positive engagement activities (context for authoritative parental style)

Paternal Involvement

Table 3.1 Relationships Between Paternal Involvement and Fathers’ Parental Capital

5. Process responsibilitya 9 > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > = indirect >effects > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ;

86 PATERNAL INVOLVEMENT

process. Since social capital theory does not describe in much detail what parental socialization consists of or why it influences development, the model’s specification of three aspects of parental socialization may contribute to the social capital perspective. Second, according to the parental capital model, one aspect of parental community capital, sharing knowledge about entry into the adult world (C3), occurs via the three primary involvement components. The social capital perspective focuses on the content of the knowledge that is shared with the child. The parental capital model also emphasizes the interactive process between father and adolescent or adult by which that knowledge is shared. This process necessitates direct interaction with the child, providing opportunities for fathers to offer warmth-responsiveness and an appropriate balance between control and autonomy granting. Next, the parental capital model offers an interpretation of how material indirect care benefits the child, a matter not made explicit in Lamb and Pleck’s conceptualization. As noted before, Lamb and Pleck excluded breadwinning from material indirect care (and from the involvement construct as a whole). In the model, the importance of material indirect care is that it is the key mediator of the extent to which the child gets the benefits of family financial capital. Acquiring money through employment or other means (breadwinning) is obviously a precondition for providing goods and services to the child. But earning income does not automatically translate to it being spent on the child. As family economics research makes clear, families vary considerably in how they allocate their economic resources to different family members (Kenney, 2006). The purchasing and arranging goods and services (material) component of indirect care is the behavior through which family financial resources are used for the child’s benefit. Turning to social indirect care, the aspect receiving most attention in prior research is fathers’ role in managing the child’s peer relationships. These studies take as a fundamental premise that good peer relations promote positive development. The parental capital model makes explicit that this form of social indirect care benefits the child because it puts the child in additional interaction contexts in which development-promoting proximal process can occur. The social capital perspective has so far not considered parents’ role in fostering children’s peer relationships as an aspect of their provision of social capital. Since it involves integrating the child into the community, it could be considered an aspect of parental community social capital. However, it is difficult to classify this role within the community social capital’s three subtypes. (In social capital theory, access to networks refers to parents’ networks.) In my view, parents’ promoting peer relations is better interpreted as an aspect of parental socialization social capital (column 4 and row B), albeit one provided by parents indirectly. That is, what is critical about this parental activity is that it places the child in peer contexts promoting additional proximal process interaction, rather than that it leads to greater integration into the community. Finally, in the parental capital model, two other forms of social indirect care, advocacy and provision of network access (rows C1–C2) are interpreted as fostering good developmental outcomes because they provide the child

Implications for Research and Practice 87

with these two important types of social capital. Here, the social capital perspective contributes to the further development of the concept of social indirect care. Social capital theory reinforces broadening the focus of social indirect care beyond only promoting children’s peer relations to include encouraging the child’s broader community integration. Finally, the linkage of process responsibility (column 5) to child outcomes is an indirect one. Process responsibility per se is not expressed via any specific form of parental capital. Rather, it refers to the father’s monitoring whether the child’s needs for the forms of parental capital conveyed in the other four components of involvement are being met. Thus, the effect of process responsibility is mediated by the other involvement components. (Process responsibility may have direct theoretical linkages, however, with fathers’ own psychosocial outcomes.) To summarize, the parental capital model’s integration of social capital theory, authoritative parental style, and proximal process potentially offers increased theoretical understanding of how all five paternal involvement components may foster positive development in children. The three primary involvement domains offer possible developmental benefits because they entail elements of authoritative parental style as well as proximal process. Fathers manifest the core involvement behaviors primarily in direct socializing interaction with their children. However, they also can do so in sharing their knowledge about entering the adult world with their adolescent and young adult children. Material indirect care benefits children because it is the crucial link between a family’s having income and using that income on behalf of the child. Social indirect care that fosters a child’s peer relations assists in development because in this way the parent indirectly provides the child with additional opportunities for development-promoting proximal process. Other aspects of social indirect care concerning advocacy and sharing of adult social networks can lead to positive developmental outcomes via the processes delineated in social capital theory. IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH AND PRACTICE This chapter proposed a reconceptualization of paternal involvement as comprised of three primary components, positive engagement activities, warmth-responsiveness, and control; and two auxiliary domains, indirect care and process responsibility. Data were reviewed on the interrelationships among these components, their current levels, and the extent to which they have changed in recent years. The methodological issues and substantive results of current research on the direct influence of paternal involvement components on child outcomes were then examined. Finally, using social capital theory and employing the additional concepts of authoritative parental style and proximal process, I proposed a parental capital framework for theorizing how and why these components of paternal involvement might have direct positive effects on children’s development. In light of the chapter’s focus, more recommendations can be offered for future research than for future practice. Some recommendations include:

88 PATERNAL INVOLVEMENT

1. Many researchers will continue to focus their investigations on the three primary components of paternal involvement. This is appropriate for many research purposes. Nonetheless, much more study is needed of indirect care (both material and social) and of process responsibility. 2. The parental capital model offers a more explicit and detailed discussion of why paternal involvement components may benefit child development than has heretofore been available. However, future research is needed to operationalize and test the model’s theoretical linkages further, so that theory development can advance. 3. Whether construed as an aspect of paternal involvement or not, more research on fathers’ breadwinning and how it influences developmental outcomes is also needed. 4. The question of the extent to which fathers’ roles have been changing in recent decades continues to be great interest. Although considerable information is available documenting trends in fathers’ positive engagement activities, there is a data gap about change in all the other involvement components. 5. Scholars should continue to improve the quality of research on paternal influences on children by the adoption of advanced analytical procedures. 6. Scholars should also develop more explicit theoretical models about the mechanisms by which paternal involvement may influence mothers, and may have consequences on fathers themselves. 7. Practitioners should always have in mind of the multi-faceted nature of paternal involvement. Because there is no ‘‘one way’’ for fathers to be involved, there is necessarily no ‘‘one way’’ to promote increased father involvement. 8. Practitioners should also be mindful that fathering includes other important activities besides paternal involvement, especially breadwinning and making responsible fertility decisions, and that promoting these also benefits children. REFERENCES Adamsons, K., & Buehler, C. (2007). Mothering versus fathering versus parenting: Measurement equivalence in parenting measures. Parenting, 7(3), 271–303. Amato, P. (1995). Single-parent households as settings for children’s development, wellbeing and attainment: A social network/resources perspective. In A.-M. Ambert (Ed.), Sociological Studies of Children (Vol. 7, pp. 19–47). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Amato, P. (1998). More than money? Men’s contributions to their children’s lives. In A. Booth & A. C. Crouter (Eds.), Men in families: When do they get involved? What difference does it make? (pp. 241–278). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Amato, P., & Gilbreth, J. G. (1999). Nonresident fathers and children’s well-being: A meta-analysis. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61, 557–573. Amato, P., Meyers, C., & Emery, R (2009). Changes in nonresident father contact between 1976 and 2002. Family Relations, 58, 41–53. Amato, P., & Rivera, F. (1999). Paternal involvement and children’s behavior. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61, 375–384. Bailey, W. T. (1991). Fathers’ involvement in their children’s health care. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 152, 289–293.

References 89 Baruch, G. K., & Barnett, R. C. (1986). Consequences of fathers’ participation in family work: Parents’ role strain and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 983–992. Baumrind, D. (1967). Child care practices anteceding three patterns of preschool behavior. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 75, 43–88. Beitel, A. H., & Parke, R. D. (1998). Paternal involvement in infancy: The role of maternal and paternal attitudes. Journal of Family Psychology, 12, 268–288. Belsky, J. (1984). The determinants of parenting: A process model. Child Development, 55, 83–96. Bianchi, S., Robinson, J., & Milkie, M. (2006). Changing rhythms of American family life. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). Ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1986). Ecology of the family as a context for human development. Developmental Psychology, 22, 723–742. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1994). Ecological models of human development. In T. Husen & T. N. Postelthwaite (Eds.), International encyclopedia of education (pp. 1642–1647). Oxford: Pergamon Press. Brown, G., McBride, B. A., Shin, N., & Bost, K. (2007). Parenting predictors of fatherchild attachment security: Interactive effects of father involvement and fathering quality. Fathering, 5, 197–219. Bruce, C., & Fox, G. L. (1997). Measuring father involvement among lower-income White and African-American populations. Presented at the National Council on Family Relations, Crystal City, VA. Cabrera, N., Fitzgerald, H., Bradley, R., & Roggman, L. (2007). Modeling the dynamics of paternal influences on children over the life course. Applied Developmental Science, 11, 185–189. Cabrera, N., Tamis-LeMonda, C., Bradley, R., Hofferth, S., & Lamb, M.E. (2000). Fatherhood in the twenty-first century. Child Development, 71, 127–136. Carlson, M. (2006). Family structure, father involvement, and adolescent behavioral outcomes. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68, 137–154. Casper, L. M. (1997). My daddy takes care of me! Fathers as care providers. P70–59. Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Casper, L. M., & O’Connell, M. (1998). Work, income, the economy, and married fathers as child-care providers. Demography, 35, 243–250. Cassidy, J. (Ed.). (1999). Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications. New York: Guilford Press. Chang, J., Halpern, C., & Kaufman, J. (2007). Maternal depressive symptoms, father’s involvement, and the trajectories of child problems behaviors in a U.S. national sample. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, 171, 697–703. Child Trends (2006). Charting parenthood: A statistical portrait of fathers and mothers in America. Washington, DC: Author. Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94, 95–120. Coley, R., & Medeiros, B. (2007). Reciprocal longitudinal relations between nonresident father involvement and adolescent delinquency. Child Development, 78, 132–147. Coley, R., Votruba-Drzal, E., & Schindler, H. (2009). Fathers’ and mothers’ parenting predicting and responding to adolescent sexual risk behaviors. Child Development, 80, 808–827. Coltrane, S. (1996). Family man. New York: Oxford University Press.

90 PATERNAL INVOLVEMENT Cookston, J., & Finlay, A. (2006). Father involvement and adolescent adjustment: Longitudinal findings from Add Health. Fathering, 4, 137–158. Day, R., & Lamb, M. E. (Eds.). (2004). Conceptualizing and measuring father involvement. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. DeLuccie, M. F. (1996). Mothers: Influential agents in father–child relations. Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs, 122, 287–307. Deutsch, F., Servis, L., & Payne, J. (2001). Paternal participation in child care and its effects on children’s self-esteem and attitudes toward gendered roles. Journal of Family Issues, 22, 1000–1024. Doucet, A. (2006). Do men mother? Fathering, care, and domestic responsibility. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Doucet, A. (2009). Dad and baby in the first year: Gendered responsibilities and embodiment. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 624, 78–98. Dyer, W. J. (2009). Exploring the various ways paternal incarceration affects children: An application of mixture modeling. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Human and Community Development, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Entwisle, D. R., & Astone, N. M. (1994). Some practical guidelines for measure youth’s race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Child Development, 65, 1521–1540. Finley, G., Mira, S., & Schwartz, S. (2008). Perceived paternal and maternal involvement: Factor structures, mean differences, and parental roles. Fathering, 6, 62–82. Flouri, E. (2005). Fathering and child outcomes. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley. Furstenberg, F. R. (1998). Social capital and the role of fathers in the family. In A. Booth & A. C. Crouter (Eds.), Men in families: When do they get involved? What difference does it make? (pp. 295–302). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Furstenberg, F. R., & Hughes, M. E. (1995). Social capital and successful development among at-risk youth. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 57, 580–192. Goncy, E., & Van Dulmen, M. (in press) Fathers do make a difference: Parental involvement and adolescent alcohol use. Fathering, 8. Hawkins, A. J., & Palkovitz, R. (1999). Beyond ticks and clicks: The need for more diverse and broader conceptualizations and measures of father involvement. Journal of Men’s Studies, 8, 11–32. Hakwins, D., Amato, P., & King, V. (2007). Nonresident father involvement and adolescent well-being: Father effects or child effects? American Sociological Review, 72, 990–1010. Hofferth, S. (2003). Race/ethnic differences in father involvement in two-parent families: Culture, context, or economy? Journal of Family Issues, 24, 185–216. Hossain, Z. (2001). Division of household labor and family functioning in offreservation Navajo Indian families. Family Relations, 50, 255–261. Isacco, A., & Garfield, C. (in press) Child healthcare decision-making: Examining ‘‘conjointness’’ in paternal identities among residential and non-residential fathers. Fathering, 8. Kelley, M. (1997). The division of family work among low-income African Americans. Journal of African American Men, 2, 87–102. Kenney, C. (2006). The power of the purse: Allocative systems and inequality in couple households. Gender and Society, 20, 354–381. Kenny, D., Kashy, D., & Cook, W. (2006). Dyadic data analysis. New York: Guilford Press. Kotelchuk, M. (1967). The nature of the infant’s tie to his father. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Social Relations, Harvard University. Kotelchuk, M. (1976). The infant’s relationship to the father: Experimental evidence. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (pp. 329–344). New York: Wiley.

References 91 Lamb, M. E. (Ed.). (1976). The role of the father in child development. New York: Wiley. Lamb, M. E. (Ed.). (1981). The role of the father in child development, 2nd ed. New York: Wiley. Lamb, M. E. (1987). Introduction: The emergent American father. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The father’s role: Cross-cultural perspectives (pp. 3–25). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Lamb, M.E. (2002). Infant-father attachments and their impact on child development. In C. Tamis-LeMonda & N. Cabrera (Eds.), Handbook of father involvement: Multidisciplinary perspectives (pp. 93–117). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Lamb, M. E., Pleck, J. H., Charnov, E. L., & Levine, J. A. (1985). Paternal behavior in humans. American Zoologist, 25, 883–894. Lanborn, S., Mounts, N., Steinberg, L., & Dornbusch, S. (1991). Patterns of competence and adjustmnent among adolescents from authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, and neglectful families. Child Development, 62, 1049–1065. Lareau, A. (2003). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Leslie, L. A., Anderson, E. A., & Branson, M. P. (1991). Responsibility for children: The role of gender and employment. Journal of Family Issues, 12, 197–210. Leydendecker, B., Harwood, R., Comparini, L., & Yalcinkaya, A. (2005). Socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and parenting. In Luster, T., & Okagaki, L. (Eds.), Parenting: An ecological perspective (pp. 319–342). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Maccoby, E., & Martin, J. (1983). Socialization in the context of the family: Parentchild interaction. In E. Hetherington, Handbook of child psychology (Vol. 4, pp. 1– 101). New York: Wiley. Marsiglio, W. (1991). Paternal engagement activities with minor children. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 53, 973–986. Marsiglio, W., Amato, P., Day, R.D., & Lamb, M.E. (2000). Scholarship on fatherhood in the 1990s and beyond. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62, 1173–1191. Martin, A., Ryan, R., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2007). The joint influence of mother and father parenting on child cognitive outcomes at age 5. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 22, 423–439. McBride, B.A., Dyer, W.J., & Laxman, D. (2009, April). Father involvement and child outcomes: A longitudinal view. Paper presented at the Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting, Denver, CO. McBride, B.A., Dyer, W. J., Liu, Y., Brown, G., & Hong, S. (2009). The differential impact of early father and mother involvement on later student achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101, 498–508. McBride, B. A., & Lutz, M. (2004). Intervention: Changing the nature and extent of father involvement. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (4th ed., pp. 446–475). New York: Wiley. McBride, B.A., & Mills, G. (1993). A comparison of mother and father involvement with their preschool age children. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 8, 457–477. Moore, T., & Kotelchuck, M. (2004). Predictors of urban fathers’ involvement in their child’s health care. Pediatrics, 113 (3 Pt 1), 574–580. Muthen, B. O. (2004). Latent variable analysis: Growth mixture modeling and related techniques for longitudinal data. In D. Kaplan (Ed.), Handbook of quantitative methodology for the social sciences (pp. 345–368). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Muthen, B. O., & Muthen, L. K. (2000). Integrating preson-centered and variablecentered analyses: Growth mixture modeling with latent trajectory classes. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 24(6), 882–891.

92 PATERNAL INVOLVEMENT O’Connell, M. (1993). Where’s papa? Fathers’ role in child care. Washington: Population Reference Bureau. Palkovitz, R. (1997). Reconstructing ‘‘involvement’’: Expanding conceptualizations of men’s caring in contemporary families. In A. J. Hawkins & D. C. Dollahite (Eds.), Generative fathering: Beyond deficit perspectives (pp. 200–216). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Palkovitz, R. (2002). Involved fathering and child development: Advancing our understanding of good fathering. In C. Tamis-LeMonda & N. Cabrera (Eds.), Handbook of father involvement: Multidisciplinary perspectives (pp. 119–140). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Palkovitz, R. (2007). Challenges to modeling dyna mics in a developing a developmental understanding of father-child relationships. Applied Developmental Science, 11(4), 190–195. Parke, R.D. (2002). Fathers and families. In M.H. Bornstein (Ed.), Handbook of parenting (2nd ed., Vol. 3, pp. 27–73). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Parke, R., McDowell, D., Kim, M., Killian, C., Dennis, J., Flyr, M., & Wild, M. (2004). Fathers’ contributions to children’s peer relationships. In R. Day & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Conceptualizing and measuring paternal involvement (pp. 141–168). Mahway, NJ: Erlbaum. Paquette, D. (2004). Theorizing the father-child relationship: Mechanisms and developmental outcomes. Human Development, 47, 193–219. Peterson, R., & Gerson, K. (1992). Determinants of responsibility for child care arrangements among dual-earner couples. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 54, 527–536. Pleck, J. H. (1985). Working wives, working husbands. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Pleck, J. H. (1997). Paternal involvement: Levels, sources, and consequences. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (3rd ed., pp. 66–103). New York: Wiley. Pleck, J. H. (2007). Why could father involvement benefit children? Theoretical perspectives. Applied Developmental Science, 11(4), 1–7. Pleck, J. H., & Hofferth, S. (2008). Mother involvement as an influence on father involvement with early adolescents. Fathering, 6, 267–286. Pleck, J. H., Lamb, M. E., & Levine, J. A. (1985). Facilitating future change in men’s family roles. Marriage and Family Review, 9(3–4), 11–16. Pleck, J. H., & Masciadrelli, B. (2004). Paternal involvement in U.S. residential fathers: Levels, sources, and consequences. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (4th ed, pp. 222–271). New York: Wiley. Pleck, J. H., & Stueve, J. L. (2001). Time and paternal involvement. In K. Daly (Ed.), Minding the time in family experience: Emerging perspectives and issues (pp. 205–226). Oxford: Elsevier Science. Pleck, J. H., & Stueve, J. L. (2004). A narrative approach to paternal identity: The importance of parental identity ‘‘conjointness. In R. Day & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Conceptualizing and measuring paternal involvement (pp. 83–107). Mahway, NJ: Erlbaum. Presser, H. B. (1989). Can we make time for children? The economy, work schedules, and child care. Demography, 26, 523–543. Rosenbaum, P. R., & Rubin, D. B. (1985). Constructing a control group using multivariate matched sampling methods that incorporate the propensity score. American Statistician, 39(1), 33–38. Ryan, R., Martin, A., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2006). Is one good parent good enough? Patterns of mother and father parenting and child cognitive outcomes at 24 and 36 months. Parenting, 6(203), 211–228.

References 93 Sandberg, J. F., & Hofferth, S. L. (2001). Changes in children’s time with parents: United States, 1981–1997. Demography, 38, 423–436. Sarkadi, A., Kristiansson, R., Oberklaid, F., & Bremberg, S. (2008). Fathers’ involvement and children’s developmental outcomes: A systematic review of longitudinal studies. Acta Pædiatrica, 97, 153–158. Schoppe-Sullivan, S., McBride, B.A., & Ho, M. (2004). Unidimensional versus multidimensional perspectives on father involvement. Fathering, 2, 147–164. Skinner, E., Johnson, S., & Snyder, T. (2005). Six dimensions of parenting: A motivational model. Parenting: Science and Practice, 5, 175–235. Small, S. A., & Eastman, G. (1991). Rearing adolescents in contemporary society: A conceptual framework for understanding the responsibilities and needs of parents. Family Relations, 40, 455–462. Stolz, H., Barber, B., & Olsen, J. (2005). Toward disentangling fathering and mothering: An assessment of relative importance. Journal of Marriage and Family, 67, 1076– 1092. Stueve, J. L., & Pleck, J. H. (2003). Fathers’ narratives of arranging and planning: Implications for understanding paternal responsibility. Fathering, 1, 51–70. Sullivan, O., & Coltrane, S. (2008, April). Men’s changing contribution to housework and child care. Council on Contemporary Families, Chicago.www.contem poraryfamilies.org / subtemplate.php?t=briefingPapers&ext=menshousework. Retrieved June 23, 2009. Sullivan, O., Coltrane, S., McAnnally, L., & Altintas, E. (2009). Father-friendly policies and time-use data in a cross-national context: Potential and prospects for future research. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 624: 234–254. Tamis-LeMonda, C., Shannon, J., Cabrera, N., & Lamb, M. E. (2004). Fathers and mothers at play with their 2- and 3-year olds: Contributions to language and cognitive development. Child Development, 75, 1806–1820. U.S. Census Bureau (2008a). Who’s minding the kids? Child care arrangements: Spring 2005. www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/child/ppl-2005.html. Retrieved June 22, 2009. U.S. Census Bureau (2008b). Who’s minding the kids? Child care arrangements: Spring 2005: Historical tables. www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/childcare. html. Retrieved June 22, 2009. Vaughn, B. E., & Bost, K. K. (1999). Attachment and temperament. In J. Cassidy (Ed.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (pp. 198–225). New York: Guilford Press. Walzer, S. (1996). Thinking about the baby: Gender and divisions of infant care. Social Problems, 43, 219–234. Wang, R., & Bianchi, S. (2009). ATUS fathers’ involvement in childcare. Social Indicator Research, 93, 141–145. Yeung, W. J., Sandberg, J. F., Davis-Kean, P. E., Hofferth, S. L. (2001). Children’s time with fathers in intact families. Journal of Marriage and Family, 63, 136–154.

CHAPTER 4

The Development and Significance of Father–Child Relationships in Two-Parent Families MICHAEL E. LAMB and CHARLIE LEWIS

A

LL ACCOUNTS OF socialization and personality development, following Freud’s lead, have emphasized the crucial importance of early experiences, the complex ways in which children’s experiences, memories, and fantasies have enduring influences on their development and the importance of parent–child relationships. All of these beliefs have affected subsequent research on child development in general and on parent– child relationships in particular, helping create a voluminous literature that we can only sample in this brief chapter. Two of Freud’s ideas have had a particular influence in the past 40 years of research on father–child relationships: The beliefs that fathers play unique roles in their children’s development and that their influences must be viewed in the context of a broader array of social relationships. The notion that fathers play a unique role in their children’s development was especially prominent in earlier phases of research on fatherhood, although it continues to attract attention, as we recognize in our abbreviated discussion of these pioneering studies. Further, although fathers are notoriously difficult to study because they are hard to reach and tend more than mothers to drop out of longitudinal studies (Mitchell et al., 2007), many scholars have recently shifted their attention to the ways in which children’s development occurs within a network of changing and interlinked relationships. Particularly noteworthy have been their attempts to achieve a systemic understanding of fathering (e.g., Cabrera, Fitzgerald, Bradley & Roggman, 2007; McHale, 2007). The study of systemic processes and their changes over time requires longitudinal research involving systematic analyses of different levels of influences, including the actions of individual family members as well as the influences of subsystems, like the effect of parental relationships on parent–child relationships. Fortunately, statistical approaches using

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The Development of Relationships in Early Childhood 95

structural equations (e.g., Schudlich & Cummings, 2007), multilevel (O’Connor, Dunn, Jenkins & Rasbash, 2006) and hierarchical (e.g., Elgar, Mills, McGrath, Waschbusch, & Brownridge, 2007; Frascarolo, Favez, Carneiro, & Fivaz-Depeursinge, 2004) modeling have become much more commonplace in recent years, and this has made possible types of research that were not hitherto attempted. We will describe some of these conceptual developments later in the chapter, as we review current thinking about the nature and importance of father–child relationships. We begin by describing fathers’ responses to parenthood and to their infants, the processes by which infants become attached to their fathers, and differences in the nature and impact of mother– and father–child relationships. In the second section, we switch the emphasis from normative developmental processes to individual differences, discussing the factors that influence father–child interactions and relationships, and noting how men’s interactions with their children need to be understood within the context of a network of family relationships. Studies of infants and young children have predominated, and these thus continue to dominate our examination, in the third section, of studies concerned with the characteristics of father–child relationships, including the amount of time that fathers spend with their children, and differences between maternal and paternal styles of interaction. We attempt to show how we need to take into account both the complexity of relationships within the family and how these fit into a plethora of extrafamilial factors and influences. Changes in the nature of relationships between children and their parents in childhood and adolescence are discussed in the final substantive section. Here, we describe the mechanisms by which parent– child relationships are gradually transformed over this period and the roles that fathers play in the lives and socialization of their adolescent sons and daughters. We focus particularly on development in two-parent families, because fathers in other family constellations are discussed elsewhere in this book, notably by Amato and Darius (Chapter 6), Carlson and McLanahan (Chapter 8), and Marsiglio and Hinojosa (Chapter 9).

THE DEVELOPMENT OF RELATIONSHIPS IN EARLY CHILDHOOD PATERNAL SENSITIVITY

IN

EARLY INFANCY

Even though new mothers experience more life changes and report getting more satisfaction from their new roles than fathers do (Dulude, Wright, & Belanger, 2000), most men adapt positively to parenting, albeit in diverse ways (Henwood & Procter, 2003). For example, men in many countries report being elated when their infants are born (Bader, 1995; Greenberg, 1985; Greenberg & Morris, 1974), frequently visit hospitalized newborns (Marton & Minde, 1980; Levy-Shiff, Sharir, & Mogilner, 1989), and feel emotionally connected to their infants. These feelings are profound, even moving fathers whose children have been placed for adoption (Clapton, 2004). When fathers continue to live with their infants, there appears to be substantial continuity over time in the extent to which fathers report feeling attached to their infants (Condon, Corkindale, & Boyce, 2008). Biological and in vitro fertilization

96 THE DEVELOPMENT

AND

SIGNIFICANCE

(IVF) fathers in Sweden reported feeling equivalently attached prenatally, and the stronger the attachment prenatally, the less anxious and irritable the men reported being postnatally (Hjelmstedt & Collins, 2008). Fathers and mothers are equivalently anxious about leaving their babies and toddlers in someone else’s care (Deater-Deckard, Scarr, McCartney, & Eisenberg, 1994; Hock & Lutz, 1998; though see Wille, 1998, for contrasting results). New fathers behave just as mothers do when introduced to their newborn infants (R€ odholm & Larsson, 1982), and are effective sources of heat and protection for their neonates (Christensson, 1996). The nurturant attentiveness of new fathers may reflect the fact that mothers and fathers experience similar changes in hormonal levels (increasing levels of prolactin and cortisol and decreased levels of testosterone and estradiol) around the birth of their infants (Storey, Walsh, Quinton, & Wynne-Edwards, 2000). Men also experience postnatal mood swings that may be of biological origin (Ramchandani, Stein, Evans, O’Connor, & the ALSPAC Study Team, 2005). In addition to the hormonal changes experienced by pregnant women and their partners, however, the female hormone estrogen appears to make younger women more sensitive to infantile cuteness than either men or menopausal women (Sprengelmeyer et al., 2009). Indeed, how expectant parents interact with a doll during pregnancy predicts later interactions with their infants and toddlers (Favez et al., 2006). Men quickly learn about the uniqueness of their own newborn children, although they may not be as perceptive as mothers. When blindfolded and denied access to olfactory cues, for example, Israeli and American fathers were able to recognize their infants by touching their hands after only 60 minutes of exposure (Bader & Phillips, 1999; Kaitz, Lapidot, Bronner, & Eidelman, 1992; Kaitz, Shiri, Danziger, Hershko, & Eidelman, 1994). Fathers could not recognize their infants by touching their faces, however, whereas mothers could do so (Kaitz, Meirov, Landman, & Eidelman, 1993; Kaitz et al., 1994), perhaps because the mothers had spent twice as much time with their infants prior to testing. Interestingly, both mothers and fathers were better at identifying their own newborns by touching their hands than by touching their faces. Kaitz, Chriki, Bear-Scharf, Nir, and Eidelman (2000) reported that Israeli mothers soothed their newborns more effectively than new fathers did, regardless of parity, whereas American fathers and mothers both responded appropriately to infant cues when observed feeding their infants (Parke & Sawin, 1977). Fathers and mothers both adjust their speech patterns when interacting with infants—speaking more slowly, using shorter phrases, imitating, and repeating themselves more often when talking to infants rather than adults (Blount & Padgug, 1976; Dalton-Hummel, 1982; Gleason, 1975; Golinkoff & Ames, 1979; Kokkinaki & Kugiumutzakis, 2000; Lewis et al., 1996; Rondal, 1980). Infant-directed singing has more exaggerated features than simulated singing or normal singing (Trehub, Unyk, et al., 1997; Trehub, Hill, & Kamenetsky, 1997) and Warren-Leubecker and Bohannon (1984) reported that fathers increased their pitch and frequency range even more than mothers did when speaking to 2-year-olds. Although they can discriminate among male voices, however, 4-month-olds do not show preferences for their

The Development of Relationships in Early Childhood 97

fathers’ voices (Ward & Cooper, 1999), perhaps because their daily exposure to paternal speech is often very low (Korman & Lewis, 2001). Microanalyses of infant–father ‘‘dialogues’’ involving 2- to 6-month-old Greek infants showed both infants and fathers closely attending and responding sensitively to their partners’ emotional expressions (Kokkinaki, 2008). Some researchers have found no differences between levels of maternal and paternal sensitivity during the first year. In the face-to-face and still-face paradigms, for example, mothers and fathers were equally sensitive with their 4-month-olds, while infants showed equivalent patterns of affect and self-regulation with their mothers and fathers (Braungart-Rieker, Garwood, Powers, & Notaro, 1998), although boys may behave more negatively with their fathers when their mothers are employed (Braungart-Rieker, Courtney, & Garwood, 1999). Both parents are sufficiently sensitive to developmental changes in their children’s abilities and preferences that they adjust their play and stimulation patterns accordingly (Crawley & Sherrod, 1984), although Israeli fathers of 6-month-olds expect cognitive maturity and social autonomy to be acquired more slowly than mothers do (Mansbach & Greenbaum, 1999). In addition, French fathers appeared highly attuned to their toddlers’ interests when playing with them, although their tendencies to tease were disruptive (Labrell, 1994). Notaro and Volling (1999) reported no differences in the sensitivity and responsiveness of American mothers and fathers who were observed interacting with their 1-year-olds for 3 minutes while the parents were preoccupied completing questionnaires. Others have reported contrasting results, however. When observed playing with their 8-month-olds, American fathers were less sensitive to cues regarding their infants’ interests and activities than mothers were (Power & Parke, 1983), prohibited their infants’ activities and talked more (Brachfeld-Child, 1986), and were somewhat less likely to retrieve their crying infants than mothers were (Donate-Bartfield & Passman, 1985). Likewise, Heermann, Jones, and Wikoff (1994) reported that fathers were rated lower than mothers on several multifactorial measures of parenting skill at every age studied. Schoppe-Sullivan et al. (2006) reported that father and mothers were equivalently sensitive to their 1-year-old sons, but that mothers were both more sensitive to daughters than fathers were and less sensitive to sons than to daughters. Interestingly, fathers were notably more sensitive to sons whose mothers were less sensitive. In another study, fathers of both full- and preterm infants appeared less sensitive than mothers when their infants were 3 and 12 months old (Harrison & Magill-Evans, 1996). Because most men interact with their children so much less than mothers do, we cannot distinguish the relative importance of biological and social causes of these differences: We need to explore individual differences as well as changes in men over time, noting that these differences themselves suggest that social and personal factors both play important roles. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

IN

RESPONSIVENESS

Belsky, Gilstrap, and Rovine (1984) reported that, although fathers were less actively engaged in interaction with their 1-, 3-, and 9-month-old infants than mothers were, the differences narrowed over time. Individual differences in

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paternal engagement were quite stable over time, especially between 3 and 9 months, and it is obviously important to determine why fathers differ in their sensitivity and engagement. Fathers’ recollections of their own childhood relationships play an important role in shaping paternal sensitivity: Researchers have shown that men who had loving and secure relationships with their parents were more sensitive, attentive, and involved than fathers who recalled poor relationships (Bretherton et al., 2006; Cowan, Cohn, Cowan, & Pearson, 1996; Shannon, Tamis-LeMonda, & Cabrera, 2006). Some men are motivated by a desire to be ‘‘better’’ than their own fathers (Bretherton et al.; West et al., 2009), while others’ adaptations to parenthood seem to be influenced adversely by memories of their own mothers’ poor caring (Mayes & Leckman, 2007). Paternal responsiveness also appears to vary, depending on the degree to which fathers assume responsibility for infant care: Caretaking experience appears to facilitate parental responsiveness (Donate-Bartfield & Passman, 1985; Zelazo, Kotelchuck, Barber, & David, 1977), and fathers who are more involved in the treatment of their medically compromised infants appear to interact with them more positively than those who are more distressed by their infants’ ill-health (Darke & Goldberg, 1994). This may explain why low-income American fathers who lived with their infants appeared more sensitive than those who did not (Brophy-Herb, Gibbons, Omar, & Schiffman, 1999). There is also an intriguing association between paternal reactivity to infant signals and the magnitude of the hormonal changes experienced by new fathers (Storey et al., 2000). Because most fathers interact with their infants less and assume less responsibility for child care than mothers do, we might expect paternal sensitivity to decline over time relative to that of mothers, but the available evidence does not reveal a clear developmental pattern of this sort. Variations and developmental changes notwithstanding, most fathers are sufficiently responsive to their infants that attachments should form provided that a sufficient amount of father–infant interaction takes place. Fathers who have additional contact with their infants seem to adapt to parenting more easily. For example, Feldman, Sussman, and Zigler (2004) found that men who took leave after the birth of their infants became more involved with them and that this was related to more positive evaluations at work. THE DEVELOPMENT

OF

FATHER–INFANT ATTACHMENTS

The establishment of attachment relationships between children and parents constitutes one of the most important aspects of human social and emotional development, and Bowlby’s (1969) attachment theory has guided most research on this topic in the last four decades. One crucial aspect of attachment formation is that infants come to focus their bids for attention on a small number of familiar individuals. When adults respond promptly and appropriately to infant signals, infants come to perceive them as predictable or reliable and secure infant–parent attachments result, whereas insecure attachments may develop when adults do not respond sensitively (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978; Lamb, Pleck, Charnov, & Levine, 1985; Thompson, 1998; DeWolff & Van IJzendoorn, 1997). When adults respond rarely, no

The Development of Relationships in Early Childhood 99

attachments at all may develop, and it was thus crucially important to determine whether fathers were appropriately responsive to their infants. The research reviewed in the previous subsection suggested that most were. An early interview study with mothers suggested that infants begin to protest separations from both parents at 7 to 9 months of age and that by 18 months of age, 71 percent protested separation from both parents (Schaffer & Emerson, 1964). Babies formed attachments to those with whom they interacted regularly regardless of their involvement in caretaking. Likewise, Pedersen and Robson (1969) found that 75% of the mothers reported that their infants responded positively and enthusiastically when their fathers returned from work, with the intensity of greeting by boys particularly correlated with the frequency of paternal caretaking, paternal patience with infant fussing, and the intensity of father–infant play. Among daughters, however, intensity of greeting was correlated only with reported paternal ‘‘apprehension’’ about girls’ well-being. Separation protest was the preferred measure when observational studies of father–infant attachment began in the 1970s. Kotelchuck (1976) reported that 12-, 15-, 18-, and 21-month-old infants predictably protested when left alone by either parent, explored little while the parents were absent, and greeted them positively when they returned. Few infants protested separation from either parent when the other parent remained with them. A majority of the infants were more concerned about separation from their mothers, but 25 percent preferred their fathers and 20 percent showed no preference for either parent. Later research confirmed, not surprisingly, that infants and toddlers also protested being left by either parent in nursery school settings (Field et al., 1984). Somewhat unexpectedly, however, Guatemalan babies who experienced a great deal of interaction with their fathers started to protest separation later (not earlier) than those whose fathers were uninvolved (Lester, Kotelchuck, Spelke, Sellers, & Klein, 1974) and the phase during which protest occurred was briefer when involvement was greater (Kotelchuck, 1976; Spelke, Zelazo, Kagan, & Kotelchuck, 1973). These counterintuitive correlations suggest that the intensity of separation protest may not index the intensity of attachment.However, low paternal involvement in caretaking was associated with reduced interaction and proximity seeking in the laboratory (Spelke et al.), and when paternal involvement increased at home, there was a concomitant increase in the amount of father–infant interaction in the laboratory (Zelazo et al., 1977). Measures of separation protest were unaffected. Feldman and Ingham (1975), Lamb (1976b), and Willemsen, Flaherty, Heaton, and Ritchey (1974) all reported no preferences for either parent in different laboratory procedures focused on responses to separation and reunion by American infants. Distress did not discriminate between mothers and fathers in a study by Cohen and Campos (1974) either, but on measures such as the frequency of approach, speed of approach, time in proximity, and use of parents as ‘‘secure bases’’ from which to interact with strangers, 10-, 13-, and 16-month-old infants showed preferences for their mothers over their fathers, as well as clear preferences for fathers over strangers. Likewise, Ban and Lewis (1974) reported that 1-year-olds touched, stayed near, and

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vocalized to mothers more than fathers in 15-minute free-play sessions, whereas no comparable preferences were evident among 2-year-olds. By the mid-1970s, therefore, there was substantial evidence that most American children developed attachments to their fathers in infancy. It was, however, unclear whether infants formed these attachments between 6 and 9 months of age, when they form attachments to their mothers (Bowlby, 1969). Lengthy home observations subsequently revealed that 7-, 8-, 12-, and 13-month-old infants in traditional Euro-American families showed no preference for either parent over the other on attachment behavior measures although all showed preferences for the parents over relatively unfamiliar adult visitors (Lamb, 1977c), suggesting that babies formed attachments to both parents at the same time. Similar patterns were evident in a later study of 8- and 16-month-old infants on Israeli kibbutzim (Sagi, Lamb, Shoham, Dvir, & Lewkowicz, 1985). Patterns of separation protest and greeting at home also showed no preferences for either parent in the North American study, but the situation changed during the second year of life when many of the infants began to show preferences for their fathers (Lamb, 1977a). There was controversy at this time concerning the existence of preferences for mothers over fathers and there were no data available concerning father–infant interaction in naturalistic settings. According to attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969), preferences among attachment figures may not be evident when infants do not need comfort or protection from attachment figures, but infants should focus their attachment behavior more narrowly on primary attachment figures when distressed. When infants are distressed, the display of attachment behaviors increases, and infants organize their behavior similarly around whichever parent is present (Lamb, 1976a, 1976e). When both parents are present, however, distressed 12- and 18month-olds turn to their mothers preferentially (Lamb, 1976a, 1976e), whereas 8- and 21-month-olds show no comparable preferences (Lamb, 1976b). Especially between 10 and 20 months of age, therefore, mothers appear to be more reliable sources of comfort and security, even though fathers are more desirable partners for playful interaction, especially with boys (Clarke-Stewart, 1978; Lamb, 1977a, 1977c). In a longitudinal study of less involved and highly involved Swedish fathers and their partners, Lamb, Frodi, Hwang, and Frodi (1983) found that 8- and 16-month-olds showed clear preferences for their mothers on measures of both attachment and affiliative behavior, regardless of the fathers’ relative involvement in child care. One reason for this unexpected result may have been that these Swedish fathers were not especially active as playmates; Lamb et al. speculated that playfulness may serve to enhance the salience of fathers, and that in the absence of such cues infants develop clear-cut preferences for their primary caretakers (for a related argument, see Paquette, 2004). Frascarolo-Moutinot (1994) reported that Swiss fathers and mothers were both used as secure bases and sources of security, but only when the fathers were unusually involved in a variety of everyday activities with their infants. According to Frascarolo (2004), the 1-year-old children of nontraditional Swiss fathers were more sociable both with parents and with a stranger, although they treated parents as attachment figures and strangers with a little

The Development of Relationships in Early Childhood 101

‘‘distance.’’ By contrast, Swiss infants with traditional fathers clearly obtained more comfort and security, even at home, from their mothers than from their fathers (Frascarolo-Moutinot). Increased paternal involvement thus does seem to strengthen infant–father attachment but when mothers assume primary responsibility for child care, they are likely to be the preferred attachment figures. Most infants, however, clearly form attachments to both their fathers and mothers at the same age. The extent of involvement in early care may have long-term effects on the family. THE SECURITY

OF

CHILD–FATHER ATTACHMENT

Researchers later switched focus from whether or not infants form attachments to both parents (plainly, they do) to the quality or security of those relationships, perhaps reasoning that infant–father attachments might tend to be more insecure because fathers were less involved in or adept at child care. In fact, regardless of cultural context, just under two-thirds of the attachments to either parent are rated secure (e.g., Ahnert, Pinquart, & Lamb, 2006; Diener, Mangelsdorf, McHale, & Frosch, 2002; Fox, Kimmerly, & Schafer, 1991; Lamb, Hwang, Frodi, & Frodi, 1982) with no differences in the average levels of infant–mother and infant–father security on the Attachment Q-set (Monteiro et al., in press). Attachment theorists believe that maternal sensitivity determines the security of infant–mother attachment and thus of subsequent psychological adjustment (Ainsworth et al., 1978), and it seems reasonable to assume that individual differences in paternal sensitivity influence the security of infant– father attachment as well. Cross-sectional studies provide contradictory results. Notaro and Volling (1999) reported no significant associations between assessments of American mother– and father–infant attachment in the Strange Situation and near contemporaneous measures of parental responsiveness in a brief (3-minute) session. These findings were consistent with an earlier report that measures of father–infant interaction at home when infants were 6 and 9 months of age were unrelated to the security of infant–father attachment in the Strange Situation (Volling & Belsky, 1992), with Rosen and Rothbaum’s (1993) observation that measure of both maternal and paternal behaviour were weakly associated with Strange Situation assessments of attachment security and with Braungart-Rieker et al.’s (2001) report that 4month paternal sensitivity was not associated with the quality of infant– father attachment. By contrast, Goosens and Van IJzendoorn (1990) reported that the sensitivity of fathers in a free-play session was correlated with near contemporaneous assessments of infant–father attachment in a sample of Dutch fathers, and Lundy (2002) reported significant associations among paternal mind-mindedness (describing the infant’s thoughts and feelings), synchronous behavior, and attachment security. A meta-analysis of eight studies concerned with the association between paternal sensitivity and the quality of infant–father attachment in the Strange Situation revealed a small but statistically significant association (Van IJzendoorn & DeWolff, 1997) that was significantly weaker than the modest but reliable association between maternal sensitivity and the security of infant-mother attachment. It is not yet

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clear whether this pattern of results reflects poorer or less appropriate measurement of paternal than maternal sensitivity, or the more limited nature of the relevant research. Father–infant attachments are more likely to be insecure when fathers report high levels of stress (Jarvis & Creasey, 1991), as attachment theory would predict, and longitudinal studies also reveal some important continuity. For example, Steele, Steele, and Fonagy (1996) reported that British mothers’ perceptions of their attachments to their own mothers during pregnancy predicted the security of their infants’ attachments to them at age 1, while fathers’ perception of their childhood attachments predicted the security of their infants’ attachments to them. Consistent with this, Van IJzendoorn (1995) reported an association between the security of infant– father attachment and the Dutch fathers’ representations of their own childhood attachments. The same holds for behavioral measures. Cox, Owen, Henderson, and Margand (1992) found that American fathers who were more affectionate, spent more time with their 3-month-olds, and had more positive attitudes were more likely to have securely attached infants 9 months later. Caldera, Huston, and O’Brien (1995) likewise reported that American infants were more likely to appear insecure in the Strange Situation at 18 months when their fathers appeared more detached in a semistructured laboratory setting 12 months earlier. Two recent studies provide evidence for the role of paternal involvement. The first, of Portuguese families, showed that toddlers were more securely attached to their fathers when the latter were more involved in both care/organization as well as play/leisure activities. Fathers’ participation in play/leisure activities was also associated with the security of the toddler–mother attachments (Monteiro et al., in press). The second study, of Canadian families, showed a closer association between the fathers’ own attachment representations and those of their children when they had custody following divorce than in a matched married sample (Bernier & Miljkovitch, 2009). The effects of infant–father attachment on subsequent behavior have also been studied quite intensively. Brown, Mangelsdorf, Wong, Shigeto, and Neff (2009) reported that age-appropriate measures of father–child attachment were quite stable (r = 0.47) from 12 months to 3 years of age, and there is some evidence that infant–mother attachments have greater and more consistent predictive power than infant–father attachments. Main and Weston (1981) found that the security of both mother–infant and father– infant attachments affected American infants’ responses to an unfamiliar person (dressed as a clown). Unfortunately, it was not possible to determine which relationship had the greater impact because the clown session took place at the same time as the assessment of the mother–infant attachment— 6 months before assessment of the father–infant attachments. Main, Kaplan, and Cassidy (1985) reported that earlier and concurrent assessments of mother–child attachment had greater impact on American children’s attachment-related responses than earlier and concurrent assessments of child–father attachment. Similar results were reported by Suess, Grossmann, and Sroufe (1992), who studied associations between parent–infant attachment security and the quality of German children’s later interaction

The Development of Relationships in Early Childhood 103

with peers. Interestingly, although the parents’ sensitivity toward their 12-month-olds did not predict later behavior problems in one study (Benzies, Harrison, & Magill-Evans, 1999), Verschueren and Marcoen (1999) reported that the security of child–mother attachments had a greater effect on the positive self-perceptions of Belgian 5- and 6-year-olds than did child– father attachments, whereas child–father attachments protected the children from anxiety and withdrawn behavior more effectively. In both studies, secure attachments to one parent partially but not completely offset the effects of insecure attachment to the other, and we might expect the same to be true in infancy. By contrast, Steele, Steele, Croft, and Fonagy (1999) found that the ability of British 6-year-olds to read affective expressions in cartoons was predicted by the security of infant–mother attachments 5 years earlier, but not by infant–father attachments at 18 months or by the parents’ feelings of attachment during pregnancy. Belsky, Garduque, and Hrncir (1984) reported that the security of both attachment relationships, but especially the infant– mother attachments, affected executive capacity, an index of cognitive performance, in a sample of American toddlers. Other studies suggest that father–child relationships can be at least as important as mother–child relationships. In Fagot and Kavanagh’s (1993) study, both parents found interaction with insecurely attached infants less pleasant, and both tended to become less involved in interactions with insecurely attached boys, a factor that may explain the greater likelihood of behavior problems among boys. Interestingly, fathers had unusually high levels of interaction with insecure–avoidant girls, who received the fewest instructions from their mothers. In a study of 20-month-olds, Easterbrooks and Goldberg (1984) found that the children’s adaptation was promoted by both the amount of paternal involvement and, more importantly, the quality or sensitivity of their fathers’ behavior. Among infants on Israeli kibbutzim, the security of both mother– and father–infant attachment were associated with indices of the infants’ sociability with strangers (Sagi, Lamb, & Gardner, 1986): Securely attached infants were more sociable than insecure–resistant infants. However, the security of neither infant–mother nor infant–father attachment influenced the adjustment at age 5 of infants raised on traditional kibbutzim (those with central dormitories for children), although the security of the infant–caretaker relationships did predict later behavior (Oppenheim, Sagi, & Lamb, 1988). Lamb, Hwang, Frodi, and Frodi (1982) had found that Swedish infants who were securely attached to their fathers were more sociable with strangers, although there was no association between the security of infant–mother attachment and sociability in their sample. As in an earlier study by Bridges, Grolnick, and Connell (1997), Diener et al. (2002) reported similarities between the emotion-regulating strategies employed by infants when accompanied by mothers or fathers as well as similar associations between the strategies adopted and the security of infant–parent attachment, with infants who were securely attached to both parents showing more consistent parent-focused (as opposed to self-) soothing strategies. Most of the evidence thus suggests that we should take into account infants’ attachments to both of their parents when evaluating the factors shaping their adjustment, but these attachments cannot be treated in isolation

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of other factors, particularly the relationships between the parents, as we show next. THE MOTHER–FATHER–CHILD SYSTEM AND BEHAVIORAL SKILLS

AND

CHILDREN’S COGNITIVE

Over time, all members of the mother–father–child triad shape and adapt to one another. In her observational study of 15- to 30-month-olds, for example, Clarke-Stewart (1978) found that intellectual competence was correlated with measures of maternal stimulation (both material and verbal), intellectual acceleration, and expressiveness, as well as with measures of the fathers’ engagement in play, their positive ratings of the children, the amount they interacted, and the fathers’ aspirations for the infants’ independence. However, examination of the correlational patterns over time suggested that the mothers affected the children’s development and that this, in turn, influenced the fathers’ behavior. In other words, paternal behavior appeared to be a consequence, not a determinant, of individual differences in child behavior. Similarly, Hunter, McCarthy, MacTurk, and Vietze (1987) reported that, although the qualities of both mother– and father–infant interaction in play sessions were individually stable over time, the paternal variables were not associated with differences in the infants’ cognitive competence whereas the indices of maternal behavior were predictively valuable. Not only do patterns of influence not always run directly from parents to children, but the impact of the two parents is often not equivalent as well: In two-parent households, mothers’ enhanced levels of responsibility make them more influential. For example, in triadic interaction with 11- to 15-month-olds, mothers do more to keep the interaction going, while fathers display more emotion (Lindsey & Caldera, 2006). Paternal behavior appears influential as well, however. Yarrow et al. (1984) reported that paternal stimulation had an especially important role to play in the development of American boys’ (but not girls’) mastery motivation in the first year of life. Wachs, Uzgiris, and Hunt (1971) found that increased paternal involvement was associated with better performance on the Uzgiris–Hunt scales. Magill-Evans and Harrison (1999) reported that the sensitivity of both mothers and fathers to their 3- and 12-month-olds predicted individual differences in the linguistic and cognitive capacities of the children when they were 18 months old, while Yogman, Kindlon, and Earls (1995) found that infants with more involved fathers had higher IQs than those whose fathers were less involved, even after controlling for socioeconomic differences. Finnish fathers who read more often to their 14- and 24-month-old infants had children who were later more interested in books (Lyytinen, Laakso, & Poikkeus, 1998). In addition, Labrell (1990) reported that paternal scaffolding (i.e., providing indirect rather than direct help) promoted independent problem solving by French 18-month-olds. Symbolic activity by 30- and 42-month-olds was predicted by maternal but not paternal distancing strategies in a later study (Labrell, Deleau, & Juhel, 2000), however. Although mothers and fathers both adjust their speech characteristics when talking to young children, maternal and paternal communicative styles

Fathering Within Dynamic Family Systems 105

differ. Gleason (1975) and Rowe, Coker, and Pan (2004) have suggested that, because fathers use more imperatives, attention-getting utterances, and utter more complex sentences than mothers do, they contribute in unique, though still poorly understood, ways to linguistic development. Infants clearly view both parents as potential sources of information: In ambiguous settings, they look to either parent for clarification and they are equally responsive to information from mothers and fathers (Dickstein & Parke, 1988; Hirshberg & Svejda, 1990). Nevertheless, Rondal’s (1980) research suggests that the different communicative styles adopted by mothers and fathers force children to learn a greater variety of linguistic conventions. For example, the Belgian 2year-olds he studied addressed their mothers using the informal tu, whereas they addressed their fathers using the more formal vous. Youngblade and Belsky (1992) found no significant associations between the security of infant–father attachment and the quality of father–child interaction when these American children were 3 years old, although those children who had more positive interactions with their fathers at age 3 interacted more positively with peers 2 years later. Interestingly, the security of infant–father attachment at age one was inversely associated with indices of peer play at age 5, leading Youngblade and Belsky to speculate that unsatisfying parent–child relationships led children to look outside their families for more rewarding relationships. These associations were not replicated when infant–father attachment was assessed using the Attachment Q sort rather than the Strange Situation, however: Secure infant–father attachments were associated at that time with more positive interactions with peers (Youngblade, Park, & Belsky, 1993), leaving some confusion about the pattern of predictive associations.

FATHERING WITHIN DYNAMIC FAMILY SYSTEMS MOTHERS, FATHERS,

AND

PARENT–CHILD RELATIONSHIPS

Although our focus in this chapter is on the relationships between children and their fathers, these must be viewed in the context of the complex web of relationships that children experience, especially within the family. Fathers are traditionally viewed primarily as breadwinners, with mothers assigned primary responsibility for child care and household maintenance. Of course, fathers have long juggled responsibilities other than breadwinning, as many commentators have noted, while women have assumed increasingly responsibilities as cobreadwinners alongside their continued prominence in the child and home care domains, leading to a reliance on many types of child care, varying by culture and ethnicity (Radey & Brewster, 2007). The emergence of fatherhood research in the 1970s in part reflected increased attention to the complexity of family relationships and the patterns of influence within the family system (Lamb, 1976d; Lewis & Weinraub, 1976; Pedersen, 1980) and this has become a dominant theme in contemporary research (McHale, 2007; chapter 5, this volume). Over the past 30 years, researchers have shown that fathers not only influence children by interacting with them, but also affect maternal behavior, just as mothers influence

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paternal behavior and involvement (Cummings & O’Reilly, 1997; Lamb, 1997) and children influence their parents (Bell, 1968). Thus, for example, Davis, Schoppe-Sullivan, Mangelsdorf, and Brown (2009) found that the infant’s temperament influenced the quality of parenting, particularly those aspects shared between the two parents, over the first year of life. The quality of marital relationships appears to be a key marker of the way that parents interact with their children from an early age. Fathers are consistently more involved in interaction with their infants when they are highly engaged in interaction with their partners (Belsky, Gilstrap, & Rovine, 1984) and when both they and their partners have supportive attitudes regarding paternal involvement (Beitel & Parke, 1998). Gable, Crnic, and Belsky (1994) reported robust associations among marital quality, the quality of parent–child relationships, and child outcomes in a study of American 2-year-olds. Infants characterized by negative emotionality early in the first year tended to become more positive when they had active, sensitive mothers in good spousal relationships, whereas some infants became more negative when their fathers were dissatisfied with their marriages, insensitive, and uninvolved in their children’s lives (Belsky, Fish, & Isabella, 1991). In the year after the birth of the first child, Grych and Clark (1999) reported that marital quality predicted the amount of appropriate stimulation that fathers gave their 4- and 12-month-olds, while Lundy (2002) reported that marital dissatisfaction adversely affected paternal synchrony and thus the security of infant–father attachment. Likewise, Goldberg and Easterbrooks (1984) found that high marital quality was associated with both more sensitive maternal and paternal behavior as well as higher levels of functioning on the part of the toddlers. By contrast, infants whose fathers abused alcohol tended to have insecure attachments to their mothers (DasEiden & Leonard, 1996), and they show problems in self-regulation and externalizing at the age of 3 (Eiden, Edwards, & Leonard, 2007). Such patterns are not only evident in Anglo-American families. For example, Durrett, Otaki, and Richards (1984) found that the Japanese mothers of securely attached infants reported greater levels of spousal support than did the mothers of insecurely attached infants. Harmony between the parents thus seems to be a key predictor of father– child relationships. This pattern seems to hold even when the father’s own psychological makeup is taken into account. After controlling for individual differences in the fathers’ psychological adjustment, for example, Cox et al. (1989) reported that American men in close, confiding marriages had more positive attitudes toward their 3-month-old infants and toward their roles as parents than did fathers in less successful marriages, whereas mothers in close, confiding marriages were warmer and more sensitive. Similar results were obtained in Israel by Levy-Shiff and Israelashvili (1988). Meanwhile, Heinicke and Guthrie (1992) reported that couples who were well adapted to one another provided better care than parents whose spousal adaptation was poor or declining, and similar findings were reported by researchers in a variety of cultures (Durrett, Richards, Otaki, Pennebaker, & Nyquist, 1986; Engfer, 1988; Jouriles, Pfiffner, & O’Leary, 1988; Meyer, 1988). Interestingly, Belsky, Gilstrap, and Rovine (1984) and Lamb and Elster (1985)

Fathering Within Dynamic Family Systems 107

both reported that American fathers’ interactions with their infants were influenced by the ongoing quality of interaction with their partners much more profoundly than mothers’ behavior was. This may be because paternal behavior and engagement are somewhat discretionary or at the behest of mothers (Allen & Hawkins, 1999), whereas maternal behavior is driven by clearer conventions and role definitions. In any event, marital conflict consistently has harmful effects on socio-emotional development and child adjustment (Hetherington & Stanley-Hagan, 1999; Kelly, 2000; Chapter 5), presumably because it adversely affects the parents’ interactions with their children. However, the quality of the relationship between parents does not always predict children’s development (Belsky, Jaffee, Sligo, Woodward, & Silva, 2005). DISRUPTION

TO THE

FAMILY SYSTEM

The psychological adjustment of either parent can affect other relationships, revealing changing family dynamics over time. For example, Bronte-Tinkew, Scott, Horowitz, and Lilja (2009) examined the transitions to parenthood of more than 1,000 couples. They found that having a mistimed or unwanted pregnancy was a key predictor of higher levels of paternal depression as well as lower mother–father relationship happiness, lower supportiveness, and greater conflict between the parents. Such patterns set the scene for later interactions. Paternal dysphoria postpartum is correlated with maternal dysphoria (e.g., Bielawska-Batorowicz & Kossakowska-Petrycka, 2006; Pinheiro et al., 2006; Roberts, Bushnell, Collings, & Purdie, 2006), and this is often associated with deficient mothering (Murray & Cooper, 1999). Perceived psychological well-being on the part of fathers is associated with paternal sensitivity (Broom, 1994), but it is not clear whether and how symptoms of depression affect paternal sensitivity. Some studies show that the depression of one parent is associated with compensatory behavior by the other. When mothers become depressed postnatally, for example, their husbands/partners often engage in more positive interactions with the babies than men with nondepressed partners (Hossain, Field, Gonzalez, Malphurs, & Del Valle, 1994). Ruth Feldman’s (2007) observations of 4-month-olds with their parents suggested that paternal involvement had a beneficial effect on maternal distress and was associated with more ‘‘family cohesion,’’ as defined by cooperation, positive affect, and mutual gaze between parents during a short episode of mother–father– infant triadic interaction. However, other analyses (e.g., Goodman, 2008) suggest that fathers do not fully compensate for their partner’s depression. Most research suggests that problems in the family system, like the depression of one parent, tend to have negative effects. Depression reduces the amount of involvement with infants and is linked with cognitive delay (Wanless, Rosenkoetter & McClelland, 2008). For example, Kaplan, Sliter, and Burgess (2007) found that depressed fathers interacted with their 4-montholds using a flatter tone of voice, and that their infants showed slightly less ability to learn in a face–voice conditioning paradigm. Likewise, McElwain and Volling (1999) found that depressed fathers were less intrusive when

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observed playing with their 12-month-olds, whereas depressed fathers studied by Field, Hossain, and Malphurs (1999) did not interact with their infants more negatively than nondepressed fathers did. Of course, both maternal and paternal depression have long-term consequences, too: When fathers were depressed 8 weeks after the delivery, their children, particularly their sons, were more likely to have conduct problems or hyperactivity almost 3 years later, even when later paternal and maternal depression were taken into account (Ramchandani et al., 2005). This effect was independent of maternal depression but related to the father’s history of depression before the birth (Ramchandani et al., 2008), although it is likely that the long-term correlation is a marker of chronicity rather than of the effects of postpartum depression per se. In the late preschool period, major depression in men was associated with an eightfold increase in the likelihood of behavior problems and a 36-fold increase in the likelihood of difficulties with peers (Dave, Sherr, Senior, & Nazareth, 2008). We have focused on parental postnatal depression here because it illustrates the ways in which one individual’s pathology can affect the family as a whole. We could have chosen other aspects of parental adjustment to demonstrate similar effects. In particular, research shows long-standing influences of the parents’ relationships on their children. Where parents are in conflict, both resident and nonresident fathers tend to provide less care and to have less positive interaction with their children (e.g., Coley & Hernandez, 2006), sometimes even turning to young preschoolers for emotional support (Macfie, Houts, Pressel, & Cox, 2008). LINKS BETWEEN

THE

FAMILY

AND

WIDER SOCIAL PROCESSES

Although the connection between spousal and parent–child relationships is clear, it has to be understood within the context of a network of factors outside the home. For a start, parental employment patterns influence the amount of paternal care and the closeness of father–child relationships, although sometimes in unexpected ways. For example, Crouter, PerryJenkins, Huston, and McHale (1987) reported that, at least in dual-earner families, increased paternal involvement in child care often occurred at the expense of marital happiness. In addition, fathers in dual-earner families sometimes appear less sensitive toward their young sons, who are thus more likely to develop insecure attachments to their fathers than to their mothers (Braungart-Rieker et al., 1999). Similarly, Grych and Clark (1999) found that fathers with wives who were unemployed or worked part-time were more sensitive when they were involved, whereas fathers whose wives were employed full-time behaved more negatively when they were more highly involved. Beyond infancy, the relationships among maternal employment, paternal involvement, and positive father–child relationships became more positive, however. Thus, maternal employment is associated with increased paternal involvement in the preschool (Berry & Rao, 1997) and school-age (Crouter, Helms-Erikson, Updegraff, & McHale, 1999) periods of development, ensuring that these fathers also know more about their children’s daily experiences. Such findings underscore the need

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to view the relationships with both parents in the context of other important characteristics and experiences of the families. In part because women have assumed increasing responsibility for provisioning themselves and their families in the last 4 decades, the tight identification of fathers with breadwinning has been attenuated. Nevertheless, when asked to identify the features of parental roles with which they most closely identified, many fathers still listed financial provisioning even when they were not the main earners (Warin, Solomon, Lewis, & Langford, 1999). Policy makers, too, have maintained a focus on paternal breadwinning as a key role demand, although other more psychological roles—notably nurturance, emotional support, companionship, play, and tutelage—have also been emphasized in affluent postmodern societies (Burgess, 1997; Hawkins & Dollahite, 1997; Palkowitz, 2002) and this has helped prompt increases in the amounts of time children spend with their fathers (see chapter 3). Hewlett (1992, 2004) points out that, as a rule, men seem to spend more time with children in societies that are less differentiated on the basis of age, gender, wealth, or status. Economic factors also affect fathers’ involvement in the family. In many parts of the world, particularly southern Africa and Asia, men work several hundreds of miles away from their homes to provide sufficient income for their families. Many other men have to work long hours, often in two jobs, to keep their families afloat. Under such circumstances, hands-on involvement with children is impossible. By the same token, as indicated above, much of the increase in men’s domestic involvement has been the result of shifting labor force patterns that include a massive expansion of the female labor force and increasing opportunities that allow both mothers and fathers to be active as carers and breadwinners (Presser, 1989). Second, some factors are so powerful that they influence all fathers in a culture or across cultures. In the report quoted earlier, for example, two worldwide processes leading men to take more active roles in their families were identified: Both increasing female participation in the labor force and economic instability have made traditional ‘‘men’s jobs’’ more unstable, prompting men to take more active roles in their families (e.g., northern England: Warin et al., 1999, Wheelock, 1990; Santiago, Chile: Olavarrı´a, 2003). Such trends support the broader secular shift toward greater male domesticity described by Pleck and Masciadrelli (2004; Chapter 3) and are consistent with Fisher, McCulloch, and Gershuny’s (1999) analyses of two national databases showing a greater increase in British fathers’ involvement than in British mothers’ involvement since the 1960s. Although fathers in dualearner households still do less with their children than mothers do (3 and 4.5 hours per day, respectively), a trend toward greater equity is clearly evident (O’Brien, 2005). Further analysis of these databases suggests that the sharpest increase in parenting activities has occurred among fathers of preschoolers (O’Brien & Shemilt, 2003). As O’Brien (2005) concluded: ‘‘British fathers are now expected to be accessible and nurturing as well as economically supportive to their children’’ (p. 1). Of course, all attempts to quantify the extent of paternal involvement need to consider carefully the sources of information, in light of the fact that fathers tend to report higher levels of involvement than their partners acknowledge (Mikelson, 2008).

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PARENTAL EMPLOYMENT

ON

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Because dual-earner families now predominate around the world, ongoing changes in working and family roles have important psychological effects. Men who worked fewer hours and whose wives/partners worked more hours were reliably more involved with their children in the study conducted by the NICHD Early Childcare Research Network (2000), but the association in dual-earner families between the number of hours worked and the amount of parent–child contact was not direct or straightforward in that study. Gottfried, Gottfried, and Bathurst (1988) and Crouter et al. (1987) likewise reported that fathers in dual-earner families were more involved in child care than were fathers in single-earner families, although the mothers’ employment status did not affect paternal involvement in leisure activities, and fathers’ sex role attitudes did not predict the types of paternal involvement (McHale & Huston, 1984). Work demands also played an important role in determining how involved the Swedish fathers in Lamb et al.’s (1988) study were, just as they did in a later study conducted in the United States (Hyde, Essex, & Horton, 1993). More recently, Goodman, Crouter, Lanza, and Cox (2008) reported that less supportive work environments for low-income American men were associated with lower sensitivity and engagement on the fathers’ part. Higher levels of father involvement in child care are related to the hours and status of maternal employment (Sidle Fuligni, & Brooks-Gunn, 2004), but increased involvement by men is not always correlated with increased harmony between the involved partners. Indeed, in at least some dual-earner families, increased paternal involvement in child care was related to lower marital satisfaction (e.g., Crouter et al., 1987). Fathers with less sensitive partners appear to be less sensitive toward their children (Grych & Clark, 1999), however, so perhaps the depressed marital satisfaction reported by Crouter et al. reflected general family stress rather than poor-quality paternal involvement. Furthermore, other findings are not wholly consistent with Crouter et al.’s findings. Indeed, Brennan, Barnett, and Gareis (2001) reported that greater paternal participation in child care was related to increased maternal satisfaction with their partners, and the issue is important because the quality of parental relationships can affect children’s well-being. In the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), British children’s developmental progress was delayed when mothers returned to work before the children were 18 months old, except when the fathers were highly involved in child care (Gregg & Washbrook, 2003). As Lewis (2000, p. 8) observed, ‘‘Fathers, as well as mothers, find the combination of family responsibilities and a demanding job can be stressful.’’ Further research on more diverse samples might help identify why apparently discrepant results have been reported. For example, emphasis on the breadwinner role may be greater in some social and ethnic groups (Radey & Brewster, 2007), including some immigrant groups (Este & Tachble, 2009, regarding Sudanese immigrants to Canada; Chuang & Su, 2009, regarding Chinese immigrants to Canada; Cabrera, Shannon, Mitchell, & West, 2009,

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and Tamis-LeMonda, Kahana-Kalman, & Yoshikawa, 2009, regarding Latin immigrants to the United States; and Hatten, Vinter, & Williams, 2002, Warin et al., 1999, Salway, Chowbey, & Clarke, 2008, regarding Punjabi British fathers). Atzaba-Poria and Pike (2008) found that job ‘‘spillover’’ affects parenting in White British households, but not in British-Indian families. The intensity of what Allen and Hawkins (1999) term maternal gatekeeping may vary depending on social, cultural, and ethnic factors, although it is important to remember, as emphasised by Salway et al. (2008), that fathers are often involved in many different ways even when breadwinning is emphasized. Gatekeeping processes are often evident in parents’ accounts of the ways in which parental responsibilities are negotiated (Backett, 1982), however, with both mothers and fathers creating and maintaining the ‘‘gates’’ (Zacharostilianakis-Roussou, in preparation) because mother–father relationships appear to be central predictors of the roles played by men in families. Dunn (2006) has argued that maternal gatekeeping is central to our understanding of fathering and its effects and Clarke et al.’s (in press) recent research suggests that mothers play a crucial role in determining whether men in prison (a growing proportion of fathers) remain psychologically and emotionally involved in their children’s lives. The rapid increase in paternal involvement reported by O’Brien and Shemilt (2003) needs to be examined closely because they may reflect the temporary reactions of parents to outside forces, like downturns in the economy, rather than shifts in the nature of parent–child relationships. However, the fact that contemporary men are more likely than either their partners or men in earlier generations to seek increasing involvement in their children’s lives (Yaxley, Vintner, & Young, 2005), suggests that an enduring shift is occurring (see Chapter 3). WIDER SOCIAL INFLUENCES In the main, the same factors predict paternal relationships throughout the first 18 years of parenting. For example, in their recent analysis of parenting in ‘‘middle childhood,’’ Pike, Coldwell, and Dunn (in press) found that a range of factors predicted paternal involvement. For example, the warmth of men’s relationships with their children was greater when they had good relationships with the children’s mothers, when the homes were ‘‘well organized,’’ and when the families regularly engaged in activities together. Such data echo the results of research on the early months of parenting in the United States in the 1970s (Parke & Sawin, 1977, 1980) and parallel patterns in families in which fathers are nonresident (Flouri, 2005), but further research exploring each family member’s conception of the family dynamics more generally, and of the father’s role more particularly (Langford, Lewis, Solomon, & Warin, 2001), is still needed. Paternal roles and involvement are also likely to vary depending on whether the parents are married and live together. The number of cohabiting couples in the United Kingdom increased from 11% in 1979 to around 29% of all households in 2000 (Office for National Statistics, 2000). Many cohabiting parents appear unaware that cohabitation typically offers or demands few

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paternal responsibilities (Pickford, 1999), and researchers have shown that parents’ engagement in their cohabitating relationships ranges from mutual commitment, in which some formal arrangements are made, to contingent commitment, in which it is assumed that the relationships will not last (Smart & Stevens, 2000). Interestingly, Smart and Stevens reported that, even when the latter types of relationships dissolved, there was often a commitment to maintenance of father–child relationships, unless there had been a history of violence. Lewis, Papacosta, and Warin (2002) suggested that the mothers’ gatekeeping role was paramount in such family forms because, after separation, ‘‘ex-cohabiting’’ fathers had responsibilities enforced by the Child Support Agency but no rights to have contact with their children. In the United Kingdom, the Blair/Brown government sought to allocate parental responsibility to some cohabiting fathers, introduced paternal leave (see O’Brien, 2004), and restructured the Child Support Agency in an effort to communicate a positive view of fathers (see also Scourfield & Drakeford, 2002), and similar (as well as more generous) policies are being developed and implemented throughout the European Union (O’Brien & Moss, 2005; Chapter 19). Most European governments are clearly committed to facilitating active paternal involvement with children by revising their directives on working hours and paid paternity leave, but contemporary couples continue to face dilemmas that would be familiar to their parents (Day, Lewis, O’Brien, & Lamb, 2005): They can enhance their family circumstances economically by working more only at the cost of reduced involvement in child care. Many British fathers continue to work much longer hours than their European counterparts. More than 33% are regularly engaged in paid employment for more than 48 hours per week, and 12% continue to work for over 60 hours, although there are signs of a slight reduction in the numbers of men working such long hours (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 2003). The extent of paternal involvement may also differ depending on the fathers’ personalities as well as on the amount of encouragement and support fathers receive: Lind (1974), for example, reported long ago that Swedish fathers who were taught how to care for their newborns and were encouraged to do so were more involved with their infants 3 months later, while the greater burdens imposed on families by the birth of preterm babies appears to facilitate paternal involvement (Parke & Beitel, 1986). More recently, a randomized study revealed that young African-American and Hispanic men in the United States developed more positive attitudes toward coparenting with their adolescent partners and higher later levels of paternal engagement, regardless of residence (Fagan, 2008). However, other research suggests that short-term interventions for new fathers do not influence paternal behavior or involvement (Belsky, 1985; Pannabecker, Emde, & Austin, 1982; Parke & Beitel, 1986) although Myers (1982) reported that fathers became more knowledgeable and were more involved when they were shown how to conduct standardized assessments of their newborns. Israeli fathers who were more involved with their 9-month-olds perceived them as more competent (Ninio & Rinott, 1988), suggesting that perceptions of infant competence and paternal involvement reinforce one another.

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McHale and Huston (1984) reported that fathers who perceived themselves as more skillful were more involved later, but knowledge affected involvement differently among Mormon and non-Mormon fathers in another study, leaving uncertainty about the association between involvement and knowledge of child development (Roggman, Benson, & Boyce, 1999). Other paternal characteristics surely affect involvement, too: Levy-Shiff and Israelashvili (1988) found that Israeli fathers who were rated prenatally as warm and interested played more with their 9-month-olds, whereas prenatal perceptiveness, sensitivity, and a tolerance for external intrusions were correlated with greater involvement in caretaking. Grossmann and Volkmer (1984) reported that the predelivery desire of German fathers to be present during delivery had a greater impact on their reported involvement than did actual presence during childbirth. This outcome was not surprising in light of Palkovitz’s (1985) conclusion that birth attendance, in and of itself, does not appear to have consistent, clear, or robust effects on paternal involvement or behavior. However, birth attendance followed by extensive postpartum father–infant interaction in the hospital may stimulate greater paternal involvement and engagement (Keller, Hildebrandt, & Richards, 1985). The child’s gender also affects the extent to which fathers interact with their infants. Many researchers have shown that fathers interact preferentially with their sons from shortly after birth (Cox et al., 1989;Gewirtz & Gewirtz, 1968; Kotelchuck, 1976; Lamb, 1977a, 1977b; NICHD Early Childhood Research Network, 2000; Parke & Sawin, 1980; Rendina & Dickerscheid, 1976; Weinraub & Frankel, 1977; West & Konner, 1976; Woollett, White, & Lyon, 1982). Beyond infancy, however, this effect appears hard to detect and/or relatively small (Lytton & Romney, 1991; Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004). Whatever factors influence fathers’ tendencies to be more or less involved in interactions with their children, there appears to be substantial stability, at least during the period from birth through the first 30 months (Hwang & Lamb, 1997; Lamb et al., 1988; Nugent, 1987; Pruett & Litzenburger, 1992). According to Lamb, Chuang, and Hwang (2004), the amount of time that Swedish fathers spent interacting with their children declined as the children grew older, although the amount of time that they were accessible (both awake and in the home) increased as the children moved from infancy into childhood and adolescence. Stability over the 15-year period was quite low, however. Quinton and Pollock (2002) found that 60% of young fathers in Bristol remained highly involved with their children, whereas 37% had no contact. These contrasting responses were best predicted by the couple’s relationship during pregnancy and not, as expected, by family reactions to the men’s involvement. It is important to interpret data about ethnic minority groups in context, paying attention to other possible influences on the parents’ behavior. In an intensive qualitative analysis, for example, Williams (2004) reported similar effects of financial hardship, social connections, and health among AfricanCaribbean and White working class fathers, with no ethnic differences. In a more quantitative study, Fouts and her colleagues (2008) reported similar social class differences in Euro- and African-American parents’ behavior in relation to their young infants, while Roopnarine, Fouts,

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Lamb, and Lewis-Elligan (2005) emphasized major differences between upper-, middle-, and lower-income African-American infants’ early social experiences, with lower-income infants much more likely to have limited contact with their fathers, but more likely to interact with a variety of social figures. Even when differences between ethnic groups are found, these are complexly determined by a range of factors, including gender and the fathers’ residence (Guishard, 2002). Studies of ethnicity and fathering need to explore the complexities of fathering in all social and ethnic groups and beware of simple, often ethnocentric, assumptions. In the United States, for example, many social commentators have made sweeping statements about AfricanAmerican fathers, particularly when they are non-resident. Careful ethnographic research (e.g., Waller, 2002) has identified much greater nonresident father–child contact than the stereotypes would suggest. As just noted, other research shows that many ‘‘ethnic’’ differences are better viewed as socioeconomic in nature (e.g., Roopnarine et al.). Similarly, some characteristics of ‘‘young unwed fathers’’ may reflect the influence of economic deprivation on family obligations, rather than the direct effect of paternal immaturity (Speak, Cameron, & Gilroy, 1997). CHARACTERISTICS

OF

MOTHER–

AND

FATHER–CHILD INTERACTION

How do the patterns of involvement of men and women in the home and ‘‘outside world’’ influence the nature of their interactions with their children? Because mothers and fathers assume different roles in relation to their children from early in the first trimester of their children’s lives, fathers and mothers often appear to engage in different types of interactions with their infants. When videotaped in face-to-face interaction with their 2- to 25week-old infants, for example, fathers tended to provide staccato bursts of both physical and social stimulation, whereas mothers tended to be more rhythmic and containing (Yogman, 1981). Mothers addressed their babies with soft, repetitive, imitative sounds, whereas fathers touched their infants with rhythmic pats. This idea is given support in the research of Borke, Lamm, Eickhorst, and Keller (2007), suggesting that fathers tend to engage in a more ‘‘distal’’ style of interaction, whereas mothers are more proximal (i.e., they used bodily contact). When they used such distal contact, their children showed more mirror self-recognition skills, possibly because distal contact involves holding the child ‘‘out’’ toward the world, including mirrors. Similar patterns are in evidence in a range of settings. During visits to hospitalized premature infants, mothers were responsive to social cues, fathers to gross motor cues (Marton & Minde, 1980), and although Israeli mothers visited and interacted with hospitalized preterm infants more than fathers did (Levy-Shiff, Sharir, & Mogilner, 1989), fathers were consistently more likely to stimulate and play with their infants, but less likely to engage in caretaking. Although both parents encourage visual exploration, object manipulation, and attention to relations and effects (Power, 1985; Teti, Bond, & Gibbs, 1988), American fathers tend to engage in more physically stimulating and unpredictable play with infants and toddlers than mothers do (ClarkeStewart, 1978; Crawley & Sherrod, 1984; Dickson, Walker, & Fogel, 1997;

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Lamb, 1977c; Power & Parke, 1979; Teti et al., 1988), although rough physical play becomes less prominent as children grow older (Crawley & Sherrod), and secular increases in the extent to which men are involved in child care almost certainly mean that these ‘‘differences’’ between maternal and paternal styles are decreasing (see below). Because physically stimulating play elicits more positive responses from infants, young children who have more traditional fathers often prefer to play with their fathers when they have the choice (Clarke-Stewart, 1978; Lamb, 1976b, 1977c). Early studies showed that mothers were more likely to hold their 7- to 13-month-old infants in the course of caretaking, whereas fathers were more likely to do so while playing or in response to the infants’ requests to be held (Belsky, 1979; Lamb, 1976b, 1977c). It was thus not surprising that infants responded more positively to being held by their fathers than by their mothers (Lamb, 1976b, 1977c). However, Frascarolo-Moutinot (1994) and Labrell (1994) reported that French and Swiss fathers were also more intrusive than mothers were, and all researchers agree that most of the differences between mothers and fathers are not large. Fathers and mothers in ‘‘traditional families’’ do not simply play differently; play is often an especially salient component of father–infant relationships. According to Kotelchuck’s (1976) informants, mothers spent an average of 85 minutes per day feeding their 6- to 21-month-olds, 55 minutes per day cleaning them, and 140 minutes playing with them. The comparable figures for fathers were 15, 9, and 72 minutes. According to parental diaries (Yarrow et al., 1984), similarly, the average father spent 6 and 7.3 hours per week playing with his 6- and 12-month-old, respectively (43% and 44% of the time spent alone with the infant) compared with 17.5 and 16.4 hours by the average mother (16% and 19%, respectively, of the time she spent alone with the infant). Clarke-Stewart (1978) and Rendina and Dickerscheid (1976) also suggested that fathers were consistently notable for their involvement in play and their lack of involvement in caretaking. It is not only affluent Euro-American fathers who specialized in play: Middle-income African-American (Hossain, Field, Pickens, Malphurs, & Del Valle, 1997; Hossain & Roopnarine, 1994) and Hispanic-American (Hossain et al., 1997) fathers were also more likely to play with their infants than to feed or clean them despite claiming (like many Euro-American fathers) that parents should share child care responsibilities (Hyde & Texidor, 1988). English fathers were also more likely than mothers to play with rather than care for both normal and handicapped infants and toddlers (McConachie, 1989), and similar differences were evident in India, regardless of whether or not mothers were employed (Roopnarine, Talukder, Jain, Joshi, & Srivastav, 1992), as well as in France, Switzerland, and Italy (Best, House, Barnard, & Spicker, 1994; Frascarolo-Moutinot, 1994: Labrell, 1996). By contrast, Taiwanese fathers reported that they rarely played with their children (Sun & Roopnarine, 1996), and fathers on Israeli kibbutzim did not play with their 8- and 16-month-olds more than mothers did, although the mothers were much more actively involved in caretaking and other forms of interaction than the fathers were (Sagi et al., 1985). Likewise, German (Best et al.), Swedish (Lamb et al., 1983; Frodi, Lamb, Hwang, & Frodi, 1983; Lamb,

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Frodi, Hwang, & Frodi, 1982) Aka hunter-gatherer (Hewlett, 1987), and Portuguese (Monteiro et al., in press) fathers were not notably more playful than mothers. Interestingly, Zaouche-Gaudron, Ricaud, and Beaumatin (1998) argued that French fathers who differentiated between maternal and paternal roles tended to have a more positive impact on their children’s development than those whose roles were less distinctive, but there is no evidence suggesting that this is so. Research conducted in the 1970s further suggested that, in industrial cultures, patterns of parental behavior differed when both parents worked full-time during the day (Pedersen, Cain, & Zaslow, & Anderson, 1982). Working mothers stimulated their infants more than nonworking mothers did, and they were far more active than their husbands were. As expected, fathers with nonworking wives played with their infants more than mothers did, but this pattern was reversed in families with working mothers. Likewise, Field, Vega-Lahr, Goldstein, and Scafidi (1987) reported that employed mothers were much more interactive in face-to-face interactions with their infants than employed fathers were. Maternal employment does not necessarily change the nature of father–child relationships, however, as more recent studies document. The relationship between employment and the quality of child–father interaction was moderated by the fathers’ attitudes and ages in the large NICHD Early Child Care Study (2000), with younger men and those committed to equal parenting more sensitive in their play styles. Such belief systems are very important. In New Delhi, for example, a strong ‘‘traditional’’ culture is maintained, and fathers in dual-earner families are indistinguishable from men in single-earner families (Suppal & Roopnarine, 1999). VARIATIONS WITHIN

AND

BETWEEN CULTURES

What happens when fathers are highly involved in infant care? Field (1978) reported that primary caretaking fathers and mothers behaved more similarly than primary and secondary caretaking fathers, although fathers engaged in more playful and noncontaining interactions than mothers did regardless of their involvement in child care. Pruett (1985; Pruett & Litzenberger, 1992) studied only fathers who were highly involved in infant care but repeatedly remarked on the distinctive playfulness of these fathers. Frascarolo-Moutinot (1994) reported no differences in playfulness between ‘‘new fathers’’ and ‘‘traditional’’ fathers, although the wives of the new fathers were less intrusive and controlling than the wives of traditional fathers. Lamb and his colleagues (Lamb, Frodi, Hwang, Frodi, & Steinberg, 1982a, 1982b; Lamb, Frodi, Frodi, & Hwang, 1982) reported that mothers were more likely than fathers to vocalize, display affection to, touch, tend to, and hold their infants whether or not their partners took a month or more of paternity leave. Unfortunately, most of these studies were conducted decades ago, when ‘‘traditional’’ conceptions of fathers’ role predominated, maternal employment was still relatively uncommon and was viewed negatively, and fathers were much less involved in the day-to-day care of their infants. There is an urgent need for descriptive research on the characteristics of maternal and

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paternal behavior in ‘‘modern’’ families. In one such study, Lewis et al. (2009) found that contemporary primary and secondary caretaker British fathers were largely similar (including the key measure, ‘‘sensitivity’’), although more involved men engaged in more positive interactions. Overall, the earlier studies suggested that the distinctive maternal and paternal styles were quite robust, with fathers tending to adopt a more playful interaction style than mothers do, especially when there was a clear division of labor. These patterns were not ubiquitous, however, as noted above, and there are cultures (e.g., Northern Thailand; Tulananda & Roopnarine, 2001) with a clear division of labor in which fathers and mothers did not differ with respect to playfulness or sensitivity. In any event, sharply defined differences between maternal and paternal roles are being softened by secular changes, with men increasingly involved in the types of activities—feeding, cleaning, nurturing, soothing—and behaviors that were previously seen as the exclusive province of women and mothers (Parsons & Bales, 1955; Walker & Walker, 1928). Decades ago, men were predominantly viewed in many cultures as playmates, sources of stimulation, and excitement. These role definitions almost certainly reflected the absence of clearly defined paternal responsibilities (apart from breadwinning) and the limited amount of time that fathers spent with their children rather than the parameters of a clearly defined paternal role. Differences between maternal and paternal roles in that era were clearly secondary to culturally defined male and female roles; furthermore, the better defined those roles, the clearer the distinction between maternal and paternal roles and, in almost every case, the more poorly defined— almost by negation—the relevant paternal roles. In light of the changes taking place, however, there is less and less justification for viewing the identification of fatherhood with play and companionship as something with unique psychological significance (say, to foster gender identification and sex role adoption) as was once thought (Lamb, 1976b, 1977b). Nevertheless paternal playfulness may still be influential, to the extent that it allows children and fathers to discover the pleasures of meaningful relationships and it increases the affective salience of relatively small amounts of time in mutual interaction (e.g., Lamb, Frodi, Hwang, & Frodi, 1982), both factors that foster the formation of the bonds that make mothers and fathers significant psychological forces in their children’s lives. The assumptions and presumptions that kept fathers from greater involvement in their children’s care until recently were and still are rooted in differentiated male and female roles more generally—the sharper the perceived line between men and women, the sharper the lines between maternal and paternal roles, the smaller the role fathers are expected to play in the direct care and nurture of their children, and the greater the expectation that they will assume primary responsibility for provisioning both women and children. Among hunter-gatherers, such as the !Kung, Bofi, or Aka, the amount of child care performed by fathers varies depending on the availability of other care providers (Hewlett, 1987, 2004; Fouts 2005, 2005; Konner, 2005). More generally, Hrdy’s (2005a, 2005b, 2009; see also Lamb, 1998;Lamb & Ahnert,

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2006) examination of ‘‘allo mothering’’ underscores not only the extent to which allo-mothering is nearly universal but also how the identity of ‘‘allomothers’’ varies as individuals opportunistically exploit the human resources available to them. Forest dwelling hunter-gatherers like the Aka and the Bofi are characterized by extremely egalitarian norms and minimal gender differentiation, whereas hunter-gatherers like the Hadza of East Africa are more gender stratified and, not coincidentally, not characterized by equivalently high levels of paternal participation in child care (Marlowe, 2005). Paternal participation in infant care is also lower among agricultural groups in Africa than among the forest hunter-gatherers like the Aka and Bofi, although fathers in these cultures begin providing care, guidance, and tutelage to their offspring much earlier in development than Western fathers became involved in child care in the middle part of the 20th century (see Chapter 14). The physical and social ecologies occupied by these African groups and by parents in industrialized societies are dramatically different, yet the relevant research shows that variability, change, adaptability, and opportunism are key features when we examine parenting (perhaps especially fathering) and child care in cross-cultural and/or historical perspective (see also Chapter 14). Indeed, the variability within cultures and subcultures is much more impressive than the cross-cultural differences, especially when these are specified in terms of mean differences. CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE The preschool years represent a peak in levels of father–child interaction, at least in public situations (Amato, 1989), with a slow decline in the elementary school period (Mackey, 1985). Seven areas of change—including physical and locomotor growth, language, impulse control, social–cognitive understanding, conception of the self, cognitive executive processes, and the desire for autonomy—characterize the years between infancy and school and have significant effects on the nature and quality of parent–child relationships (Maccoby, 1984). Importantly, the transition from infancy to early childhood brings dramatic changes in the roles of parents because physical, mental, and language development make new behavioral capacities possible and facilitate the comprehension of more complex parental communication. From the end of infancy, the amount of child care performed by parents also declines progressively (DeLuccie, 1996; Galinsky, 1999). Toward the end of the second year of life, therefore, parents increasingly attempt to shape their children’s social lives by directly encouraging children to behave in appropriate ways and discouraging them from inappropriate and socially proscribed behavior. The ability to conceptualize symbolically facilitates another important process—observational learning—because the observer must be able to store a model’s behavior in memory and then recall it for subsequent performance in order for this form of learning to be effective (Bandura, 1969, 1977). Prior to this age, continuing egocentricism and the social–cognitive immaturity of preschoolers imposes restraints on their

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interaction skills and, presumably, on the extent to which they can benefit from complex (e.g., observational) learning experiences. CHILDHOOD As in infancy, data from a range of cultures show that mothers continue to spend more time with their children than fathers do (Collins & Russell, 1991; Chapter 3), although Ferri and Smith’s (1995) analysis of the relationship between the nature of parents’ occupations and their family life showed that blue-collar British fathers in the National Child Development Study (NCDS) were more likely than white-collar workers to care for their children while their partners worked. Despite increasing focus on fatherhood by policy makers in the United Kingdom, preschool services for families seldom provided services for fathers or men taking advantage of generally available provision (Ghate, Shaw, & Hazel, 2000; Lloyd, O’Brien, & Lewis, 2003). Of course, male workers at day nurseries and playgroups in Sure Start comprise, respectively, 2% and 1% of the total (Kahn, 2005), but about 40% of fathers have contact with preschools, albeit for very short periods, presumably when dropping their children off in the morning. Lloyd et al. found that Sure Start programs had successfully accommodated fathers where the directors were keen to do so and particularly when the programs had dedicated ‘‘fathers’ workers,’’ but that fathers were absent from many programs. In a small qualitative study of Sure Start users, Cavanaugh and Smith (2005) found that half of the children’s fathers were nonresident, and that half of these fathers felt socially isolated. They perceived Sure Start services as being run by women for women, and thus did not feel that the available services could help overcome their isolation. A linked survey of programs for men found that these tended to aim at problems, like drug abuse, rather than focusing on more positive topics, such as the benefits of parenting. COMPARISONS BETWEEN PARENTS How do mothers and fathers differ with respect to their parenting styles and their ability to serve as role models for their children? Most researchers have examined the parents’ functions as role models—especially sex role models— and few have examined and compared their parenting styles or the quality of the attachments systematically. As in infancy, mothers and fathers appear to adopt quite similar interaction styles, although they may do so for very different reasons. Social learning theorists have long assumed that the different interactional styles of mothers and fathers must somehow help boys and girls acquire gender appropriate behavioral repertoires (e.g., Block, 1976). Consistent differences between parents have been hard to identify, however (Lytton & Romney, 1991; Russell & Saebel, 1997; Siegel, 1987). For example, Lytton and Romney’s metaanalysis of 172 studies involving over 27,000 children revealed only one consistent difference between mothers and fathers—a significant, but small, tendency for fathers to encourage the use of sex-typed toys more than

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mothers did. Otherwise, there were insufficient data to support the claim that mothers and fathers differentially affect their children’s sex role development, although Lindsey and Mize (2001) reported that mothers engaged in more pretend play with their daughters while father–son dyads specialized in physical play, and patterns of parent–child pretense and physical play predicted the amounts of the same type of play with peers. Lytton and Romney further reported that, beyond the preschool years, the similarities between the behavior of mothers and fathers increased. Consistent with this, Labrell et al.’s (2000) more recent research suggested that, by 42 months, French fathers were no longer more challenging than mothers. Similarly, each parent’s language comes to resemble the other’s, especially when they interact in mother–father–child triads (Pellegrini, Brody, & Stoneman, 1987), and the communicative balance between parent and child appear comparable for mothers and fathers (Welkowitz, Bond, Feldman, & Tota, 1990). Collins and Russell’s (1991) review suggested that, when observed together, mothers and fathers initiated activities with equal frequency, with broad similarities in their reactions to their children’s play and cognitive styles (Bronstein, 1984; Noller, 1980), although there is continuity within individual patterns of paternal closeness over time during middle childhood, suggesting that there are discernible parental styles in this period (Herman & McHale, 1993). However, these findings do not mean that fathers are redundant. In one recent study, Tamis-LeMonda, Shannon, Cabrera, and Lamb (2004) found that maternal engagement, paternal interaction styles, family background factors all affected one another, as well as the preschoolers’ cognitive and language development. Unfortunately, researchers typically observe mothers and fathers in the same context. Well-educated American mothers and fathers interviewed by Bretherton, Lambert, and Golby (2005) both spoke about the importance of play and companionship with their 3- to 6-year-olds and though they tended to agree that fathers were more active than mothers, few considered fathers more playful. Different settings typically impose different constraints on parents (Lewis & Gregory, 1987), and most researchers do not sample contexts in such a way that different parental styles might be expressed. This tendency is likely to obscure any differences between the behavior of mothers and fathers. One excellent demonstration of the need to study particular contexts in which parents interact with their children concerns how parents assist their children on a balance beam. Hagan and Kuebli (2007) found that fathers were particularly protective of their daughters in this context, while mothers were equally attentive to children of either sex. Interestingly, children as young as preschoolers clearly differentiate between the stereotyped roles of mothers and fathers in a variety of cultures. For example, Raag and Rackliff (1998) introduced preschoolers to a laboratory play room in which a range of sex-neutral and sex-stereotyped toys were laid out, and then asked the children which toys they and their parents thought it was appropriate to play with. Many boys, particularly those who had chosen sex-stereotypical toys, stated that their fathers would consider cross-sex toy play to be ‘‘bad.’’ Thus, fathers were believed by sons (but not daughters) to have more restrictive rules of conduct than mothers did. By the time of their

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entry into school, furthermore, children appear to have highly stereotyped views of parental roles. Domestic work is widely described as the mother’s prerogative, while breadwinning is seen as the province of fathers throughout the school years (Hartley, 1960; Langford et al., 2001; Williams, Bennett, & Best, 1975), and interviews with over 800 five- to 15-year-olds in four societies revealed that these beliefs persisted into middle childhood and adolescence (Goldman & Goldman, 1983). Although a recent study showed that 7- and 10-year-old American children thought it was appropriate for mothers or fathers to work full-time, however, they were more suspicious of fathers staying home (Sinno & Killen, 2009) suggesting that children share the implicit values of contemporary adults about changing gendered expectations. Interestingly, the children also accepted nontraditional arrangements more when their own families were more nontraditional. PARENTING STYLES Focusing on broader aspects of socialization than gender-role acquisition, Baumrind and her colleagues began in the 1960s to examine the associations between specific childrearing patterns and particular child outcomes (Baumrind, 1967, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1991; Baumrind & Black, 1967). These researchers distinguished four patterns of parenting, which they labeled authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and nonconformist. According to Baumrind, authoritarian parents value obedience and recommend forceful imposition of the parents’ will, permissive parents believe that they should be nonintrusive but available as resources, while nonconformist parents, although opposed to authority, are ‘‘less passive and exert more control than permissive parents’’ (Baumrind, 1975, p. 14). Between the extremes represented by authoritarian and permissive parents fall authoritative parents, who encourage independence and attempt to shape their preschoolers’ behavior using rational explanation. According to Baumrind, authoritative parents are sensitive to and facilitate their children’s changing sense of self. Furthermore, by allowing themselves to learn from their children, authoritative parents maximize their positive impact, teaching their children, as authoritarian and permissive parents do not, that social competence emerges within a context of interpersonal give and take. Although authoritative parents strive to foster independence, they also inculcate a value system characterized by conformity to cultural and societal norms by balancing the use of both reasoning and punishment. Attempts to compare mothers’ and fathers’ approaches to parenting have yielded inconclusive findings. Baumrind’s analysis underscores the need to study parents’ philosophies of child rearing, but it has been hard to discern much about the effects of fathers’ styles on child development using this general blueprint and Baumrind’s own research focused on parents rather than mothers and/or fathers. Studying the parents of 305 Australian preschoolers, Russell and his colleagues (1998) found that mothers were more likely to identify with the authoritative style of parenting, whereas fathers were more likely to describe themselves as either authoritarian or permissive. Parents were also more often identified with the authoritarian

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perspective when the child under discussion was a son. Similar gender differences were not apparent in Bretherton et al.’s (2005) study of welleducated American parents, who agreed by a slim margin that fathers tended to be stricter and less patient (more authoritarian?) than mothers of preschoolers. Such contrasts suggest that we need to consider both the children’s impact on the parents’ child-rearing beliefs and the reasons why mothers and fathers may have differing philosophies, as these may well be colored by the domestic roles that they assume. Of course, this assertion needs to be explored empirically in a wide variety of cultural and subcultural settings. In addition, as Darling and Steinberg (1993) pointed out, Baumrind has yet to document the developmental processes by which authoritative parents shape their children’s development. However, mothers and fathers may differ in their expectations of boys’ and girls’ academic achievement. Thus, for example, fathers appear to expect more of sons than daughters when the material involves physics or mathematics (Crowley, Callanan, Tenenbaum, & Allen, 2001; Tenenbaum & Leaper, 2003), while mothers do not discriminate as much. Whatever the differences between maternal and paternal behavioral styles, there is impressive evidence that mothers and fathers may have different effects on child development. Such influences are moderated by external factors like parental employment patterns (Gottfried, Gottfried & Bathurst, 2002). For example, Hoffman and Youngblade (1999) found that American fathers’ involvement in routine child care was associated with higher school grades and with less stereotypical views about adult sex roles on the part of daughters. Such data suggest that fathers may play a special role as intermediaries between the family and the outside world. However, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that there are continuing links between paternal styles and the child’s educational performance. Martin, Ryan, and BrooksGunn (2007) found that supportiveness by both mothers and fathers at age 2 independently predicted the children’s language and arithmetic scores just before school entry at the age of 5. In a sample of 641 children, Belsky et al. (2008) found that, although both parents’ support for children’s (especially boys) independent thinking was related to 6- to 8-year-olds’ reading and arithmetic, fathers’ support for autonomy was related particularly to changes between grades 1 and 3. Other research on educational attainment suggests that the amounts of parental conversation and parental limit setting affect achievement, with no clear differences between mothers and fathers (e.g., Scott, 2004). Such studies suggest that both parents are influential, of course, and this conclusion is supported by findings indicating that paternal involvement in the educational process is associated with greater achievement even after controlling for maternal involvement (and vice versa). These findings were confirmed in a more recent study of low-income American families, in which paternal book reading to children predicted children’s cognitive outcome but not language development (Duursma, Pan, & Raikes, 2008). Similarly, Flouri and Buchanan (2004) reported that British children with more involved fathers had higher IQs at 7 years of age, while Nettle (in press) reported a link between early paternal involvement and IQ at 11 years. Bhanot and Jovanovic (2009) found

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that American fathers’ perceptions of their children’s ability was associated with the children’s perceptions of both task value and ability. In addition, the level of maternal involvement is correlated not only with child outcomes, but also with the quality of the father–mother relationship, and the extent of paternal involvement (Goldman, 2005). McBride, Schoppe-Sullivan, and Ho (2005) attempted to distinguish paternal influence on education from the effects of wider familial and neighborhood influences, in a sample of over 1,300 elementary school children. They found that paternal involvement in schooling predicted variations in the children’s performance even after maternal contributions were taken into account. Across the preschool years, at least, fathers who are supportive in their interactions appear to help children do better on language and cognitive measures (Cabrera, Shannon, & Tamis-LeMonda, 2007). Data like these suggest that men have a particular influence on their children’s prosocial development. As Parke and his colleagues (2004) argued, fathers and mothers have distinct influences on the development of peer relationships. Specifically, physically playful, affectionate, and socially engaging father–son interaction predicts later popularity, just as mothers’ verbal stimulation predicts popularity. Parke and his colleagues suggested that father–child interactions teach children to read their partners’ emotional expressions and that these skills are later displayed in interactions with peers. Similarly, fathers who are more sensitive to their 5-year-olds’ emotional states have children with more competent peer relationships 3 years later (Gottman, Katz, & Hooven, 1997). Rah and Parke’s (2008) data suggest that paternal involvement influences the school-aged child’s understanding of vignettes about peer relationships, which in turn affects their peer acceptance. How do fathers influence the development of social skills? One recent study suggested that mothers and fathers play complementary roles that are not gender specific (McElwain, Halberstadt, & Volling, 2007). Another suggested specific roles for each parent: LaBounty Wellman, Olson, Lagattuta, and Liu’s (2008) longitudinal analysis of 3.5- to 5-year-olds found that there were dissociations between parental styles during conversation at 3.5 and the children’s current and subsequent social–cognitive development. Mothers’ emotional expression was related to the children’s grasp of emotions, while fathers’ ‘‘causal explanatory’’ language was related to the child’s concurrent and later ‘‘theory of mind’’ competence. This recent result adds to the plethora of studies showing connections between children’s social understanding and the nature and complexity of social relationships (Carpendale & Lewis, 2006). Because attachment theory has so dominated research on infant–parent relationships, it is striking how little attention has been paid to the security or quality of child–parent relationships, which seem more likely to form a hierarchy at this time, with the child–mother relationship more significant (Kobak, Rosenthal, & Serwik, 2004). However, closeness, affection, and attachment were emphasized by both the mothers and fathers interviewed by Bretherton et al. (2005), who agreed that a slim majority of children were closer to their mothers, but that many were equally close to both parents.

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Several researchers have reported that the security of child–father attachments can affect children’s adjustment, particularly their relationships with other children. Diener, Isabella, Behunin, and Wong (2008) reported that 6-, 8-, and 10-year-old American girls reported more secure attachments to mothers than to fathers, whereas the reverse was true of their male counterparts. Similarly, Booth-LaForce et al. (2006) found that 10-year-olds reported more secure attachments to their mothers than to their fathers. Secure attachments were associated with superior perceived special and academic competence, and the strength of the association increased with age. Children who reported secure attachments to both parents felt more competent than those who felt securely attached to only one parent. Similarly, Lieberman, Doyle, and Markiewicz (1999) reported that the security of attachments to both parents were associated with various indices of positive friendship qualities among the 9- to 14-year-olds. Rubin et al. (2004) reported that maternal and paternal support was independently related to perceived self-competence and peer-reported interviewing and externalizing behavior among American 10-year-olds. At the same time, there is evidence that negative aspects of fathering influence children in the same way as they do infants. For example, Cummings, Schermerhorn, Keller and Davies’s (2008) longitudinal study suggested that paternal and maternal depressive symptoms when the children were 5 exerted independent influences on the latter’s subsequent attachment representations and externalizing symptoms. Paternal harsh discipline is also correlated with child behavior problems (Lewis, Newson, & Newson, 1982). However, recent longitudinal research suggests that such relationships may not be simple. For example, Capaldi, Pears, Kerr, and Owen (2008) analysed the precursors of paternal discipline strategies in relation to 2- to 3-year-olds in longitudinal analyses involving an ‘‘at-risk’’ sample. They found that maternal adjustment problems and disciplinary strategies predicted the father’s disciplinary strategies, even when controlling for factors like the father’s own adjustment problems. This suggests that patterns of interaction within families are influenced by a network of family relationships in which the maternal contribution is more influential. Similar findings are also seen in the origins of behavior problems in preadolescents (Underwood Beron, Gentsch, Galperin, & Risser, 2008) and young adolescents (Fanti, Henrich, Brookmeyer, Kuperminc, 2008). This by no means rules out direct influences by fathers, however. For example, Foster, Reese-Weber and Kahn (2007) reported that men who were reported to be more negative in their behavioral expression had preschool sons (they did not study girls) who were reported to be more disruptive and aggressive by their teachers. Reports that paternal withdrawal and the quality of mother–child relationships are related to problems like delinquency (Das Groot et al., 2008) need further investigation, however. Although there are intriguing findings regarding the negative effects of paternal behavior on some children (see Phares, 1996, and Chapter 15 for a detailed analysis), the literature generally shows that paternal involvement has positive effects on children. A systematic review of 24 longitudinal studies involving 22,300 children reported that 21 of 22 studies revealed positive and only one negative effects of paternal involvement on children’s

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development (Sarkadi, Kristiansson, Oberklaid, & Bremberg, 2008). Although some of the paternal effects were no longer significant when socioeconomic status (SES) was controlled, and factors like cohabitation were important, the authors concluded that lack of paternal involvement was related to both the frequency of behavioral problems in boys and the level of psychological problems in girls once they mature. Involvement was also associated with enhanced cognitive development. How do these effects come about? Sophisticated models that take into account the complexities of family and social systems have been most helpful, especially when they consider the two parents’ psychosocial adjustment, their relationship, wider social processes, and the children’s own developmental status. In keeping with Sarkadi et al.’s conclusions, Tither and Ellis (2008) examined the joint influence of paternal coresidence and parental psychosocial adjustment, finding that younger sisters reached menarche earlier than their older sisters in disrupted families, but not when children lived with their biological parents, although this effect was less important than a large moderating effect of ‘‘paternal dysfunction.’’ Younger sisters from disrupted families who were exposed to serious paternal dysfunction in early childhood attained menarche almost a year earlier than either their older sisters or other younger sisters from disrupted families who were not exposed to such dysfunction. Another intriguing analysis by Boyce et al. (2006) showed that the effects of the father’s involvement in infancy on behavior problems at the age of 9 appeared to be moderated by the children’s psycho-physiological sensitivity at the age of 7. Lower father involvement in infancy coupled with later autonomic, adrenocortical, and behavioral reactivity together predicted later mental health symptoms. Children with high autonomic reactivity who had experienced low father involvement and maternal depression in infancy had the most pronounced problems. FROM CHILDHOOD INTO ADOLESCENCE The longer term influences of parents on their child’s adjustment are somewhat surprising, however. Maternal ‘‘inputs’’ are not consistently correlated with indices of their children’s development once they enter secondary school, whereas paternal inputs are so correlated. Indeed, there is some indication that teenagers’ sense of self-worth is predicted by the quality of their play with their fathers some 13 years earlier (Grossmann et al., 2002), and there are more consistent associations between father–teenager relationships and the latter’s adjustment to adult life than there are between adjustment and mother–teenager relationships. The most detailed of the relevant findings have come from a series of analyses of the longitudinal data in the U.K. National Child Development Study. Flouri (2005; Flouri & Buchanan 2002a, 2002b) has demonstrated links between parental reports of paternal involvement at the age of 7 and lower levels of later police contact as reported by the mothers and teachers (Flouri & Buchanan, 2002a). Similarly, father and adolescent reports of their closeness at age 16 are correlated with measures of the children’s depression and marital satisfaction at age 33 (Flouri & Buchanan, 2002b). The teenagers’ reported closeness to their mothers at

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age 16 predicted marital satisfaction 17 years later, but not the children’s satisfaction with life. These data might indicate that fathers make some magical contribution that mothers cannot match, but it may simply be that the quality of father–child relationships is a marker of the quality of all relationships in the families. We would, of course, make the same point if mother–child relationships were more predictive of child adjustment than father–child relationships—all family relationships are highly interrelated, and it is difficult, if not unwise, to single out individual relationships as unique determinants of child development. It is also important to take the children’s perspectives into account (e.g., Dunn, 2008; Gilles, Ribbens McCarthy, & Holland, 2001; Langford et al., 2001; Morrow, 1998). In an early study, for example, Sturgess, Dunn, and Davies (2001) asked children to place all of their family members on a diagram comprising five concentric circles, with an X representing themselves in the inside of the innermost circle. Two thirds of the 4- to 7-year-old children who lived with their biological fathers placed him in the two innermost circles. By contrast, only 30% of the relevant children placed stepfathers in these circles, although 62% placed their [nonresident] biological fathers there. ADOLESCENCE The relationships between fathers and their adolescent children have been documented empirically (e.g., Holmbeck, Paikoff, & Brooks-Gunn, 1995; Shulman & Seiffge-Krenke, 1997), although this research literature is relatively atheoretical and descriptive (Hosley & Montemayor, 1997). Research comparing mothers and fathers reveals few differences between mothers’ and fathers’ interactional styles (Russell & Saebel, 1997; Silverberg, Tennenbaum, & Jacob, 1992). In early adolescence, children shift their dependence first to same-sex and then to opposite-sex peers, while continuing the processes of self-differentiation and individuation, which become the major themes of development in adolescence (Grotevant, 1998). The biological changes associated with puberty also foster change and promote distance between parents and children in early adolescence (Collins, 1990; Hill & Holmbeck, 1987; Steinberg, 1987, 1990) with the parent–child relationship increasingly marked by self-assertion, distance, and conflict as children develop. The effects of puberty are frequently confounded with the effects of other age-related changes such as the transition from elementary to junior high or from junior high to high school (Collins & Russell, 1991; Simmons & Blyth, 1987), unfortunately, but whatever their relative importance, the biological, social, and cognitive changes associated with puberty all make early adolescence a critical transitional period during which youngsters are expected to consolidate their knowledge of the norms and roles of adult society and, at least in Western industrialized societies, begin to become emotionally and economically independent of their parents (Grotevant, 1998). Steinberg (1987) found that early-maturing sons and daughters reported more conflict with their mothers than later-maturing children, although these processes may take different forms and have different meanings in mother– child and father–child relationships. Adolescents believe that their mothers

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know them better than their fathers do, and although they care about both mothers and fathers, daughters are more likely than sons to differ with parents regarding the degree of closeness (Hosley & Montemayor, 1997; Langford et al., 2001; Youniss & Ketterlinus, 1987). Large-scale surveys show that the vast majority of adolescents continue to rely on their parents for advice, support, and emotional intimacy (Maccoby & Martin, 1973; McGrellis, Henderson, Holland, Sharpe, & Thomson, 2000; Noller & Callan, 1988; Offer, Ostrov, & Howard, 1981), suggesting that parent–adolescent relationships are marked by increasing interdependence and mutuality rather than by detachment and conflict. Langford et al. (2001) explored the paradoxes and contradictions in parent–adolescent relationships as the parties strived for such mutuality. Researchers have also described some interesting differences in the ways in which mothers and fathers relate to their adolescent sons and daughters (Collins & Russell, 1991; Steinberg, 1987, 1990). Collins and Russell focused on three dimensions of parent–child relationships in middle-class families: interactions (measured by frequency, extent, and structure), affect (indexed by the degree of positive affect, closeness, and cohesion), and cognition (indexed by discrepancies between parents’ and children’s perceptions of their relationships). They concluded that, as in infancy, mothers engage in more frequent interaction with children in middle childhood and adolescence (especially interactions involving caretaking and routine family tasks) than fathers do and that most father–child interactions during this developmental period involve play, recreation, and goal-oriented actions and tasks (see also Lamb, 1997;Montemayor & Brownlee, 1987; Russell & Russell, 1987). However, mothers and fathers are equivalently involved in activities related to their children’s and adolescents’ scholastic and extracurricular performance and achievement (Youniss & Smollar, 1985), and both parents frequently engage in nurturant caretaking in middle childhood (Russell & Russell). Nevertheless, adolescents in North America (Hosley & Montemayor, 1997) and Britain (Langford et al., 2001) consistently report being closer to their mothers than to their fathers. When dyadic and systemic aspects of parent–adolescent relationships are examined (Larson & Richards, 1994; Steinberg, 1990), mothers appear to engage in more shared activities with daughters than with sons, although both relationships are marked by relatively high levels of both closeness and discord. Fathers, by contrast, tend to be more engaged with their sons, have less contact with daughters, and generally have more distant relationships with their children than mothers do (Hosley & Montemayor, 1997; Montemayor & Brownlee, 1987; Youniss & Ketterlinus, 1987). Such patterns are found in diverse cultural contexts. For example, Korean daughters see their fathers as distant and controlling (Rohner & Pettengill, 1985). Because fathers spend less time with and have fewer conversations with their adolescent children, one might expect them to be less influential, and the literature suggests that daughters report being relatively uninfluenced by their fathers (Larson & Richards). Even sons feel that mothers provide more support than fathers do (Youniss & Smollar, 1985). However, there is clear evidence that some fathers have positive influences on their children’s academic

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performance (Chen, Liu, & Li, 2000) and achievement, particularly in sports (Jodl, Michael, Malanchuk, Eccles, & Sameroff, 2001). In addition, Phares (1996, 1997) concluded a review of the literature on child psychopathology by noting that fathers have powerful direct and indirect effects on their children’s adjustment. For example, Brennan, Hammen, Katz, and Le Brocque (2002) reported that maternal depression had a more reliable effect on adolescents when the fathers were substance abusers, whereas maternal and paternal depression had additive effects. As in earlier years, of course, some patterns of influence in adolescence are quite complex and indirect. In an observational study, for example, Gjerde (1986) found that mother–son interactions were less stormy when fathers were present than when mothers and sons were observed alone, whereas father–son interactions were of poorer quality in triadic than in dyadic settings. Parents and adolescents may view their interaction quite differently as well. Noller and Callan (1988) videotaped 41 mother–father–adolescent triads discussing the adolescents’ behavior and then had trained observers, the interactants, and members of other mother–father–child triads rate the degree of anxiety, dominance, involvement, and friendliness shown by each of the interactants. The ratings made by the experts were very similar to those made by members of other families. Interactants rated other members of their families more negatively than they rated themselves, although the ratings by participating and nonparticipating parents were more divergent than ratings by adolescents who were and were not involved. PATERNAL INFLUENCES

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Because the two parents’ behaviors, attributions, and attitudes are complexly interrelated, it is hard to identify paternal effects (Ogletree, Jones, & Coyl, 2002), but studies focused on adolescents’ perceptions of their parents’ influences and a small number of longitudinal investigations provide valuable insight into patterns of influence over time. The evidence to date suggests that there is a long-term association between reported paternal involvement and the psychosocial adjustment of adolescents. For example, Burns and Dunlop (1998) reported that adults’ feelings about their relationships and peer interactions were positively correlated with their experiences of parental care in the adolescent years. Such continuities might be important for understanding father–child relationships because earlier paternal involvement predicts their adult children’s feelings of satisfaction in spousal relationships and self-reported parenting skills (Franz, McClelland, & Weinberger, 1991). Likewise, fathers’ expressions of hostility toward their 16-year-olds and the extent to which they undermined their teenagers’ autonomy predicted the degree of hostility and low ego resiliency reported in the children by close friends at age 25 (Allen, Hauser, O’Connor, & Bell, 2002). Measures of teenager–mother hostility also predicted adjustment at age 25. A few researchers have examined paternal involvement in children’s lives in relation to both concurrent parent–child measures and the children’s later psychosocial functioning. For example, Lewis, Newson, and Newson (1982)

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found that the reported involvement of British fathers in two-parent households at ages 7 and 11 predicted the children’s performance in national examinations at age 16, as well as whether they had criminal records by age 21. In their analyses of data from the U.K. National Child Development Study, furthermore, Flouri and Buchanan (2002a, 2002b) reported a variety of positive predictive associations between patterns of paternal involvement and later indices (until the children were 33 years of age) of psychosocial adjustment even when possible mediating factors (e. g., gender, parental SES, family structure, parental mental health, maternal involvement) were controlled for in the statistical analyses. Maternally reported father involvement at age 7 predicted the children’s self-reported closeness to fathers at 16 and lower levels of police contact as reported by the child’s mothers and teachers (Flouri & Buchanan, 2002a). This, in turn, predicted marital satisfaction and diminished psychological distress at age 33 (Flouri & Buchanan, 2002b), whereas self-reported closeness to mothers at age 16 predicted only marital satisfaction 17 years later. When fathers and sons were separated by paternal imprisonment during the first 10 years of the boys’ lives, however, the boys had higher levels of internalizing problems from age 14 to 48 (Murray & Farrington, 2008). Koestner, Franz, and Weinberger (1990) reported significant associations between paternal involvement at age 5 and the children’s feelings when they were in their early 30s—some 26 years later. Similarly, Franz, McClelland, Weinberger, and Peterson (1994) reinterviewed children initially studied by Sears, Maccoby, and Levin (1957), reporting that ‘‘over a period of 36 years, the children of warm, affectionate fathers, and boys with warm mothers and less stressful childhood years were more likely to be well adjusted adults who, at age 41, were mentally healthy, coping adequately, and psychosocially mature’’ (p. 141). Results such as these suggest that, in the long term, patterns of father–child closeness might be crucial predictors of later psychosocial adjustment although the patterns of influence remain to be explored in depth. Other forms of childhood adversity (including the social and physical deprivation prevalent in post–World War II Britain) can also have long-term effects, leading to lower paternal warmth and poorer attachments to subsequent children (Stansfeld, Head, Bartley, & Fonagy, 2008). These longitudinal studies relied predominantly on maternal reports of early paternal involvement and warmth, however, and we must be cautious inferring paternal influences from these data, particularly as marital closeness is a strong predictor of psychological well being as well (Cummings, Goeke-Morey, & Raymond, 2004; Davies & Cummings, 1994; Grych & Fincham, 1990). It could be that maternal reports of high paternal involvement reflect something else, like family harmony or the mother’s own psychological well-being, and this would explain why levels of paternal involvement are often unrelated to contemporaneous indices of adjustment. For example, Israeli teenagers’ academic performance was related to their descriptions of maternal, but not paternal, involvement (Feldman, Guttfreund, & Yerushalmi, 1998). Longitudinal studies help us to explore such correlations further. When pieced together, the evidence is now clear that paternal ‘‘influences’’ on children are discernible, but less clearly in the areas of research, like

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attachments, that have so preoccupied researchers. The data suggest that maternal attachments have clear predictive validity into the primary school years but that maternal influences may wane by the time children enter secondary school. Several recent reports further suggest that aspects of paternal relationships with children appear to have more predictive power than similar measures of mother–child relationships and that their impact continues into adulthood. Thus, paternal involvement in childhood predicts the children’s feelings of security in late adolescence (Grossmann et al., 2002), as well as their social interaction styles (Allen et al., 2002), their adjustment to spousal relationships, and their self-reported parenting skills (Burns & Dunlop, 1998; Franz, McClelland, & Weinberger, 1991) in adulthood. Over the past 5 years, Eirini Flouri has conducted key research exploring these longitudinal patterns in the National Child Development Study, which followed 13,000 children from their births in 1958 up to the age of 33, as well as in studies of current parent–teenager relationships (Flouri, 2005). In several papers, she has found clear associations between paternal factors and later child adjustment, even when possible mediators (e.g., family structure, gender, maternal involvement, parental mental health, and parental SES) were taken into account. For example, father involvement at age 7 predicted closeness to fathers and a lower likelihood of police involvement in their lives at 16 (Flouri & Buchanan, 2002a). Closeness to fathers at 16 predicted marital satisfaction and lower psychological distress at age 33, while closeness to mothers at age 16 predicted only later marital satisfaction (Flouri & Buchanan, 2002b). Flouri’s more recent analyses have suggested such other links as those between paternal involvement and teenagers’ academic motivation and general feelings of happiness (Flouri, 2005). Perhaps more importantly, she has also shown that paternal ‘‘effects’’ may be mediated by the children’s gender and family social backgrounds. For example, fathers’ participation is related to daughters’, but not sons’, educational achievements in adult life, appears to protect all sons from delinquency, and protects sons in impoverished families from homelessness in adulthood. Much current research is exploring the complexities of paternal influences within a global context. One focus has been on transnational migration (Antonucci, 2006). East Asian girls living in the United States were less likely than boys to be influenced by their parents’ values orientations (Koh, Shao, & Wang, 2009), perhaps because East Asian parents find it a challenge to socialize daughters rebelling against traditional values. Family conflict in immigrant families may also affect boys and girls differently; in its presence, adolescent Hmong girls drank more, while males performed better at college and smoked less (Lee, Jung, Su, Tran, & Bahrassa, 2009). Of course, this may also reflect differences in the specific types of family conflict involved. Updegraff, Delgado, and Wheeler (2009) reported that father–adolescent conflict affected risk taking by Mexican immigrant females more than males in one study, whereas parental harshness was associated with classroom misbehavior by adolescent boys of Mexican origin and maternal harshness with problematic peer relationships, yet better school performance by girls in another study (Dumka, Gonzales, Bonds, & Millsap, 2009). By contrast, Qin (2009) reported no salient gender differences in the reactions to immigration

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by Chinese boys and girls, suggesting that these patterns are not characteristic of all immigrants groups or at all points after migration. Koh et al. (2009) reported that East Asian immigrant mothers affected their adolescents’ relationship identity, whereas fathers affected their adolescents’ identity in the achievement domain. FINAL THOUGHTS As indicated earlier, most researchers have focused on early development, particularly infancy. Studies have revealed that men develop strong attachments to their infants, but that these relationships and their effects on childhood functioning have to be understood in the context of children’s other relationships and cultural experiences. Research on fathers over the past 40 years has shifted toward multilevel analyses. The diverse ways in which children’s experiences and memories influence later personality is in part a reflection of the complexity of family and other interactions to which children are exposed. In the context of this shift, father–child relationships appear to have a significant impact on later psychosocial development. Most attempts to tease apart men’s influences on their children have involved analyses of the security of attachments. While interesting, this enterprise seems to continue a long tradition (Richards, 1982) of examining men using measures that may place them in a poor light relative to mothers. Only recently have researchers attempted to establish more patricentric research themes (Palkowitz, 1997, 2002; Warin et al., 1999). For example, Grossmann et al. (2002) have explored the relative influences of early attachments and parent–child sensitivity in play—a more traditionally ‘‘paternal’’ activity in many cultures. They found that security of infant–mother attachment was a better predictor of the child’s feelings of security at age 6 and 10 than was the security of infant–father attachment, but that by age 10, the father’s sensitivity during 10 minutes of free play at age 2 also predicted security, and by 16 only this measure of father–toddler play significantly predicted adjustment. Such patterns of influence underline the need to recognize the limited range of measures used in research and the strong possibility that many paternal influences may have been overlooked by researchers. REFERENCES Ahnert, L., Pinquart, M., & Lamb, M. E. (2006). Security of children’s relationships with nonparental care providers: A meta-analysis. Child Development, 77, 664–679. Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Allen, J. P., Hauser, S. T., O’Connor, T. G., & Bell, K. L. (2002) Prediction of peer-rated adult hostility from autonomy struggles in adolescent–family interactions. Development and Psychopathology, 14, 123–137. Allen, S. M., & Hawkins, A. J. (1999). Maternal gatekeeping: Mothers’ beliefs and behaviors that inhibit greater father involvement in family work. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61, 199–212.

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CHAPTER 5

Fathers, Marriages, and Families Revisiting and Updating the Framework for Fathering in Family Context E. MARK CUMMINGS, CHRISTINE E. MERRILEES, and MELISSA WARD GEORGE

M

ARITAL CONFLICT AND quality are associated with children’s functioning and adjustment (e.g., Cummings & Davies, 1994; Grych & Fincham, 1990). That is, a substantial literature supports the links between interparental processes, including marital quality and interparental conflict, and child and adolescent adjustment. Moreover, recent processoriented research on marital conflict and child adjustment is beginning to untangle the complexities of how, why, and under what circumstances the interparental relationship affects multiple domains of child development (Davies & Cummings, 1994; Cummings, Davies, & Campbell, 2000; Grych & Fincham, 2001). Illustrating these advances in approach, for example, Cummings, Schermerhorn, Davies, Goeke-Morey, and Cummings (2006) studied emotional security about marital conflict as a mediator of the effects of marital conflict on child adjustment in two independent longitudinal studies based on relatively large samples. The findings were that emotional security about the marital relationship consistently mediated relations between marital conflict and child adjustment, with children ranging in age across the two investigations between early childhood and middle adolescence. However, the influence of marital processes on children has typically been viewed from a dyadic level of analysis, that is, the marital relationship considered as a unit, without study of the particular role of fathers. In fact, marital relations, including marital dissolution (Emery, 1988), reflect an important category of the influence of fathers in their children’s lives. The effects of marital quality on children illustrate the pertinence of a broader perspective on fathering than simply father–child interactions. That is, the importance of a family-wide perspective on fathering is indicated (Lamb & Tamis-LeMonda, 2004; Parke, 2002).

154

Fathers, Marriages, and Families 155 Father Characteristic

Child Characteristic

Fathering and Father-Child Relationships

Marital Quality

Child Coping Processes and Mechanisms

Child Exposure to Father Martial Discord

Child Adjustment

Father Psychological Functioning Time

Figure 5.1 A Framework for Fathers in the Context of Marital Quality. Source: Reprinted with permission from John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

This chapter revisits the examination of paternal influences on child development in the context of this broader family-wide conceptualization of fathering, emphasizing the context provided by marital relationships. Cummings and O’Reilly (1997) proposed an initial framework for multiple influences on children and families, calling attention to the pivotal role of the marital relationship. This model was further developed by Cummings, Goeke-Morey, and Raymond (2004), which is presented in Figure 5.1. In this model, ultimately, fathers are seen as contributors to complex social systems, reciprocally affecting and affected by other family members (Goeke-Morey & Cummings, (2007); see Schermerhorn, Cummings, DeCarlo, & Davies, 2007). In this chapter we update the framework for fathering in the family context presented in Cummings, Goeke-Morey, and Raymond (2004). Multiple pathways of influence of fathering in the family context are outlined, focusing on fathering in the context of marital relations. Specific hypotheses for fathers contributing to various domains of family functioning and child development are advanced. This framework includes consideration of mediating and moderating processes, addressing the question of how to conceptualize how these pathways function (Lamb & Tamis-LeMonda, 2004). The major pathways of the influence of fathering in the marital context merit consideration (see Figure 5.1). One pathway concerns the interrelations of marital relations and fathering, and father–child relationships (Cabrera, Tamis-LeMonda, Bradley, Hofferth, & Lamb, (2000); Cox, Paley, & Harter, 2001). The accumulation of evidence to support relations between marital conflict and parenting is impressive (Erel & Burman, 1995; see also many more recent studies, including Davies, Sturge-Apple, & Cummings, 2004; Davies, Sturge-Apple, Woitach, & Cummings, in press; ShoppeSullivan, Schermerhorn, & Cummings, 2007). The issue for the study of

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this pathway is the examination of the relations between marital conflict, fathering, and child adjustment, including the relative effects of marital discord and conflict on fathers’ in comparison to mothers’ parenting and parent–child relationships. A second pathway considers interrelations between fathers’ mental health and marital functioning in contributing to family functioning and child adjustment (Cummings & Davies, 1994; Downey & Coyne, 1990). Marital conflict and parental depression are causally related (see review in Whisman, 2001), with children of depressed parents at elevated risk for adjustment problems (Cummings, Davies, & Campbell, 2000). Moreover, marital conflict and parental depression are interrelated as predictors of children’s adjustment problems (e.g., Davies, Dumenci, & Windle, 1999). However, maternal depression has been studied much more often than has paternal depression. Relatively little is known about relations between marital conflict and fathers’ depressive symptomatology or, more broadly, fathers’ psychological functioning with regard to implications for child development (Cummings et al., 2000). A third pathway in the figure examines the direct impact of fathers’ interparental conflict behaviors on children, and the potential differential reactivity of children in response to fathers’ compared to mothers’ negative and positive marital behaviors (Crockenberg & Langrock, 2001; Cummings et al., 2004). The evidence for direct effects of exposure to marital conflict on child adjustment is cogent (Cummings & Davies, in press; see Ha, Overbeek, Vermulst, & Engels, 2009). The concern is identifying the influences of fathers on children through exposure to fathers’ marital discord (Cummings, GoekeMorey, Papp, & Dukewich, 2002). Although effects on children of exposure to destructive marital conflict at a dyadic level of analysis are well documented (Cummings & Davies, 2002), until recently few studies compared children’s reactions to fathers’ in comparison to mothers’ marital conflict behaviors. Moreover, the personal characteristics of the father (Papp, Goeke-Morey, & Cummings, 2004) or child (Davies & Lindsay, 2001) may moderate these effects. Furthermore, each pathway is assumed to be ultimately related to children’s adjustment via influences on children’s coping processes and mechanisms (Cummings & Davies, 2002). Although various mediating and moderating variables (e.g., parenting variables, parental psychopathology, physiological functioning and processes) have been identified in recent longitudinal studies of relations between marital conflict and child adjustment (El-Sheikh et al., 2009; Kouros, Merriless, & Cummings, 2008; Sturge-Apple, Davies, Cicchetti, & Cummings, 2009), understanding of the distinct role that fathers play in the link between the marital relationship and child outcomes remains a gap. This is despite continuing calls for father-focused theory and empirical studies dedicated to more comprehensive models for the influence of fathers on child development (Parke, 2002; Phares, Fields, Kamboukos, & Lopez, 2005; Phares, Lopez, Fields, Kamboukos, & Duhig, 2005). Finally, the model calls attention to the significance of examining effects over time. A notable advance in recent years is many more studies considering the influence of fathering in the marital context longitudinally. In the

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framework described by Cummings et al. (2004) a major element of the model was ‘‘time’’ (see Figure 5.1), but few studies had, to that point, considered time. The few extant papers were limited in considering effects over time, especially with regard to adequate controls for cogently testing hypotheses about causal processes operating over time. For example, these studies lacked formal statistical tests for the existence of mediated or moderated pathways or the inclusion of advanced criteria for testing or confirming causal pathways (e.g., autoregressive controls). This chapter updates the analysis of fathers’ influence in the marital context, reviewing very recent studies relevant to this topic. Addressing all of these component processes and assessing their change over time is a complex task that requires advanced methodological tools and analysis. At the same time, utilizing multiwave, longitudinal samples allows for more informative tests of the components of fathering in the family context over time, including the possibility of testing multiple components within the same study. These advanced analyses can also accommodate tests of the processes that link marital relations to child adjustment, specifically within the focus of the role of the father. Although no one study may be able to fully address all of the possible paths and hypotheses explicated within the fathering framework, assessing and testing multiple constructs within the framework can provide a more accurate picture of how these processes unfold over time. Relatedly, both fathers and mothers continue to expand their number of roles and responsibilities, with fathers taking on more roles in the home and mothers adding increased responsibilities in their work environments (Pleck, 2004). These continuously shifting patterns of multiple roles that parents and marital partners fill require the continued focus of psychologists and others to understanding how role changes affect child development. Moreover, another gap noted by Cummings et al. (2004) was scant consideration of constructs in model testing that reflected ‘‘child coping processes and mechanisms.’’ As we will see, recent work has begun to address these questions. This level of analysis is essential for advancing a processoriented account of the mechanisms underlying effects of fathering in family contexts over time (see Figure 5.1). Relatedly, recent advances are studies testing specific and well-articulated theoretical models for the effects of fathering in family contexts, especially as guided by emotional security theory (EST; Cummings & Davies, (1996). Finally, reflecting a culmination of research pertinent to this framework, we will consider a recent report that evaluates the effects of multiple elements of this model on children’s development over time, including emotional security as a process mechanism contributing to explanations of change over time (Schacht, Cummings, & Davies, in press).

MARITAL QUALITY AND FATHERING THE FATHERING VULNERABILITY HYPOTHESIS A fathering vulnerability hypothesis has been advanced to describe the effects of marital conflict on fathering in relation to mothering (Cummings et al., 2004).

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The hypothesis is that fathering and father–child relationships are more vulnerable to negative effects of marital discord than are mothering and mother–child relationships, with differentially more negative implications for children’s adjustment. In other words, it is expected according to this hypothesis that negative marital relations will have stronger negative effects on father–child relations compared to mother–child relations. With regard to the theory as to why father vulnerability may exist, one explanation for the increased vulnerability of fathers to the stress of marital discord is based on gender role theory, which suggests that the role of parent and child caretaker is more clearly defined for mothers than fathers (Thompson & Walker, 1989). This definition of roles facilitates mothers compartmentalizing the stress in their roles as mother versus spouse, whereas fathers have less direction for engaging in such compartmentalization. Others have speculated that the reason why men may be more vulnerable to deficits in multiple areas of functioning (e.g., marital dissatisfaction being associated with poor parenting for fathers) is reflected in their use of social withdrawal as a coping response (Story & Repetti, 2006). For example, men may be more prone to becoming emotionally overwhelmed when experiencing distress, resulting in a tendency to be more likely to respond by withdrawing. Research supports that men may become more physiologically distressed in the face of marital conflict, which may lead them to use tactics such as withdrawal (Levenson & Gottman, 1983). Social withdrawal may be an effort to alleviate the emotional distress men are feeling, and thus may occur in response to stress in the marital relationship, which may contribute to withdrawing from other contexts in the family, such parenting or parent–child relationships (Calzada, Eyberg, Rich, & Querido, 2004). Evidence for the fathering vulnerability hypothesis has a relatively long history. Based on studies from the 1980s and early 1990s, Cummings and O’Reilly (1997) concluded that differences between mother–child and father– child relationships increased as marital quality declined, with father–child relationships being more vulnerable to low marital satisfaction and high marital conflict than mother–child relationships (see also Frosch, Mangelsdorf, & McHale, 1998). Coiro and Emery (1998) concluded that when there were significant differences, greater effects were found for fathering than mothering. Similarly, Krishnakumar and Buehler’s (2000) meta-analysis of relations between interparental conflict and parenting provided support for a fathering vulnerability hypothesis, including relations with parenting control, acceptance, harsh discipline, and overall quality of parenting. Owen and Cox (1997) reported negative effects of marital conflict on attachments to both mothers and fathers but more pervasive negative effects of marital conflict on father–child attachments than on mother–child attachments. Relatedly, Frosh, Mangelsdorf, and McHale (2000) found that marital conflict was negatively related to insecure attachment to both mothers and fathers, with warm and engaged marital interactions associated with the security of father–child attachment relationships but not with the security of mother– child attachments.

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A QUALIFIED FATHERING VULNERABILITY HYPOTHESIS Cummings et al. (2004) stressed the need for qualifications of a fathering vulnerability hypothesis. Parenting vulnerability is the most consistent finding. Even when fathering is found to be relatively more affected than mothering, the impact of marital discord on both fathering and mothering is often indicated. Moreover, when differences are reported (e.g., differences in the size of correlations), they are often not directly tested. Thus, the pattern of supportive evidence may not be as pervasive as it may seem at first glance (Coiro & Emery, 1998). However, there is only limited and qualified evidence for a mothering vulnerability hypothesis. That is, typically, studies either have reported findings consistent with accentuated fathering vulnerability or found no differences between effects on mothering and fathering (e.g., Erel & Burman, 1995). As we will see, studies have continued to provide, for the most part, qualified support for a fathering vulnerability hypothesis, although a variety of factors and variables may modify these relations. Contextual Factors. Contextual factors may be important. For example, Clements, Lim, and Chaplin (2002) reported that lower marital quality was consistently related to greater parental negativity for fathers than for mothers. That is, for fathers, lower marital quality was associated with poorer parenting both in the presence of the spouse (i.e., triadic context) and in the spouse’s absence (i.e., dyadic context), whereas lower marital quality was linked with poorer parenting for mothers only in the triadic context. Child Gender. Another intriguing possibility is that fathers’ relationships with children are differentially affected by marital discord as a function of child gender. As shown in Figure 5.1, the characteristics of the child, including child gender, may factor into the way in which fathering and mothering are affected by marital quality and conflict. Some studies suggest that fathering of boys is more vulnerable than mothering of boys (Jouriles & Farris, 1992; Kitzmann, 2000) or fathering of girls (Neighbors, Forehand, & Bau, 1997), including parenting dimensions of democratic parenting and long-term relationships. Other studies provide support for the notion that fathering of daughters is more affected than fathering of boys (Cowan, Cowan, & Kerig, 1993; Kerig, Cowan, & Cowan, 1993) or mothering of girls (McHale, 1995), including parenting dimensions of authoritarian parenting and engagement. In summary, relations between marital conflict and fathering of sons and daughters vary across studies, suggesting that these effects may be complexly determined (Snyder, 1998). It may be the case that parent gender and child gender interactions are important for some aspects of parenting but not for others (Russell & Saebel, 1997). A Diversity of Parenting Processes. Expanding the study of dimensions of parenting processes may thus further advance understanding of fathering vulnerability. Kaczynski, Lindahl, Malik, and Laurenceau (2006) found relations between marital conflict and fathers’ parenting was significantly stronger than for mothers’ parenting. Furthermore, the association between

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parenting and child adjustment supported that fathers’ parenting more strongly impacted boys’ internalizing symptoms. However, mothers’ parenting more strongly predicted boys’ externalizing symptoms. This study shows support for greater levels of marital hostility negatively impacting parenting; however, the findings suggest not a universal fathering vulnerability, but rather parenting vulnerabilities with regard to specific aspects of children’s functioning. Another notion of fathering vulnerability may relate to the extent to which marital conflict may affect fathers’ perceptions of family processes. In this regard, Merrilees, Goeke-Morey, and Cummings (2008) found that completing daily diaries about specific marital conflict tactics had a negative effect on fathers’ perceptions of marital quality, but not on mothers’ perceptions. While fathers’ marital behaviors did not change over the study, it appears their emotional or cognitive reactivity was affected, suggesting fathers may be more vulnerable to the increased awareness of their conflict interactions with their wives. However, fathering may also be especially affected by positive aspects of marital functioning. For example, Bradford and Hawkins (2006) found that greater emotional intimacy in the marital relationship was significantly predictive of fathering competence (i.e., involvement, role identity, and satisfaction as a father). Suggesting similar effects for mothers and fathers, Barnett, Deng, Mills-Koonce, Willoughby, and Cox (2008) found the marital relationship to contribute to the interdependency of mother– and father– infant interactions. While it was expected that father–infant interactions would be contingent upon mother–child interactions, in contrast, findings supported that positive marital processes may be related to more sensitive parenting in both mothers and fathers, with sensitivity by either parent directly affecting the sensitivity of the other parent. Attachment processes may also factor in these relations. Lindsey, Caldera, and Tankersley (2009) found support for attachment processes accounting for the association between marital conflict and peer relations, with differences as a function of parent gender. Specifically, the connection between interparental conflict and children’s positive peer relations was partially mediated by mother–child attachment. However, father–child attachment fully mediated the impact of marital conflict on negative peer interactions. Thus, differences in specific pathways through which mother–child and father–child attachment security mediated child outcomes were supported; however, other research has indicated no differences in attachment processes for mothers and fathers (Buehler & Welsh, 2009). MOVING TO THE LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF THE FATHERING VULNERABILITY HYPOTHESIS While research has continued to support fathering to be at greater risk than mothering when the marital relationship is distressed (Calzada et al., 2004), until recently there were few longitudinal studies (e.g., Harold, Fincham, Osborne, & Conger, 1997) and scant research examined the specific elements of marital relations and parenting in the context of parent gender to more fully explicate pathways contributing to child adjustment.

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Illustrating this point about the importance of specificity, a longitudinal investigation conducted by Sturge-Apple, Davies, and Cummings (2006) reported that interparental hostility and withdrawal were both associated with parenting (i.e., emotional availability) in explaining children’s adjustment over time. Interparental withdrawal compromised only fathers’ emotional unavailability with children and fathers’ emotional unavailability was more consistently linked with children’s psychological problems than maternal emotional unavailability. Paternal emotional unavailability was associated with internalizing, externalizing and scholastic problems in children, whereas mothers’ emotional unavailability only predicted scholastic problems over time, suggesting a unique and more pervasive impact in this context of fathers’ than mothers’ parenting on children’s socioemotional development. Thus, this study supports that pathways between marital conflict, parenting, and child adjustment are more robust for fathers than mothers. However, this study also calls attention to the importance of understanding how specific conflict tactics affect specific parenting dimensions in the context of parent gender. Schermerhorn, Cummings, and Davies (2008) examined mutual family influence processes at the level of children’s representations of multiple family relationships, including children’s emotional security about marital conflict, mother–child and father–child relationships. Findings indicated relations over time between emotional security about marital conflict and representations of father–child and mother–child relationships. Similar patterns of relations between representations of marital conflict and representations of father–child and mother–child relationships were found. However, at the same time, a reverse pathway from parent–child to marital relationships was found only for father–child relationships, suggesting that the security of father–child relationships are more closely interrelated with the security of broader family relationships than the security of mother–child relationships. Moreover, the evidence for directionality found from mother to father attachments suggested that attachments to fathers may be especially influenced by broader family relationships, consistent with another possible qualified version of a father vulnerability hypothesis. Finally, different processes may factor in the effects of marital conflict on parenting for mothers and fathers. Sturge-Apple et al. (2009) reported marital withdrawal during conflict was linked with adrenocortical reactivity in mothers but not fathers. Moreover, greater psychologically controlling parenting behavior and inconsistent discipline over time was associated with higher adrenocorticol reactivity in mothers but not fathers. Thus, the results suggest possible physiological factors, that is, amplified cortisol reactivity, may contribute to spillover from marital conflict to parenting for mothers. These results leave questions as to the physiological factors that may relate to spillover for fathers, again suggesting that different pathways may be leading to vulnerabilities in parenting. In sum, while research has supported fathering to be at greater risk than mothering when the marital relationship is distressed, support for more qualified and diverse pathways has emerged. Thus, recent findings underscore that a particular parenting vulnerability for fathers in the marital

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context likely exists, but this vulnerability is limited to specific dimensions of family processes and specific domains of children’s functioning, rather than a universal fathering vulnerability. MARITAL CONFLICT AND FATHERS’ PSYCHOLOGICAL FUNCTIONING A PATERNAL MENTAL HEALTH HYPOTHESIS Another pathway concerns interrelations among marital quality, fathers’ psychological functioning and children’s functioning across multiple domains. Relations between marital conflict and mothers’ mental health, including depression and depressive symptoms, have long been the subjects of study (Cummings & Davies, 1994). New directions concern relations between marital conflict and fathers’ mental health. Specifically, the paternal mental health hypothesis is that, while recognizing that mothers’ mental health affects children’s functioning in the context of marital conflict (Cummings & Davies, 1994; Davies & Windle, 1997; Downey & Coyne, 1990), fathers’ mental health also has important implications for children’s adjustment, including relations in the context of marital conflict and broader family functioning. A strong version of this hypothesis is that fathers’ mental health in the marital context has implications for child development that are even more pronounced than mothers’ mental health in terms of the relations associated with the marital context. Initial studies reported in our previous review, specifically with regard to marital conflict, that fathers’ depressive symptoms and children’s development, supported relations between marital conflict and the impact of fathers’ mental health on children’s functioning and adjustment (McElwain & Volling, 1999). Moreover, tentative support, based on a small number of studies, was reported for the even more pronounced role of marital conflict processes in the impact of paternal compared to maternal depressive symptoms on child adjustment. For example, DuRocher Schudlich and Cummings (2003) found that marital discord, particularly depressive conflict styles, mediated the relationship between parental dysphoria and children’s internalizing problems. The link between maternal dysphoria and child internalizing problems was partially mediated by maternal depressive conflict tactics, but for fathers, depressive conflict styles fully mediated the link between dysphoria and child symptoms. PATERNAL DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS Increasing evidence has emerged in the past 5 years for the proposition that paternal depressive symptoms, in addition to maternal depressive symptoms, may be related to children’s adjustment problems. Recognizing the complexity of relations between depressive symptomatology and marital relations, Papp, Cummings, and Schermerhorn (2004) examined complementary models, testing the role of both marital conflict and parental symptoms as predictors and mediators of child adjustment problems.

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Paternal symptoms were found to be associated with child adjustment indirectly though disruptions in the marital relationship, whereas maternal symptoms directly impacted child symptoms, suggesting different processes for mothers and fathers in linking psychological symptoms, marital distress, and child functioning. At the same time, both paternal and maternal symptoms acted as mediators in the link between marital distress and child symptoms. There is increasing evidence that even subclinical levels of depressive symptoms in fathers may also be linked with child adjustment problems. In a community sample of families with kindergarten children, Cummings, Keller, and Davies (2005) found that increased parental depressive symptoms were related to child problems in pathways involving heightened marital conflict and insecure interparental attachment. Pathways were identified between (a) mothers’ or fathers’ depressive symptoms, respectively; (b) marital conflict or interparental attachment, respectively; and (c) child outcomes. Mothers’ dysphoria predicted children’s problems of internalizing or externalizing and children’s peer exclusion, respectively, whereas fathers’ depressive symptoms predicted children’s internalizing problems. Child gender was also a factor in a subset of the results: compared to boys, maternal symptoms were more strongly related to girls’ peer exclusion, and compared to girls, paternal symptoms were more strongly (negatively) related to boys’ prosocial behavior. These results thus underscore the significance of both paternal and maternal dysphoria for children’s adjustment in the context of marital conflict. The findings also further support that pathways of influence on children may be somewhat different for men and women (e.g., see also Du Rocher Schudlich & Cummings, 2003; Papp, GoekeMorey, & Cummings, 2004). Low and Stocker (2005) found that fathers’ depressed mood was linked with child adjustment in the family context. Fathers’ depressed mood was indirectly linked with child adjustment through father–child hostility; however, fathers’ depressed mood was also directly linked with children’s externalizing problems. Mothers’ dysphoria was not associated with children’s adjustment. These results thus once again support distinctive pathways through paternal and maternal mental health and child adjustment in the marital context. In addition, these findings provide further evidence for a strong version of a paternal mental health hypothesis (e.g., DuRocher Schudlich & Cummings, 2003). MOVING TO THE LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF THE PATERNAL MENTAL HEALTH HYPOTHESIS Longitudinal study of these relations for father’s depressive symptoms has been a gap and is an emerging direction in research in this area. Shelton and Harold (2008) longitudinally examined relations between maternal and paternal depressive symptoms, multiple pathways (i.e., adult attachment insecurity, marital conflict, parental rejection), and child adjustment. Both fathers’ and mothers’ depressive symptoms were linked with adult attachment insecurity and heightened marital conflict. In turn, controlling for initial levels of child symptoms, marital conflict was related to increased maternal

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and paternal rejection, which was associated with child adjustment problems (i.e., internalizing and externalizing problems). Maternal, but not paternal, adult attachment insecurity was linked with marital conflict. Mother–child rejection was linked with girls’ externalizing problems, whereas father–child rejection was linked with boys’ externalizing problems. These results thus suggest similarities, and differences, between pathways from mothers’ and fathers’ depressive symptoms, respectively, and child adjustment. In another longitudinal study, Kouros et al. (2008) tested a moderated mediation model for relations between parental depressive symptoms, marital conflict, and child adjustment. The links between destructive marital conflict and child insecurity in the interparental relationship were stronger for children with fathers who reported higher depressive symptoms. Specifically, a moderated relationship was found such that marital conflict was associated with greater child emotional insecurity about marital conflict over time in the context of higher paternal depressive symptoms. At the same time, a mediational relationship was found for maternal depression such that children’s emotional insecurity about marital conflict mediated relations between maternal depression and children’s externalizing problems over time. These findings thus suggest marital conflict and children’s emotional security about marital conflict factored in the impact of both parents’ depressive symptoms on children. However, the precise nature of the pathways identified differed for mothers and fathers. Exploring the possible role of physiological factors, Cummings, ElSheikh, Kouros, and Keller (2007) examined children’s sympathetic nervous system (SNS) reactivity as measured via skin conductance level reactivity (SCLR) in response to family (i.e., marital conflict) and nonfamily (i.e., star tracing task) stressors as a possible moderator of children’s reactions to parental dyphoria over time. Notably, SCLR longitudinally moderated children’s risk for internalizing, externalizing, and social adjustment problems, especially for paternal dysphoria in comparison with maternal dysphoria. Notably, higher SCLR predicted adjustment problems in the context of paternal dysphoria. Main effects of relations between maternal dysphoria and children’s internalizing and externalizing problems over time were also found. One possible interpretation is that children are not as inherently distressed by paternal dysphoria, so that they tend to be affected when they are prone dispositionally to stress (i.e., heightened biologically based reactivity). PATERNAL PROBLEM DRINKING While research has tended to focus on depressive symptoms, with extensive study of depressive symptoms especially for mothers (Cummings et al., 2000), there is an emerging interest in advancing a broader examination of parental psychological symptoms affecting child development in the marital context. A recent advance is the study of fathers’ drinking as another component of psychopathology in the context of marital conflict (El-Sheikh & Flanagan, 2001), thereby broadening the investigation of the role that paternal psychopathology plays within the family system. Given that

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drinking may be especially problematic for fathers in relation to mothers, as an influence on family systems and child development (Keller, Cummings, Davies, & Mitchell, 2008), drinking behaviors and alcohol use may serve as a mental health problem in the context of marital conflict that is highlighted for fathers substantially more so than for mothers. That is, this variable may be specifically associated with problems related to fathering in family and marital contexts, further delineating fathers’ particular effects in relation to mothers. An initial cross-sectional study supported that family processes were similar when accounting for the impact of maternal and paternal problem drinking on children’s adjustment (Keller, Cummings, & Davies, 2005). However, a subsequent follow-up longitudinal investigation supported different pathways for the effects of mothers’ and fathers’ problem drinking (Keller et al., 2008). Examined from a longitudinal perspective, only fathers’ drinking problems were significantly related as a function of family functioning to children’s internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Over time, the pathway flowed from paternal alcohol problems to increased marital conflict, then to deficits in parenting, and, finally, child adjustment problems. Confidence in the results was increased by high standards met for model testing from a statistical perspective, including autoregressive controls to establish change over time and formal tests conducted to document indirect effects as statistically significant. This rigorous, longitudinal examination of family processes suggested that, even in community samples with low levels of drinking problems, fathers’ alcohol consumption negatively affects family functioning and thereby contributes to children’s maladjustment. A recent longitudinal study by Keller, El-Sheikh, Keiley, and Liao (2009) sheds further light on the processes that may underlie relations between marital aggression and alcohol problems in couples’ relationships. These investigators reported evidence that alcohol problems and marital aggression may have bidirectional effects on each other. In their discussion, Keller et al. suggested that problem drinking may undermine efforts to adequately handle marital disagreements and also foster problem drinking as a way of coping with family stress. Further supporting the special significance of fathers’ drinking problems for child and family functioning, the results suggested that couples in which husbands engaged in more problem drinking than wives are at increased risk in relation to other couples. The findings from the parental drinking literature thus further support a strong version of the paternal mental health hypothesis. In summary, although the extent of study remains limited, the significance of paternal mental health to children’s adjustment is significantly further supported by recent research. Findings on the effects of paternal mental health in the marital and family context suggest multiple possible pathways through which fathers’ mental health may have implications for child adjustment. Moreover, emerging evidence even supports a strong version of this hypothesis, that is, stronger relations for fathers than mothers, especially with regard to the role of marital conflict in the context of paternal mental health problems, and concerning the effects of paternal, in comparison to maternal, alcohol use (see also Papp et al., 2004).

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CHILDREN’S EXPOSURE TO MARITAL CONFLICT BY FATHERS A DIFFERENTIAL REACTIVITY HYPOTHESIS Children’s exposure to interparental discord is another pathway of the effects on children of fathers’ behavior in the marital context (see Figure 5.1). Given the evidence that children are negatively affected by exposure to negative forms of marital conflict, it is important to determine the impact of fathers’ conflict behaviors in the marital context, including whether fathers’ conflict behaviors have effects on children that are similar to or different from these expressions by mothers. While differential reactivity has been supported (Crockenberg & Forgays, 1996; Crockenberg & Langrock, 2001), as indicated by children’s greater reactivity to fathers’ than mothers’ marital aggression, there have been inconsistent findings as a function of child gender. These differences, along with recent research examining the multidimensionality of marital conflict have yielded the necessity to understand these processes in the context of specific forms of marital conflict behaviors (Cummings et al., 2004). With regard to hypotheses concerning this pathway, the differential reactivity hypothesis proposes that children are more negatively reactive and distressed to comparable expressions of destructive conflict in marital disputes by fathers than mothers, and more positively reactive to constructive conflict expressions. Although destructive conflict expressions have negative effects, and constructive conflict has a positive impact, Cummings et al. (2004) concluded that the evidence provided tentative support for the differential reactivity hypothesis that children are more negatively reactive to fathers’ destructive conflict behaviors and more positively reactive to fathers’ constructive conflict behaviors. The proposition of the differential reactivity hypothesis is that children show more reactivity to fathers’ expressions of anger, but there is also evidence that these reactions may depend on the form of conflict expression (Goeke-Morey, Cummings, Harold, & Shelton, 2003). Consistent with this qualified perspective of a differential reactivity hypothesis, Shelton, Harold, Goeke-Morey, and Cummings (2006) found further evidence to suggest that child responses to marital conflict tactics may differ in meaningful ways based on the gender of the parent. Children’s efforts to mediate in marital conflict were more likely when fathers, rather than mothers, enacted overtly hostile marital conflict behaviors or marital conflicts about the children. Marital aggression, particularly fathers’ aggression, appears to be an especially important conflict behavior in contributing to children’s maladjustment (McDonald, Jouriles, Norwood, Ware, & Ezell, 2000). The context of fathers’ aggression in the home may also be an important factor in examining the context of children’s reactions to marital conflict. Margolin, Gordis, and Oliver (2004) examined the context of husband’s previous use of physical aggression in the home to understand the impact of current marital interactions on mother– and father–child interactions. Results suggested that the effect of marital hostility took a different form for mothers and fathers. In the context of previous physical aggression in the home, husbands’ and wives’ expression of hostility during marital interactions were associated

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with poor parent–child interactions for mothers and fathers. However, reflecting differences in effects of conflict expressions as a function of parent gender, marital hostility negatively impacted fathers’ empathy, while it was associated with mothers’ expressed negative affect toward their child. However, the differential reactivity hypothesis is most closely tied to the children’s reactions to parents’ marital conflict behaviors rather than parents’ reactions to these behaviors. Children’s cognitive understanding of conflict has important implications for the impact of marital conflict behaviors on children’s differential reactions to conflict (Grych & Fincham, 1990). Weston, Boxer, and Heatherington (1998) found that children made significantly more attributions about fathers in comparison to mothers in marital arguments, attributing negative behaviors to mothers’ temporal state, whereas fathers’ negative behaviors were believed to be a trait or part of their being. With regards to recent research, based on home diary reports and analog stimuli, Goeke-Morey, Cummings, and Papp (2007) examined children’s reactions to multiple forms of marital conflict endings and resolution as a function of parent gender. Although a complex pattern of findings was reported, for the most part, conflict endings elicited similar reactions regardless of the parent expressing these endings. For example, parents’ compromise increased children’s positivity at the end of conflicts, regardless of whether mothers or fathers expressed compromise. One difference was that when fathers expressed apology with positive affect the impact of destructive conflict was fully ameliorated. However, mothers’ positive affect during apology did not improve children’s responses. Negative affect indicated by either parent during apology led to more negative emotional reactions by the children. The heightened responding of children to fathers’ compared to mothers’ positive emotionality during these constructive conflict endings can be seen as consistent with the differential reactivity hypothesis, qualified by the observation that children, for the most part, responded similarly to mothers’ and fathers’ conflict endings. STUDY

OF THE

DIFFERENTIAL REACTIVITY HYPOTHESIS

IN

PROCESS MODELS

Another important issue to address centers on the implications of marital conflict expressions by fathers and mothers for process models regarding child coping processes and mechanisms concerning the impact of marital conflict on children’s adjustment (see Figure 5.1). Based on a cross-sectional research design for a relatively diverse sample, El-Sheikh, Cummings, Kouros, Elmore-Staton, and Buckhalt (2008) tested the proposition of EST (Davies, Harold, Goeke-Morey, & Cummings, 2002) that children’s emotional security mediates relations between marital aggression (psychological and physical) and children’s psychological and physical health. Children’s emotional insecurity was found similarly to mediate links between aggression (against the mother by the father and aggression against the father by the mother) and multiple dimensions of children’s adjustment (e.g., internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and posttraumatic stress disorder). These relations were robust, that is, the child’s ethnic status (i.e., African-American or

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European-American families), gender, and socioeconomic status did not moderate these relations. These findings thus advance the notion that emotional security is a viable explanatory mechanism for the effects of marital aggression against either the mother or father in terms of the implications for children’s adjustment. Moreover, the findings do not support a differential reactivity hypothesis in terms of process-oriented models and pathways for the effects of fathers’ compared to mothers’ conflict behaviors on children’s adjustment. That is, at least with regard to marital aggression, these behaviors would appear to constitute threats to children’s emotional insecurity and adjustment whether expressed by mothers or fathers. In the face of marital aggression, children’s emotional security plays a critical role in mediating effects on children’s adjustment regardless of parent gender. In summary, consistent with the differential reactivity hypothesis, the evidence continues to provide some limited support in specific circumstances for children being more negatively reactive to fathers’ destructive conflict behaviors and more positively reactive to fathers’ constructive conflict behaviors (for more details, see also the review provided by Cummings et al., 2004). However, for the most part, destructive conflict has negative effects, and constructive conflict has a positive impact, regardless of which parent expresses the behaviors. Moreover, even for marital aggression, which is sometimes reported to elicit more negative reactions when expressed by fathers than mothers (Goeke-Morey et al., 2003), differences in reactions of children to these behaviors by the gender of the parent is limited. For example, in the context of process-oriented models in which the larger family context and multiple pathways are examined, the impact on children of the use of destructive marital behaviors, such as marital aggression, may not differ at all as a function of parent gender. However, given the limited study, further work is needed before firm conclusions can be reached concerning the impact of fathers’ conflict behaviors and their effect on children in comparison to the same behaviors by mothers. A LONGITUDINAL TEST OF THE FATHERING IN FAMILY CONTEXT FRAMEWORK Although the question of the relative effects of fathers and mothers in marital and family context is an important issue to explore with regard to the multiple pathways of fathering in the family context framework, the key issue ultimately is to identify and establish the significance of fathers as influences on child development in the marital and family context. In this regard, direct tests of the fathering in family context framework, including examinations of possible explanatory processes for the impact of fathers on children’s adjustment, is another significant direction. Based on a three-wave longitudinal design, Schacht et al. (in press) examined a variation of the fathering in family context framework. Pathways tested included all of the elements discussed in the present review. These elements of fathering in the family context model (see Figure 5.1) included (a) paternal marital conflict behaviors; (b) paternal psychological functioning,

Future Directions for Research 169

represented by paternal problem drinking and paternal depressive symptoms); (c) paternal parenting, reflected by positive parenting; (d) child coping processes and mechanisms, represented by children’s emotional security about marital conflict; and (e) child adjustment, assessed in terms of internalizing and externalizing problems. Structural equation modeling was used to test the conceptual model. Autoregressive controls and bootstrapping to test indirect effects were among the statistical procedures employed to meet high standards for longitudinal model testing. Tested in the context of a fully articulated prospective model of all these influences, fathers’ problem drinking was linked with paternal marital conflict behaviors and decreased positive parenting, which was then associated with externalizing problems in children. Internalizing problems were predicted by fathers’ depressive symptoms. Children’s emotional security powerfully mediated relations between fathers’ multiple behaviors in the family context and child adjustment problems, including both internalizing and externalizing adjustment problems in children. That is, there were direct links from (a) paternal depressive symptoms, (b) paternal marital conflict, and (c) paternal positive parenting to children’s emotional security. Children’s emotional security, in turn, was significantly linked with the prediction of both internalizing and externalizing problems in children. The results thus comprehensively advance a model of the significant role of father’s behavior in marital and family context on children’s adjustment. Further support was also provided for children’s emotional insecurity as a central explanatory mechanism for relations between fathering problems and child adjustment difficulties. FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR RESEARCH An important direction for future research is further study of fathering in other family contexts. Assessment of noncustodial fathers and how these relationships and changes in marital status and family structure affect children within the context of interparental conflict is a gap in the current marital conflict and family literature. For example, Fabricius and Luecken (2007) found that a positive relationship with fathers after divorce mediated the link between interparental conflict before the divorce and up to 5 years after and indicators of physical health in college students. This study also showed that more time spent with fathers after divorce was related to more positive relations in their long-term relationships with their fathers. A recent intervention program targeting noncustodial fathers (Dads for Life; Braver & Griffin, 2000) was found to be effective in decreasing interparental conflict between divorced parents (Cookston, Braver, Griffin, De Luse, & Miles, 2006). These findings are particularly persuasive as mothers and fathers both reported decreases in conflict, whereas only fathers participated in the intervention program. Finally, Sandler, Miles, Cookston, and Braver (2008) reported that among divorced couples both father and mother warmth were independently associated with reduced risk for children’s externalizing problems. However, relations with internalizing problems varied as a function of interparental conflict and the warmth of both the custodial and

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noncustodial parents, with high conflict and low warmth with both parents linked with the highest levels of internalizing problems in children. Emerging evidence also suggests the value of assessing differences in interparental processes as a function of different family structures (e.g., the role of biological vs. social fathers; Berger, Carlson, Bzostek, & Osborne, 2008) as another important future direction. More generally, extending our understanding of how interparental conflict is expressed within diverse family structures and how the family structure affects children’s experience and responses to interparental conflict, including the role of fathers, is a next step in research (e.g., Cummings et al., 2009). Carlson and McLanahan (2006) found that supportiveness in partner relationships is a critical component that promotes positive parenting including positive engagement with children among low-income married and unmarried couples. Moreover, their findings suggest that support between partners predicts positive parenting regardless of family structure or parent gender, including marital status, although greater supportiveness was seen in married couples. CONCLUSIONS Research over the past 5 years thus has further established the importance of taking into account the father’s role in the relations between marital conflict and quality and (a) fathering and father–child relationships, (b) fathers’ psychological functioning, and (c) children’s exposure to fathers’ marital discord. Studies emerging since the Cummings et al. (2004) review substantiate that fathers exert multiple influences on children’s development as a function of multiple aspects of fathering in the marital and family context (see Figure 5.1). The work of the past several years has further advanced understanding particularly in terms of notions of fathering vulnerability and paternal mental health. Recent work suggests that fathering vulnerability in marital context may be somewhat more nuanced than suggested by early work (Cummings & O’Reilly, 1997). However, evidence is rapidly emerging for a salient role of marital and family contexts in relations between paternal mental health and child adjustment. Further insights and advances have been facilitated by the emergence of the exploration of these questions based on longitudinal data analyses’; more sophisticated tests of pathways, including autoregressive controls and tests of indirect effects (e.g., bootstrapping); inclusion of physiological measures and additional measures of paternal adjustment (e.g., alcohol problems); and beginning tests of hypotheses concerning theoretical mechanisms (e.g., emotional security theory). Concerning the hypotheses advanced in Cummings et al. (2004), qualified support continues to accumulate for these notions. At the same time, with all the evidence taken together, although fathers and fathering appear to be somewhat more affected by marital and family factors, and somewhat more vulnerable to these influences, than mothers and mothering, there are many instances in the literature of no differences reported between mothers and fathers, or simply different patterns of effects for mothers and fathers. Thus, the various hypotheses advanced are perhaps most valuable for (a) their heuristic significance, (b) the impetus for increased

References 171

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References 173 Davies, P. T., Sturge-Apple, M. L., & Cummings, E. M. (2004). Interdependencies among interparental discord and parenting styles: The role of adult attributes and relationship characteristics. Development and Psychopathology, 16, 773–797. Davies, P. T., Sturge-Apple, M., Woitach, M. J., & Cummings, E. M. (in press). A. process analysis of the transmission of distress from interparental conflict to parenting: Adult relationship security as an explanatory mechanism. Developmental Psychology. Davies, P. T., & Windle, M. (1997). Gender-specific pathways between maternal depressive symptoms, family discord, and adolescent adjustment. Developmental Psychology, 33, 657–668. Downey, G., & Coyne, J. C. (1990). Children of depressed parents: An integrative review. Psychological Bulletin, 108, 50–76. Du Rocher Schulich, T. D., & Cummings, E. M. (2003). Parental dysphoria and children’s internalizing symptoms: Marital conflict styles as mediators of risk. Child Development, 74, 1663–1681. El-Sheikh, M., Cummings, E. M., Kouros, C. D., Elmore-Staton, L., & Buckhalt, J. (2008). Marital psychological and physical aggression and children’s mental and physical health: Direct, mediated and moderated effects. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 76, 138–148. El-Sheikh, M., & Flanagan, E. (2001). Parental problem drinking and children’s adjustment: Family conflict and parental depression as mediators and moderators of risk. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 29, 417–432. El-Sheikh, M., Kouros, C. D., Erath, S. A., Cummings, E. M., Keller, P. S., & Staton, L. (2009). Marital conflict and children’s externalizing behavior: Interactions between parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system activity. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 74(1), 1–79. Emery, R. E. (1988). Marriage, divorce, and children’s adjustment. Beverly Hills: Sage. Erel, O., & Burman, B. (1995). Interrelatedness of marital relations and parent–child relations: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 118, 108–132. Fabricius, W. V., & Luecken, L. J. (2007). Postdivorce living arrangements, parent conflict, and long-term physical health correlates for children of divorce. Journal of Family Psychology, 21, 195–205. Frosch, C. A., Mangelsdorf, S. C., & McHale, J. L. (1998). Correlates of marital behavior at 6 months postpartum. Developmental Psychology, 34, 1438–1449. Frosch, C. A., Mangelsdorf, S. C., & McHale, J. L. (2000). Marital behavior and the security of preschooler–parent attachment relationship. Journal of Family Psychology, 14, 144–161. Goeke-Morey, M. C., & Cummings, E. M. (2007). Impact of father involvement: A closer look at indirect effects models involving marriage and child adjustment. Applied Developmental Science, 11(4), 1–5. Goeke-Morey, M. C., Cummings, E. M., Harold, G. T., & Shelton, K. H. (2003). Categories and continua of destructive and constructive marital conflict tactics from the perspective of U.S. and Welsh children. Journal of Family Psychology, 327– 338. Goeke-Morey, M. C., Cummings, E. M., Papp, L. M. (2007). Children and marital conflict resolution: Implications for emotional security and adjustment. Journal of Family Psychology, 21, 744–753. Grych, J. H., & Fincham, F. D. (1990). Marital conflict and children’s adjustment: A cognitive–contextual framework. Psychological Bulletin, 108, 267–290. Grych, J. H., & Fincham, F. D. (Eds.). (2001). Child development and interparental conflict. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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References 175 Merrilees, C. E., Goeke-Morey, M. C., & Cummings, E. M. (2008). Do event-contingent diaries about marital conflict change marital interactions? Behavior Research and Therapy, 46, 253–262. Neighbors, B. D., Forehand, R., & Bau, J. (1997). Interparental conflict and relations with parents as predictors of young adult functioning. Development and Psychopathology, 9, 169–187. Owen, M. T., & Cox, M. J. (1997). Marital conflict and the development of infant– parent attachment relationships. Journal of Family Psychology, 11, 152–164. Papp, L. M., Cummings, E. M., & Schermerhorn, A. (2004). The impact of marital adjustment on mothers’ and fathers’ symptomatology: Implications for children’s functioning. Journal of Marriage and Family, 66, 368–384. Papp, L. M., Goeke-Morey, M. C., & Cummings, E. M. (2004). Mother’ and fathers’ psychological symptoms, marital relationships and children’s psychological functioning. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 13, 469–482. Parke, R. D. (2002). Fathers and families. In M. Bornstein (Ed.), Handbook of parenting: Vol.3. Being and becoming a parent (2nd ed., pp. 27–74). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Phares, V., Fields, S., Kamboukos, D., & Lopez, E. (2005). Commentary: Still looking for poppa. American Psychologist, 60, 735–746. Phares, V., Lopez, E., Fields, S., Kamboukos, D., & Duhig, A. (2005). Are fathers involved in pediatric psychology research and treatment? Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 3, 631–643. Pleck, E. H. (2004). Two dimensions of fatherhood: A history of the good dad–bad dad complex. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (4th ed., pp. 32–57). New York: Wiley. Russell, A., & Saebel, J. (1997). Mother–son, mother–daughter, father–son, and father– daughter: Are they distinct relationships? Developmental Review, 17, 111–147. Sandler, I., Miles, J., Cookston, J., & Braver, S. (2008). Effects of father and mother parenting on children’s mental health in high- and low-conflict divorces. Family Court Review, 46, 282–296. Schacht, P. M., Cummings, E. M., & Davies, P. T. (in press). Fathering in family context and child adjustment: A longitudinal analysis. Journal of Family Psychology. Schermerhorn, A. C., Cummings, E. M., & Davies, P. T. (2008). Children’s representations of multiple family relationships: Organizational structure and development in early childhood. Journal of Family Psychology, 22, 89–101. Schermerhorn, A. C., Cummings, E. M., DeCarlo, C., & Davies, P. T. (2007). Children’s influence in the marital relationship. Journal of Family Psychology, 21, 259–269. Shelton, K. H., & Harold, G. T. (2008). Interparental conflict, negative parenting and children’s adjustment: Bridging links between parents’ psychological symptoms and children’s psychological symptoms. Journal of Family Psychology, 22, 712– 724. Shelton, K. H., Harold, G. T., Goeke-Morey, M. C., & Cummings, E. M. (2006). Children’s coping with marital conflict: The role of conflict expression and gender. Social Development, 15, 232–247. Shoppe-Sullivan, S., Schermerhorn, A., & Cummings, E. M. (2007). Marital conflict and children’s adjustment over time: Testing parental behavioral control, psychological autonomy, and warmth as mediators. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 69, 1118–1134. Snyder, J. R. (1998). Marital conflict and child adjustment: What about gender? Developmental Review, 18, 390–420. Story, L. B., & Repetti, R. L. (2006). Daily occupational stressors and marital behavior. Journal of Family Psychology, 20, 690–700.

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CHAPTER 6

Fathers, Children, and Divorce PAUL R. AMATO and CASSANDRA DORIUS

T

on divorce and its implications for fathers and children. Because this literature has been reviewed previously (Amato, 2000; Amato & Sobolewski, 2004), we rely mainly (although not exclusively) on studies conducted during the past decade. To set a context for our chapter, we begin by describing recent changes in the divorce rate, along with factors that predict divorce. We then include a section on how divorce affects men and women, followed by a section on how divorce affects children. The chapter then turns to nonresident fathers and the roles they play in their children’s lives. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of existing research for future research and practice. In general, the research reviewed in this chapter indicates that divorce is a stressful experience for the majority of men and women. Nevertheless, a great deal of variability exists in adults’ adjustment to divorce. For example, spouses who initiate the divorce appear to adjust better than do other spouses. Similarly, ending a seriously troubled marriage is followed by improvements in the subjective well-being of men and women. Divorce is also a stressful experience for most children—an experience that increases their risk for a variety of problems over the life course. As with adults, however, a considerable degree of variation exists in how children cope with this transition. For example, when marriages involve frequent and overt conflict, children appear to be better off, in the long run, when these marriages end in divorce. Divorce also presents many challenges for fathers, who continue to make up the great majority of noncustodial parents. Following divorce, some fathers maintain frequent contact with their children and continue to be highly involved in their lives. In contrast, other fathers drop out of their children’s lives relatively quickly. Nevertheless, the frequency of contact between divorced fathers and their children has increased in recent decades. Studies consistently show that positive involvement on the part of nonresident fathers is associated with fewer emotional and behavioral problems and better school adjustment among children. HIS CHAPTER FOCUSES

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THE DIVORCE RATE Data on divorce in the United States is limited because a number of states do not report vital statistics on marital dissolutions to the federal government. Nevertheless, the U.S. Census Bureau uses available data from participating states to report the number of divorces per 1,000 people in the population (the crude divorce rate). This measure is less than optimal because it is affected by the age structure of the population as well as the proportion of married adults in the population. Keeping this limitation in mind, the crude divorce rate more than doubled, from 2.2 in 1960 to 5.2 in 1980. The rate dropped after the early 1980s to 3.6 in 2006—a 31% decline (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008, Table 77). The rise in age at first marriage since the 1980s appears to be the most important factor responsible for this decrease (Heaton, 2002). That is, couples who marry at older ages have a lower risk of divorce, and delaying marriage also decreases the percentage of married couples in the population. Divorce rates in the United States vary with race, ethnicity, and immigration status. One study of first marriages found that by the 15th year, 42% of Whites and Hispanics had divorced, compared with 55% of African-Americans (Bramlett & Mosher, 2002). The comparatively high rate for AfricanAmericans is due to a complex set of historical, structural, and cultural factors that have not yet been clearly disentangled. Other research shows that Mexican-American women born outside of the United States have an especially low divorce rate. Mexican-American women born in the United States, however, have a divorce rate comparable to non-Hispanic Whites (Sweeney & Phillips, 2004).

UNION DISRUPTION AMONG UNMARRIED PARENTS During the past few decades, rates of nonmarital childbearing have increased substantially, more than doubling, from 18% in 1980 to 38% in 2006 (U.S. Census Bureau, 1985, 2008). The Fragile Families Study indicates that about half of unmarried mothers and fathers are living together when their children are born, and another one third is in some type of romantic (or visiting) relationship (McLanahan et al., 2003). These informal unions, however, tend to be unstable. The Fragile Families Study shows that 5 years after the child’s birth, 26% of cohabiting couples had married and 45% had separated. Correspondingly, 7% of visiting couples had married and 72% had separated (Center for Research on Child Wellbeing, 2007). (See the chapter by Carlson and McLanahan for a detailed discussion of these families.) If we count these informal union disruptions, then the percentage of children experiencing family disruption has continued to increase, despite the decline in the divorce rate. For example, The National Survey of America’s Families shows that the percentage of children living with two continuously married biological (or adoptive) parents declined from 62% to 60% during the relatively short period between 1997 and 2002 (Urban Institute, 2009).

Predictors of Divorce 179

THE WORLDWIDE INCREASE

IN

DIVORCE

Although the United States has one of the highest rates of divorce in the world, divorce rates have been rising in many countries in recent decades. For example, between 1970 and 2005, the crude divorce rate increased from 1.5 to 2.8 in England and Wales, from 0.93 to 2.50 in France, from 1.13 to 1.80 in Poland, from 0.32 to 0.80 in Italy, and from 0.95 to 2.4 in Norway. Similarly, the crude divorce rate between 1979 and 2005 increased from 0.33 to 1.40 in China, from 0.72 to 2.75 in Taiwan, from 0.39 to 2.60 in Korea, and from 1.20 to 2.10 in Japan. Correspondingly, between 1971 and 2002, the crude divorce rate rose from 0.21 to 0.70 in Mexico, from 0.17 to 1.90 in Costa Rica, from 0.36 to 1.2 in Trinidad, and from 0.28 to 0.70 in Jamaica. Although these are just a few examples, similar trends appear across many countries in different parts of the world (United Nations, 1999; Eurostat, 2008). Given these trends, explanations for the increase in divorce cannot be attributed to factors that are idiosyncratic to a particular society. Instead, explanations must be relevant to countries in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean. Many scholars view the widespread increase in divorce as part of the second demographic transition, which includes related trends such as delays in age at first marriage, rising nonmarital cohabitation, and increases in nonmarital births (Lesthaeghe, 1995; McLanahan, 2004). Presumably, these changes are driven by a variety of factors including modernization, women’s growing education and economic independence, a decline in religious influence, an increase in individualism, and a corresponding decline in communalism. PREDICTORS OF DIVORCE Research by demographers and sociologists in the United States during the past decade has shown that risk factors for divorce include marrying as a teenager, being poor, having a low level of education, having no children from the marriage, bringing children from a previous union into a marriage, being in a second or higher order marriage, cohabiting prior to marriage, having no religious affiliation, not sharing the same religion with one’s spouse, living in an urban area, and growing up in a household without two continuously married parents (Bramlett & Mosher, 2002; Bratter & King, 2008; Mahoney et al., 2001; Sayer & Bianchi, 2000; Schoen, Astone, Rothert, Standish, & Kim, 2002; South, 2001; Sweeney & Phillips, 2004; Teachman, 2002, 2008). These demographic and economic predictors of divorce have remained relatively stable during the past several decades. Studies from European countries generally yield comparable results, including Hungary (Bukodi & Robert, 2003), the Netherlands (de Graaf & Kalmijn, 2006), Italy (Vignoli & Ferro, 2009), Finland (Jalovaara, 2003), Sweden (Liu, 2002) and Europe in general (Wagner & Wei, 2006). One exception involves education. In a multicountry study, Harkonen and Dronkers (2006) found that education and the risk of divorce were positively associated in some countries (France, Greece, Italy, Poland, and Spain), negatively associated in other countries (Austria, Lithuania), and not associated in yet other

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countries (e.g., Finland, Hungary, Sweden, and Switzerland). The authors concluded that education is positively associated with divorce when marital dissolution is relatively uncommon and the social and economic costs are high, and there is no relationship or a negative relationship when marital dissolution is relatively common and the costs are low. A historical study of changing divorce patterns in the Netherlands supports this conclusion (de Graaf, & Kalmijn, 2006). In addition to examining socio-structural variables, other researchers have used longitudinal data to identify relationship characteristics that predict marital dissolution. Most of this research has been conducted in the United States. Predictors of divorce include frequent arguments; repeated expressions of negative affect; domestic violence; infidelity; and low levels of emotional support, commitment, love, and trust between spouses (Previti & Amato, 2004; Huston, Caughlin, Houts, & Smith, 2001; Clements, Stanley, & Markman, 2004; DeMaris, 2000; Gottman & Levenson, 2000; Kurdek, 2002; Lawrence & Bradbury, 2001; Story, Karney, Lawrence, & Bradbury, 2004). Although it seems obvious that low marital quality predicts divorce, not all couples report an elevated number of relationship problems prior to divorce. Amato and Hohmann-Marriott (2007) found two clusters of married couples who subsequently divorced. The first included couples who reported frequent arguments, physical aggression, thoughts of divorce, and, correspondingly, low levels of marital happiness and interaction. The second cluster included couples with who reported few arguments, little or no physical aggression, few thoughts of divorce, and moderate levels of marital happiness and interaction. Despite these differences, the two groups shared a variety of risk characteristics for divorce, such as growing up in a divorced family, being in a second or higher order marriage, having liberal attitudes toward divorce, and perceiving positive alternatives to the present marriage. The authors concluded that an accumulation of risk factors can produce two pathways to divorce: (1) a high level of conflict and unhappiness with the marriage and (2) a low level of commitment to the marriage. CONSEQUENCES OF DIVORCE FOR MEN AND FATHERS As noted in earlier reviews, divorced individuals tend to score lower than continuously married individuals on measures of psychological well-being and physical health, and recent studies from the United States have continued to replicate this finding (Bierman, Fazio, & Milkie, 2006; Hetherington, 2003; Williams, 2003). Comparable findings also have been obtained in many European countries (Brockmann & Klein, 2004; Lorant et al., 2005; Thuen, 2000). In a comprehensive study based on a sample of American men in midlife, Zhang and Hayward (2006) reported that divorced men, compared with continuously married men, had significantly lower household incomes ($36,900 vs. $63,700), lower household wealth ($140,500 vs. $303,400), and a greater likelihood of having no health insurance (26% vs. 17%). Furthermore, divorced men, compared with married men, were twice as likely to be smokers (44% vs. 22%), nearly twice as likely to be heavy drinkers (13%

Consequences of Divorce for Men and Fathers 181

vs. 7%), twice as likely to be clinically depressed (1% vs. 0.5%), and three times as likely to report emotional problems (12% vs. 4%). Several explanations have been offered for these differences. The most commonly accepted explanation refers to protective factors and stress associated with different marital statuses. Marital dissolution is a stressful experience for most individuals, and stress can have adverse effects on mental and physical health. Moreover, stress does not necessarily dissipate after the divorce is concluded. Many custodial mothers face chronic strains due to the demands of solo parenting and raising children on a reduced budget. Similarly, many noncustodial fathers face chronic strains due to a decrease in contact with their children and the difficulties of maintaining close father–child relationships under conditions of limited access. Marriage, in contrast, provides many benefits, including emotional support and economic security, and the loss of these benefits is likely to erode well-being. Finally, spouses often encourage one another to adopt healthier lifestyles and to minimize potentially harmful behaviors, such as excessive alcohol use or smoking. An alternative explanation refers to selection—the notion that mental or physical health problems are causes, rather than consequences, of divorce. Recent research, however, has provided little support for the selection perspective (e.g., Simon, 2002; Williams & Dunne-Bryant, 2006). DIVORCED MEN COMPARED WITH DIVORCED WOMEN Disagreement exists as to whether the negative effects of divorce are more severe for men or women. Writing from a feminist perspective, Bernard (1972) was one of the first social scientists to argue that marriage benefits men at the expense of women. For this reason, Bernard believed that divorce was detrimental to the well-being of most men but beneficial to the well-being of most women. Although some early research appeared to support Bernard’s thesis, more recent research on this topic has produced conflicting results. Consistent with Bernard’s thesis, some studies have reported that men have more psychological and health problems following divorce than do women (Brockman & Klein, 2004; Hetherington, 2003; Williams & Umberson, 2004). Similarly, a Spanish study found that divorced men had a higher risk of mortality than did married men, and divorced women had a lower risk of mortality than did married women (Burgoa, Regidor, Rodriguez, & Gutierrez-Fisac, 1998). Contrary to Bernard’s thesis, other studies have reported that women have more adjustment problems following divorce than do men (Dupre & Meadows, 2007; Williams & Dunne-Bryant, 2006). Yet other studies have found no gender differences in postdivorce well-being (Amato & HohmannMarriott, 2007; Bierman et al., 2006; Williams, 2003). Although Wang and Amato (2000) found no significant gender differences across three domains of divorce adjustment (general adjustment, attachment to the ex-spouse, and positive life appraisals), they found that women were more likely than men to initiate divorce. Because initiators tend to adjust more quickly, women are advantaged relative to men in this respect. Due to differences in socialization (and perhaps biology), divorced men and women tend to react to stress in different ways. For example, some

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studies show that divorced men are particularly likely to report externalizing problems, such as alcohol abuse, whereas divorced women are particularly likely to report internalizing problems, such as depression (Barrett, 2003; Simon, 2002; Williams & Dunne-Bryant, 2006). Simon argued that these gender-linked problems can be viewed as functionally equivalent. Consequently, men’s and women’s divergent problems may offset one another, leaving men no more or less disadvantaged than women following marital dissolution. If this is true, then studies may show that the negative outcomes of divorce are more severe for one gender than the other, but only because they have failed to incorporate multiple dimensions of adjustment. Other studies have examined gender differences in postdivorce financial well-being. As in previous decades, recent literature continues to show that women, compared with men, suffer more severe financial difficulties and accumulate less wealth following marital dissolution (Hirschil, Altobelli, & Rank, 2003; Wilmoth & Koso, 2002). European studies also show that women are more finally disadvantaged following divorce, although the extent of disadvantage varies with a particular country’s social policies (Andress, Borgloh, Brockel, Giesselmann, & Hummelsheim, 2006). McManus and DiPrete (2001) argued that the level of economic interdependence between husbands and wives has increased in recent years due to women’s increased labor force participation, the rise in women’s real wages, the decline in male earnings, and the greater sharing of household labor between spouses. Their analysis found that men are more likely now than in the past to lose financial ground following divorce, mainly because most men these days cannot fully compensate for the loss of their former wives’ income. The one exception occurred in households in which male breadwinners provided 80% or more of household income. Among these men, divorce was associated with a 17% increase in their standard of living. Nevertheless, when child support payments and taxes were accounted for, the ‘‘increase’’ declined to a nonsignificant 1%. Conversely, men who contributed between 60% and 80% of the predivorce household income saw declines of about 8% in their standard of living after accounting for child support payments and taxes. Along similar lines, Braver (1999) found that mothers had substantially lower household incomes than did fathers following divorce. The gender gap in standard of living closed, however, once taxes, government transfers, child support, and alimony were taken into consideration. Another economic analysis found that maintaining contact with a nonresident child is expensive (equivalent to 40% of the cost of maintaining a child in a two-parent middle class household), mainly due to the costs of providing a child-appropriate environment in the father’s home during visits (Henman & Mitchell, 2001). In fact, many poor fathers have a lower standard of living following divorce than do their ex-wives (Stirling & Aldrich, 2008). Because some low-income fathers have children spread across multiple households, economic obligations to nonresident children can accumulate and overwhelm the financial stability of these men (Meyer, Cancian, & Cook, 2005). These studies suggest that there are more similarities than differences in the financial well-being

Consequences of Divorce for Men and Fathers 183

of men and women following divorce—a conclusion that runs contrary to common perceptions. After divorce, men appear to have one clear advantage over women: They form new partnerships more quickly and at higher rates (Sweeney, 2002). For example, Wu and Schimmele (2005) found that within 5 years of divorce, 54% of men and 42% of women had formed a second union (counting marriages and cohabitations). Finding a new partner is one of the best predictors of mental and physical well-being following divorce (Johnson & Wu, 2002; Wang & Amato, 2000; Zhang & Hayward, 2006). Presumably, women require more time to find new partners because many have resident children (which makes them less desirable on the marriage market), earn lower incomes, and (especially at later ages) face a more restricted pool of available single partners. DIVORCED FATHERS COMPARED

WITH

CHILDLESS MEN

For fathers, divorce involves stressors and strains that childless men do not encounter. Divorced fathers are often faced with several emotionally draining events at once—not only mourning a failed marital relationship, but also (in most cases) losing custody of a child, becoming a nonresident parent, and receiving orders to pay child support. For many men, the loss of time with children is emotionally painful. Many fathers complain that limited ‘‘visitation’’ agreements make it difficult to enact the parental role and maintain close ties with their children. As a result, many noncustodial fathers develop relationships with their children that are largely recreational in nature—an arrangement that is less than satisfying for fathers as well as for children (Amato & Sobolewski, 2004). Taken together, the emotional and financial strain associated with divorce may leave fathers worse off than their childless counterparts. Although the role of fatherhood in moderating the effects of divorce on men would appear to be a topic of considerable interest, relatively few studies have explored this issue. Williams & Dunne-Bryant (2006) presented mixed evidence for this conclusion. On the one hand, they found that divorce was followed by more increases in symptoms of depression among men with young children (age 5 or less) than among men without young children. On the other hand, divorce was associated with elevated alcohol use among all men, irrespective of whether they had young children. Several other studies provide indirect evidence that fatherhood exacerbates the negative effects of divorce on men. Umberson and Williams (1993) found that divorced fathers reported higher levels of parental role strain than did married fathers. This study also found that the estimated effects of divorce on men’s psychological distress and alcohol consumption were partly explained by elevated levels of parental role strain. Eggebeen and Knoester (2001) found that involvement with children was positively associated with the psychological well-being of married men but not of divorced men—suggesting that paternal involvement is not especially rewarding for divorced fathers. Taken together, this research appears to support the notion that divorce is more stressful for fathers than for childless men, although more research on this topic is warranted.

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FACTORS THAT AFFECT MEN’S DIVORCE ADJUSTMENT A few recent studies have focused on factors that make divorce more or less problematic for adults. In general, these factors appear to be similar for men and women. Bierman et al. (2006) found that divorced men (and women) reported lower levels of psychological distress, less alcohol abuse, and a stronger sense of purpose in life if they were not experiencing economic strain, were employed, and had emotional support from friends and family. Another study by Wang and Amato (2000) found that adjustment to divorce was positively associated with postdivorce income, dating someone steadily, remarriage, holding favorable attitudes toward marital dissolution prior to divorce, and being the person who initiated the divorce. Amato and Hohmann-Marriott (2007) found that postdivorce global happiness was contingent on the quality of marriage prior to dissolution. When marriages were seriously troubled, former husbands as well as wives reported improvements in happiness. But when marriages were not seriously troubled, former husbands and wives reported declines in happiness. This finding is consistent with the notion that divorce can represent an ‘‘escape’’ from an aversive home environment. At the same time, individuals who leave marriages that are not seriously troubled may underestimate the stress inherent in divorce and adapting to a single lifestyle, as well as the benefits they enjoyed while married.

CHILDREN’S ADJUSTMENT TO DIVORCE Recent research in the United States continues to show that children with divorced parents, compared with children with continuously married parents, tend to score lower on a variety of emotional, behavioral, social, health, and academic outcomes. In addition, adults with divorced parents tend to obtain low levels of education, report more difficulties in forming intimate relationships, experience more problems in their own marriages, and are at greater risk of seeing their own marriages end in divorce. Most of these outcomes also appear for children who experience the dissolution of their unmarried parents’ unions. (For a review, see Amato, 2005). The effect sizes associated with divorce tend to be modest, however—a fact that reflects the diversity of outcomes among children in all types of family structures. Although some variation exists across countries, research conducted in European countries is generally consistent with research conducted in the United States. For example, parental divorce has been shown to be associated with internalizing and externalizing problems in children and young adults in England (Cherlin, Chase-Lansdale, & McRae, 1998), Bulgaria (Christopoulos, 2001), Finland (Aro & Palosaari, 1992), Norway (Strksen, Roysamb, Holmen, & Tambs, 2006), and the Netherlands (Spruijt & Duindam, 2005; van der Valk, Spruijt, Goede, Meeus, & Maas, 2004). Similarly, divorce is related to lower educational attainment among offspring in Italy (Albertini & Dronkers, 2009) and Sweden (Jonsson & Gaehler, 1997). In Denmark, parental divorce is associated with more delinquency and crime among male adolescents and young adults (Mednick, Baker, & Carothers, 1990). Finally, Dronkers and

Children’s Adjustment to Divorce 185

Harkonen (2008) found support for the intergenerational transmission of divorce in 16 out of 17 European countries. (See a meta-analysis by Wagner & Wei, 2006, for a similar result). Despite variations in history, culture, and policy contexts, the link between parental divorce and child problems is common throughout Europe—not just in the United States. ARE

THE

ESTIMATED EFFECTS

OF

DIVORCE

ON

CHILDREN CAUSAL?

An increasing number of studies have attempted to determine whether the effects of divorce on children are causal or spurious. Methods have included the use of fixed-effects models (Cherlin et al., 1998), genetically informed designs (D’Onofrio et al., 2006), and longitudinal analyses that compare children’s well-being prior to and following divorce (Sun, 2001; Sun & Li, 2002). Although not all studies are in agreement, the majority suggest that most of the links between divorce and children’s well-being cannot be accounted for by unobserved variables, genetic factors, or predivorce characteristics of the family of origin. One can make the argument, however, that these studies are somewhat misguided, given that they focus on measures of central tendency (e.g., mean differences between groups) rather than dispersion (or variability within groups). The accumulated evidence makes clear that divorce does not have uniform consequences for children. Indeed, some children adjust relatively quickly to divorce, whereas others show serious negative symptoms that persist across the life course. A more profitable focus of research, therefore, would be on the factors that produce variability in children’s reactions to divorce—not on whether a significant mean difference exists between children with divorced and continuously married parents. FACTORS THAT AFFECT CHILDREN’S ADJUSTMENT

TO

DIVORCE

Many studies have attempted to delineate the factors that mediate or moderate the link between parental divorce and child well-being. Variables that appear to be mediators of divorce include the child’s standard of living following divorce (Biblarz & Gottainer, 2000; Carlson & Corcoran, 2001), psychological distress among resident parents—usually mothers (Carlson & Corcoran; Tein, Sandler, & Zautra, 2000), positive parenting from resident parents—usually mothers (Cavanagh, 2008; King, 2002; King & Sobolewski, 2006; Sandler, Miles, Cookston, & Braver, 2008), positive parenting from nonresident parents—usually fathers (Ahrons & Tanner, 2003; Carlson, 2006; Fabricius, & Luecken, 2007; King & Sobolewski, 2006; Martinez & Forgatch, 2002), and the extent of conflict or cooperation between parents following divorce (Ahrons & Tanner; Fabricius & Luecken; Pruett, Williams, Insabella, & Little, 2003; Sandler et al., 2008). Although some studies have found that the estimated effects of divorce are stronger for children of one gender than the other (Hill, Yeung, & Duncan, 2001; Oldehinkel, Ormel, Veenstra, De Winter, & Verhulst, 2008), most studies have uncovered little evidence of gender differences in reactions to divorce (Sun, 2001; Sun & Li, 2002; Woodward, & Fergusson, 2000). With respect to race and ethnicity, one study found no racial or ethnic differences in

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the estimated effects of family structure on adolescent drug use (Broman, Li, & Reckase, 2008). In contrast, Heard (2007) found that the links between family structure and adolescent school performance were weaker for Blacks and Hispanics than for Whites. Another study found that growing up in a divorced family had similar implications for the marital quality of Black and White adult offspring (Timmer & Veroff, 2000). Sun and Li (2007) found that following marital disruption, White, Asian, and African-American adolescents exhibited greater maladjustment than did their Hispanic counterparts. Overall, it is difficult to reach conclusions about racial and ethnic differences in divorce adjustment given the small number of studies. An important but understudied moderator is the quality of family relationships prior to divorce. Research in the 1990s indicated that children tend to show improvements (or relatively little change) in multiple forms of well-being if the divorce ends a high-conflict marriage but tend to show declines in multiple forms of well-being if the divorce ends a low-conflict marriage (e.g., Amato, Loomis, & Booth, 1995). Studies conducted during the last decade have continued to replicate this finding (Booth & Amato, 2001; Strohschein, 2005). Correspondingly, a study by Videon (2002) found that the more attached adolescents were to the same-sex parent prior to divorce, the more likely they were to engage in delinquent behavior if the divorce separated them from this parent. NONRESIDENT FATHERS AND THEIR CHILDREN Due to the rise in family disruption (marriages as well as cohabiting unions with children) during the past half-century, more children are living apart from their biological fathers than at any time in American history (Harris & Ryan, 2004). Research on nonresident fathers and the role that these men play in their children’s lives has developed alongside these demographic trends. (See Chapter 7 for additional information on nonresident fathers.) CONTACT BETWEEN NONRESIDENT FATHERS

AND

THEIR CHILDREN

In general, the perception that most nonresident fathers have little contact with their children appears to be widespread (Troilo & Coleman, 2007). Nevertheless, levels of father–child contact have increased substantially during the past several decades. In the most recent study to provide relevant data, Amato, Meyers, and Emery (2009) pooled data from four nationally representative samples collected over a 27-year period. Their findings indicated that the percentage of 6- to 12-year-old children who saw their nonresident fathers weekly rose from 18 in 1976 to 31 in 2002. During the same period, the percentage of children who had no contact with their fathers in the previous year declined from 37 to 29. Because these data were based on mothers’ reports, and because mothers tend to underreport contact (Braver, Wolchik, Sandler, Fogas, & Zvetina, 1991), the authors cautioned that these numbers should be treated as lower bound estimates of fathers’ actual involvement.

Nonresident Fathers and their Children 187

Many researchers have focused on the factors that influence the frequency of contact. Divorced fathers tend to have more contact with their children than do fathers who were never married to their children’s mothers (Amato, Meyers, & Emery, 2009; Aquilino, 2006; Cheadle, Amato, & King, in press; Cooksey & Craig, 1998). Other factors that are positively correlated with the frequency of contact are the father’s religiosity (King, 2003), age (Landale & Oropesa, 2001; Manning, Stewart, & Smock, 2003), education (Cheadle, Amato, & King, in press; Cooksey & Craig, 1998; King, Harris, & Heard, 2004), and income (Swiss & Le Bourdais, 2009). In addition, fathers have more contact when they have a cooperative relationship with the child’s mother (Sobolewski & King, 2005). Some studies suggest that nonresident fathers have more regular contact with sons than daughters (Hetherington, 2003) and with older than younger children (Aquilino, 2006; Cheadle, Amato, & King, in press). Research on child characteristics is inconsistent, however, with many studies failing to replicate these findings. Several studies have shown that nonresident fathers see their children less frequently after they remarry or form cohabiting relationships (Stephens, 1996; Swiss & Le Bourdais, 2009). This trend is especially pronounced when these new unions are formed quickly, before fathers and children have established the structure of their postseparation relationships (Juby, Billette, Laplante, & Le Bourdais, 2007). Also important is whether fathers have children with their new partners (Manning & Smock, 1999; Manning, Stewart, & Smock, 2003; Seltzer, Shaeffer, & Charng, 1989). Presumably, men’s commitment to children in new unions consumes time and other resources that might otherwise have been devoted to children from previous unions. A number of studies have shown that father contact is most frequent when mothers are single and tends to decline after mothers remarry or cohabit with new partners (Amato et al., 2009; Juby et al., 2007; Landale & Oropesa, 2001; Manning et al., 2003; Seltzer et al., 1989). This decline may occur because some fathers feel that their presence is less necessary due to the addition of another male role model in the child’s home. Correspondingly, some mothers may discourage contact because they do not want it to interfere with their new relationships (England & Edin, 2007; Harris & Ryan, 2004). The geographical distance between children’s and fathers’ households is consistently and negatively associated with the frequency of contact (Cheadle et al., in press; Cooksey & Craig, 1998; Manning & Smock, 1999; Seltzer et al., 1989). This association may occur for two reasons. On the one hand, when mothers initiate the move, the additional time and money necessary to maintain frequent involvement is likely to decrease paternal contact. On the other hand, men with weak commitments to their children may experience few internal constraints on moving away from their children’s households, despite the fact that this makes contact more difficult. The latter interpretation is consistent with Cooksey and Craig, who found that fathers living more than 100 miles away engaged in fewer telephone calls with their children as well as fewer face-to-face visits. Father contact also may vary with race and ethnicity, although research findings are inconsistent. One study found that White adolescents reported higher levels of contact than did Black and Hispanic adolescents (King et al.,

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2004). In contrast, Thomas, Krampe, and Newton (2008) reported that adult African-Americans who grew up with single mothers felt closer to their fathers than did their White counterparts. In a study of low-income families, nonresident White fathers had less contact with young children than did African-American and Hispanic fathers (Cabrera, Ryan, Mitchell, Shannon, & Tamis-LeMonda, 2008). This difference may have occurred because White fathers were the least likely to maintain romantic relationships with the mothers after separation and most likely to repartner in the following years. Other studies have shown that Hispanic children are visited less often by fathers than are children from other racial or ethnic groups (Amato et al., 2009; King et al., 2004; Seltzer & Bianchi, 1988). Although the patterns are less than clear, racial and ethnic differences in father contact presumably reflect a complex mix of structural, economic, and cultural factors. STABILITY

AND

CHANGE

IN

CONTACT

Many researchers have suggested that paternal contact tends to decline over time following separation or divorce (e.g., Clarke-Stewart & Brentano, 2006; Hofferth et al., 2007). New research, however, reveals multiple patterns of involvement over time, and declining involvement does not appear to be an accurate description of most fathers’ behavior (Juby et al., 2007; Fabricius & Hall, 2000; Manning & Smock, 1999). Using a nationally representative sample, Cheadle et al. (in press) used growth mixture models to reveal four patterns of nonresident father involvement over a 12-year period. This study suggested that most fathers have relatively stable levels of contact with nonresidential children. The largest group of fathers (38%) was highly involved with their children over the course of the study, seeing their children at least weekly in the first year following union dissolution and maintaining a high level of contact for up to 12 years. The second-largest group (32%) consisted of uninvolved fathers who saw their children once a year or less in the first year and showed no subsequent increase. The third-largest group (23%) consisted of fathers who were initially highly involved with their children and then became relatively uninvolved, with contact declining from about once a week to once every 2 to 6 months. Finally, a small group of fathers (7%) started with low levels of contact in the first year (with an average visitation rate of between one and six times a year) and then gradually increased the frequency of visitation over the next decade to about one to three times a month. Several tentative conclusions can be drawn from this study. First, many men are highly involved with their children following union disruption. Indeed, 61% of men in this sample visited their children once a week or more immediately following separation, and nearly half (45%) visited once a month or more after 12 years. Second, stability is the rule rather than the exception, and most fathers are stably involved, or stably uninvolved, with their children. Less than a third of fathers changed their frequency of contact during the 12-year period. Third, stability of contact is strongly linked to the father’s initial levels of visitation, which suggest that men who develop early patterns of involvement are likely to continue being involved and, conversely,

Nonresident Fathers and their Children 189

initially uninvolved fathers are likely to remain uninvolved. Although many observers report that fathers tend to decrease their involvement with children over time, the majority of fathers maintain relatively consistent patterns of contact that neither increase nor decrease in frequency. CONTACT

AND

CHILD SUPPORT

One of the reasons father contact has been studied so frequently is its positive association with fathers’ economic involvement. Recent research is congruent with earlier studies in demonstrating that the more contact men have with their children, the larger and more consistent are their financial contributions to their children (Amato et al., 2009; Cheadle et al., in press; Huang, 2009; Juby, Le Bourdais, & Marcil-Gratton, 2005; Bartfeld, 2000). Although there is a strong connection between these two components of involvement, the causal direction is unclear. One possibility is that fathers who visit their children frequently are more aware of their children’s needs, so they increase support payments. A second possibility is that fathers who make consistent payments visit their children frequently to make sure their money is being spent properly. Alternatively, high-paying fathers may visit frequently because they feel they have earned the right, and their former wives may concur. In addition, contact and paying child support may reciprocally influence one another, or both behaviors may be caused by a third variable, such as fathers’ commitment to their children. One study attempted to sort out the direction of influence by applying cross-lagged models of paternal contact and economic support to longitudinal data (Nepomnyaschy, 2007). The author found that the causal order appeared to run primarily from child support payments to contact, with men who made regular payments at time 1 tending to increase their frequency of contact between times 1 and 2. THE QUALITY

OF

NONRESIDENT FATHER INVOLVEMENT

Currently, family scholars know more about the frequency of nonresident father–child contact than the quality of these relationships. Nevertheless, most scholars recognize that the quality of the father–child relationship is more important for children than the quantity of time spent together (Amato & Gilbreth, 1999). At one extreme, if nonresident fathers are abusive toward their children, or if fathers have strong antisocial personality traits, then frequent contact is not in the children’s best interest (Blazei, Iacono, & McGue, 2008). More commonly, nonresidential fathers engage in ‘‘recreational parenting,’’ as reflected in activities such as going to restaurants, movies, or sporting events. Although these types of activities are not harmful to children, it is doubtful whether they contribute a great deal to children’s development. Authoritative parenting, which combines emotional warmth with rule setting and monitoring, is generally considered to be in children’s best interest (Amato & Sobolewski, 2004). Authoritative parents also provide practical assistance to children with everyday problems, encourage their children’s academic success, and teach children about moral issues. This form of

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parenting requires not only availability, but also high levels of what Lamb, Pleck, and Levine (1985) have referred to as engagement and responsibility. Unfortunately, the time restrictions of many visitation arrangements make it difficult for even well-intentioned fathers to engage in authoritative parenting (Lamb, 1999; Amato & Sobolewski, 2004). The limited time that nonresident fathers see their children is qualitatively different from the extended time that residential fathers have with their children. Pasley and Braver (2004) noted that many fathers are restricted to face-to-face contact with their children on weekends—a time when leisure activities commonly occur in most families. Indeed, many nonresident fathers are reluctant to spend their time disciplining their children or even engaging in activities like assistance with homework. Research by Cashmore, Parkinson, and Taylor (2008) supports the notion that when nonresidential fathers expand the context of their visitation—even if they do not increase the amount of time spent with their children—children benefit. Specifically, the authors found that Australian adolescents who had overnight stays with their nonresident fathers reported stronger feelings of closeness and better relationship quality than did adolescents who saw their fathers only during the day, even after controlling for the amount of contact between the father and child as well as the level of conflict between the parents. NONRESIDENT FATHERS

AND

CHILDREN’S WELL-BEING

A meta-analysis by Amato and Gilbreth (1999) reviewed 63 studies that included data on nonresident father involvement and children’s internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and academic attainment. Their analysis revealed that the frequency of contact was not significantly associated with any type of child outcome. In contrast, forms of father involvement that reflected aspects of authoritative parenting (such as offering praise, expressing warmth, talking with children about their problems, and providing supervision) were significantly associated with all three types of child outcomes in the anticipated direction. The meta-analysis demonstrated that positive forms of father involvement are more important than the simple frequency of contact in understanding children’s adjustment and development. More recent studies also are consistent with this conclusion (e.g., King & Sobolewski, 2006; Pruett et al., 2003). Although it is tempting to assume that authoritative parenting on the part of nonresident fathers has a positive effect on children, most prior studies in this literature have been cross-sectional. For this reason, an alternative explanation is equally likely. That is, fathers may be especially motivated to visit happy, well-behaved, academically successful children. Correspondingly, fathers may be disinclined to visit children who are depressed, poorly behaved, and failing at school. In other words, the causal direction may run primarily from children to fathers. A study by Hawkins, Amato, and King (2007) provided support for a child effects model. Conducting cross-lagged analyses with longitudinal data, the authors found that the causal direction appears to run from adolescent

Recommendations for Future Research 191

children to nonresident fathers. That is, if children were well adjusted at time 1, fathers became more deeply involved with their children between times 1 and 2. Correspondingly, if children were poorly adjusted at time 1, fathers tended to become less involved with their children between times 1 and 2. In married-couple families, in contrast, the authors found evidence of reciprocal effects between resident fathers and their adolescent children. The authors were cautious about generalizing these finding, however, until further replications have been published with other data sets, especially with children in other age groups. Of course, frequent and positive father involvement may have beneficial effects that are not captured by standardized measures of well-being and adjustment. Studies indicate that offspring who had high levels of contact following divorce, compared with offspring who had low levels of contact, reported a number of positive outcomes in adulthood, including feeling closer to their fathers, less abandoned by their fathers, more certain of their fathers’ love, less anger toward their parents, and more favorable about the postdivorce years (Fabricius, 2003; Fabricius & Luecken, 2007; LaumannBillings & Emery, 2000). Similarly, Fabricius found that most young adults with divorced parents endorsed postdivorce living arrangements that provide more time with fathers. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH Given the breadth of the current chapter, it is not possible to provide a comprehensive list of recommendations for future studies. Nevertheless, the following topics have the potential to advance our understanding of fathers, children, and divorce: 1. The divorce rate in the United States has declined since the 1980s, but this trend was offset by an increase in the number of children born to unmarried, cohabiting parents. These informal unions are less stable than marriages, however. Additional research on the implications of these union disruptions for children, as well as the roles that unmarried biological fathers play in the lives of their children following union disruption, is sorely needed. 2. Studies suggest that the effects of divorce on parents and children vary with race and ethnicity. Yet the number of existing studies is too small to reach definitive (or even tentative) conclusions about these differences. More studies that focus on racial and ethnic diversity are clearly needed. Similarly, although a few studies have addressed racial and ethnic differences in the roles that nonresident fathers play in their children’s lives, current knowledge is sparse. More studies that focus on racial and ethnic differences would be useful in understanding diversity in father involvement following divorce. 3. Although many studies have estimated the effects of marital disruption on the well-being of men, few studies have considered parental status as a moderating variable. Consequently, we know little about whether

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divorce is a more difficult experience for men who have fathered children within the union than for men who have not. This topic would be relatively easy to address with existing data sets. 4. As noted earlier, most studies on nonresident father involvement and child outcomes have not addressed the possibility of reciprocal effects or child effects. More longitudinal studies using cross-lagged models would help to sort out the direction of influence between nonresident fathers and their children. 5. A growing research literature on the causes and consequences of divorce is emerging from European countries. More comparative research is necessary to understand the extent to which divorce-related phenomena are specific to certain countries and cultural settings or can be generalized across a range of settings. New research from other parts of the world, such as Asia and Latin America, would enrich our understanding considerably. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE AND POLICY The breadth of material covered in this chapter makes it difficult to provide a comprehensive list of recommendations for practice and policy. Nevertheless, the following short list provides a sample of possibilities that practitioners and policy makers may wish to consider. 1. Divorced men and women, on average, have lower levels of mental and physical health than do married individuals. Moreover, these differences can persist for long periods of time due to chronic strains associated with single parenthood—for nonresident as well as resident parents. Practitioners should not assume that once parents have ‘‘survived’’ the crisis period that recovery is complete. Divorced fathers and mothers need to learn adaptive coping skills, especially with respect to chronic parenting strain, that will help them to function well over the long haul—which generally means until their children are grown. 2. Although frequent contact with nonresident fathers may not be appropriate for all children, increasing the level of father contact and improving the quality of father–child relationships would benefit many children as well as fathers. Consequently, policies and interventions designed to improve ties between fathers and children should be maintained and encouraged. These include the use of nonadversarial methods of dispute resolution, such as mediation, collaborative law, and parenting coordination; education classes for divorcing parents; and Responsible Fatherhood initiatives that help fathers to meet their child support obligations, increase fathers’ access to their children, and encourage better quality parenting. 3. As noted earlier, the frequency of nonresident father–child contact has increased in recent decades. Although this is a positive trend, a potential risk is that disputes between parents also may increase. As we move toward a postdivorce family system in which fathers are more involved, a key task is to help parents play useful roles in their children’s lives

References 193

while avoiding the tension that often persists between former spouses. An objective of education, therapy, and mediation should be to help parents separate the romantic and parental aspects of their relationships, avoid postdivorce conflict, and develop at least minimally cooperative coparental relationships. 4. Finally, as noted earlier, only about one-half of children in the United States will grow up with two continuously married parents. And the rate of divorce appears to be increasing throughout much of the world. Without doubt, for spouses and children who find themselves in hostile, dysfunctional, and abusive family settings, divorce provides an escape and a second chance for happiness. But given the high rate of divorce, as well as the high level of union dissolution among unmarried parents, it is reasonable to assume that too many families are disrupted every year, too many fathers and children are physically separated, and that many of these unions could be saved. Despite the best efforts of policy makers and practitioners to ‘‘soften the blow’’ of divorce, prevention is generally superior to—and more cost effective than—trying to fix a problem that has become intractable. Consequently, current efforts by the U.S. federal government, states, and communities to strengthen marriage and assist couples in developing healthy and stable relationships appears to be an appropriate and useful social policy goal. REFERENCES Ahrons, C. R., & Tanner, J. L. (2003). Adult children and their fathers: Relationship changes 20 years after parental divorce. Family Relations, 52, 340–351. Albertini, M., & Dronkers, J. (2009). Effects of divorce on children’s educational attainment in a Mediterranean and Catholic society: Evidence from Italy. European Societies, 11, 147–159. Amato, P. R. (2000). The consequences of divorce for adults and children. Journal of Marriage and Family, 62, 1269–1287. Amato, P. R. (2005). The impact of family formation change on the cognitive, social, and emotional well-being of the next generation. Future of Children, 15, 75–96. Amato, P. R., & Gilbreth, J. G. (1999). Nonresident fathers and children’s well-being: A meta-analysis. Journal of Marriage and Family, 61, 557–573. Amato, P. R., & Hohmann-Marriott, B. (2007). A comparison of high and low-distress marriages that end in divorce. Journal of Marriage and Family, 69, 621–638. Amato, P. R., Loomis, L. S., & Booth, A. (1995). Parental divorce, marital conflict, and offspring well-being in early adulthood. Social Forces, 73, 895–916. Amato, P. R., Meyers, C. E., & Emery, R. E. (2009). Changes in nonresident father contact between 1976 and 2002. Family Relations, 58, 41–53. Amato, P. R., & Sobolewski, J. M. (2004). The effects of divorce on fathers and children: Nonresidential fathers and stepfathers. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (4th ed., pp. 341–367). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Andress, H. J., Borgloh, B., Brockel, M., Giesselmann, M. & Hummelsheim, D. (2006). The economic consequences of partnership dissolution: A comparative analysis of panel studies from Belgium, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and Sweden. European Sociological Review, 22, 533–560. Aquilino, W. S. (2006). The noncustodial father–child relationship from adolescence into young adulthood. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68, 929–946.

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Williams, K., & Umberson, D. (2004). Marital status, marital transitions, and health: A gendered life course perspective. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 45, 81–98. Wilmoth, J., & Koso, G. (2002). Does marital history matter? Marital status and wealth outcomes among preretirement adults. Journal of Marriage and Family, 64, 254–268. Woodward, L., & Fergusson, D. M. (2000). Timing of parental separation and attachment to parents in adolescence: Results of a prospective study from birth to age 16. Journal of Marriage and Family, 62, 162–174. Wu, Z., & Schimmele, C. M. (2005). Repartnering after first union disruption. Journal of Marriage and Family, 67, 27–36. Zhang, Z., & Hayward, M. (2006). Gender, the marital life course, and cardiovascular disease in late midlife. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68, 639–657.

CHAPTER 7

Custody and Parenting Time Links to Family Relationships and Well-Being After Divorce WILLIAM V. FABRICIUS, SANFORD L. BRAVER, PRISCILA DIAZ, and CLORINDA E. VELEZ

INTRODUCTION The father’s role in child development typically undergoes profound change when the parents divorce. Around much of the world, this eventuality became about twice as likely in the past 40 years as it ever was previously in our history (Shiono & Quinn, 1994). Although divorce rates have decreased since the peak in 1979–1981 (Fine & Harvey, 2006), by the time they reach age 16, the percentage of children who are anticipated to live in a divorced home is between 31% (Bumpass & Sweet, 1989) and 40% (Cherlin, 1992). Chapter 6 discusses many of the changes wrought by divorce in the father–child relationship. The goal of the current chapter, a new one for this series, is to survey what is known about how postdivorce parenting arrangements impact the family. In the past, these arrangements included determining which parent would be the child’s custodial parent, and how much visitation would occur between the child and the other parent. There is now a widespread movement to abolish the terms custody and visitation, and replace them with the more neutral terms parenting plans, parenting time, and decision-making responsibility (Emery, 2004; Kelly, 2004, 2007). As of 2005, 26 states had statutes addressing parenting plans (Douglas, 2006). In the European Union and the United Kingdom, the term parental responsibility predominates (Lowe, 2005), which both parents legally retain regardless of the residential order. In New Zealand, the 2004 Care of Children Act replaced the term custody with day-today care, and access or visitation with contact (Martindale-Hubbell Law Digest: New Zealand, 2008). Notwithstanding these attempts to reform nomenclature, many issues facing divorced families (e.g., determining child support, adjudicating relocation disputes, signing for a child’s driver’s license, taking the child out of the country) require designation of the parent with whom the child primarily lives or to whom the court grants legal decision-making authority. Thus, we 201

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will use the corresponding terms residential custody and legal custody. We will use the term parenting time to refer to the distribution of the time the child resides with each parent. The form these arrangements take has a very strong overlay of law and policy, perhaps more so than other aspects of father–child relationships discussed in other chapters. Courts and legislatures take jurisdiction over custody and parenting time; what they decree is their primary point of entry or leverage over the divorced family, because they cannot control how (or even whether) parents use their parenting time. Often, courts accept or request advice from mental health professionals, such as custody evaluators. In exercising their authority, policy makers, judges, and custody evaluators (collectively, we refer to these as decision makers) implicitly or explicitly face the question of how custody and parenting time can be arranged to best serve divorcing families. We have therefore taken this question as the primary vantage point and goal for this review of the literature: what guidance the existing empirical research can give decision makers about the custody and parenting time arrangements that work best for children. Taking this perspective alerts us to gaps and methodological problems in the empirical literature. Thus, a second goal of this chapter becomes illuminating what directions future research needs to take to ultimately be more dispositive to such decisions. The chapter is organized into eight sections. First, we examine the current prevailing custody standard, the Best Interest of the Child standard (BIS), as well as contemporary proposed alternatives to this standard, in historical context. This section reveals that cultural norms about parenting shape custody policy. We argue that research into current public opinion about custody and parenting time is needed to inform the debates about alternative standards, and we present new findings on public opinion. Second, we examine current custody practice, in terms of both court awards and the processes of arriving at custody and parenting time provisions. This section reveals that while parents typically make these decisions themselves, they bargain within a complex social context, which includes, at a minimum, the law; the advice they receive about the court’s application of the law; and, as we illustrate with new data, their own beliefs about the lack of judicial fairness or bias. These social forces constrain their negotiations and affect the resulting distribution of parenting time arrangements. Third, we examine empirical research that directly compares various custody arrangements, which generally shows that joint custody benefits children most. An issue that arises, however, is the degree to which the research is useful to decision makers, since it may or may not generalize to situations in which the parents disagree about joint custody. We then segue to another discussion of how future research can yield information about likely outcomes from imposing joint custody. Fourth, we turn to the research on parenting time. We begin by noting that it is universally accepted—and generally honored in law—that a rich relationship with the father (as well as the mother) is in most cases beneficial for children. But there is less agreement about what policy will bring about that strong relationship. We next point out two problems with the research that have compromised the ability of researchers to give more definitive advice.

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One problem involves measurement. On the one hand, Kelly (2007) notes that we have had ‘‘no reliable measures to accurately record the numerous complexities and variations in contact patterns’’ (p. 37). We describe two new measures of parenting time. On the other hand, there is no consensus about how to measure the quality of father involvement. We illustrate a new measure that distinguishes between the quantity and quality of parent involvement from the young adolescent’s point of view. Another problem is conceptual. Researchers in the past tested simplified models that missed important processes by which the effects of parenting time are propagated. We propose a model in which the mediators of the effects of parenting time on long-term child outcomes are aspects of the father–child relationship, including the quantity and quality of father–child interactions and the child’s felt security in the relationship. We argue that the father–child relationship should be considered not only as a mediator of the effects of parenting time, but also as an important outcome in itself. Fifth, we review the recent studies on parenting time, the father–child relationship, and child outcomes that we feel are more definitive because they avoid some of these problems of the past. There is much evidence in these studies that the proximal effect of parenting time is on the father–child relationship, and that the quality of the ongoing father–child relationship is what propagates the effects of parenting time into the future on various aspects of wellbeing. Sixth, we evaluate the literature to provide answers to the questions of how much parenting time is necessary to achieve benefits for children in the usual case. Seventh, we do so in the case of especially high conflict between the parents. Finally, we conclude by summarizing the implications for policy and research, respectively, which stem from taking this broad perspective on custody and parenting time.

CHILD CUSTODY STANDARDS HISTORICAL TRENDS Child custody standards have historically reflected the gender roles prevailing at the time (Braver & O’Connell, 1998; Mason, 1994; Roth, 1976). Under Roman law, men had absolute control over their families and children were considered fathers’ property, whereas women had no legal rights. This patriarchal system of male ownership was continued into British common law, which added that fathers were also responsible for protecting, supporting, and educating children. British law, in turn, served as a foundation for early American law, which also mandated paternal custody throughout the 19th century. However, in the early 20th century, when the Industrial Revolution pulled fathers to work outside the home and mothers became children’s main caretakers, the trend reversed to maternal custody, especially for children of ‘‘tender years.’’ More recently, constitutional concerns about sex bias, cultural changes in parental roles, and the women’s movement prompted states to remove parent gender as a basis for custody and focus instead on the well-being of

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the child. The Best Interest of the Child standard was introduced in 1970 as a Model Code under the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act. It was subsequently adopted by every state, and it remains the prevailing U.S. standard (Freed & Walker, 1986; Kelly, 1994). It also prevails internationally under Article 9.1 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). Under the BIS, as Kelly (1994) noted, ‘‘For the first time in history, custody decisions were to be based on a consideration of the needs and interests of the child rather than on the gender or rights of the parent’’ (p. 122). The BIS is generally considered to be an improvement over past standards because it accords primacy to children’s needs, and because it is egalitarian, flexible, and simple (Chambers, 1984; Warshak, 2007); nonetheless, it has been criticized for being vague and for allowing judges to rely on idiosyncratic biases (Chambers, 1984; Finley & Schwartz, 2007). Because rulings are unpredictable, some argue that it catalyzes parents to battle for custody (O’Connell, 2007). CONTEMPORARY PROPOSALS

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Courts and legislatures have thus recently been urged to consider alternative standards to counter the alleged defects of the BIS. It is important to note that each of these alternatives purportedly upholds the child’s best interests as the focus of custody policy. Primary Caretaker. The Primary Caretaker standard (Chambers, 1984; Maccoby, 1999) presupposes that stability for the child is the factor most critical to the child’s well-being, and that the parent who provided the most child care during the marriage should be the one to obtain custody. Although this standard is ostensibly gender-neutral, in practice it promotes a preference for maternal custody, because the child care duties it credits (e.g., preparing meals, bathing, dressing, nurturing) are usually not provided primarily by fathers (Kelly, 1994). Only Minnesota adopted this standard, but repealed it 4 years later (Crippen, 1990). Approximation Rule. A modified version of the Primary Caretaker standard is the Approximation Rule, first proposed by Elizabeth Scott (1992), and later endorsed by the American Law Institute (ALI) in their influential Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution (2002). This standard, too, credits stability as the greatest contributor to child well-being, but recognizes that the secondary parent also has an important role to play. This standard is aimed at determining the distribution of parenting time with each parent: ‘‘The court should allocate custodial responsibility so that the proportion of custodial time the child spends with each parent approximates the proportion of time each parent spent performing caretaking functions for the child prior to the parents’ separation’’ (p. 1). Proponents (Emery, 2007; Kelly & Ward, 2002; Maccoby, 2005; O’Connell, 2007) contend that potential benefits include: (a) simplifying and expediting custody determinations, (b) offering a genderneutral criterion, (c) respecting decisions parents earlier made about childrearing patterns, (d) providing a means of measuring qualitative factors such

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as the strength of parent–child ties and parental competence, (e) reducing the incidence of custody litigation, (f) promoting stability of parent–child relationships, and (g) reducing the intrusion of the state into family matters. In contrast, opponents (Lamb, 2007; Riggs, 2005; Warshak, 2007) claim that its disadvantages include: (a) it does not consider that there will be changes to the parenting patterns after divorce; (b) it assumes the quantity of caretaking predicts the quality of the parent–child relationship, but evidence suggests that children typically become securely attached to both parents whatever their respective caregiving duties; (c) there are severe difficulties involved in measuring past caretaking time; (d) it does not consider other parenting functions such as providing a role model or moral guidance, and (e) in practice it is not likely to reduce the level of conflict between parents. Despite the imprimatur of the prestigious ALI’s endorsement, only West Virginia has adopted the Approximation Rule. Joint Custody. The Joint (or Shared) Custody standard is claimed by its proponents to be in the best interests of children because it credits factors even more critical to child well-being than stability: mutual parental responsibility and the children’s relationships with both parents. When considering this standard, joint physical or residential custody (specifying that the child will alternate residence with each parent) is generally distinguished from joint legal custody (specifying that both parents retain legal authority to make decisions about the child’s education, medical care, religious upbringing, etc.). In 1979, California became the first state to authorize joint custody (Folberg, 1991), but joint legal custody, joint physical custody, or both are currently permitted in 44 states (Family Law in the Fifty States Case Digests, 2008). There is a presumption in 7 to 10 states in favor of joint legal custody (which means it is customarily ordered even over the objection of one parent). In contrast, joint physical custody is typically authorized only when both parents request it. Only a few states (e.g., California) allow judges the discretion to order it over the objection of one parent, and only the District of Columbia has a joint physical custody presumption. Joint physical custody does not necessarily entail equal parenting time with each parent; splits as disparate as 30% vs. 70% often are called joint physical custody (Kelly, 2007; Venohr & Griffith, 2005). A limiting condition in most states is that joint custody (legal or physical) is treated as not appropriate when evidence of domestic violence is produced. In England and Wales, the 1989 Children’s Act gives courts the power to order ‘‘shared residence,’’ but it more typically grants instead a Sole Residence order, typically to the mother (Lowe, 2005). In Canada, the 1997 Divorce Act permits joint custody, which may involve equal decision making or equal residential time, or both, but sole maternal residential custody with the father granted access according to a detailed schedule is far more common (Douglas, 2001; Kruk, 2008). Australia currently is the only nation with presumptive equal physical custody, the Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Act 2006 (see Chapter 20). Where reasonably practicable and unless shown not to be in the best interests of child, it requires courts to order that the child spend equal amounts of time with each parent.

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In cases where equal time is determined to be not appropriate, the court must consider a parenting time arrangement that is substantial and significant for both parents (Bates, 2008). PUBLIC OPINION ABOUT CUSTODY

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The preceding discussion illustrates that custody standards throughout history have reflected the prevailing cultural values and norms regarding parenting and gender roles. It is legitimate that these cultural standards should inform and even constrain custody standards, because parenting values and norms determine whether parents are willing and feel able to assume the custody that is granted to them. Likewise, the current impetus for a new standard reflects ongoing cultural evolution of parenting values and norms. For any new custody standard to accurately reflect contemporary cultural standards, however, the policy makers of today need to be acquainted with prevailing public opinion on custody issues. But, curiously, despite the popularity of polls and surveys in almost every other area of life, public opinion about postdivorce parenting arrangements has rarely been sought. In the next paragraphs, we review what is in fact known about public opinion concerning custody. The first attempt of which we are aware to assess public opinion about residential custody targeted a restricted slice of the public—young adults attending a large state university (Fabricius & Hall, 2000). The authors asked, ‘‘What do you feel is the best living arrangement for children after divorce?’’ Participants answered using a 9-point Likert scale ranging from ‘‘Live with mother and see father minimally or not at all’’ to ‘‘Live with father and see mother minimally or not at all,’’ with the midpoint being ‘‘Live equal amounts of time with both.’’1 Regardless of how the question was phrased over the course of several semesters, whether students were male or female, or from divorced or intact families, approximately 70 to 80% answered the midpoint category, ‘‘equal time’’ (Fabricius, 2003). In 2006, an advisory (i.e., nonbinding) ballot question appeared in Massachusetts: ‘‘There should be a presumption in child custody cases in favor of joint physical and legal custody, so that the court will order that the children have equal access to both parents as much as possible, except where there is clear and convincing evidence that one parent is unfit, or that joint custody is not possible due to the fault of one of the parents.’’ The proposition received 86% yes votes. Braver, Fabricius, and Ellman (2008) repeated that exact language on a public opinion survey to a representative sample of adult citizens in Tucson, Arizona, asking respondents to indicate how much they agreed with the statement on a 7-point Likert scale. Ninety percent responded

1. ‘‘Lived with mother, saw father (a) minimally or not at all; (b) some; (c) a moderate amount; (d) a lot; (e) Lived equal amounts of time with each; Lived with father, saw mother (f) a lot; (g) a moderate amount; (h) some; (i) minimally or not at all.’’

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on the ‘‘agree’’ side; 57% responded 7 (‘‘strongly agree’’) and another 30% responded 6. There were no significant differences by gender, age, education, income, political outlook, whether the respondents themselves were currently married, had ever divorced, had children, or had paid or received child support. To explore whether such a preference was only abstract and theoretical, or was in fact the preference citizens would like to see in practice, Braver, Fabricius, and Ellman (2008) developed a hypothetical custody case for use with a different representative sample of Tucson, Arizona, citizens. Mother and father were depicted as providing equal amounts of predivorce child care. The parents were further described as reasonably good parents who deeply loved their children, with a family life that was quite average, and children who were normally adjusted. Respondents were asked how they would award parenting time if they were judge, using the alternatives specified in Footnote 1. About 75% chose the option, ‘‘Live equal amounts of time with each parent.’’ Almost all the remainder chose ‘‘Live with mother, see father a lot.’’ In this scenario, because the parents provided equal amounts of predivorce child care, awards of equal parenting time could reflect adherence to either the Approximation Rule or the Joint Custody standard. However, Votruba (2008) modified the ‘‘equally involved’’ aspect of the scenario into a fully typical scenario, telling new respondents that the division of predivorce child care was ‘‘about like average families in which both parents work full-time (both M–F, 9-to-5).’’ The results were unchanged, suggesting respondents tacitly adhered to the Joint Custody standard rather than the Approximation Rule. Summary. Custody practices have historically reflected cultural norms about gender roles and parenting; we contend that this is completely appropriate. For example, in Trinidad and Tobago, boys’ entrance into the company of the men in the community is gradual and regulated over many years. Awarding equal parenting time within such cultural norms would not be in younger children’s best interests. Because it is the cultural norm, boys do not attribute fathers’ limited involvement with them to fathers’ lack of caring for them. In contrast, in our society, the norm has become for fathers to be more involved in children’s upbringing. Prohibitions or restrictions on fathers’ involvement post-divorce would not be in children’s best interests, because within our cultural norm, children are at risk for attributing limited postdivorce father involvement to fathers’ lack of caring for them. As we discuss later, that can undermine children’s emotional security in their relationships with their fathers and put them at risk for mental, physical, and behavioral health problems. There now appears to be a strong consensus among the general public that under normal circumstances, equal parenting time is best for the child. Large majorities favor it across several variations in question format, including variation in how much predivorce child care each parent provided. This powerful consensus would appear to lend support to a Joint Custody standard. Awards of equal parenting time continue to be rare, however, as we discuss next.

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CHILD CUSTODY PRACTICE COURT AWARDS

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As several other writers have done (Argys et al., 2007; Clark, Whitney, & Beck, 1988; Maccoby & Mnookin, 2002), we distinguish between arrangements that are de jure (as specified in the decree) and de facto (as practiced day to day). We shall discuss only de jure custody (legal and physical) and de jure parenting time in this section; de facto parenting time requires consideration of measurement issues and so will await a later section. De Jure Legal and Physical Custody. According to several studies of state or jurisdiction-level statistics on legal and physical custody in the United States (Braver & O’Connell, 1998; DeLuse, 1999; Fox & Kelly, 1995; Logan, Walker, Horvath, & Leukefeld, 2003; Maccoby & Mnookin, 1992; Seltzer, 1990), mothers obtained primary de jure physical custody in 68 to 88% of cases, fathers did so in only 8 to 14% of cases, and joint physical was specified in 2 to 6%. These numbers also comport well with national U.S. figures (Argys et al., 2007; Emery, 1994; Nord & Zill, 1996; Saluter & Lugaila, 1998). Maccoby and Mnookin (1992) report a higher proportion (20%) of joint physical arrangements in California. And as noted earlier, Australia now has a presumption in favor of shared parenting, and statistics show that 15 to 19% of recent cases have equally shared custody and another 11 to 15% have at least 30% with each parent (see chapter 20). The rate of joint legal custody is more variable across the above studies, from 21% (Seltzer, 1990) to 76% (Maccoby & Mnookin, 1992) to 93% (Douglas, 2003). It has also changed much more than physical custody has over time. It is important to note that this change appears spontaneous, that is, not based on corresponding revisions in formal policy such as statute or court decisions. For example, in Canada, joint legal custody increased from 14% to 37% from 1990 to 2000 (Juby, Billette, Laplante, Le Bourdais, 2007). During one longitudinal study conducted by the second author (Braver, Griffin, Cookston, Sandler, & Williams, 2005), joint legal custody doubled (from about one-third to two-thirds) over the 3-year course of the study, despite no discernible changes in any formal or official standard. What apparently did change, however, was that the informal ‘‘culture’’ among the professionals involved in divorce (judges, attorneys, custody evaluators, mediators, etc.) warmed to joint legal custody over the interval, possibly because of findings (e.g., Gunnoe & Braver, 2001; Maccoby & Mnookin, 1992) showing its beneficial impact with few downsides. De Jure Parenting Time. Prior to the 1980s, most decrees either specified the traditional pattern of every other weekend with the nonresident parent, which totals about 14% of the child’s time (Kelly, 2007), or simply used a general phrase such as ‘‘reasonable,’’ ‘‘liberal,’’ or ‘‘according to court guidelines,’’ which in practice meant the same traditional pattern. Two studies of randomly selected case files in Arizona conducted 10 years apart (Braver & O’Connell, 1998; DeLuse, 1999) found that in the interim decade there were

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increases in the number of decrees that added some visitation during the week to the alternating weekend pattern, and that specified uninterrupted summer weeks with the nonresidential parent. Venohr and Griffith (2003) conducted the federally-mandated review of a randomly selected set of case files in Arizona for divorces filed in 2002. They found that by this date, 54% of cases specified 20 to 35% of the days per year as parenting time for the nonresidential parent, and 15% specified 36 to 50%. By 2007, only 36% specified 20 to 35% parenting time, while twice as many (29%) specified 36 to 50% (Venohr & Kaunelis, 2008). In Washington State, 46% of fathers obtained at least 35% parenting time in 2007–2008 (George, 2008), and in Wisconsin in 2003, 24% had equal parenting time (Brown & Cancian, 2007). In Arizona the percentage of cases specifying exactly equal parenting time tripled from 2002 (5%) to 2007 (15%). Again, all the changes in practice described in this paragraph were spontaneous, informal and unofficial, not based on formal rule changes. Summary. More divorce agreements stipulate joint legal custody nowadays than in the past, and in several states, at least, substantially more parenting time is routinely being awarded than the traditional alternating weekend. These trends appear informal rather than based on any official rule changes. Nevertheless, the great majority of families continue the 1970s pattern of children living mostly with mothers. This occurs despite the widespread adoption of the ostensibly gender-neutral BIS in the 1980s, and despite current public opinion that equal parenting time is best for children. To discern why these tendencies now prevail requires examination of the processes by which divorce arrangements are forged, discussed next. PROCESSES OF ARRIVING AT CUSTODY AND PARENTING TIME PROVISIONS Litigation. Studies have found that only 2 to 10% of divorcing couples have their custody provisions decided by a judge (Braver & O’Connell, 1998; Maccoby & Mnookin, 1992; Logan et al., 2003). The rest come to an agreement themselves (with no lawyers, about 30% of couples; with one lawyer, most commonly the mother’s, another 30%; with two lawyers, the remainder; Braver & O’Connell, 1998; Maccoby & Mnookin, 1992; Hogan, Halpenny, & Greene, 2003) that is then ‘‘rubber stamped’’ by a judge or court official. But getting to this agreement is often complicated and circuitous, involving a large and growing menu of alternative methods of resolving custody disputes. Interim Settlement Conferences. Parents typically have one or more appearances before the judge, called settlement conferences, before final resolution. During settlement conferences, judges typically will inquire what progress is being made, order parents to special classes, appoint mediators or custody evaluators (as explained in the following sections), and exhort parents toward settling. Some judges will drop clues about how they are leaning, and even if they don’t, lawyers typically advise their clients about the judge’s reputation for deciding custody matters.

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Parent Education. Many parents are sent to a ‘‘Parent Education’’ class during the course of resolving their case (Blaisure & Geasler, 1996). The class is intended to facilitate their negotiations, prevent them from litigating, and improve their agreements (Braver, Salem, Pearson & DeLuse, 1996; Pollet & Lombreglia, 2008). Such programs have become very popular with courts in recent years (Arbuthnot, 2002; Blaisure & Geasler, 2000), despite little evidence that they have intended effects (Douglas, 2006; Goodman, Bonds, Sandler, & Braver, 2004; Sigal, Sandler, Wolchik, & Braver, in press), although DeLuse (1999) found that if fathers attended, they negotiated significantly more parenting time. Mediation. In mediation, a neutral professional helps the couple resolve custody and parenting time disputes (Emery, 1994; Kelly, 2004). Many states require that parents attend mediation before allowing litigation (Douglas, 2006; Tondo, Coronel, & Drucker, 2001). Research has shown only limited success for mediation, but high-quality studies are difficult to do in this area (Beck & Sales, 2001; Emery, Laumann-Billings, Waldron, Sbarra, & Dillon, 2001). Australia now practices ‘‘child inclusive’’ divorce mediation, in which the child meets separately with the mediator, who then artfully conveys the child’s wishes and concerns to the parents (McIntosh, Wells, Smyth, & Long, 2008). Custody Evaluation. In about 5 to 10% of cases, an expert (usually a psychologist) is hired by the parents, who evaluates the family and makes nonbinding custody recommendations (at an average fee, as of 1997, of $2,646; Ackerman & Ackerman, 1997) (Ackerman, 2007; Gould & Martindale, 2007; Stahl, 1994). Current American Psychological Association guidelines specify that the court appoint only one evaluator, whose code of ethics requires giving fair consideration to each parent. Often, the evaluator’s recommendation is made first to the parents, and only if it does not spur settlement will it be sent to the court. There have been several critiques of the legal propriety, ethics, and acumen of custody evaluations in determining what is best for children (Bow & Quinell, 2002, 2004; Martin, 2005; Tippins & Wittman, 2005). Summary. Few parents have their custody and parenting time provisions decided by a judge. Instead, almost all parents come to agreement themselves. This suggests how historical changes in parenting arrangements can occur without corresponding changes in statutes and precedents. One possibility is thus that both mothers and fathers have changed in terms of the parenting arrangements they desire, and that currently prevailing decree provisions accurately reflect their sentiments. Regarding those that still opt for mothercustody, Tippins (2001), for example, claims that ‘‘most of the mothers who have custody attained it with the father’s consent, presumably because the father understood and agreed that the best interest of the children was served by such an arrangement.’’ The other possibility is that input from some combination of judges, attorneys, parent educators, mediators, and evaluators affects what parents ask for and agree to. Thus, we need to examine what

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is known about parents’ desires regarding custody, and the role of the social and legal context in their bargaining for custody and parenting time. Bargaining About Custody and Parenting Time. Braver and O’Connell (1998) found that 70% of mothers indicated early in the process that they wanted sole legal custody, and the remainder wanted joint; among fathers, 75% wanted joint and the remainder were equally split between wanting sole mother and sole father. Analogously, but concerning physical custody, Maccoby and Mnookin (1992) report that 82% of mothers wanted sole maternal, while about a third of fathers wanted joint, a third sole paternal, and a third sole maternal. Similarly, Fabricius and Hall (2000) found that two-thirds of students reported that their mothers had wanted to be their primary residential parent, and almost two-thirds reported that their fathers had wanted equal or nearly equal living arrangements or to be their primary residential parent. Yet in all three studies, the parents’ ultimate agreements were twice as likely to reflect the mothers’ than the fathers’ preferences. Most children also want substantially more time with fathers (Amato, 1987; Buchanan, Maccoby, & Dornbush, 1996; Funder, 1996; Parkinson, Cashmore, & Single, 2005; Smith & Gallop, 2001; Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980). Fabricius and Hall used the response scale in Footnote 1 to ask what living arrangement students had wanted, and found that one-half wanted either an exactly equal (‘‘50–50’’) split of time or close to it (i.e., to live with the other parent "a lot"). In the end, the time they had with their fathers was far less than what they and their fathers wanted, but very close to what their mothers wanted. Why do mothers’ preferences prevail? One possibility is that fathers’ stated preferences are only bargaining positions that they are prepared to negotiate away in exchange for concessions on other matters, especially lowered child support payments (Neely, 1984; Singer & Reynolds, 1988; Weitzman, 1985). However, Braver and O’Connell (1998), and Maccoby and Mnookin (1992) specifically investigated this possibility and found that the evidence rejected it. Similarly, Venohr and Griffith (2003) found no evidence that fathers were ‘‘gaming’’ the system by asking for more parenting time to gain advantages in lowered child support. Moreover, Sheets and Braver (1996) found that fathers were less satisfied with the custody agreements than mothers, and that mothers more often got the outcomes they preferred and felt more strongly in control of the bargaining process. The other possibility is that fathers’ preferences are genuine, but whether they fervently pursue them depends on the guidance about their chances they receive from judges, attorneys, custody evaluators, parent educators, and mediators (Braver & O’Connell, 1998; Maccoby & Mnookin, 1992; Mnookin, 1984; Mnookin & Kornhauser, 1979). If such guidance shifted over time, this could easily account for the findings cited earlier that the rate of joint legal custody doubled in response to informal changes in the attitudes of divorce professionals; that parenting time allocations for fathers in Washington, Wisconsin, and Arizona recently greatly increased despite no formal change in statutes or guidelines; and that fathers’ parenting time increased when the parents attended parent education, in which instructors typically explain

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that courts desire to keep both parents involved in the child’s life. It may also account for Douglas’s (2003) finding that in Maine, 90% of families have joint legal custody, though there is nothing in statute to encourage it. Empirical evidence that it is communication from their lawyers in particular that may be important in leading most fathers to not pursue their preferences for physical custody and parenting time comes from a study of Family Law attorneys attending an Arizona State Bar convention (Braver, Cookston, & Cohen, 2002). A custody scenario was distributed in which the lawyers were asked to imagine they represented either the mother or the father, randomly assigned. The facts of the case advantaged neither parent, but findings showed that attorneys would advise mothers more than fathers that they would likely prevail in seeking physical custody and the majority of parenting time. The same attorneys were also asked about ‘‘the slant of the Arizona legal system regarding divorced parents.’’ The results are depicted by the black bars in Figure 7.1. Only 35% thought the system was not gender-biased, while most saw it as substantially biased in favor of mothers. These views did not differ by attorney gender or by whether they primarily represented mothers or fathers. Dotterweich and McKinney (2000) also obtained evidence that attorneys in Maryland, Missouri, Texas, and Washington thought judges preferred to award custody to mothers. Lawyers’ advice may be realistic. Stamps (2002), querying judges themselves in four southern states, found that most indeed had a maternal preference. But even if judges were completely gender-neutral, lawyers’ views can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. As one commentator quoted in Newsweek’s (2008) article ‘‘Not Your Dad’s Divorce’’ explained, ‘‘The lawyers are telling them, ‘You can’t fight this, you won’t get it, and it will Citizens

Attorneys

.60 .50

Proportion

.40 .30 .20 .10 .00 Very slanted in favor of mothers

Somewhat slanted in favor of mothers

Slanted toward neither mothers nor fathers

Somewhat slanted in favor of fathers

Very slanted in favor of fathers

Figure 7.1 Perceived Slant of the Arizona Legal System Regarding Divorced Parents. Source: From ‘‘Experiences of Family Law Attorneys with Current Issues in Divorce Practice,’’ by S. L. Braver, J. T. Cookston, and B. Cohen, 2002, Family Relations, 51(4), pp. 325–334. Copyright 2002 by Blackwell Publishing.

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cost you a lot of money and heartache. . . . [The few fathers who go on to litigate] have been told in advance they have a chance at winning because they were Mr. Mom before the divorce, or there’s an obvious problem with the mother.’’’ Braver et al. (2008) have recently found that the public also believes that today’s courts operate with a maternal preference. We asked the Tucson citizens who received the hypothetical custody case in which the parents provided equal predivorce child care how they thought parenting time would actually be allocated in ‘‘today’s courts and legal environment.’’ Whereas 75% said they would award equal parenting time in this situation, fewer than 25% thought the courts would do so. All of the others thought that mothers would be awarded most of the parenting time. We also asked citizens the ‘‘slant’’ question that Braver et al. (2002) used with attorneys. As can be seen in the white bars in Figure 7.1, only 16% saw the system as unbiased. Citizens actually saw the system as more biased than did attorneys. Thus, even without advice from attorneys, such a widespread view of judicial bias among the public can lead fathers to not pursue their preferences for custody and parenting time. Summary. The empirical evidence is clear that the majority of fathers (and their children) desire more parenting time, but mothers tend to oppose it. The reason fathers do not bargain harder for it is due to the guidance they receive from professionals, and their own widespread belief that the system has a maternal bias. The above reality appears to prevail despite overwhelming public opinion that equal living arrangements are actually best for children, and despite the desires of a great many of the children for such arrangements. Courts and legislatures need to be well informed about the prevailing cultural norms of parenting and public opinion about custody, and they usually will wish to make policy that fits harmoniously with the zeitgeist, unless the public wants a policy that will not achieve the desired best interests of children or will have unintended consequences. Thus, policy makers need to also be acquainted with the best available empirical evidence about what works best for children and families. We turn next to the behavioral science evidence. We begin with the most direct evidence, studies that provide comparisons of various de jure custody and parenting time arrangements. EMPIRICAL COMPARISONS OF CUSTODY AND PARENTING TIME ARRANGEMENTS In 2002, Bauserman published a comprehensive meta-analytic review of all the previous research comparing joint vs. sole custody. This review included 11 published and 22 unpublished (almost all doctoral dissertations) studies, comprising 1,846 sole-custody and 814 joint-custody children altogether. His category of ‘‘joint custody’’ included arrangements of joint physical custody as well as sole maternal physical but joint legal custody. Across all the studies, he found that children in joint custody were significantly better off than those

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in sole custody (and about as well off as those in which the parents remained married), in terms of general adjustment, family relationships, self-esteem, emotional and behavioral adjustment, and divorce-specific adjustment. The effect size was ‘‘slightly greater than what would be considered a small effect size’’ (p. 95). The joint legal custody cases showed very similar benefits to that of the joint physical custody cases. Since both types of joint involved a ‘‘substantial proportion of time actually spent living with each parent’’ (p. 93), the results were concluded to apply to high amounts of parenting time, as well as the specific label given to the custody arrangement. These results are indeed probative for families that seek and/or readily agree to joint custody (either legal or physical), as did those summarized in the meta-analysis. It appears conclusive that for such families, empirical evidence strongly supports that such an arrangement will promote benefits or at least not harm families and should be endorsed. As Bauserman (2002) concludes, ‘‘courts should not discourage parents from attempting joint custody’’ (p. 99). ARE THESE FINDINGS GENERALIZABLE TO FAMILIES IN WHICH ARRANGEMENTS ARE IMPOSED, NOT CHOSEN?

THE

Emery, Otto, and O’Donohue (2005) noted that it is questionable whether those same benefits will accrue by imposing joint custody on less-thanwilling families, because those families who have chosen it in the past may be different in important ways from other families, and those differences may account for children’s better outcomes. Bauserman (2002) acknowledged that self-selection bias and confounding remains a plausible rival hypothesis. Incontrovertible support that imposing an(y) arrangement will have intended effects would require an experiment in which families were assigned at random to one of the various arrangements and then compared (Ramsey & Kelly, 2006). Of course, there is no such research, nor will there ever be. However, the viability of the self-selection hypothesis is undermined by the common situation, described earlier, in which many fathers want joint custody and would otherwise have it, but are prohibited or dissuaded from obtaining it. This ‘‘funneling’’ process, in which only a few fathers end up with the custody arrangements they desired, represents a different dynamic than the typical self-selection scenario in which people choose to engage or not in a certain behavior. To the extent that the ‘‘funnel’’ represents blanket advice from attorneys, mediators, and the like to fathers, or maternal resistance to joint custody that is not motivated by well-founded concerns about individual fathers’ parenting capabilities (Allen & Hawkins, 1999; Fagan & Barnett, 2003), then the current situation could in fact constitute a ‘‘natural experiment,’’ in which case the beneficial outcomes may be suggestive evidence of a causal role of joint custody. We currently cannot determine with certainty whether the well-documented benefits associated with joint physical custody are caused by joint custody, or represent self-selection, though we believe that the self-selection hypothesis should be viewed with a new sense of skepticism.

Empirical Comparisons of Custody and Parenting Time Arrangements 215

RESEARCH APPROACHES THAT ENABLE GENERALIZATION Statistical Controls for Predisposing Factors. Notwithstanding, there are three useful approaches that have been attempted or referred to in the literature as a means of correcting for selection bias, or otherwise determining the causal effects of custody and parenting time arrangements per se. One of these is the use of statistical controls, in which predisposing differences are statistically held constant by partialing or covarying them out (Campbell & Stanley, 1963). Differences that remain after such partialing can be interpreted as the differences that would be present if the two groups of families had been equal on the predisposing factors. However, this approach is successful only to the extent that all the variables (and only the variables) that truly are self-selection factors are adequately measured and partialed. Only one study in the literature, Gunnoe and Braver (2001), made a serious attempt to control for all self-selection factors in its comparison of joint legal custody to sole maternal legal custody. They assessed a random sample of 254 recently separated, not-yet-divorced families on 71 predivorce variables that might plausibly differentiate between families later awarded joint legal vs. sole maternal custody. Twenty of these did in fact empirically distinguish the two types of families, and all 20 were simultaneously controlled for in comparison of the families 2 years postdivorce. Results showed that even after such equating, children in families with joint legal custody had significantly fewer adjustment problems than those in sole maternal legal custody. Differentiating on the Basis of Parents’ Initial Preferences. A second approach that can yield the information needed to inform decision makers about the wisdom of imposing a certain parenting arrangement on families where one parent is inclined against it is to differentiate families in terms of what parenting arrangements each of the parents preferred early in their divorce proceedings, before the decree was final. Such analyses can distinguish the families in which both parents initially agreed to a certain parenting arrangement and thus presumably volunteered for it, from families in which the parents had differing initial preferences and one or both ultimately had an arrangement that in some sense or another was imposed unwillingly upon them. Such an analysis requires a prospective longitudinal study in which participating families are assessed first during the period between when the divorce is sought and before it becomes final, and again later, after the provisions have been in effect for some time. Only two studies meet this criterion. Braver and O’Connell (1998) report that in about one-third of families in their random sample, both parents initially preferred joint legal custody (and generally later had it awarded). Of the remaining initially conflicted families, 23% obtained the joint legal custody status the father preferred but the mother initially objected to, and 77% got the sole maternal legal custody status the mother preferred, while the father didn’t get the joint legal order he desired. Results showed that when the father got the joint legal custody he wanted over mother’s initial objection, he paid more child support and had more later contact with the child than when the mother got the sole legal she wanted over father’s initial objection, and, surprisingly, even more than when the two parents agreed to joint legal.

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Maccoby and Mnookin (1992) also gathered data on their sample at the predecree interview about initial preferences (‘‘what he or she would personally like in terms of residential [and legal] custody, regardless of what in fact had been or would be requested in the legal proceedings,’’ p. 99). Although this sample was followed for several years, and several articles (e.g., Buchanan, Maccoby, & Dornbusch, 1991; Maccoby, Depner, & Mnookin, 1990;) and a monograph (Buchanan, Maccoby, & Dornbusch, 1996) have been written about later outcomes for the family including child well-being, the authors have not as yet performed analyses similar to those above, that can tease out the effects of various parenting arrangements that are imposed upon one of them against the initial inclination of the other. Since their data set is now available to researchers (www.socio.com/srch/summary/afda/fam 25–27.htm), perhaps such analyses will be undertaken. Suggestive evidence should be noted, however; while the vast majority of mothers initially indicated they had wanted sole maternal physical custody, children in dual residence were the ones who showed the greatest satisfaction with their parenting arrangements, and were also the best adjusted (Maccoby, Buchanan, Mnookin, & Dornbusch, 1993). If granting fathers’ preference for joint physical custody while contravening mother’s physical custody desire had been at all deleterious, such an advantage for dual residence should not have appeared. Moreover, the advantage of dual residence remained even after statistically controlling, as described earlier, for such predisposing factors as education, income, and initial levels of interparental hostility. Natural Experiment. The third approach is the ‘‘natural experiment’’ approach, where either law, policy, or professional norms change, and the typical parenting arrangement award in the jurisdiction changes rather suddenly in response. Such an occurrence can illuminate the policy question of the projected effect of imposing a certain parenting arrangement on families, since it is implausible to assume that parents’ average proclivity to prefer a certain arrangement changes as rapidly. Thus, any changes found in outcomes are almost certainly not due to selection bias, but instead to the power of the imposed rule. What such a study would require is grouped data about family outcomes from a sample with the old regime and comparative data from a like sample soon afterward.2 Unfortunately, we could locate no completed studies of parenting arrangements using such a design. This is particularly unsatisfying given the opportunities presented by quick changes seemingly regularly introduced in family policy by courts and lawmakers. While Weitzman (1985) purports to be a study of the effects of a legal shift to no-fault divorce, and Maccoby and Mnookin (1992) purport to study the California legislature’s adoption of joint custody, on closer inspection neither exploration has the necessary data to convincingly evaluate the respective 2. Care must be taken here that rival hypotheses, such as sudden and concomitant economic changes, are implausible. When such factors remain plausible, closely matched control samples that share that change but not the rule change aid causal interpretation. Relatively longer time passage between the two samples also increases the plausibility of the rival hypotheses.

Research on Parenting Time After Divorce 217

policies. However, a rare new opportunity is provided by Australia, which we later discuss further. It might appear that a similar ‘‘natural experiment’’ exists when various jurisdictions are compared, for example, one that has recently passed a new rule vs. another still using the old rule. In the only such study in the literature, Douglas (2003) attempted to use such an occurrence to evaluate New Hampshire’s introduction in 1982 of a presumption in favor of joint legal custody. Using data from several counties more than a decade later, she found that 93% of respondents reported indeed having obtained joint legal custody. She compared father involvement in New Hampshire to father involvement in Maine, where no such presumption existed, but found no difference. On further reflection, she noted that Maine was ‘‘likely a poor comparison state, as 90% of families in this state also had joint legal custody, even though there is no stated presumption’’ (Douglas, 2006, p. 134). In general, it is also likely that jurisdictions may be unmatched on many demographic and other variables, rendering futile the attempt to equate on predisposing factors. To the best of our knowledge, there are also no studies about de jure parenting time schedules (exclusive of custody arrangements) that take any of these three approaches. That is, no studies exist of which we are aware that compare alternative de jure parenting time arrangements, after controlling in any way for predisposing factors. Thus, despite the currency and urgency of the question, the empirical research provides limited guidance to decision makers about the wisdom of imposing any particular parenting time schedule on families where one parent opposes it. However, there is a great deal of research that we discuss next about de facto, ‘‘naturally’’ developing, parenting time arrangements (some reviewed in Chapter 6). These studies do not equate families on predisposing factors, and thus are not definitive about likely outcomes if the same arrangement is imposed. We begin with the two issues about which there is consensus in the research, practice, and policy communities: That children normally benefit from having a good relationship with both parents, and that at least some parenting time with the father is required for such a relationship to develop and be maintained. RESEARCH ON PARENTING TIME AFTER DIVORCE The evidence now available that children in divorced families benefit from rich relationships with both their residential and their nonresidential parents leaves little room for debate. For example, in their meta-analysis, Amato and Gilbreth (1999) found that children’s well-being was significantly enhanced when their relationships with nonresident fathers were positive, and when the nonresident fathers engaged in ‘‘active parenting.’’ A number of studies have found that nonresident fathers’ active involvement in routine everyday activities benefited their children (Clarke-Stewart & Hayward, 1996; Dunn, Cheng, O’Connor, & Bridges, 2004; Hetherington, Bridges, & Insabella, 1998; Simons, Whitbeck, Beaman, & Conger (1994). Nord, Brimhall, and West (1997) found that these included academic benefits such as better grades,

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fewer suspensions, and lower dropout rates. In their consensus statement on behalf of 18 expert researchers, Lamb, Sternberg, and Thompson (1997) summarized that: [P]ost-divorce arrangements should aim to promote the maintenance of relationships between nonresidential parents and their children. . . . The majority of children experiencing parental divorce express the desire to maintain relationships with both of their parents after separation. (p. 400)

Not only is it generally recognized within the research community that some parenting time with the father benefits the child, this belief is formally recognized in much public policy. Thus, 26 states’ custody statutes declare that ‘‘frequent and continuing contact’’ with both parents is in the child’s interests and a foundation of their custody policy (Douglas, 2006). The policy of going further by inserting the ‘‘friendly parent’’ provision (which specifies that an advantage in a custody dispute should go to the parent who is more likely to allow ‘‘frequent and continuing contact’’ with the child and the other parent) into their custody statute is also ‘‘widespread and routinely applied throughout the United States’’ (Dore, 2004, p. 43). Aside from benefits to the child, the parent’s right to have at least some access to his child is ‘‘generally considered to be constitutionally grounded . . . [it is] extremely rare’’ for a court not to grant it (Ellman, Scott, & Kurtz, 1998, p. 685). The most important questions for decision makers include: (a) how much parenting time is necessary or sufficient to achieve its benefit, and (b) what should parenting time policy be when the parents are embroiled in substantial conflict? We contend that answering another question first leads to greater clarity about the first two questions: (c) how does father–child contact achieve its beneficial impact on children? This question requires valid measurement of the amount of contact and clear distinctions between the quality and quantity of father involvement. We explore these two preliminary issues in the next section, followed by a summary of the findings about parenting time, father–child relationships, and child outcomes. Then we return to the discussion of questions 1 and 2. MEASURING DE FACTO FATHER–CHILD CONTACT AFTER DIVORCE Several earlier influential studies based on large national data sets found little or no relationship between frequency of contact and child well-being (e.g., Furstenberg, Morgan, & Allison, 1987; King, 1994; McLanahan, Seltzer, Hanson, & Thomson, 1994), leading to continued skepticism expressed by some researchers about benefits to children associated with amount of contact with their nonresidential fathers (e.g., Hawkins, Amato, & King, 2007; Stewart, 2003). However, the problem may be with the measures of father–child contact used in these data sets. Argys et al. (2007) compared six data sets and concluded that, ‘‘What is most striking about the reports of father–child contact . . . and perhaps most alarming to researchers, is the magnitude of the differences in the reported prevalence of father–child contact across the different surveys’’ (p. 383). In what follows, we discuss

Research on Parenting Time After Divorce 219

why these measures might be so unreliable, and offer solutions to the measurement problem. Four of the six surveys analyzed by Argys et al. (2007), as well as other prominent surveys3 and recent studies (e.g., Coley & Medeiros, 2007) employ ordinal category scales that ask how many times father–child contact has occurred (e.g., ‘‘once a week,’’ ‘‘one to three times a month’’). Ordinal category scales poorly represent amount of parenting time. In practice, it is difficult to tell if respondents report number of visits or number of days. For example, every other weekend at the father’s home could be reported as ‘‘one to three times a month’’ if respondents count it as two visits, or ‘‘once a week’’ if they count it as 4 days. As a measure of number of days, the scale is not interval. For example, Table 7.1 shows the average percentage of days of contact represented by each of the categories of the widely used National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979. Following Argys et al. (2007), these percentages are based on the midpoint of each category (e.g., ‘‘one to three times a month’’ ¼ 24/365 days a year ¼ 6.6%). There are narrow gaps between adjacent categories at the lower end of the scale, and wide gaps at the upper end. Furthermore, increases in parenting time between ‘‘once a week,’’ or 14.2%, and ‘‘two to five times a week,’’ or 50%, are likely to be the most potent for conferring benefits, but the wide gap obscures the levels at which these benefits might accrue, reducing the guidance that can be provided to courts and policy makers. As a measure of number of visits, the scale would not even be ordinal with respect to parenting time if extended visits in lower categories resulted in more yearly parenting time than shorter visits in higher categories. For example, one visit per year could represent more parenting time than one visit per month if the former lasted all summer and the latter lasted just the weekends. Ordinal category scales were actually designed to measure frequency of visits, rather than amount of parenting time. The designers of these scales apparently viewed visits as brief ‘‘reminders,’’ to be measured by the frequency (per year, month, week, or day) with which they occurred. More frequent visits do not necessarily entail greater amounts of time, because amount of time equals the product of frequency and length of visits. Nevertheless, it is common for researchers to draw conclusions about amount of parenting time from data collected with ordinal category scales. More frequent visits do entail more transitions between parents; thus, researchers should more properly draw conclusions about number of transitions rather than amount of parenting time when using ordinal category scales. Because many of the studies that have found weak or inconsistent relations between father–child contact and child outcomes used ordinal category scales, the findings may tell us more about the effects of transitions than parenting time. Future research may be able to tease apart effects of amount of parenting time and number of transitions. In some studies (Johnston, Kline & Tschann, 1989; 3. These include the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH87, NSFH92; Sweet, Bumpass, & Call, 1988), Britain’s Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children 1991 (ALSPAC91; Golding, 1996), and Canada’s National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth 1994–1995 (NLSCY94; Juby et al., 2007).

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Kline, Tschann, Johnston, & Wallerstein, 1989) the two have been substantially correlated, with r’s ranging from about 0.45 to 0.65, but not in others (Clarke-Stewart & Hayward, 1996). New measures of amount of parenting time are needed that have good psychometric properties and that are sensitive to different parenting time schedules (Argys et al., 2007; Smyth, 2002). One approach we recommend is to use quantitative scales that reflect the percentage of the child’s parenting time spent with the father. For example, Fabricius and Luecken (2007) asked young adults four questions about the typical number of days and nights they spent with their fathers during the school year and vacations.4 Fabricius and Braver (2003) provide an example of the utility of a similar scale for identifying the amount of parenting time at which changes in the rates of fathering behaviors occur. Smyth (2004) describes the telephone survey designed by the Australian Institute of Family Studies to reveal not only the amount of parenting time, but also the different schedules parents and children followed. Another approach we urge is to use qualitative category scales (e.g., ‘‘some time,’’ ‘‘a moderate amount of time’’). A qualitative category can capture different parenting time schedules that yield similar yearly amounts of parenting time. Fabricius and Luecken (2007) showed that the qualitative living arrangements (LA) scale developed by Fabricius and Hall (2000)5 had good test–retest reliability (r ¼ 0.86), and that reports from matched pairs of young adults and parents correlated highly (r ¼ 0.92) and were nearly identical in terms of mean levels. Using data from 582 young adults in that study who completed both the LA and the quantitative scales, we calculated the mean percent of the child’s parenting time with the father for each LA category.6 As shown in Table 7.1, the LA categories were well distributed from lower levels to higher levels of parenting time (for simplicity, we combined the father–residence categories). Thus, the categories are readily interpretable, and can provide practical guidance to courts and policy makers regarding the levels of parenting time that may be associated with increases in child well-being. 4. ‘‘Considering the most typical living arrangement you had after the divorce, what was (a) the number of days you spent any time at all with your father in an average 2-week period during the school year [0 to 14]? (b) the number of overnights (i.e., sleepovers) you spent with your father in an average 2-week period during the school year [0 to 14]? (c) the number of school vacation weeks out of 15 (Christmas ¼ 2 weeks, spring ¼ 1 week, summer ¼ 12 weeks) during which your time with your father was different from what it was during the school year [0 to 15]? And (d) the percentage of time you spent with your father during those vacation weeks above that were different from the regular schedule [0% to 100% in 10% increments]?’’ 5. ‘‘Between the time [your parents/you] got divorced and now, which of the following best describes [your/your child’s] living arrangements?’’ The 1–9 response scale is described in Footnote 1. 6. We counted an overnight visit as a full day, a daytime visit as a half-day, and a day during vacation as a full day. Referring to variables (a) – (d) in Footnote 4, the number of half-days per week (D) ¼ (a  b)/2. The number of full days per week during the school year (S) ¼ b/2. The number of full days per week during ‘‘different’’ weeks (V) ¼ d  7. Yearly percent of time with father ¼ (D  .5  (52 – c)) þ (S  (52 – c)) þ (V  c)/365.

Research on Parenting Time After Divorce 221 Table 7.1 Mean Percentage of Days of Father–Child Contact Represented by the Categories in Two Scales NLSY79 category Once in last year

% of total year this translates to

Fabricius and Luecken (2007) living arrangements (LA) category:

0.3%

Lived with mother, saw father

% of total year this translates to

2–6 times a year

1.1%

minimally/not at all

4.6%

7–11 times a year

2.5%

some

13.3%

1–3 times a month

6.6%

a moderate amount

22.3%

About once a week

14.2%

a lot

34.3%

2–5 times a week

50.0%

Lived with both equally

44.8%

Almost every day

92.6%

Lived with father

75.2%

CONCEPTUALIZING AND MODELING OF FATHER INVOLVEMENT

THE

QUALITY

AND

QUANTITY

Sophisticated discussion of the question of how much parenting time is necessary or sufficient to achieve its benefit depends on having models that incorporate theoretically informed, rather than intuitive, distinctions between quantity and quality of father involvement, and that specify processes by which those aspects of involvement affect child well-being. In what follows, we first briefly illustrate the lack of consensus about what constitutes high quality father involvement. We then present a model based on our research that specifies processes by which the quantity and quality of fathering relate to parenting time and child adjustment. Although there have been calls to improve conceptualization of father involvement (e.g., Hawkins & Palkovitz, 1999; Marsiglio, Day, & Lamb, 2000; Palkovitz, 2002), there is currently no agreement on the construct of highquality father involvement (Argys et al., 2007). Furthermore, measures are often constrained by the items available in data sets that were not designed on the basis of any theory of father involvement. Table 7.2 (left side) illustrates the divergence of approaches in four recent studies. Both Sobolewski and King (2005) and Stewart (2003) have a similar construct of relationship quality, but use different types of items to tap it. Sobolewski and King used three items about the child’s feelings about the father or the relationship, and one about the father’s behavior toward the child. Stewart used three items about activities father and child do together. Conversely, the same types of items often appear in different constructs, sometimes within the same study. For example, shared activities or spending time together is an indicator of both relationship quality and authoritative parenting in Stewart, active fathering in Hawkins et al. (2007), and father–child positivity in Dunn et al. (2004). Items for shared activities or spending time together do not appear at all in Sobolewski and King. Researchers who have constructed their own scales also employ different sets of constructs; e.g., instrumental, expressive, and mentoring involvement

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Table 7.2 Constructs and Items in Four Studies of High-Quality Father Involvement and the Dimensions They Would Indicate in Adolescents’ Descriptions of Their Relationships With Their Parents Study, Construct and Items

IN

RE

EQ

Sobolewski & King (2005) Father–child relationship quality Likely you would talk to father

x

Admire father

x

Overall relationship

x

Father praised or complained

x

Responsive fathering Father explains reasons

x

Father talks over decisions

x

Father changed mind because of child’s ideas

x

Stewart (2003) Relationship quality Went shopping together

x

Played a sport together

x

Went to movie, play, museum, concert, sports event

x

Authoritative parenting Worked together on school project

x

Talked about import personal or school issues

x

Closeness to father How close do you feel to father

x

Dunn et al. (2004) Child–father positivity Enjoyment of father

x

Warmth in relationship

x

Confiding Time spent together

x x

Child–father conflict Level of punishment

x

Levels of parent and child upset

x

Frequency of disagreement

x

Hawkins, Amato, & King (2007) Active fathering Contact

–

Shared activities

x

Communication Emotional closeness IN ¼ Interaction; RE ¼ Responsiveness; EQ ¼ Emotional Quality of the Relationship

–

–

x x

Research on Parenting Time After Divorce 223

(Finley & Schwartz, 2004), executive, socio-emotional, caregiving, and instructive functions (Fox & Bruce, 1996), and cognitive, emotional, parenting, and instrumental competence (Coley & Hernandez, 2006). The constructs in these different scales do not overlap, in terms of having similar types of items as indicators;for example, the indicators of parenting competence in Coley and Hernandez are indicators of all three constructs in Finley and Schwartz In our own longitudinal study of the role of fathers in adolescent development, we sought to discover the dimensions of father involvement that young adolescents themselves see as important, because those aspects should carry meaning to adolescents about their fathers’ caring. We recruited 393 families with a 7th grader, equally divided between Anglo-American and MexicanAmerican families, and between intact and stepfather families (see Baham, Weimer, Braver, & Fabricius, 2008, and Schenck et al., in press, for sample details). We asked them to describe their relationship with each of their parents in open-ended interviews7 when they were in 7th and 10th grade. Adolescents generally produced 150 to 200 words about each parent (resident mother, resident biological father, resident stepfather, and nonresident biological father). Regardless of which parent they described, adolescents at both ages spontaneously evaluated their relationships with their parents along three dimensions: 1. Interaction between parent and child, which refers to the amount of time the parent spends doing things with the child (e.g., ‘‘She does a lot with us.’’ ‘‘Sometimes he’ll take me out to basketball.’’ ‘‘Most of the time we really don’t spend time with each other.’’). 2. Responsiveness of the parent, which refers to the reliability of the parent’s responsiveness to the child’s requests or needs, including talking with or helping the child (e.g., ‘‘He’s always there for me.’’ ‘‘He tries not to ignore me.’’ ‘‘When I ask for help, she’s always too busy’’). 3. Emotional quality of the relationship, which refers to the positive or negative emotions in the relationship (e.g., ‘‘He can make me feel better.’’ ‘‘She’s nice but she can be mean.’’ ‘‘He yells at me a lot.’’). Working from transcripts of recordings, coders reliably (r’s generally > 0.85) classified statements into the three dimensions and rated each statement as a positive, neutral, or negative evaluation (coding criteria available from the first author). Adolescents seldom referred to other parent 7. ‘‘I’d like you to take a few moments to think more about your (target parent). [Q1] Tell me everything you can think of about your (target parent). Think of anything you want to say about who he is, what he likes to do, his work, anything like that. Say whatever comes to your mind. [Q2]. Now, think of your relationship with your (target parent): how he treats you, what he does for you, how he talks to you, and about the time he spends with you. Tell me what kind of person he is and how you two get along together. Try to think of all of those things and think of it as the story of your (target parent) and your relationship with him. [Q3]. What else can you tell me about your (target parent) and your relationship with him? [Q4]. Think now of any changes in your relationship with your (target parent), or if the relationship has changed over the past few years. Tell me about that, and if the changes have been good ones or bad ones.’’

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behaviors, such as discipline, monitoring, teaching values, or economic provisioning, although these could also be reliably coded. Table 7.2 shows how the various items that other researchers have used to assess the quality of father involvement would be represented by these three dimensions. Thus, adolescents spontaneously distinguished between the quantity of time their parents spent interacting or doing activities with them, and the quality of their interactions in terms of the reliability of the parent’s responsiveness. They also distinguished these two aspects from the emotional climate of the relationship. These three dimensions of parent involvement are notable for their similarity to the central constructs in attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969), in which parent availability and responsiveness to the child both contribute to the security of the child’s emotional connection to the parent, and ultimately to the development of healthy independence. Parent availability and responsiveness convey meaning to the child about the parent’s caring. Figure 7.2 shows our conceptual model relating these dimensions to parenting time and child adjustment. The model distinguishes between the quantity (father–child interaction) and the quality (father responsiveness) of father involvement, and specifies their theoretical roles in mediating between parenting time and adjustment. Father–child interaction and father responsiveness should independently predict the emotional security of the relationship. Parenting time should impact interaction rather than responsiveness, because parenting time sets upper limits on the amount of interaction, but should not constrain the father’s ability to respond when asked or approached. The effects of parenting time on adjustment should be mediated by amount of interaction and the emotional security of the relationship. These hypothesized processes were supported in several preliminary tests of this model using reports from 7th graders about their nonresident fathers. First, parenting time in the past year, as reported by adolescents and mothers using a quantitative scale similar to the one in Footnote 4, correlated significantly with interaction (adolescents, r ¼ 0.41; mothers, r ¼ 0.38), but not with responsiveness. This suggests that parenting time does not elicit responsiveness, and that responsive fathers were not the ones who had more parenting time. Second, father–child interaction mediated the association between parenting time and the emotional quality of the father–child relationship, and the emotional quality of the relationship mediated associations between both interaction and responsiveness and adolescent Parenting

Father–Child

Time

Interaction Father

Father–Child

Child

Relationship

Outcomes

Security

Responsiveness

Figure 7.2 Conceptual Model Relating Parenting Time to Quantity and Quality of Father Involvement, Father–Child Relationship Security, and Child Outcomes.

De Facto Parenting Time, the Father–Child Relationship, and Child Outcomes 225

adjustment, as measured by parent and teacher reports of internalizing and externalizing. Finally, interaction and responsiveness compensated for each other in predicting the emotional quality of the relationship. Adolescents who reported the closest relationships with their nonresidential fathers had either highly responsive fathers (regardless of amount of interaction), or at least moderate amounts of interaction (regardless of father responsiveness). Other research in related fields is beginning to specify in some detail the processes by which parent–child relationships serve as sources of risk and resilience. Disrupted parent–child relationships are hypothesized to cause emotional insecurity in children regarding their parents’ love and ability to care for them (e.g., Davies & Cummings, 1994; Troxel & Mathews, 2004; Wolchik, Tein, Sandler, & Doyle, 2002) and to disrupt children’s emotional regulation processes, thereby establishing enduring dysregulations in children’s physiological stress responses, promoting pathophysiology in the brain and body (McEwen & Wingfield, 2003) and contributing not only to behavior problems (El-Sheikh et al., 2009) but also to hypertension, heart disease, infectious diseases, and other illnesses (Markovitz & Matthews, 1991). These biopsychosocial models hold promise, in conjunction with improved measures of parenting time and father involvement, for revealing how parenting time can affect children of divorce in the long term. DE FACTO PARENTING TIME, THE FATHER–CHILD RELATIONSHIP, AND CHILD OUTCOMES Some early researchers noted associations between father–child contact and father–child relationships, but in general researchers in the past were more focused on associations between contact and other outcomes, such as child internalizing and externalizing symptoms. One early exception, Buchanan et al. (1996), found that adolescents whose parents divorced in 1985–1986 and who had four or more overnights in a 2-week period (28% time) were ‘‘equally happy, if not happier, with their relationships’’ with both parents (p. 72), and were more satisfied with the amount of contact than those in sole (mother or father) residence. Among adolescents in sole mother residence, those with some parenting time (i.e., vacations only and no overnights, one overnight per 2-week period, two or three overnights) were closer to their fathers than those who had little or no parenting time. Recent studies using ordinal category scales (Dunn, et al., 2004; King, 2006; Sobolewski & King, 2005) find strong associations between frequency of contact and father–child relationship quality. Notably, Aquilino (2006) found that frequent contact during adolescence was the most important predictor, among other measures of father involvement, of close relationships with fathers in young adulthood. Cashmore, Parkinson, and Taylor (2008) found that overnight stays were associated with better quality father–adolescent relationships than daytime-only contact. Peters and Ehrenberg (2008) found that contact predicted higher levels of affective, nurturing fathering, which was likely an indication of father–adolescent closeness. Fabricius (2003) reported that more parenting time was associated with young adults feeling

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closer to, and less angry at their nonresidential fathers, and Luecken and Fabricius (2003) reported similar findings with a measure of perception of parental caring during childhood. Our model specifies that effects of parenting time on father–child relationships, and ultimately on child outcomes, are mediated by quantity of interaction. Struss, Pfeiffer, Preuss, and Felder (2001) found that quantity of interaction during visits predicted adolescents’ positive feelings about visiting, and Clarke-Stewart and Hayward (1996) found that quantity of interaction, as well as frequency and length of visits, was related to the father– child relationship. Consistent with the mediational role of interactions, studies (Buchanan & Maccoby, 1993; Clarke-Stewart & Hayward, 1996; Kurdek & Berg, 1983) have found that quantity of interaction predicted children’s adjustment better than did parenting time. Simons, et al. (1994) and Amato (1994) were the first to find beneficial effects of close relationships with nonresidential fathers on children’s wellbeing independent of closeness to mothers. Recently, White and Gilbreth (2001) and Manning and Lamb (2003) also controlled for closeness to mothers and found that adolescents’ closeness to nonresident fathers was associated with fewer behavior problems and higher academic success. Mediational models that move beyond simple, direct associations between parenting time and child adjustment have begun appearing with some frequency. Buchanan et al. (1996) and Clarke-Stewart and Hayward (1996) were the first to discuss visitation, father–child relationships, and child adjustment as a mediational chain. They noted that amount of visitation was related to closeness, and close relationships were related to positive outcomes, but amount of visitation was not directly related to positive outcomes. Amato and Gilbreth’s (1999) meta-analysis confirmed that two dimensions of the father–child relationship (i.e., closeness, and father behaviors such as listening to the child’s problems, giving advice, explaining rules, monitoring and helping with school work, engaging in projects, and using noncoercive discipline) were more closely related to child outcomes than frequency of contact, but they did not examine relations between frequency of contact and those dimensions of the father–child relationship. Whiteside and Becker’s (2000) meta-analysis found evidence between studies that closeness of father–child relationships mediated the effect of frequency of contact on child internalizing. However, they did not control for the mother–child relationship or parent conflict. Amato and Sobolewski (2001) were the first to test directly the mediational role of parent–child relationships. In their model, the predictors were divorce and parent conflict (rather than parenting time), and the outcome was well-being in adulthood. The three candidate mediators were children’s socioeconomic attainment, their marital and relationship stability, and the quality of their relationships with their parents in adulthood. Quality of relationships was the only significant mediator, and father–child and mother–child relationships had independent effects. King and Sobolewski (2006) modeled the mediational role of father–child relationships, controlling for mother–child relationships, in the connection between frequency of contact and adolescent well-being. Results revealed that there was a significant indirect effect of frequent contact

How Much Parenting Time Is Necessary to Achieve Benefits for Children? 227

on adolescent well-being, and that the beneficial effect of contact was not restricted to close father–child relationships. Although it has sometimes been hypothesized, there is no evidence that mother–child relationships suffer at higher levels of parenting time. Instead, mother–child relationships remain constant as fathers’ parenting time increases. Buchanan et al. (1996) reported this was true across their four visitation categories within sole mother residence, and Lee (2002) reported that it extended as well to dual residence as defined by Buchanan et al. Fabricius (2003) and Luecken and Fabricius (2003) reported similar findings, and also reported that as parenting time approached equal, relations with both parents were equally good and resembled those in intact families. HOW MUCH PARENTING TIME IS NECESSARY TO ACHIEVE BENEFITS FOR CHILDREN? We are now in a position to draw conclusions concerning the amount of parenting time necessary to achieve a high-quality father–child relationship, which in turn confers its benefits on child outcomes. We agree with most current writers (Kelly, 2007; Lamb, 2004) that the weight of the evidence argues that the current minimum alternating weekend visitation is, in the typical case, too little. First, these parenting time arrangements are largely disdained by the children themselves, especially as they age and get perspective (Fabricius & Hall, 2000; Fabricius, 2003; Laumann-Billings & Emery, 2000; Parkinson et al., 2005; Smith & Gallop, 2001). Considering the dissatisfaction of the children and the fathers, and the rates at which fathers dropped out of children’s lives and minimized their financial support, any fair assessment of the parenting time patterns of the 1970s is that ‘‘they haven’t worked.’’ There is strong evidence, backed by theory, for relations between contact (even as measured by ordinal category scales) and father–child relationships. And there is strong evidence, backed by theory, for relations between parent–child relationships and child outcomes. These findings show benefits up to and including equal parenting time, and there is no evidence that increased parenting for fathers negatively impacts mother–child relationships or mothers’ well-being, but there is evidence that lack of parenting time negatively impacts fathers (Umberson & Williams, 1993). In the statement that summarized the consensus of 18 expert researchers, Lamb, Sternberg, and Thompson (1997) wrote that: To maintain high-quality relationships with their children, parents need to have sufficiently extensive and regular interaction with them. Time distribution arrangements that ensure the involvement of both parents in important aspects of their children’s everyday lives and routines—including bedtime and waking rituals, transitions to and from school, extracurricular and recreational activities—are likely to keep nonresidential parents playing psychologically important and central roles in the lives of their children.

This includes significant time during the regular school week. An emerging consensus is developing (Lamb, 2004; Braver & O’Connell, 1998) that a

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minimum of one-third time is necessary to achieve these criteria and that additional benefits continue to accrue up to and including equal (50–50) time. CUSTODY AND PARENTING TIME WHEN THERE IS HIGH CONFLICT One of the areas of greatest debate in the literature concerns parenting time and custody when there is high conflict between parents.8 It is not disputed that high amounts of conflict between the parents are deleterious to their children (Davies & Cummings, 1994; Emery, 1982; Grych & Fincham, 1990; Krishnakumar & Beuhler, 2000). Instead, what is under debate concerns the amount of parenting time that is advisable when the conflict level is high. Some early studies (Amato & Rezac, 1994; Hetherington, Cox, & Cox, 1978) found that more frequent contact in high-conflict families was related to poorer child outcomes. Johnston, Kline, and Tschann (1989) found that among the very high-conflict families entrenched in custody disputes that composed their sample, greater amounts of visitation in sole-custody arrangements were generally harmful. Such findings have led some commentators (e.g, Amato, 1993; Emery, 1999) to advocate precluding shared custody and/or limiting parenting time for the nonprimary parent when high conflict prevails. For example, Stahl (1999), in his guide for professional custody evaluators, opines ‘‘high conflict parents cannot share parenting’’ (p. 99). Similarly, Buchanan (2001) writes ‘‘when parents remain in high conflict, joint custody is . . . ill-advised’’ (p. 234). However, the previous research is in fact quite mixed on this issue. Buchanan et al. (1996) did not find that greater amounts of visitation were harmful in high-conflict families. Even Johnston et al.’s (1989) finding was restricted to sole custody families; the children in joint physical custody arrangements (in which children spent 12 to 13 days a month with their fathers) did not have worse adjustment than those in sole custody. Healy, Malley and Stewart (1990) and Kurdek (1986) found the opposite pattern, that more frequent visitation was actually associated with fewer adjustment problems when parent conflict was high. Fabricius and Luecken (2007) addressed the issue by testing one of the more comprehensive biopsychosocial models to date. They found that the long-term effects of parent conflict and parenting time on young adults’ health outcomes were mediated by young adults’ relationships with fathers and their ongoing distress surrounding their parents’ divorces. Importantly, more parenting time was beneficial to father-child relationships in both high- and low-conflict families, and served to counteract the negative effects associated with parent conflict.

8. Because of the complexity of the issue and because of space limitations, we are not including here conflict that reaches the level of physical violence. Lamb and Kelly (in press) have a good discussion of this, and reference the quickly changing consensus view observed by Jaffe, Johnston, Crooks, and Bala (2008) and Kelly and Johnson (2008) that types and duration of the physical violence must be distinguished.

Custody and Parenting Time When There Is High Conflict 229

The divergence of findings on this question may be partly explained by whether researchers measured frequency of contact, or amount of parenting time. Most researchers measured frequency of contact, and by extension, number of transitions (Amato & Rezak, 1994; Crosbie-Burnett, 1991; Healy et al., 1990; Hetherington et al., 1978; Kurdek, 1986), and those results are mixed. However, results were consistent among the three studies that measured amount of parenting time. Buchanan et al. (1996) and Fabricius and Luecken (2007) found that more parenting time was not harmful in highconflict families, and Johnston et al. (1989) found that dual residence was not harmful in families referred to court services for custody disputes. Thus, sometimes studies indicate that more transitions between conflicted parents’ homes can be harmful, presumably because they expose children to more conflict. However, there are two ways to limit transitions: One is to eliminate some visits, and the other is to combine some visits into longer, uninterrupted time periods. In the first case amount of parenting time would decrease, and in the second it would increase. The second approach remains viable—and is no doubt preferable—for high-conflict families because there is no evidence that greater amounts of parenting time are harmful for most children of conflicted parents, or that dual residence is harmful for children whose parents are involved in lengthy custody disputes. Instead, evidence suggests that father-child relationships can be strengthened through increased parenting time in high-conflict families as well as in low-conflict families, and that a warm relationship with the father or the mother can buffer or ameliorate the harmful aspects of conflict (Sandler, Miles, Cookston, & Braver, 2008; Vandewater & Lansford, 1998). There are other considerations that make questionable a policy of limiting fathers’ parenting time when high conflict prevails. First, such a policy assumes the level of conflict is exogenous, immutable, and not controllable by the parents or by the authorities, but Lamb and Kelly (in press) discuss the many interventions courts now have available to help parents reduce the level of conflict and shield children from it when it does occur, and to identify the small percentage of nonresident parents for whom limited contact is appropriate. A second concern with the policy that parenting time should be limited under high conflict is its perverse incentive and the faulty message it sends. Attorneys are thus tempted to tell parents that the safest way to ensure that the other parent’s parenting time is limited is to exaggerate the amount of conflict that occurs. Instead of giving parents an incentive to manage their conflict, the policy provides the opposite, an instigation to escalate it, with its attendant harmful impact. To see this point vividly, imagine a parent driving two children in the backseat of her car. The children are squabbling and quarreling, driving the mother to distraction. Finally, in exasperation, she pulls over, stops the car, turns around, and says: ‘‘That does it. Johnny, since you are not the ‘primary’ child, you are out of here. You are banished from the car and hereafter from the family.’’ Such a practice is ludicrous to imagine; instead, any good parent will take some action intending to quiet the conflict while retaining both children. Our policy regarding parenting time in a highconflict family should be analogous.

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Third, a blanket policy discouraging parenting time when there is high conflict fails to recognize the dynamics of the conflict. For example, Kelly and Emery (2003) argue that: [A]lthough high conflict postdivorce is generally assumed to be a shared interaction between two angry, culpable parents, our clinical, mediation, and arbitration experience in high conflict postdivorce cases indicates that it is not uncommon to find one enraged or defiant parent and a second parent who no longer harbors anger, has emotionally disengaged, and attempts to avoid or mute conflict that involves the child. (p. 353)

Hence, a decision maker ought to discern the reasons, instigation pattern, and dynamics of the conflict, not just the existence of it, in making parenting arrangement decisions. The ‘‘friendly parent’’ provision discussed earlier directs the fact finder to make just such an inquiry. Summary. The soundest conclusion to date is what Lamb and Kelly (in press) conclude: Unless it is severe or violent, ‘‘inter-parental conflict . . . should not be used to justify restrictions on children’s access to either of their parents.’’ (p. 12). IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR DECISION MAKERS We summarize the conclusions we have arrived at for custody and parenting time policy: 1. There is clear and strong public support for equal physical custody, and strong public condemnation of courts as unreasonably gender biased in their usual custody and parenting time proclivities. 2. The literature clearly supports permitting any kind of custody and parenting time arrangements to which both parents freely agree. Specifically, courts should not discourage or prevent parents from joint custody if they both desire it. 3. The literature supports the benefits of joint legal custody in most circumstances even when it is imposed over the objections of one party. Of course, there are some exceptions, such as protracted unilateral abuse (Braver & O’Connell, 1998), where it should not be ordered. 4. The outcome literature is less definitive about the desirability of mandating equal physical custody when one party opposes it. Although those in joint custody are better adjusted, strictly speaking, there is no causal evidence about the impact of mandated equal physical custody on children and the parents. However, there is reason to suspect that findings of beneficial outcomes for children in joint physical custody may not be simply due to self-selection. 5. The common finding from previous research that frequency of contact (measured by ordinal category scales) is weakly related to child outcomes should not be overextended to conclude that parenting time is weakly related to outcomes, for two reasons. First, frequency of contact

Implications for Research 231

6.

7.

8.

9.

(and number of transitions) is not the same thing as amount of parenting time, and second these earlier studies tested the zero-order correlation between contact and outcomes, rather than theoretically informed mediational models. The literature does not support a presumption that amount of parenting time should be restricted in cases of parent conflict, though for some conflicted parents the number of transitions may be harmful. While more definitive data may soon become available (see below), it is not necessary for researchers to take a firm position on mandated joint physical custody. In disputed cases, courts no longer face a black-andwhite dichotomy (sole vs. joint physical custody), but rather must direct parents to a point along a continuum of how parenting time should be distributed. In the typical family, more parenting time than the traditional alternating weekend visitation is required to achieve the well-recognized benefits of two involved parents, each with a close relationship to the child. An emerging consensus is that that a minimum of one-third time is necessary to achieve this criterion and that benefits continue to accrue as parenting time reaches equal (50–50) time. Attaining desirable changes in de jure parenting arrangement practice may not require legislation, court rulings or any other kind of official imprimatur. Since parents’ bargaining appears to be strongly affected by the informal guidance they receive from judges, custody evaluators, parent educators, and mediators, and (especially) attorneys, all that is likely required is a change in this informal professional culture of belief. We believe our review of the evidence here provides strong support for such a change. IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH

1. Research should attempt to be more clearly directed at the precise questions decision makers need to know to make the best decisions and policy on behalf of divorced families. 2. Most importantly, future research needs to use research designs that better answer the question of what arrangements should be preferred when one of the parents does not prefer it or even actively opposes it. Thus, the causal question needs better answers. Three appropriate designs were discussed: those that statistically control for predisposing (or self-selection) factors; those that condition on each parents’ initial preferences; and those that take advantage of natural experiments when policy shifts. Just such a natural experiment is presently occurring in Australia, and researchers there such as Parkinson, Smyth, and Cashmore are poised to exploit that rare opportunity. 3. Researchers need to use more sophisticated measures of parenting time that do not group the most meaningful gradations into overly coarse categories, and do not confuse amount of parenting time with frequency of contact.

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4. Researchers need to test more sophisticated theoretical models of the mediational mechanisms by which parenting time produces beneficial effects, and to move beyond simple formulations about the relative importance of quantity versus quality of father involvement. This will help answer the question of how much parenting time is enough, as well as suggest ways to improve the quality of the contact, the father–child relationship, and ultimately the family’s outcomes. 5. Researchers need to suggest better ways of dealing with postdivorce conflict between the parents, such as the program of Cookston, Braver, Griffin, DeLuse, & Miles (2007). The simple view that high amounts of conflict imply that parenting time should be minimized and shared parenting avoided produces perverse incentives for the custodial parent to maintain conflict, inhibits the child’s relationship with the other parent and thereby makes it even harder to deal with the conflict, and ignores the reality that most parents can successfully learn to minimize conflict when they are motivated to do so. REFERENCES Ackerman, M. J. (2007). Clinician’s guide to child custody evaluations (3rd ed.). New York: Wiley. Ackerman, M. J., & Ackerman, M. C. (1997) Child custody evaluation practices: A survey of experienced professionals (revisited). Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 28(2), 137–145. Allen, S. M., & Hawkins, A. J. (1999). Maternal gatekeeping: Mothers’ beliefs and behaviors that inhibit greater father involvement in family work. Journal of Marriage and Family, 61, 199–212. Amato, P. R. (1987). Children in Australian families: The growth of competence. Sydney: Prentice Hall of Australia. Amato, P. R. (1993). Children’s adjustment to divorce: Theories, hypotheses, and empirical support. Journal of Marriage and Family, 55(1), 23–38. Amato, P. R. (1994). Life-span adjustment of children to their parents’ divorce. Future of Children, 4(1), 143–164. Amato, P. R., & Gilbreth, J. G. (1999). Nonresident fathers and children’s well-being: A meta-analysis. Journal of Marriage and Family, 61, 557–573. Amato, P. R., & Rezac, S. J. (1994). Contact with nonresidential parents, interparental conflict, and children’s behavior. Journal of Family Issues, 15(2), 191–207. Amato, P. R., & Sobolewski, J. M. (2001). The effects of divorce and marital discord on adult children’s psychological well-being. American Sociological Review, 66(6), 900–921. American Law Institute (2002). § 2.08 Allocation of custodial responsibility. Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution: Analysis and Recommendations. Aquilino, W. S. (2006). The noncustodial father-child relationship from adolescence into young adulthood. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68, 929–946. Arbuthnot, J. (2002). A call unheeded: Courts’ perceived obstacles to establishing divorce education programs. Family Court Review, 40, 371–382. Argys, L. H., Peters, E.Cook, S.Garasky, S., NepomnyaschyL., & Sorensen, E. (2006). Measuring contact between children and nonresident fathers. In S. Hofferth & L. Casper (Eds.), Handbook of measurement issues in family research. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

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References 235 Emery, R. E. (1982). Interparental conflict and the children of divorce and discord. Psychological Bulletin, 92, 310–330. Emery, R. E. (1994). Renegotiating family relationships: Divorce, child custody, and mediation. New York: Guilford Press. Emery, R. E. (1999). Marriage, divorce and children’s adjustment (2nd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Emery, R. E. (2004). The truth about children and divorce: Dealing with the emotions so you and your children can thrive. New York: Viking. Emery, R. E. (2007). Rule or Rorschach? Approximating children’s best interests. Child Development Perspectives, 1, 132–134. Emery, R. E., Laumann-Billings, L., Waldron, M. C., Sbarra, D. A., & Dillon, P. (2001). Child custody mediation and litigation: Custody, contact, and coparenting 12 years after initial dispute resolution. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 69(2), 323–332. Emery, R. E., Otto, R. K., and O’Donohue, W. T. (2005). A critical assessment of child custody evaluations: Limited science and a flawed system. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 6(1), 1–29. Fabricius, W. V. (2003). Listening to children of divorce: New findings that diverge from Wallerstein, Lewis and Blakeslee. Family Relations, 52, 385–396. FabriciusW. V., & Braver, S. L. (2003). Non-child support expenditures on children by nonresidential divorced fathers. Family Court Review, 41(3), 321–336. Fabricius, W. V., & Hall, J. A. (2000). Young adults’ perspectives on divorce: Living arrangements. Family and Conciliation Courts Review, 38, 446–461. Fabricius, W. V., & Luecken, L. J. (2007). Postdivorce living arrangements, parent conflict, and long-term physical health correlates for children of divorce. Journal of Family Psychology, 21(2), 195–205. Fagan, J., & Barnett, M. (2003). The relationship between maternal gatekeeping, paternal competence, mothers’ attitudes about the father role, and father involvement. Journal of Family Issues, 24, 1020–1043. Family Law in the Fifty States Case Digests (2008). Chart 2: Custody Criteria. Family Law Quarterly, 41, 710–711. Fine, M. A., & Harvey, J. H. (2006). Divorce and relationship dissolution in the 21st century. In M. A. Fine & J. H. Harvey (Eds.). Handbook of divorce and relationship dissolution (pp. 3–11). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Finley, G. E., & Schwartz, S. J. (2004). The Father Involvement and Nurturant Fathering Scales: Retrospective measures for adolescent and adult children. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 64(1), 143–164. Finley, G. E., & Schwartz, S. J. (2007). Father involvement and long-term young adult outcomes: The differential contributions of divorce and gender. Family Court Review, 45, 573–587. Folberg, J. (1991). Custody overview. In J. Folberg (Ed.), Joint custody and shared parenting (2nd ed., pp. 3–10). New York: Guilford Press. Fox, G. L., & Bruce, C. (1996, November). Development and validation of measures of parenting for low-income, high-risk men. Paper presented at the Theory and Methodology Workshop, National Council on Family Relations. Fox, G. L., & Kelly, R. F. (1995). Determinants of child custody arrangements at divorce. Journal of Marriage and Family, 57(3), 693–708. Freed, D. J., & Walker, T.B. (1986). Family law in the fifty states: An overview. Family Law Quarterly, 19, 331–441. Funder, K. (1996). Remaking families: Adaptation of parents and children to divorce. Melbourne, Australia: Australian Institute of Family Studies.

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References 237 Kelly, J. B., & Emery, R. E. (2003). Children’s adjustment following divorce: Risk and resilience perspectives. Family Relations, 52, 352–362. Kelly, J. B., & Johnson, M. P. (2008). Differentiation among types of intimate partner violence: Research update and implications for interventions. Family Court Review, 46(3), 476–499. Kelly, R. F., & Ward, S. L. (2002). Allocating custodial responsibilities at divorce: Social science research and the American Law Institute’s Approximation Rule. Family Court Review, 40, 1–20. King, V. (1994). Nonresident father involvement and child well-being: Can dads make a difference? Journal of Family Issues, 15, 78–96. King, V. (2006). The antecedents and consequences of adolescents’ relationships with stepfathers and nonresident fathers. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68, 910–928. King, V., & Sobolewski, J. M. (2006). Nonresident fathers’ contributions to adolescent well-being. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68, 537–557. Kline, M., Tschann, J. M., Johnston, J. R., & Wallerstein, J. (1989), Children’s adjustment in joint and sole physical custody families. Developmental Psychology, 23, 430–438. Krishnakumar, A., & Buehler, C. (2000). Interparental conflict and parenting behaviors: A meta-analytic review. Family Relations, 49(1), 25–44. Kurdek, L. A. (1986). Custodial mothers’ perceptions of visitation and payment of child support by noncustodial fathers in families with low and high levels of preseparation interparent conflict. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 7(4), 307–323. Kurdek, L. A., & Berg, B. (2006). Correlates of children’s adjustment to their parents’ divorces. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 1983, 47–60 Lamb, M. E. (2004) Divorce and parenting. In C. B. Fisher & R.M. Lerner (Eds.), Encyclopedia of applied developmental science (pp. 794–796). New York: Sage. Lamb, M. E. (2007). The Approximation Rule? Another proposed reform that misses the target. Child Development Perspectives, 1, 135–136. Lamb, M. E., & Kelly, J. B. (in press) Improving the quality of parent-child contact in separating families with infants and young children: Empirical research foundations. In R. M. Galatzer-Levy, L. Kraus, & J. Galatzer-Levy (Eds.), The scientific basis of child custody decisions (2nd. ed., pp. 187–214). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Thompson, R. A. (1997). The effects of divorce and custody arrangements on children’s behavior, development, and adjustment. Family and Conciliation Courts Review, 35, 393–404. Laumann-Billings, L., & Emery, R. E. (2000). Distress among young adults from divorced families. Journal of Family Psychology, 14, 671–687. Lee, M. (2002). A model of children’s postdivorce behavioral adjustment in maternaland dual-residence arrangements. Journal of Family Issues, 23(5), 672–697. Logan, T. K., Walker, R., Horvath, L.S., & Leukefeld, C. (2003). Divorce, custody, and spousal violence: A random sample of circuit court docket records. Journal of Family Violence, 18(5), 269–279. Lowe, N. V. (2005). The allocation of parental rights and responsibilities: The position of England and Wales. Family Law Quarterly, 39, 267–300. Luecken, L. J., & Fabricius, B. (2003). Physical health vulnerability in adult children from divorced and intact families. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 55, 221–228. Maccoby, E. E. (1999). Improving the law relating to postdivorce arrangements for children. In R. A. Thompson & P. R. Amato (Eds.), The postdivorce family: Children, parenting, and society. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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Maccoby, E. E. (2005). A cogent case for a new child custody standard. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 6, i–ii. Maccoby, E. E., Buchanan, C. M., Mnookin, R. H., & Dornbusch, S. M. (1993). Postdivorce roles of mothers and fathers in the lives of their children: Families in transition. Journal of Family Psychology, 7(1), 24–38. Maccoby, E. E., Depner, C. E., & Mnookin, R. H. (1990) Coparenting in the second year after divorce. Journal of Marriage and Family, 52(1), 141–155. Maccoby, E. E., & Mnookin, R. H. (1992). Dividing the child: Social and legal dilemmas of custody. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Maccoby, E. E., & Mnookin, R. H. (2002). Facing the dilemmas of child custody. Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law, 10, 54. Manning, W. D., & Lamb, K. A. (2003). Adolescent well-being in cohabiting, married, and single-parent families. Journal of Marriage and Family, 65(4), 876–893. Markovitz, J. H., & Matthews, K. A. (1991). Platelets and coronary heart disease: Potential physiologic reaction. Psychosomatic Medicine, 53, 643–668. Marsiglio, W., Day, R. D., & Lamb, M. E. (2000). Exploring fatherhood diversity: Implications for conceptualizing father involvement. Marriage and Family Review, 29(4), 269–293. Martin, L. (2005). To recommend or not to recommend: That is not the question: A response to Tippins and Wittmann’s article ‘‘Empirical and ethical problems with custody recommendations: A call for clinical humility and judicial vigilance.’’ Family Court Review, 43(2), 246–252. Martindale-Hubbell Law Digest: New Zealand (2008). LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell: Reed Elsevier Inc. Mason, M. A. (1994). From father’s property to children’s rights: The history of child custody in the United States. New York: Columbia University Press. McEwen, B. S., & Wingfield, J. C. (2003). The concept of allostasis in biology and biomedicine. Hormones and Behavior, 42, 2–15. McIntosh, J. E., Wells, Y. D., SmythB. M., & Long, C. M. (2008). Child-focused and child-inclusive divorce mediation: Comparative outcomes from a prospective study of postseparation adjustment. Family Court Review, 46, 105–124. McLanahan, S., Seltzer, J. A., Hanson, T. L., & Thomson, E. (1994). Child support enforcement and child well-being: Greater security or greater conflict? In I. Garfinkel, S. S. McLanahan, & P. K. Robbins (Eds.), Child support and child wellbeing (pp. 239–256). Washington, DC: Urban Institute. Mnookin, R. H. (1984). Divorce bargaining: The limits on private ordering. University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, 18, 1015–1037. Mnookin, R. H., & Kornhauser, L. (1979). Bargaining in the shadow of the law: The case of divorce. Yale Law Journal, 88, 950–997. Neely, R. (1984). The primary caretaker parent rule: Child custody and the dynamics of greed. Yale Law and Policy Review, 3, 168–186. Nord, C., & Zill, N. (1996). Noncustodial parents’ participation in their children’s lives: Evidence from the survey of income and program participation (Vol. 1). Final report prepared for the Office of Human Services Policy, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. http://aspe.hhs.gov/search/fatherhood/htdocs/SIPP/PT2.HTM. Nord, C. W., Brimhall, D., & West, J. (1997). Fathers’ involvement in their children’s school. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics. Nord, C. W., & Zill, N. (1997). Non-custodial parents’ participation in their children’s lives. Child Support Report, 19, 1–2. Not your dad’s divorce (2008, December 16). www.newsweek.com/id/174790.

References 239 O’Connell, M. E. (2007). When noble aspirations fail: Why we need the Approximation Rule. Child Development Perspectives, 1, 129–131. Palkovitz, R. (2002). Involved fathering and men’s adult development: Provisional balances. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Parkinson, P., Cashmore, J., & Single, J. P. (2005). Adolescents’ views on the fairness of parenting and financial arrangements after separation. Family Court Review, 43 (3), 430–445. Peters, B., & Ehrenberg, M. F. (2008). The influence of parental separation and divorce on father-child relationships. Journal of Divorce and Remarriage, 49, 78–109. Pollet, S. L., & Lombreglia, M. (2008). A nationwide survey of mandatory parent education. Family Court Review, 46(2), 375–394. Ramsey, S. H., & Kelly, R. F. (2006). Assessing social science studies: Eleven tips for judges and lawyers. Family Law Quarterly, 40, 367–380. Riggs, S. A. (2005). Is the Approximation Rule in the child’s best interests? A critique from the perspective of attachment theory. Family Court Review, 43, 481–493. Roth, A. (1976). The tender years presumption in child custody disputes. Journal of Family Law, 15, 423–462. Saluter, A., & Lugaila, T. (1998). Marital status and living arrangements: March 1996. Current Population Reports, Census Bureau, P 20–496. Sandler, I., Miles, J., Cookston, J., & Braver, S. (2008) Effects of father and mother parenting on children’s mental health in high- and low-conflict divorces Family Court Review, 46(2), 282–296. Schenck, C. E., Braver, S. L., Wolchik, S. A., Saenz, D., Cookston, J. T., & Fabricius, W. V. (in press). Do I matter to my (step- and non-residential) dad?: The relation between perceived mattering and adolescent mental health problems. Fathering. Scott, E. S. (1992). Pluralism, parental preferences, and child custody. California Law Review, 80, 615–672. Seltzer, J. A. (1990). Legal and physical custody arrangements in recent divorces. Social Science Quarterly, 71, 250–266. Sheets, V. L., & Braver, S. L. (1996). Gender differences in satisfaction with divorce settlements. Family Relations, 45, 336–342. Shiono, P. H., & Quinn, L. S. (1994) Epidemiology of divorce. Future of Children, 4(1), 15–28. Sigal, A., Sandler, I., Wolchik, S., & Braver, S. L. (in press). Do parent education programs promote healthy post-divorce parenting? Critical distinctions and a review of the evidence. Family Court Review. Simons, R. L., Whitbeck, L. B., Beaman, J., & Conger, R. D. (1994). The impact of mothers’ parenting, involvement by nonresident fathers, and parental conflict on the adjustment of adolescent children. Journal of Marriage and Family, 56, 356–374. Singer, J. B., & Reynolds, W. L. (1988). A dissent on joint custody. Maryland Law Review, 47, 497–518. Smith, A. B., & Gallop, M. M. (2001). What children think separating parents should know. New Zealand Journal of Psychology, 30, 23–31. Smyth, B. (2002). Research into parent-child contact after separation. Family Matters, 62, 33–37. Smyth, B. M. (2004). Parent-child contact schedules after divorce. Family Matters, 69, 32–43. Sobolewski, J. M., & King, V. (2005). The importance of the coparental relationship for nonresident fathers’ ties to children. Journal of Marriage and Family, 67, 1196– 1212. Stahl, P. M. (1994). Conducting child custody evaluations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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CHAPTER 8

Fathers in Fragile Families MARCIA J. CARLSON and SARA S. MCLANAHAN

INTRODUCTION Nonmarital childbearing has increased dramatically in the United States since the early 1960s, rising from 6% of all births in 1960 to fully 40% in 2007 (Hamilton, Martin, & Ventura, 2009; Ventura & Bachrach, 2000). Whereas similar trends have occurred in many developed nations, the United States stands out in the extent to which such births are associated with socioeconomic disadvantage and relationship instability, giving rise to a new term fragile families. The increase in fragile families reflects changes not only in the context of births but also in the fundamental nature and patterns of child rearing, particularly with respect to fathers’ roles and involvement with children. The increase in fragile families is of great interest to social scientists who care about the family. Marriage is one of the oldest institutions in Western society, and previous studies have documented strong associations between stable marriage and a range of positive outcomes for adults and children (McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994; Nock, 1998; Waite & Gallagher, 2000). While nagging questions remain about how much of the marriage effect is causal, prudence suggests that these fundamental changes in family behavior be taken very seriously. The growth of fragile families is also of interest to researchers and policy makers who care about inequality. African-Americans and Hispanics are much more likely than Whites to live in fragile families, and they are disproportionately affected by what happens in these families. Whereas 28% of White children today are born to unmarried parents, the numbers for African-American and Hispanic children are 72% and 51%, respectively (Hamilton et al., 2009). Being born to unmarried parents is also tied to social class. Whereas women in the bottom two-thirds of the education distribution have experienced large increases in nonmarital childbearing since 1970, women in the top third of the distribution have experienced virtually no increase (Ellwood & Jencks, 2004). Mothers giving birth outside of marriage typically have a high school education or less, whereas mothers giving birth within marriage typically have some college education. Nonmarital childbearing appears to be an important aspect of how family structure 241

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has contributed to growing inequality in American families over the past 40 years (Martin, 2006; McLanahan, 2004; McLanahan & Percheski, 2008). While we know quite a bit about unwed mothers and their children, until recently, research on unwed fathers was much more limited, in part because these men—especially nonresident fathers—are often underrepresented in national surveys. Some of these fathers are not represented because they are in jail or the military. Others are not counted because they do not know they are fathers. And still others are missing because most national surveys are household based, and many unmarried fathers are weakly attached to households (Garfinkel, McLanahan, & Hanson, 1998; Nelson, 2004). Men who come in and out of women’s lives, for example, are likely to be overlooked in household surveys that occur on an annual (or less frequent) basis and enumerate only those individuals who are living in the household at the time of the interview. Even men who are cohabiting—the most stable of all unwed relationships—may be missed, depending on how, when, and to whom the questions are asked (Casper & Cohen, 2000; Knab & McLanahan, 2006; Manning & Smock, 2005; Teitler, Reichman, & Koball, 2006). More casual (i.e., ‘‘visiting’’) relationships are often entirely overlooked by traditional demographic surveys (Bachrach & Sonenstein, 1998). Overall, Hernandez and Brandon (2002) estimate that a substantial proportion of men in their prime childbearing ages of 20 to 39 are undercounted in household surveys—20 to 40% of Black men, 15 to 25% of Hispanic men, and 5 to 10% of White men. Further, until the late 1990s, much of the available information on unmarried fathers came from large-scale studies that combined never-married fathers with divorced/separated fathers or from small-scale studies that were based on unrepresentative samples (Coley, 2001; Garfinkel et al., 1998; Lerman & Sorenson, 2000). The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (described below) is the first nationally representative study to provide extensive information on the capabilities and behaviors of unmarried fathers. In this chapter, we summarize what is currently known about fathers in fragile families. We draw primarily on data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, but we also include information from studies of lowincome fathers and their children, many of whom are unmarried fathers. The Fragile Families Study is a birth-cohort study of nearly 5,000 children born in 20 large U.S. cities at the end of the 20th century (1998–2000). The data include a large oversample of unmarried parents. Baseline interviews were conducted with both parents shortly after the child’s birth; mothers were interviewed at the hospital within 48 hours of the birth, and fathers were interviewed either at the hospital or as soon as possible thereafter. Follow-up interviews with both parents were conducted when the child was about 1, 3, and 5 years old; 9-year interviews will be completed in the spring of 2010. At baseline, 87% of eligible unmarried mothers agreed to participate in the study, and 75% of the fathers were interviewed.1 At the 1-year follow-up, 90% 1. The Fragile Families data are most representative of cohabiting fathers (90% response rate) and least representative of fathers who are not romantically involved with the child’s mother at the time of birth (38% response rate).

Fathers’ Characteristics and Capabilities 243

of eligible unmarried mothers and 70% of eligible unmarried fathers were interviewed; mothers who participated in the baseline interview are ‘‘eligible’’ as long as their child is alive. Response rates for subsequent waves are 88% (87%) for unmarried mothers and 68% (66%) for unmarried fathers at 3 years (5 years). When weighted, the data are representative of births to parents in cities with populations of 200,000 or more, so the evidence we present can be generalized to unmarried fathers living in large U.S. cities. We begin by describing the capabilities and resources of unmarried fathers around the time of a baby’s birth as well as their relationship status and attitudes; we include information on married fathers as a reference group. Then, we examine what happens to fathers’ relationships over time and summarize what has been learned about the factors that predict relationship stability. Next, we describe the prevalence of fathers’ involvement with children and summarize what has been learned about the antecedents of involvement and the consequences of involvement for children’s well-being. Finally, we briefly discuss the implications of our findings for public policy. FATHERS’ CHARACTERISTICS AND CAPABILITIES Prior to the Fragile Families Study, the most complete national-level information available on unmarried fathers came from two sources—the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort (NLSY79). According to these data, men who fathered children outside marriage were younger, more likely to be Black, less likely to have a high school degree, and less likely to have attended college than men who fathered children within marriage (Garfinkel et al., 1998; Lerman, 1993). Unmarried fathers also worked fewer hours per week, were more likely to be unemployed, and had lower hourly wages than married fathers. Not surprisingly, their incomes were also much lower. Finally, these studies showed that unwed fathers had more problems with disability, depression, and drug and alcohol use than married fathers, and they were more likely to have engaged in criminal behavior and/or been incarcerated (Garfinkel et al.; Lerman). Data from the Fragile Families study confirm previous findings from the NSFH and the NLSY79, while updating and providing additional information on the characteristics and capabilities of unmarried fathers in large cities. With respect to demographic characteristics, the average unmarried father is about 27 years old at the time of the birth, compared to about 32 years for married fathers (see Table 8.1). Although teen childbearing has received much attention in recent years, only 13% of unmarried fathers are under age 20; among first-time unmarried fathers, however, about one-quarter are under age 20 (figure not shown). The latter figure underscores the fact that early childbearing is a major factor behind the trends in nonmarital childbearing. The average age difference between unmarried fathers and mothers (3.4 years) is about 1 year greater than the average age difference between married parents (2.3 years). Consistent with prior research, unmarried fathers are much more likely than married fathers to be from minority racial/ethnic backgrounds; nearly

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Table 8.1 Fathers’ Characteristics, by Marital Status at Birth (in percent) Unmarried

Married

Under 20

12.8

0.4

20–24

33.3

13.2

25–29

23.5

21.1

30 and older

30.4

65.3

Mean age (years)

27.10

31.65

3.36

2.32

Background/Demographics Characteristics Age

Mean age difference w/mother (years) Race/ethnicity White non-Hispanic

17.6

49.2

Black non-Hispanic

43.7

14.1

34.6

28.3

4.2

8.4

Hispanic Other Parents are of different race/ethnicity

15.9

13.7

Immigrant

15.8

23.8

Lived with both parents age 15

42.2

69.1

Other children First birth

48.8

36.4

With biological mom only

19.0

49.7

With biological mom and other woman

11.5

6.1

With other woman only

20.8

7.8

Less than high school

38.5

14.8

High school or the equivalent

37.5

24.7

Some college

19.7

32.1

4.4

28.4

78.7

95.0

Economic Characteristics Education

College degree or higher Worked week before baby’s birth Self-reported health status Poor

0.4

0.3

Fair or good

31.6

24.7

Very good or excellent

68.0

75.0

Protestant

42.7

45.3

Catholic

32.9

37.4

Other religion

10.5

9.5

No religion

13.9

7.9

Social-Behavioral Characteristics Religious affiliation

Frequency of religious attendance (range ¼ 1–5)

2.59

3.23

Fathers’ Characteristics and Capabilities 245 Substance problem

6.4

1.2

38.7

7.7

All fathers

3,710

1,187

Interviewed fathers

2,779

1,051

Ever incarcerated (1-year survey) Unweighted number of cases (n)

Note: All figures are weighted by national sampling weights. Fathers’ age, race, education, employment status, and substance problems are reported by mothers. All other figures are reported by fathers themselves (for the subset of fathers who were interviewed).

four-fifths of these men are Black (44%) or Hispanic (35%). In contrast, nearly half of married fathers are White (49%). About 15% of both unmarried and married fathers have a partner of a different race/ethnicity. Immigrants account for a substantial proportion of all new fathers in the United States: 16% of unmarried and 24% of married fathers. With respect to family characteristics, unmarried fathers are less likely to have lived with both of their parents at age 15 (42%), compared to married fathers (69%), and they are more likely to be having a first birth. Despite their younger age and lower parity, unmarried fathers are much more likely than married fathers to have had a child with another partner: 32% as compared with 14%. Further, among unmarried fathers with more than one child (i.e., those ‘‘eligible’’ to have had kids by more than one partner), well over half have had a child by another partner (figure not shown). These numbers underscore the growing prevalence of ‘‘multipartnered fertility’’ in American families (Carlson & Furstenberg, 2006). Despite the increase in women’s participation in the labor force, breadwinning remains a key component of the father role today, and the Fragile Families data show striking differences by marital status in fathers’ earnings capabilities. Whereas only 15% of the married fathers in the study have less than a high school degree and 28% have a college degree, the pattern is essentially reversed for unmarried fathers: 39% have no high school degree, and only 4% have a college education. Poor health may reduce a father’s ability to obtain or retain a job. Most fathers report that they were in ‘‘very good’’ or ‘‘excellent’’ health, although a slightly higher fraction of unmarried (32%) than married fathers (25%) indicate their health is ‘‘good’’ or below. Whereas nearly all fathers have worked at some point during the year prior to their child’s birth (figures not shown), a substantial proportion of unmarried fathers (21%) were not working in the week prior to the birth (compared with 5% of married fathers). With respect to social–behavioral characteristics, religious differences between the two groups of men are small compared with other characteristics. About three-fourths of fathers are Protestant or Catholic, regardless of their marital status. Unmarried fathers attend religious services less frequently than married fathers. Other analyses of the Fragile Families data confirm that religious attendance is strongly associated with marital status: More religious parents are more likely to be married at the time of their baby’s birth; and among unmarried couples, they are also more likely to marry following a birth (Wilcox & Wolfinger, 2007).

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Fathers’ substance use, mental health and incarceration history also affect their ability to work and maintain stable relationships. According to mothers, only a small fraction of fathers in the Fragile Families Study have problems with drugs or alcohol: 6% of unmarried fathers and 1% of married fathers. However, analyses of fathers’ mental health (not shown) indicate that unmarried fathers are significantly more likely than married fathers to have experienced a major depressive episode, to have generalized anxiety disorder, or to have used illicit drugs; there is very little difference in heavy drinking by fathers’ marital status (DeKlyen, Brooks-Gunn, McLanahan, & Knab, 2006). Most strikingly, mothers report that 40% of unmarried fathers (vs. 8% of married fathers) have been incarcerated at some point in their lives. Incarceration is both a cause and a consequence of low earnings (Western & McLanahan, 2001) and also diminishes fathers’ family relationships (Western, Lopoo, & McLanahan, 2004). Taken together, the information from the Fragile Families Study suggests that unmarried fathers differ from married fathers in ways that have important implications for their long-term economic well-being and family stability. Most notable are the low level of education among unmarried fathers (with the majority of men having only a high school degree or less) and the high prevalence of incarceration. These findings suggests that many fathers are limited in their ability to find and retain well-paying jobs. Further, that so many unmarried fathers have had a child with a prior partner signals the fact that these men have even greater demands on their breadwinning capabilities and must deal with even more complexity in their family relationships and parental roles. FATHERS’ RELATIONSHIPS WITH MOTHERS Although large-scale quantitative research on unmarried fathers has been limited until recently, an extensive qualitative literature has developed over the past century that sheds light on the nature of relationships and family formation among low-income fathers, especially African-American fathers (Furstenberg, 2007). Many of the men in these studies were likely unmarried fathers. Studies in the 1950s and 1960s documented the social disorganization in family behavior typically found in disadvantaged communities, including sexual promiscuity, gender distrust and conflict, high rates of nonmarital childbearing, and instability in relationships (Harrington, 1962; Lewis, 1959, 1968). At least two different perspectives on (low-income) unmarried relationships have emerged in recent decades. One view posits that unmarried men take advantage of women by entering relationships to obtain sex or money but don’t intend to ‘‘stick around’’ long term (Anderson, 1989; Wilson, 2003). Other scholars paint a much more cooperative picture—that unmarried men are doing what they can to support women after childbirth but are limited by poor job prospects, disadvantaged neighborhood contexts, lack of role models, and complicated life and family circumstances (Jarrett, Roy, & Burton, 2002; Waller, 2002). One of the most important findings to emerge from the Fragile Families Study is the close connection between unmarried fathers and mothers at the

Fathers’ Relationships with Mothers 247

time of their child’s birth. According to mothers’ reports, 82% of unmarried parents are romantically involved with each other at the time of the birth: 50% are cohabiting, and another 32% are romantically involved but living apart (i.e., visiting couples). Only 10% of mothers report having little or no contact with the father at the time of the birth. The proportions in various relationship types are remarkably similar across age groups, except that teenage fathers (under age 20) are less likely to be cohabiting (30%), and older fathers (25 and older) are more likely to be cohabiting (56%). These figures stand in stark contrast to the myth that out-of-wedlock births are a product of casual relationships. Although the proportions of couples in any romantic relationship are similar across different racial and ethnic groups, there is considerable racial/ ethnic variation in the type of relationship that parents are in at the time of their baby’s birth (see Figure 8.1). Assuming that unmarried relationship types can be ‘‘ordered’’ in terms of closeness and commitment, with cohabitation at the top and no contact at the bottom, White and Hispanic fathers were more likely to be in higher order relationships than African-American fathers: White and Hispanic fathers were more likely to be living with the mother, whereas Black fathers were much more likely to be in visiting relationships. Yet, White fathers were slightly more likely to have little or no contact with the mother than Black or Hispanic fathers. Since attitudes and expectations have a strong influence on family formation (Axinn & Thornton, 2000), we also examined fathers’ views about marriage and gender roles as well as the quality of mother–father relationships. Table 8.2 shows figures for unmarried fathers (overall and for those cohabiting with the mother vs. living apart at the time of the birth) and married fathers. According to fathers’ reports, a majority of both unmarried White non-Hispanics

Visiting 16% Cohabiting 65%

Hispanics

Visiting 24% Friends 7%

Cohabiting 60%

Little or no contact 13%

Friends 6% Little or no contact 10%

Black non-Hispanics Visiting 43%

Cohabiting 40%

Friends 9% Little or no contact 8%

Figure 8.1

Relationship Status of Unmarried Parents, by Race/Ethnicity.

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Table 8.2 Fathers’ Attitudes and Couple Relationship Quality, by Relationship Status at Birth Unmarried Total

Cohabiting

Single

Married

Better for children if parents married

77.8

78.8

76.2

90.5

Better to marry than to live together

60.2

60.4

60.0

74.6

Living together is the same as marriage (disagree)

48.8

45.2

54.4

81.5

Attitudes1 Positive attitudes about marriage

Mean (range ¼ 1–4)

2.76

2.73

2.80

3.15

Traditional gender role attitudes Important decisions should be made by man

31.6

29.1

35.4

33.6

Better if man earns living/women care

39.3

41.0

36.7

45.6

Mean (range ¼ 1–4)

2.35

2.34

2.38

2.40

Distrust of women In dating, woman out to take advantage of man

17.5

15.6

20.5

5.0

Women cannot be trusted to be faithful

15.5

12.2

20.4

3.9

Mean (range ¼ 1-4)

2.04

2.02

2.07

1.79

Relationship Expectations and Quality Chances of marriage to mother No or a little chance

12.1

4.4

23.8

NA

50-50

16.3

11.8

23.2

NA

Pretty good or almost certain

71.7

83.8

53.1

NA

Was fair and willing to compromise

46.9

57.0

36.8

66.2

Expressed affection or love to father

73.4

84.2

62.6

80.0

Criticized father or his ideas (coding reversed ¼ ‘‘never’’)

73.2

76.3

70.0

71.9

Encouraged father to do things important to him

68.9

82.8

54.9

74.5

Supportiveness (Mother ‘‘often’’ . . . )2

Mean (range ¼ 1 to 3) Frequency of conflict (6 items), mean (range ¼ 1–3)2

2.64

2.67

2.60

2.69

1.44

1.39

1.51

1.35

Physical violence (‘‘often’’ or ‘‘sometimes’’) Mother’s report about father

4.0

2.8

5.3

2.4

Father’s report about mother

14.0

11.5

17.8

5.7

7.3

7.0

7.6

4.0

2,779

1,602

1,177

1,051

Mother’s report, ever seriously hurt by father (1 year) Unweighted number of cases (n) Interviewed fathers

1 Frequencies reflect endorsing the statement as ‘‘strongly agree’’ or ‘‘agree’’ (or ‘‘strongly disagree’’ or ‘‘disagree’’ as indicated for the ‘‘living together’’ item). 2 Possible outcomes are ‘‘never’’ (a), ‘‘sometimes’’ (b) and ‘‘often’’ (c). Note: All figures are weighted by national sampling weights. All items are reported by fathers, except for mothers’ reports about fathers’ violence (at time of birth and 1 year).

Fathers’ Relationships with Mothers 249

and married fathers hold positive views of marriage around the time of their baby’s birth: 78% of unmarried men and 91% of married men agree that ‘‘marriage is better for children’’; 60% of unmarried men and 75% of married men say ‘‘it is better to marry than to live together’’; and about half of unmarried men and 82% of married men disagree that ‘‘living together is the same as marriage.’’ As expected, married men’s attitudes are somewhat more positive than those of unmarried men; there are few notable differences between cohabiting and single men, except that single men more strongly disagreed that living together is the same as marriage. Attitudes toward gender roles are not dramatically different across groups, although a higher fraction of married fathers believe that ‘‘it is better if the man is the primary breadwinner and the woman is the primary caregiver in the home’’ (46% vs. 39%). In addition, unmarried fathers express greater distrust of women: 16% of the unmarried fathers said that ‘‘women could not be trusted to be faithful,’’ compared with only 4% of married fathers. Among unmarried fathers, single men indicate greater distrust of women than cohabiting men. We also investigated men’s attitudes toward being a father (figures not shown) and found that the vast majority of both unmarried and married fathers value the father role and intend to be involved in their child’s life. For example, 99% of both married and unmarried fathers either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, ‘‘I want people to know I have a new child.’’ WHAT HAPPENS

TO

FATHERS’ RELATIONSHIPS WITH MOTHERS OVER TIME?

We’ve seen that most unmarried fathers are romantically involved with the baby’s mother at the time of the birth, but what fraction of couples stay together over time, and what are key factors that help keep couples together? The Fragile Families Study is the first national study that directly follows couple relationships (with interviews of mothers and fathers) after a nonmarital birth. Table 8.3 shows the fraction of married and unmarried couples in various relationship types at the 5-year follow-up survey; figures are shown by relationship status at the time of birth—for married and unmarried Table 8.3 Relationship Stability, Birth to 5 Years (Mothers’ Reports)1 Five Years after Birth of Child Time of Birth

Married

Cohabiting

Visiting

Friends

No Relationship

Married

77.3

0.2

0.2

0.5

21.9

Unmarried

16.7

19.2

2.9

19.5

41.6

27.6

27.5

1.9

14.0

29.0

7.2

14.0

5.8

27.1

45.9

Friends

3.2

5.2

1.2

34.3

56.2

No relationship

3.5

5.6

0.1

9.9

80.8

Cohabiting Visiting

1

Percentages shown are of row totals. Note: Figures are weighted by national sampling weights. Cohabitation at 5 years is defined as living together ‘‘all or most of the time’’ or ‘‘some of the time;’’ time of birth cohabitation is a dichotomy (yes/no) for whether mothers say they are living with the baby’s father.

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couples overall, and then for unmarried couples by type of initial relationship. Among married couples, 77% are still married 5 years after the birth; 22% have broken up, and 0.5% report that they are friends (the 0.4% who say they are cohabiting or visiting likely reflect measurement error at either survey, since couples are unlikely to divorce and maintain any type of romantic relationship). Among unmarried couples overall, 17% are married 5 years after the birth, 19% are cohabiting, 3% are romantically involved but living apart, 20% say they are friends, and 42% say that they have no relationship. Taken together, these figures suggest that less than two-fifths of unmarried couples are in any type of romantic relationship 5 years after the birth of their child. Not surprisingly, couples with greater relational attachment at birth are much more likely to be together 5 years later. Of couples who were cohabiting at birth, 28% are married, and another 28% are still cohabiting—so 56% of these couples (as compared with 77% of married couples) are in stable unions 5 years after the birth of their child. Of couples who were in visiting relationships at the time of the baby’s birth, 7% are married, 14% are cohabiting, and 6% are still in a visiting relationship at 5 years. Among couples who reported no romantic relationship at birth, a small minority are married or cohabiting: 3% of those who started out as friends and 4% of those who reported ‘‘no relationship’’ are married, while 5% and 6%, respectively, are cohabiting at 5 years. Yet, fully 90% of couples who were not romantically involved at the time of the birth are not romantically involved at 5 years. It is useful to note that among this group, those who started off as friends are more likely to remain friends than those who started off with no relationship, suggesting that a friendly relationship likely contributes to parents’ being able to effectively work together in rearing their common child. Beyond the comparison of parents’ relationship status at birth and 5 years postbirth, it is informative to examine the total number of relationship transitions that unwed parents experience postbirth. Osborne and McLanahan (2007) find that the number of relationship transitions (including changes in dating, coresidence, and marital status) between birth and 3 years increases as the level of relationship commitment decreases. On average, married couples experience 0.22 transitions, whereas cohabiting, visiting, and nonromantic couples experience 0.92, 1.45, and 1.59 transitions, respectively. Considering the entire 5 years after the baby’s birth, Beck, Cooper, McLanahan, and BrooksGunn (2009) find that parents who are married at birth experienced an average of 0.67 relationship transitions, compared to 2.55 for unmarried parents. These figures suggest that most children born to unmarried parents will experience notable instability in their family relationships and/or living arrangements during early childhood. WHAT FACTORS PREDICT MARRIAGE

AND

UNION STABILITY?

An extensive body of research has shown that divorce and father absence are associated with a greater risk of adverse outcomes for children and youth (Amato & Sobolewski, 2001; McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994). (See Chapter 6.)

Fathers’ Relationships with Mothers 251

In addition, a growing strand of research has shown that instability per se (net of family structure), is linked to deleterious outcomes in some subgroups of children (Fomby & Cherlin, 2007; Osborne & McLanahan, 2007; Wu, 1996; Wu & Martinson, 1993; Wu & Thomson, 2001). Therefore, understanding the factors that help couples stay together may be important for child wellbeing, and the Fragile Families Study has provided new opportunities to examine the factors that promote marriage and union stability following a nonmarital birth. Scholars have identified a number of arguments for why some relationships are more stable than others and why some couples move on to more committed relationships than others. Economic theory points to the role of monetary incentives in couples’ decisions to enter (or remain in) cohabiting or marital unions, including shared public goods, insurance against risk, and the benefits of gender specialization (Becker, 1991; Lam, 1988). Nearly all of the empirical evidence about how earnings capacity affects union formation shows that men’s earnings are positively associated with marriage (see Ellwood & Jencks, 2004, for a review) and cohabitation (Clarkberg, 1999; Smock & Manning, 1997a) and negatively associated with divorce (Hoffman & Duncan, 1995; South & Lloyd, 1995). However, the evidence is less consistent with respect to women’s earnings (Ellwood & Jencks, 2004; Lichter, McLaughlin, Kephart, & Landry, 1992). Beyond economic factors, culture—defined as widely shared beliefs and practices—can also affect decisions about family formation (Axinn & Thornton, 2000). Most researchers agree that the decades of the 1960s and 1970s were watershed periods for changes in norms and practices governing the family (Cherlin, 1992). Widespread changes in family-related behaviors— such as increases in sexual activity, childbearing, and coresidence outside marriage; delays in marriage; and increases in divorce—were accompanied by dramatic changes in the social acceptance of all of these behaviors. Because cultural change is neither uniform nor uncontested, we would expect some couples to cling longer to traditional views and, hence, to be more likely to marry and stay married than others with less traditional values and gender roles (Clarkberg, Stolzenberg, & Waite, 1995). Cohabitation has been described as a ‘‘looser bond’’ (Schoen & Weinick, 1993) or an ‘‘incomplete institution’’ (Nock, 1995) relative to marriage, with roles that are less scripted by gender or family expectations. Thus, we would expect that positive attitudes about marriage, traditional gender role attitudes, and religiosity would encourage marriage more than cohabitation. Consistent with this argument, individuals who cohabit are typically more politically liberal, less religious, and more favorable toward nontraditional family roles than are those who do not cohabit (Smock, 2000; Thornton, Axinn, & Hill, 1992). Finally, given the growing cultural emphasis on marriage as a source of love and companionship rather than a mere economic exchange (Cherlin, 2004), we would expect the emotional quality of a couple’s relationship to affect the movement from dating to cohabitation and from either dating or cohabitation to marriage. Many studies from psychology and sociology show that partners’ perceptions of the emotional quality of their marriage affect whether they stay together or break up (Cowan, Cowan, Schulz, & Heming,

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1994; Gottman, 1994; Karney & Bradbury, 1995). At the same time, drug or alcohol abuse, infidelity, and violence within marriage are strongly associated with low marital quality and divorce (White, 1990). Factors affecting union formation and dissolution generally may not be the same among (unmarried) couples who have a biological child together. We know that having a child diminishes an unmarried woman’s position on the marriage market overall (Lichter & Graefe, 2001), but there has been limited attention to which mothers are more likely to marry after a nonmarital birth. Research based on the Fragile Families study presents new evidence on this topic. Qualitative studies point to unmet financial expectations (especially by women toward men) as a fundamental barrier to marriage (Edin & Kefalas, 2005; Gibson-Davis, Edin, & McLanahan, 2005). Yet the quantitative evidence about the role of men’s economic characteristics for union stability has been mixed: aspects of men’s economic capacities (wages, employment, and education) are sometimes—but not consistently—linked with marriage within several years after a nonmarital birth. Men’s earnings, wages, and employment appear to be more important than education for marriage (Carlson, McLanahan, & England, 2004; Harknett, 2008; Harknett & McLanahan, 2004), and changes in men’s earnings postbirth appear to predict which couples will enter marriage (Gibson-Davis, 2009). For women, education appears to be the key economic factor increasing the likelihood of marriage (Carlson, McLanahan, et al., 2004; Harknett, 2008), although Osborne (2005) finds that economic factors matter differently across unmarried relationship types: Mothers’ education predicts marriage among cohabiting parents, while mothers’ earnings predicts marriage among parents in visiting relationships. Cultural factors and relationship quality are also shown to play important roles in marital decisions after a nonmarital birth. Individuals with more positive attitudes about marriage as an institution are more likely to marry (Carlson, McLanahan, et al., 2004), and having high expectations of marriage—particularly when shared by both parents—predicts both marriage and being in a romantic relationship (vs. separation) (Waller & McLanahan, 2005). More frequent religious participation is linked to a greater likelihood of marriage (Wilcox & Wolfinger, 2007), and men’s (but not women’s) religious participation is associated with higher relationship quality— both within marriage and in unmarried romantic relationships—which may contribute to union stability (Wolfinger & Wilcox, 2008). However, gender distrust and sexual jealousy—especially by women toward men— have emerged from both qualitative and quantitative studies as key deterrents to marriage (Carlson, McLanahan, et al., 2004; Edin & Kefalas, 2005; Hill, 2007); distrust is exacerbated when fathers remain involved with children from prior relationships—and hence have ongoing contact with prior partners (Monte, 2007). Fear of divorce may also diminish the likelihood of marriage (Edin & Kefalas, 2005; Waller & Peters, 2008), although a recent study of mothers receiving welfare suggests otherwise (Cherlin, Cross-Barnet, Burton, & Garrett-Peters, 2008). Couples who report having a higher degree of supportiveness in their relationship are more likely to marry or cohabit as opposed to breaking up (Carlson, McLanahan, et al., 2004), and concerns about the couple relationship are identified in

Fathers’ Relationships with Mothers 253

qualitative interviews as a key barrier to marriage among unmarried parents (Gibson-Davis et al., 2005). A number of additional characteristics have been shown to predict marriage and relationship stability after a nonmarital birth. White and Hispanic mothers are more likely to marry than Black mothers (Carlson, McLanahan, et al., 2004). Mothers’ poor mental health is a strong deterrent to marriage, as mothers with a diagnosed mental illness are only two-thirds as likely to marry within 5 years of a nonmarital birth, even controlling for a host of individuallevel characteristics (Teitler & Reichman, 2008). Children’s characteristics may also matter for parental relationships; having a child in poor health decreases stability in parents’ relationships (Reichman, Corman, & Noonan, 2004). Several contextual factors have been shown to matter for marriage, including the availability of ‘‘marriageable’’ men (measured by the male-tofemale sex ratio) (Harknett, 2008; Harknett & McLanahan, 2004) and strong child support enforcement (Carlson, Garfinkel, McLanahan, Mincy, & Primus, 2004; Nepomnyaschy & Garfinkel, 2008). Parents’ fertility history affects union formation, and multiple-partner fertility, in particular, has been shown to pose particular challenges to parents’ relationship stability over time (Carlson, McLanahan, et al., 2004; Carlson & Furstenberg, 2006; Harknett & McLanahan, 2004). In the Fragile Families study, having children by multiple partners was more common among African Americans than among other racial/ethnic groups (Mincy, 2002); the relatively high rates of multiple-partner fertility among AfricanAmericans may also help account for the low marriage rates among this group. Incarceration history is another important factor in the formation and stability of family relationships. Western et al. (2004) find that after controlling for a wide range of social, psychological, and economic characteristics, fathers who have been incarcerated at some point in their lives are much less likely to be cohabiting with or married to the mother of their child 1 year after birth. This finding suggests that high incarceration rates among Black men of low socioeconomic status (SES) may help account for low rates of marriage among this demographic group. According to Western and colleagues, if the risk of incarceration were reduced to zero for Black fathers with less than high school education, marriage rates among this group would increase by 45%, and the Black–White gap in marriage rates would be reduced by nearly half (Western et al.). Also, incarceration has important implications for children, not only because fathers are separated from their children while in jail or prison, but also because of the social stigma, lower earnings capability, and complicated relationships with mothers typically experienced after they are released (Wildeman & Western, 2009; Comfort, 2008). In summary, data from the Fragile Families Study show that whereas many unmarried parents are in a romantic relationship and are optimistic about their future together at the time of their baby’s birth, these relationships are highly unstable and will likely dissolve within only a few years. Parents’ resources may be insufficient to establish an independent household or to meet their ideals about the financial prerequisites for marriage. Further, although parents with positive and supportive relationships are more likely

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to stay together or move toward marriage, a nontrivial number of couples struggle with personal or relationship problems such as substance use, physical violence, or the father’s criminal background. Together, these economic and relational factors pose significant barriers to marriage, and family formation among unmarried parents is often complicated by the fact that one or both parents may have children by a previous relationship. High instability and complexity interfere with parents’ ability to work together to rear their common child.

FATHERS’ INVOLVEMENT WITH CHILDREN IN FRAGILE FAMILIES PREVALENCE

OF

UNMARRIED FATHERS’ INVOLVEMENT

Until recently, much of what was known about the relationship between unmarried fathers and their children came from studies of divorced and separated fathers—or from studies of nonresident fathers, most of whom are divorced. Much of this research focused on two aspects of father involvement—paying child support and father–child contact. Studies from the 1980s and early 1990s showed that whereas one-third of divorced fathers paid child support on a regular basis and maintained frequent contact with their children, another third disappeared rather quickly from their children’s lives (Furstenberg & Cherlin, 1991; Furstenberg, Morgan, & Allison, 1987; Garfinkel, McLanahan, & Robins, 1994; Marsiglio, 1993; Seltzer, 1994). (See Chapter 7 for information about parental investments and family relationships after divorce.) With respect to more recent data, an overview chapter on nonresident father involvement using data from six large U.S. datasets found that sizeable fractions of fathers had no contact with their nonresident child ages 0 to 5 in the previous year (45 to 62% of White fathers and 39 to 81% of non-White fathers) (Argys et al., 2007). A new study of nonresident father involvement (pooling data on both divorced and unmarried fathers from four national surveys over 1976 to 2002) found that the payment of child support and the frequency of father–child contact increased over this quarter-century period, yet the 2002 data suggest that nonresident fathers can still be sorted into three basic groups—those who have no contact, moderate contact, and frequent contact with their children (Amato, Meyers, & Emery, 2009). Many people think of unwed fathers as being much less involved with their children than divorced or separated fathers, but the existing evidence suggests that the patterns are broadly similar. Many unwed fathers are involved early on, but most will live away from their child(ren) within only a few years of the birth (Lerman, 1993; Lerman & Sorenson, 2000). Once they become nonresident, some fathers remain regularly involved, although involvement tends to decrease over time. As with divorced fathers, several studies using NLSY79, NLSY97, and NSFH data suggest notable variation in the extent to which unmarried fathers remain in contact and spend time with their children (Lerman, 1993; Lerman & Sorenson, 2000; McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994). Some nonresident fathers remain significantly involved, seeing and spending time with the child regularly, but a sizeable fraction of fathers

Fathers’ Involvement with Children in Fragile Families 255

appear to have little connection to their child. Recent qualitative studies underscore this divergence in fathers’ roles with children (Johnson, Levine, & Doolittle, 1999; Roy, 1999; Waller, 2002; Waller & Plotnick, 2001). Being the breadwinner continues to be central to the meaning of fatherhood for most men and women, and a father’s ability to provide sufficient economic resources remains a strong predictor of whether he maintains a relationship with his child. Fathers who are unable to live up to the breadwinner ideal are less likely to find the father role rewarding and more likely to withdraw from their children. Alternatively, mothers may discourage the involvement of men who are unable to provide for them and their children (Edin, 2000). We know that unmarried fathers are less likely to pay formal child support (and at lower amounts when they do pay) than previously married fathers (Seltzer, 1991). Informal financial support (i.e., outside the legal child support enforcement system), especially the purchase of goods and services for the child, is quite common among unmarried fathers, especially around the time of a new baby’s birth (Edin & Lein, 1997; Marsiglio & Day, 1997; Waller, 2002). Formal child support orders are rare just after the birth, in part because many unwed couples are still romantically involved. Given that many unwed fathers are involved with their children at least early on, the question remains: What exactly do fathers do, and how does it matter for child well-being? Although the father’s role in family life has historically been defined by breadwinning, contemporary fathers are involved in child rearing in numerous ways (Cabrera, Tamis-LeMonda, Bradley, Hofferth, & Lamb, 2000; Lamb, 2004; Marsiglio, Amato, Day, & Lamb, 2000; Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004). In addition to providing economic support, fathering today may include nurturing and caregiving; engaging in leisure and play activities; providing the child’s mother with financial, emotional, or practical support; providing moral guidance and discipline; ensuring the safety of the child; connecting the child to his extended family; and linking the child to community members and resources (Marsiglio & Day, 1997; Palkovitz, 2002). Also, paternal involvement can have both direct and indirect effects on children’s well-being and may change over the life course (Cabrera, Fitzgerald, Bradley, & Roggman, 2007). Although the ‘‘new’’ father role has often been discussed with respect to higher SES fathers, ethnographic studies report that many unwed or low-income fathers describe their roles in terms similar to those used by married or middle-class fathers, even though they face much greater economic constraints (Furstenberg, Sherwood, & Sullivan, 1992; Jarrett et al., 2002; Waller, 2002). Recent data from the Fragile Families Study confirms the findings of previous studies about nonresident and nonmarital fathering and extend these findings to new areas of father involvement. With respect to fathers’ economic contributions, the Fragile Families data show that informal support from unmarried fathers (both financial and instrumental) is common around the time of a new baby’s birth, while formal child support is rare. Mothers report that 83% of fathers gave money or bought things for the baby during the pregnancy, and 80% helped in some other way (such as providing transportation to the prenatal clinic) (figures not shown in table).

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Nepomnyaschy and Garfinkel (2008) found that as an increasing share of couples break up over time, informal support from fathers declines, and the prevalence of formal child support orders and payments increases as mothers pursue support through the legal system. One year after a baby’s birth, 20% of unmarried (at birth) mothers had a formal child support order in place (and 10% received a formal payment), while 60% reported receiving in-kind support (and 60% received informal financial support) from the father. By 5 years after the birth, 47% of mothers had a child support order in place (and 27% received a formal payment), while 45% received in-kind support (and 32% received informal financial support) (Nepomnyashcy & Garfinkel). In terms of fathers’ presence and interaction with children, at the time of their baby’s birth, most unmarried fathers are around and want to be involved in their child’s life. According to mothers (figures not shown), 78% of fathers visited the mother and baby in the hospital, and 84% of babies (will) have the father’s surname on the birth certificate; these figures vary notably by the couple’s relationship status, as nearly all residential fathers were involved in these ways compared to about one-third of fathers that were not romantically involved with the mother. The high initial levels of involvement among fathers overall are probably due to the fact that many of the parents in fragile families are still romantically involved when they are first interviewed (just after the birth); in short, their unions are still intact. Thus, the comparison with divorced parents is probably not appropriate. Once the relationship ends, however, fathers’ involvement may drop off just as rapidly among never-married couples as it does among divorced couples. As romantically involved couples break up and fathers move out over time, fathers spend less time with their children. As described earlier in the context of union stability, more than three-fifths of children born outside of marriage will be living apart from their biological father by age 5. Once nonresident, the majority of unwed fathers maintain at least some contact with their child. As shown in Table 8.4, at year 1, 87% of nonresident fathers had seen their child at some time since the baby’s birth, and 63% had seen their child more than once in the past month. By year 3, 71% of fathers had seen the child since the past interview (around child’s age 1), and 47% had seen the child more than once in the past month. At 5 years, 63% of fathers had seen their child since the 3-year interview, and 43% had seen the child more than once in the past month. Consistent with prior research, these figures suggest notable divergence in the level of nonresident fathers’ involvement that children experience over time—by their fifth birthday, nearly two-fifths of children born to unmarried parents (37%) have had no contact with their father in the prior 2 years, and another two-fifths (43%) have regular contact, with the remaining fifth (20%) falling somewhere in between. Among nonresident fathers who saw their child in the past year, the mean number of days the fathers saw their child was over 8 days at year 1, falling to just over 5 days at year 5. Among the subset of fathers who saw their child more than once in the previous month, as would be expected, the average level of contact is much higher. These fathers saw their children an average of 13 days a month in years 1 and 3, and 12 days a month in year 5. The frequency of spending one or more hours is close to ‘‘a few times a week’’ at

Fathers’ Involvement with Children in Fragile Families 257 Table 8.4 Prevalence of Fathers’ Involvement after Nonmarital Birth (Mothers’ Reports) Year 1 % or M (n ¼ 3,234) Nonresident fathers (%)

Year 3

(SD)

% or M (n ¼ 3,113)

Year 5

(SD)

% or M (n ¼ 3,037)

47.6

55.9

62.9

Saw child since previous survey (%)

87.0

70.9

63.2

Saw child more than once in past month (%)

62.7

47.0

43.1

(SD)

All nonresident fathers

Mean # of days father saw child (range ¼ 0–30)

8.36

(10.92)

6.28

(9.96)

5.26

(9.17)

13.33

(11.13)

13.35

(10.79)

12.21

(10.50)

Mean frequency of spending 1þ hours (range ¼ 1–5)

3.70

(1.24)

3.67

(1.14)

3.54

(1.06)

Mean engagement in activities (range ¼ 0–7 days)

2.08

(1.79)

2.10

(1.70)

1.51

(1.80)

Fathers who saw child more than once in past month Mean # of days father saw child (range ¼ 1–30)

Notes: All figures weighted by national sampling weights for each respective year. Unweighted numbers of cases (n) indicate mothers interviewed at each survey wave living with the focal child that had nonmissing data on father coresidence status.

year 1, declining slightly over years 3 and 5. The average number of days per week that these fathers engage in activities with their child is 2.1 at years 1 and 3 and 1.5 at year 5. Although the mean levels decline, within-person analyses show that fathers typically stay on the same ‘‘end’’ of the involvement continuum over time (Ryan, Kalil, & Ziol-Guest, 2008); dichotomizing father involvement into ‘‘high’’ and ‘‘low’’ categories at each time point, Ryan and colleagues found that nearly three-quarters of nonresident fathers remained in the same category (26% consistently high, and 47% consistently low) between 1 and 3 years after the birth, while an even fraction of the remaining group (14% each) moved between categories. We also examined differences in levels of fathers’ involvement by race/ ethnicity (results not shown). We found that Black fathers were much more likely to be nonresident at each survey wave, compared to White or Hispanic fathers. Yet, among nonresident fathers, Black non-Hispanic men were somewhat more likely to have maintained contact with their child, to have seen their child in the past month, and to have seen their child a greater number of days. This is consistent with research suggesting that Black fathers are less constrained by the ‘‘package deal’’ linking partner and parent roles (Edin, Tach, & Mincy, 2009) and are more accustomed to distinguishing the ‘‘baby father’’ role from the mother–father romantic relationship (Mincy & Pouncy, 2007). We found that race/ethnic differences in the types of paternal engagement are less consistent across measures and over time, compared to the frequency of father–child contact.

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ANTECEDENTS

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OF

FATHERS’ INVOLVEMENT

Since some unmarried fathers do maintain high levels of involvement, it is instructive to consider what are the characteristics and circumstances that promote fathers’ continued involvement with children over time. Prior research on fathers in general suggests that fathers’ human capital (Cooksey & Craig, 1998; Landale & Oropesa, 2001) and identification with the father role (Ihinger-Tallman, Pasley, & Buehler, 1993; Marsiglio & Cohan, 2000) promote greater paternal investment. Also, the quality of relationship with the baby’s mother is strongly tied to parental involvement among (married) resident fathers (Erel & Burman, 1995) and among nonresident fathers (Seltzer, 1991). After the couple relationship has ended, fathers’ repartnering and having new children is shown to diminish their contact with and economic support of prior children (Manning & Smock, 1999, 2000; Smock & Manning, 1997b; Stewart, 2003). Recent studies of low-income fathers taken from welfare samples or studies of children who participated in the Early Head Start program have also provided new evidence about paternal involvement among disadvantaged men, many of whom are never married. Given the difficulty of recruiting lowincome fathers, much of this research is based on small, nonrepresentative samples of fathers (sometimes including both biological fathers and other father figures together) who were willing to participate—typically men with greater resources, men who were romantically involved with the child’s mother, and men who were involved in their child’s life. Therefore, these studies may not generalize to larger populations of poor, minority, or unmarried fathers. At the same time, this research provides important new evidence about fathering in disadvantaged settings, often based on fathers’ own reports on and perspectives about their involvement with children. According to this research on disadvantaged men, resident fathers (either cohabiting or married) are much more involved with young children than nonresident fathers, as we would expect (Cabrera et al., 2004). Results are mixed about the role of socioeconomic resources, with some research showing no association between economic capacities and father involvement (Kalil, Ziol-Guest, & Coley, 2005), and other research suggesting that higher education, income, and/or employment are positively linked with supportive parenting and frequent interaction (Cabrera, Shannon, & Tamis-LeMonda, 2007; Coley & Chase-Lansdale, 1999). Among nonresident low-income fathers, men who are romantically involved with the mothers are more involved than men who are just friends or have no relationship with the mother (Cabrera et al., 2004), and parents’ ability to cooperate and avoid conflict seems to be important for both resident and nonresident fathers’ involvement (Coley & Hernandez, 2006). More broadly, mothers in low-income communities often take an active role and employ a range of strategies to encourage biological fathers—and other father figures—to be positively involved in their children’s lives (Roy & Burton, 2007). Within the Fragile Families data, a number of individual and contextual characteristics are shown to be associated with higher levels of biological father involvement. As we might expect, fathers who demonstrate

Fathers’ Involvement with Children in Fragile Families 259

involvement early on—whether via providing financial or instrumental support during the pregnancy (Cabrera, Fagan, & Farrie, 2008) or via establishing paternity shortly after the baby’s birth (Mincy, Garfinkel, & Nepomnyaschy, 2005)—are also more likely to be involved over the child’s first 3 years (with respect to time, engagement, and financial support). Greater human capital (measured by education, employment, or earnings) is positively linked to greater involvement, although all measures do not always reach statistical significance, particularly when multiple indicators are included in the same models (Cabrera et al., 2008; Carlson & McLanahan, 2004; Ryan et al., 2008). Fathers’ financial support of children tends to promote greater father–child contact (more than vice versa); this finding is particularly true for informal payments, although there is some evidence that formal child support is also associated with fathers’ visitation (Nepomnyaschy, 2007). Fathers’ social–psychological characteristics are highly salient to their involvement over time. Analyses of both quantitative and qualitative data show that fathers who display problem behaviors—including being physically violent and having problems with drugs or alcohol—are less likely to maintain contact with their children (Waller & Swisher, 2006); the lack of contact appears to partly reflect mothers’ taking actions to protect their children, such as ending their relationship with the baby’s father or limiting his access to the child after the relationship has ended (Claessens, 2007; Waller & Swisher). Both current and past incarceration (typically correlated with the behavioral problems noted previously) is shown to strongly deter fathers’ engagement with children and payment of child support (Ryan et al., 2008; Swisher & Waller, 2008). While theories about gender identity and socialization suggest that fathers may be more involved with sons than daughters, this finding appears to be limited to married fathers; there is no difference in fathers’ involvement after a nonmarital birth based on whether the child is a girl or boy (Lundberg, McLanahan, & Rose, 2007). Another important finding to emerge from the Fragile Families Study concerns the role of the mother–father relationship in shaping fathers’ involvement with his children. Consistent with prior studies of married fathers (Furstenberg & Cherlin, 1991; Townsend, 2002), the ‘‘package deal’’ that circumscribes fathers’ partner and parent relationships appears to be highly salient for unmarried fathers (Tach, Mincy, & Edin, in press). Both the type of relationship after a nonmarital birth (i.e., cohabiting, romantic but living apart, friends, or no relationship), as well as the quality of relationship net of type (i.e., supportiveness and ability to communicate effectively), are linked to greater involvement by unmarried fathers in fragile families (Carlson & McLanahan, 2004; Fagan & Palkovitz, 2007; Ryan et al., 2008). The importance of the mother–father relationship for paternal involvement has been similarly observed in the United Kingdom using data on fathers of young children from the Millennium Cohort Study (Kiernan, 2006; Kiernan & Smith, 2003). Even after parents are no longer romantically involved, the ability of the parents to get along remains salient for paternal involvement: Among nonresident fathers, the quality of the coparenting relationship strongly predicts higher levels of interaction (Carlson, McLanahan, & Brooks-Gunn, 2008). However, when parents (especially mothers)

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repartner and have new children—fathers are less likely to see their children (Tach et al.). FATHERS’ INVOLVEMENT

AND

CHILDREN’S WELL-BEING

An extensive literature has demonstrated the benefits of father involvement for child well-being by resident fathers, although much of this work has focused on middle-income samples and school-aged children or adolescents (Shannon, Tamis-LeMonda, London, & Cabrera, 2002). The evidence about nonresident father involvement is more limited and less consistent (Amato & Gilbreth, 1999; King, 1994; King & Sobolewski, 2006; see Chapter 6). Part of the reason for differential effects of father involvement by residential status may result from differences in the characteristics of men who end up living with their children (and typically with the child’s mother) vs. men who live away from their children (Jaffee, Caspi, Moffitt, Taylor, & Dickson, 2001). Fathers’ involvement with children may not be beneficial, for example, if the father has a history of violent or abusive behavior; some research shows that the benefits of fathers’ presence and caretaking for children’s behavior depend on whether the father himself displays antisocial behavior (Jaffee, Moffitt, Caspi, & Taylor, 2003). A growing literature on samples of low-income and/or African-American fathers has explored whether and to what extent greater paternal involvement is beneficial to children’s development and well-being. Recent studies focusing on pre-school-aged children find that low-income fathers who display more nurturing parenting have children with better cognitive and behavioral outcomes (Black, Dubowitz, & Starr, 1999; Martin, Ryan, & Brooks-Gunn, 2007; Shannon et al., 2002; Tamis-LeMonda, Shannon, Cabrera, & Lamb, 2004). Also, fathers’ payment of formal and informal child support has been linked with better socio-emotional outcomes among a sample of African-American pre-school-aged children of never-married mothers receiving welfare (Greene & Moore, 2000). There is also evidence that involvement by nonresident fathers predicts lower levels of delinquency among young adolescents (ages 10 to 14) living in low-income neighborhoods in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio (Coley & Medeiros, 2007). While evidence from the Fragile Families Study is just emerging, research in progress shows that a higher level of father involvement is linked with lower child behavioral problems among resident fathers but not among nonresident fathers (Carlson, McLanahan, & Brooks-Gunn, 2009): Greater frequency of father–child contact, engagement in father–child activities, and shared parental responsibility show essentially no association with child behavioral scores for fathers who live away from their children. However, the benefits of nonresident father involvement may depend on the father’s ability to effectively work together with mothers in rearing their common child; fathers’ involvement is associated with significantly lower behavioral problems when mothers and fathers have a high-quality coparenting relationship (Carlson et al., 2009). Further research is warranted to understand for which unmarried fathers, and under what conditions, greater involvement across a range of domains contributes to children’s development and well-being.

Conclusion 261

It is important to note that biological fathers are not the only father figures in the lives of children born outside of marriage (see Chapter 9). As we’ve noted, unwed couples often break up soon after the baby’s birth, and both mothers and fathers are likely to repartner. One study finds that 31% of unmarried mothers have repartnered with a new man by the child’s fifth birthday (5% are remarried, 17% are cohabiting, and 9% are dating but living apart), and these new partners tend to have better sociodemographic characteristics than the previous partners (Bzostek, McLanahan, & Carlson, 2009). Resident ‘‘social fathers’’ are often involved with (nonbiological) children to the same extent as are resident biological fathers (Berger, Carlson, Bzostek, & Osborne, 2008), and there is evidence that their involvement is equally beneficial for young children’s behavior and health status (Bzostek, 2008). Other work that differentiates the types of social fathers involved with disadvantaged children suggests that involvement by male relatives may be more beneficial than involvement by mothers’ romantic partners (Jayakody & Kalil, 2002). Future research should consider the variation in patterns of involvement by fathers and father figures, especially as family structure changes over time, as well as the conjoint influence of involvement by biological and social fathers on children’s well-being. In summary, although most unmarried biological fathers are involved during the pregnancy and around the time of the birth, 5 years later, a significant fraction of fathers has little or no regular interaction with their child. Nearly two-thirds of unmarried fathers live away from their child, and nearly 30% of nonresident fathers have not seen their child in the past year. Further, when nonresident fathers are more involved, it is not clear that such involvement is beneficial to children’s well-being. By contrast, among fathers married at the time of the baby’s birth, their involvement with children remains much higher over time, largely because the majority of these men are still living with their child by age 5, and greater involvement by these resident fathers is positively linked to children’s well-being (figures not shown). This evidence raises concern about the circumstances of children born outside of marriage in terms of what they can expect to receive with respect to both time and money from their biological fathers, and the extent to which such contributions may enhance their well-being. Ultimately, these differential parental inputs may be an important aspect of how family structure is contributing to growing socioeconomic disparities in the United States (McLanahan & Percheski, 2008). CONCLUSION In this chapter we have described the characteristics and family relationships of fathers in fragile families, which we define as unmarried parents who have had a child together. We find that unmarried fathers differ notably from their counterparts who are married at the time of their baby’s birth, particularly in terms of their human capital and fertility histories. Most unmarried fathers have a high school education or less; one-fifth are not working at the time of the birth; and nearly one-third have children by another partner. These factors suggest that unwed fathers face serious

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challenges in providing for their children and maintaining stable family relationships over time. Most unmarried fathers are romantically involved with their baby’s mother at the time of the birth, and most have high expectations for marrying the mother in the future. However, less than one-fifth of unmarried couples had actually married by the time their child was 5 years old. Similarly, most unmarried fathers say they intend to be highly involved with their child at the time of the birth. Yet, 5 years later, nearly two-thirds are living away from their child, and of those living away, less than half saw their child more than once in the past month. This descriptive portrait of fathers in fragile families points to both opportunities and challenges for policy makers interested in strengthening family ties. Contrary to popular perceptions that unmarried parents are not interested in family commitment, most unmarried fathers say that they value marriage, expect to marry the baby’s mother, and want to be involved in rearing their children. These hopes and positive attitudes provide an encouraging starting point from which policy could help unmarried parents strengthen their family relationships. At the same time, many unmarried parents face an uncertain economic future and complex family arrangements, which make it difficult to sustain a stable family life. Thus, if these fragile families are to meet their goal of raising their child together, they will likely need both public and private support. Insofar as most individuals believe that children would be better off if they were raised by both biological parents, and insofar as most parents in fragile families want to marry, a restructuring of social policy to strengthen fragile families would appear to have wide bipartisan support. Indeed, there is a growing emphasis in policy making of funding programs that address exactly these aims. Of course, new initiatives to promote marriage and father involvement do not exist in a vacuum, and their success will depend in large part on how they interact with welfare and child support enforcement policies. Ultimately, we contend that the most effective strategy for helping unmarried parents would involve a multifaceted approach that focuses on both improving parents’ human capital and relationship skills, while also eliminating any disincentives to family formation in our tax and transfer policies. REFERENCES Amato, P. R., & Gilbreth, J. G. (1999). Nonresident fathers and children’s well-being: A meta-analysis. Journal of Marriage and Family, 61(3), 557–573. Amato, P. R., Meyers, C. E., & Emery, R. E. (2009). Changes in nonresident fatherchild contact from 1976 to 2002. Family Relations, 58(1), 41–53. Amato, P. R., & Sobolewski, J. M. (2001). The effects of divorce and marital discord on adult children’s psychological wellbeing. American Sociological Review, 66(900– 921). Anderson, E. (1989). Sex codes and family life among poor inner-city youths. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 501, 59–78. Argys, L. M., Peters, E., Cook, S., Garasky, S., Nepomnyaschy, L., & Sorenson, E. (2007). Measuring contact between children and nonresident fathers. In S. L.

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CHAPTER 9

Stepfathers’ Lives Exploring Social Context and Interpersonal Complexity WILLIAM MARSIGLIO and RAMON HINOJOSA

S

TEPFATHERS REPRESENT CRITICAL figures in the cornucopia of family configurations affecting children today. Persistent trends in family demography ensure that numerous adult men will have an opportunity to affect stepchildren’s development, and in turn, be influenced by these same children (Teachman, Tedrow, & Crowder, 2000). Because children living in households without one of their two biological parents spend more time residing with their mothers, the vast majority of stepchildren will come into contact with one or more residential stepfathers or their mother’s nonresident romantic partner(s) during their lives. These men, who Jayakody and Kalil (2002) call ‘‘romantic partner social fathers,’’ can be subsumed under the more general category of social fathers that includes any man (often a grandfather or uncle) considered to be a ‘‘father figure’’ who is not the birth father (Marsiglio, Day, & Lamb, 2000). We restrict our review to men who are romantically involved with a mother who has at least one child by another man and refer to all of the former men as stepfathers. Scholars from various disciplines have expanded and deepened understanding of stepfather families in recent years, although plenty of opportunities exist to advance knowledge in this area. The relevant literature streams focus primarily on stepfamilies, remarriage, cohabiting couples, child outcomes, and fathering. We selectively review these burgeoning literatures by emphasizing the multilayered conditions affecting stepfathers’ reciprocal relations with stepchildren. To begin, we highlight the larger cultural and social forces that frame stepfathers’ experiences. Next, we briefly document the demography of stepfather families while delineating the scope of stepfathers’ assets that might affect stepchildren’s lives. Unfortunately, most of our observations are restricted to patterns in the United States because representative data on stepfamilies from other countries are quite limited (Pryor, 2008).

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Cultural Context 271

The bulk of our review assesses the wide range of complexities associated with stepfather families including: (a) processes related to stepfathers’ romantic partnerships and coparenting dynamics that determine how a new family form is created and negotiated; (b) identity issues relevant to stepfathers, fathers, and children; (c) relations between stepfathers and biological fathers, including implications of multiple partner fathering; (d) stepfathering styles and involvement activities; and (e) varied aspects of stepchildren’s well-being. With an eye toward improving the lives of those directly involved in stepfather families, we discuss several key policy and programmatic issues. Finally, we outline an eclectic, multimethod research agenda for studying stepfather families based on social constructionist, symbolic interactionist, life course, and developmental themes. CULTURAL CONTEXT Institutional forces continue to shape both public discourses that help define stepfamily life and the familial context in which the process of stepfathering unfolds. Even though people increasingly are exposed directly and indirectly to cultural narratives about stepfathering in contemporary times, stepfamily life remains a complex and in many respects ‘‘incomplete institution’’ with illdefined norms (Cherlin, 1978). Thus, it is critical to acknowledge the larger ecological influences that account for how (step)fathers, mothers, (step) children, (step)grandparents, and vested adults in the community define, challenge, and negotiate stepfathering. Stereotypical as well as more progressive images of stepfathers provide the backdrop for how stepfamily members make sense of their circumstances (Claxton-Oldfield, O’Neil, Thomson, & Gallant, 2005; Ganong & Coleman, 1997). Ideologies rooted in perceptions about families (genetic and legal ties), parenthood, childhood, and gender (especially masculinities) play a key role in framing what is expected of the men (stepfathers and fathers), mothers, and children involved in stepfather families. These overlapping ideologies establish the narrative resources individuals use in their everyday lives to conceptualize, talk about, and negotiate stepfamilies. Biology and legal agreements continue to be privileged in how Americans define family (Mason, Harrison-Jay, Svare, & Wolfinger, 2002). Unlike fathers who are granted formalized rights and obligations when they establish legal paternity, most stepfathers earn their informal privileges by demonstrating their worthiness through social fathering. Marriage bestows additional informal recognition on stepfathers when they officially wed a stepchild’s mother. Compared to married stepfathers who coreside with their wife and child(ren), the public generally views men who either cohabit with their partner and her child(ren) outside of marriage, or are involved in committed visiting unions, as less committed to their stepfathering responsibilities and not as deserving of ‘‘(step)father’’ status. These perceptions can limit stepfathers’ opportunities to engage in the ‘‘community responsibility’’ aspects of fathering in which men manage exchanges between stepchildren and the adults who supervise them at sites such as schools, recreation, and health care (Doucet, 2006).

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Men’s most insidious difficulties as stepfathers stem from the interwoven messages that define the harmful cultural narrative about men and children (Marsiglio, 2008). The narrative is stereotypically gendered and depicts men, compared to women, as less caring and more abusive toward children in general. Most people apparently believe the data support this sweeping conclusion (Claxton-Oldfield, 2004). Moreover, in recent decades, the media frenzy has escalated ‘‘stranger danger’’ fears while distorting public perceptions about the relative risks children face being abused by men outside their families (Valentine, 2004). The perception is compounded by the socio-evolutionary argument: Stepfathers should be feared more than biological fathers because stepparents are less invested in their (step)children and treat them less conscientiously (Anderson, 2000; Daly & Wilson, 1980). These concerns surface most clearly in the literature exploring the controversial question of whether child abuse is more common in stepfamilies. After reviewing 11 studies published after 1980 assessing whether stepchildren are disproportionately overrepresented among reported cases of physical child abuse victims, Adler-Baeder (2006, p. 79) concluded that there is ‘‘a dearth of convincing evidence to substantiate the negative view of stepparents as more likely to physically abuse than biological parents.’’ Although more individual studies point to stepchildren being at greater risk, the more rigorous methodological studies find no difference (e.g., Malkin & Lamb, 1994). The discrepancy in findings may be due in part to whether sexual abuse cases are factored into the results. While studies finding no difference do not consider incidences of sexual abuse, other research finds higher rates of sexual abuse among stepparents (Ganong & Coleman, 2004; Giles-Sims, 1997). Despite the mixed findings about whether stepfathers are more likely than fathers to abuse children physically, the general public likely assumes that children are at greater relative risk in stepfather families (Claxton-Oldfield, Goodyear, Parsons, & ClaxtonOldfield, 2002). To the extent that men (and mothers) are aware of these gendered images, they may be more reluctant to press ahead with affectionate or intimate styles of stepfathering. Gender themes, in the form of dominant patriarchal norms, also shape cultural stereotypes that infuse multifather contexts (Marsiglio & Hinojosa, 2007). In the United States and most industrialized countries, the gendered norm of one man (not men) assuming a head-of-household position can place fathers and stepfathers in competition for control, attention, privileges, and affection in stepfamilies. This pattern hinders a cooperative style of dual fatherhood where family power and centrality are shared. That men are too often expected to present themselves as self-reliant, ‘‘go-it-alone’’ types alters how stepfathers (and fathers) do border work to negotiate their relative standing in relation to a stepfamily. Importantly, mothers and children can influence how these institutionalized norms are actually processed in specific families. DEMOGRAPHIC CONTEXT FOR STEPFATHER FAMILIES Because the divorce rate in the United States remains high, and rates of cohabitation and out-of-wedlock parenting have increased (Hamilton, Ventura, Martin, & Sutton, 2005; Smock, 2000; Teachman et al., 2000), men have

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a greater chance of spending time with children in some type of stepfamily than did their counterparts in the mid-1900s. This pattern coincides with a decline in the amount of time men spend living with their biological children (Hogan & Goldscheider, 2001; Eggebeen & Knoester, 2001). As of 2008, there were 73.9 million children living in the United States (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2009)), with more than 4 million, or roughly 6% of children residing in married or cohabiting stepparent households (Kreider, 2003). Because men make up a larger proportion of stepparents, the majority of these children live in stepfather homes. This number likely underestimates the number of men who act as a stepfather because it includes only those who currently reside with the child. This also tells us nothing about the number of children who before their 18th birthday may eventually live with stepfathers; past estimates have placed this figure as high as 30% (Hewitt, 1991). The literature on stepfamilies living outside the United States is limited, making it difficult to provide meaningful cross-cultural comparisons between patterns of stepfather family formation. Estimates in France in 1997 placed the number of children living with a stepparent at 8.7% (Mignot, 2008). In Australia, stepfamilies represent approximately 5% of all families (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2009). Similar to patterns in the United States, men make up the majority of stepparents, with three times as many men than women in both France and Australia entering families as the coresident stepparent (Australian Bureau of Statistics; Mignot). To better understand the latent potential that children in the United States have for men entering their lives as stepfathers at some future point, we turn to an imperfect measure, the percentage of births to unwed mothers. Between 1960 and 2006 the percentage of births to unmarried women in all age groups rose dramatically, from 5.3% to roughly 38% (Child Trends, 2008; National Center for Health Statistics, 2007). For women ages 15 to 17, 18 to 19, 20 to 24, and 25 to 29, the rates increased from 62 to 92, 40 to 81, 19 to 58, and 9 to 31%, respectively (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2008). This is a crude measure because many nonmarital births take place in the context of cohabiting relationships with biological fathers, and some of these relationships result in marriage. However, even when cohabitation is with the birth father, children born to cohabiting parents are five times more likely to experience parental separation (Osborne, Manning, & Smock, 2007). A body of work from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, research using a birth cohort of 4,898 children born to married (1,186) and unmarried parents (3,712), highlights the potential for non-biological fathers to enter a child’s life at some future point. Among unmarried parents, 75% of mothers and 87% of fathers had plans to marry their partner (Gibson, Edin, & McLanahan, 2005). Roughly half of unmarried parents were cohabiting at the time of the child’s birth (Carlson et al., 2004). Three-fourths of cohabitors were still together one year later, with 15% having married their partners, and 60% still cohabiting (Carlson, McLanahan, & England, 2003). Compare this to unmarried parents who were romantically involved but not cohabiting at the time of the child’s birth; of these, roughly 50% remained romantically involved, 32% were cohabiting,

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and only 5% had married after one year. When these relationships dissolve, doors open for men to enter children’s lives as stepfathers. In general, women with nonmarital births are more likely to cohabit (Qian, Lichter, & Mellott, 2005), and cohabiting couples are more likely to bring children from a previous relationship into the household than are remarried couples (Wineberg & McCarthy, 1998). Estimates from the early 1990s indicated roughly 25% of the 3.7 million cohabiting couples in the United States had at least one adult who brought children from a previous relationship (Bumpass, Sweet, & Cherlin, 1991). In 2007, of the 6.4 million cohabiting couples, 40%, or approximately 2.5 million couples, lived with at least one biological child of either partner (Kreider, 2007). Again, a significant majority of these families are stepfather families. What these data indirectly suggest is that stepfathering is a common experience for many men. To illustrate, a study of 7,107 men living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, found that of men at least 25 years of age, 21% helped raise a child who was not their own for more than a year (Lancaster & Kaplan, 2000). Sixteen percent raised their own offspring as well as other children, and 5% raised other men’s children exclusively. Of the 21%, 64% were involved with children from their partner’s previous relationship. The other children were either their partner’s dependent kin (5%), adopted from an agency (9%), or the children of friends or neighbors (6%). Men who become stepfathers tend to have lower incomes, fewer years of formal education, and tend to be older than men who have never married, making them somewhat less attractive mates (Anderson, 2000; Hernandez & Brandon, 2002). Comparative analyses with stepfathers in Sweden revealed a similar pattern, with men’s lower educational achievement and lower incomes being related to the increased likelihood of men becoming stepfathers (Bernhardt & Goldscheider, 2001, 2002; Bernhardt, Goldscheider, Rogers, & Koball, 2002). In the United States, single mothers also rank lower in the marriage market, both because they have a child and because they tend to have lower incomes and fewer years of education (Driscoll et al., 1999). Men who marry women with children may access a mate more easily (lower ranking people tend to couple), but at the expense of creating a family with fewer economic resources. This is particularly important considering that many births in the United States occur in remarriages, with half of all Black and White women giving birth to at least one child within 2 years of remarriage (Coleman, Ganong, & Fine, 2000). Approximately half of all remarried women, most of whom have children from prior relationships, have additional children when they remarry (Griffith, Koo, & Suchindran, 1985; Stewart, 2005). Not all men who become stepfathers will marry their partner, but some do. In the event that stepfathers marry their partner and the couple has children, each additional child in the household means that men’s ability to allocate their economic and social resources to children is stretched thin (Harknett & Knab, 2007). This may help explain why men with children in different households often withdraw support from nonresident children (Carlson & Furstenberg, 2006). For the men who become stepfathers, this often means

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bearing greater economic and social responsibility for other men’s children as they support their own. Our overview of the unique demographic circumstances associated with stepfamilies in contemporary times informs interpretations of how stepfamily processes implicate stepfathers and stepchildren. Unlike in previous centuries when many men helped raise children not biologically related to them because of paternal deaths, today high rates of nonmarital births and divorce primarily create the opportunities for men to become stepfathers while fathers are still living and often involved to some extent in their children’s lives. Also, compared to biological fathers in general, those who assume a stepfather status tend to have more limited human capital. COMPLEXITIES OF STEPFATHER FAMILIES NEGOTIATING EXTENDED

AND

MODIFIED EXTENDED FAMILIES

Increasingly, extended, modified extended, and multigenerational families fulfill the traditional role of modern nuclear families in terms of social, emotional, and economic support (Bengtson, 2001). Men moving into extended family households may encounter multiple social parents, and must negotiate understandings with their partner and partner’s children as well as possibly the children’s grandparents, aunts and uncles, and sisters and brothers, with each relationship presenting unique challenges. For example, when the children’s grandparents live in the household, stepfathers must take care not to side too much with them because doing so may jeopardize their relationship with their partners (Mills, 1988). However, stepfathers who disagree too much with grandparents may incite their partners’ anger. Compared to White stepfathers, African-American stepfathers are more likely to encounter these types of extended family situations because African American children are more likely to be raised by grandparents, usually grandmothers (Hill Collins, 2000). The most common stepfathering situation involves extended kin to the stepfamily living elsewhere but who serve as a social support network for stepfathers’ partners and stepchild(ren). Each additional relationship men encounter between a stepchild and an extended family member is fertile ground for interpersonal conflict. Failure to negotiate these relationships successfully may impede the prospect of integrating smoothly into the stepfamily (Rothe, 2001). Unfortunately, this remains an often overlooked (and understudied) aspect of the stepfather experience. CONSTRUCTING

AND

ADJUSTING

TO

STEPFAMILY DYNAMICS

The processes by which men become and express themselves as stepfathers are complex and multilayered (Marsiglio, 2004a). Becoming a stepfather means learning the ‘‘family dance,’’ or the norms, interaction routines, rituals, and ebbs and flows of family life (Marsiglio & Hinojosa, 2006). Men must navigate their partners’ and stepchildren’s established ways of interacting to integrate into the stepfamily household successfully. Part of this ever-changing process involves stepfathers managing their identities in a wide range of

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contexts (Marsiglio, 2005). The contexts are based on whether stepfathers occupy or own a physical property as well as whether an interaction occurs in a public or private venue. To the extent that biological fathers are present in children’s lives, this also means learning to adjust to the father’s relationships with the mother and children (MacDonald & DeMaris, 2002). As implied above, this dance is more complex when the stepchild’s grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other family members are involved. To better understand the social psychological features that give meaning to men’s lives as stepfathers the following processes and critical decisions warrant theoretical and empirical attention: 1. What, when, and how do men learn about the biological father’s character and role in his child(ren)’s lives and then navigate interactions with him? 2. The men’s initial reactions to meeting the child(ren) and their subsequent ‘‘affinity-seeking’’ and ‘‘affinity maintaining’’ efforts (Ganong, Coleman, Fine, & Martin, 1999). 3. Cohabitation and marriage decisions and the associated experiences tied to residential moves and sharing physical space. 4. Emotional and practical energies directed toward claiming children as their own. 5. Communications about and legal efforts to adopt. 6. Forging and modifying the level and type of coparenting with the mother. 7. Creating naming conventions. 8. Managing the larger matrix of relations with one’s own children and extended kin. A number of these experiences involve stepfathers’ romantic partnerships and coparenting dynamics as part of the process of creating and negotiating a new family form. How stepfathers and stepchildren relate to one another is often critical to these processes. One national longitudinal study found that adolescents who have closer relationships with their mothers are more likely to develop close ties to married stepfathers, but adolescent–mother relationships tend to decline when a cohabiting stepfather enters the household (King, 2008). IDENTITY CONSTRUCTIONS

AND

EXPRESSIONS

A critical aspect of the stepfathering adjustment process involves men’s efforts to forge and manage their identities as they learn how to relate to stepfamily members as part of a reciprocal process. As Hetherington and Kelly (2002, p. 190) observed, ‘‘Parenting is a two-way street, and the behavior of stepchildren has an important influence on the responses of stepparents . . . Disobedient, contentious, hostile stepchildren can make a misery of family relations.’’ In addition, children’s personality characteristics, good and bad, can affect men’s tendencies to see themselves as full-fledged stepfathers, including those willing to claim stepchildren as their own (Marsiglio, 2004b).

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Prior to getting romantically involved with a woman with children for the first time, men typically do not seriously reflect on what it would be like to develop a stepfather identity. Moreover, in his study of relatively new stepfamilies in London, Robertson (2008) found that stepfathers had few discussions with their partner about child care responsibilities prior to cohabiting. Thus, when men are on the verge of creating a stepfamily, they often begin to fashion their unconventional identity without clear expectations. However, stepfathers who have children with other women can use their children to contrast or benchmark their experiences with and feelings for their stepchildren. According to data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth (Lamb, 2007), stepfathers who had nonresident biological children were less likely to adopt their stepchildren formally. In addition, if their partner is raising children with different fathers, stepfathers may orient themselves differently to the specific children in the same family as a result of the biological fathers’ differing approaches to their children. Lamb (2007) also documented a relationship between men adopting stepchildren and their having shared biological children with their new partner. Although the causal ordering could not be determined, those stepfathers who adopted their partner’s children were more likely to have shared children as well. Interestingly, it is possible that stepfathers who commit themselves wholeheartedly to their stepchildren—as evidenced by their willingness to adopt them—may be given a chance to father biological children they might otherwise not have fathered if they had remained single. Although we are interested primarily in the processes affecting stepfathers and stepchildren most directly, biological fathers and mothers are implicated in these processes as well. The parents can influence how stepfathers perceive themselves, relate to stepchildren, and fashion their self-perceptions as possible parental figures relative to the mother and father. An earlier analysis based on the 1987–1988 wave of the National Survey of Families and Households showed that whereas nearly 33% of a combined sample of married and cohabiting stepfathers responded that it was ‘‘somewhat’’ or ‘‘definitely’’ true that: ‘‘A stepparent is more like a friend than a parent to stepchildren,’’ about 50% indicated the statement was false. Meanwhile, 55% answered ‘‘somewhat’’ or ‘‘definitely’’ true to the statement: ‘‘Having stepchildren is just as satisfying as having your own children.’’ In a multivariate analysis, three factors were positively and significantly related to a seven-item scale measuring stepfathers’ likelihood of expressing father-like perceptions: living with both biological and stepchildren in the same household (compared to living with only stepchildren), becoming a stepfather earlier in a child’s life, and having more positive evaluations of their relationship with their wife/partner. One recent qualitative analysis explored the conditions surrounding some stepfathers’ orientation toward being a ‘‘father ally’’ to the biological father (Marsiglio & Hinojosa, 2007). This orientation captures men’s activities that presumably directly or indirectly help the father sustain or improve his relationship with his child. In some cases, being a father ally led a stepfather to develop a more complex and expansive parenting identity in that he expressed a willingness to embrace the notion of cofathering.

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Stepfathers’ identity work can be further complicated if they face conditions representing some variation of multiple-partner parenting—their own, their partner’s, or the biological father’s. Men responsible for multipartner fathering tend to invest less time and money into their biological children compared to men without such commitments (Guzzo & Furstenberg, 2007; Manlove, Logan, Ikramullah, & Holcombe, 2008). Unfortunately, those least capable of financially supporting multiple children are the most likely to experience multipartner fertility. STEPFATHERING STYLES, BONDS,

AND INVOLVEMENT

ACTIVITIES

Just as fathers orient themselves to their children in varied ways, stepfathers exhibit different interaction styles with their stepchildren. Scholars have described many stepfathers as being disengaged—essentially ‘‘polite strangers’’ who express little warmth and have at best a minimal role in monitoring activities (Hetherington & Henderson, 1997; Kurdek, 1994)—or ‘‘playful spectators’’ (Patterson, 1982). Earlier research indicated that compared to married biological fathers, married stepfathers are less likely to participate in activities with their resident stepchildren (Cooksey & Fondell, 1996; Thomson, McLanahan, & Curtin, 1992) and are less apt to monitor or exert controlling behaviors toward them (Fisher, Leve, O’Leary, & Leve, 2003; Hetherington & Jodl, 1994). However, analyzing data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, Berger, Carlson, Bzostek, and Osborne, (2008, p. 637) recently concluded that ‘‘social fathers engage in parenting practices with 5-year-old children that are of equal, if not higher, quality to those of biological fathers and that marriage appears to be more closely linked to higher-quality parenting practices among social fathers than among biological fathers’’ (see also Gibson-Davis, 2008). In other words, when stepfathers are married to their stepchildren’s mother, the men tend to have stronger relationships with the children. Other researchers have also found that many stepfathers have close relationships with their stepchildren (Furstenberg & Harris, 1992; King, 2006; Marsiglio, 2004a; Pryor & Rodgers, 2001). In-depth interviews with a purposive sample of stepfathers revealed that they are capable of being fully engaged and committed to being a ‘‘father’’ to their stepchildren (Marsiglio, 2004b). This qualitative analysis generated 10 properties in connection with men claiming stepchildren as their own: timing, degree of deliberativeness, degree of identity conviction, paternal role range, solo-shared identity, mindfulness, propriety work, naming, seeking public recognition, and biological children as benchmarks. The properties include strategies and routines men use to manage their orientation toward stepchildren as well as potential consequences resulting from men’s perceiving stepchildren as their own. Some properties can also be conceptualized as conditions that prompt men to claim stepchildren. The analysis highlighted interrelated social psychological processes by which stepfathers engaged stepchildren and made sense of their commitments to them. Stepfathers were more likely to claim stepchildren in this way when the mother was supportive, the biological father was not actively involved, the stepchildren were younger, and the stepfather felt some affinity with the child’s personality (see also, Marsiglio, 1995).

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Analyzing reports from youth aged 10 to 18 from the second wave of the National Survey of Families and Households, White and Gilbreth (2001) found very similar levels of relationship quality with nonresident fathers and resident stepfathers, though the variance was considerably greater for child– father relations. They concluded that ‘‘it does not appear as if children’s good relationships with their stepfathers were purchased at the expense of relationships with their natural fathers, nor does it appear that children who got along with one father got along with the other; there is simply no relationship’’ (p. 160). King (2006) presents another set of findings related to stepfather–stepchild relations based on self-reports from 11- to 18-year-old participants in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). She focused on adolescents living in married stepfather families who also had a living nonresident father. Her analysis of adolescents’ replies to a five-point scale showed that whereas 60% reported being close (quite or extremely) with their stepfathers, 91% indicated being close to their mother, and 41% answered similarly about nonresident fathers. For the entire sample, 25% indicated being close to both fathers, 24% to neither father, 35% to only the stepfather, and 16% to only the nonresident father. When she restricted her analysis to only adolescents who have contact with their nonresident fathers, reports of closeness were still higher for stepfathers. Several factors were predictive of adolescents being in one of the four configurations of closeness to (step) fathers. Those most likely to be close to both stepfather and nonresident fathers were male, younger, closest to their mothers, and in families where the mother and stepfather were in the happiest marriages. Neither race, immigrant status, family income, nor mother’s education were significantly related to these groups. Adolescents who were close to only their stepfathers had spent the longest time with them and had the least amount of contact with their nonresident father. In their study of stepfathers with a focal stepchild 12 or 13 years of age, Coltrane, Gutierrez, and Parke (2008) confirmed that there were few differences in parenting patterns between Mexican-American and Anglo-Americans living in the southwestern region of the United States. Only 3 of 21 comparisons for parenting practices were statistically different. Compared to their Anglo counterparts, Mexican-American fathers indicated that they did more activities with their stepchildren but monitored them less, and they had worse relations with the biological father. However, based on separate measures for children, mothers, and stepfathers, no statistically significant differences were observed for levels of acceptance or warmth, amount of rejection, or frequency of discipline. In this study, both the Mexican-American stepfathers and children reported generally positive relationships. Thirty-seven percent of the Mexican-American stepfathers indicated they got along ‘‘extremely well’’ with their stepchildren; another 51% reported they got along ‘‘pretty well.’’ According to the adolescents, 86% ‘‘strongly agreed’’ or ‘‘agreed’’ that they ‘‘really mattered’’ to their stepfather. Fifty-eight percent of the stepchildren reported that their stepfathers hugged them, patted them on the back, or showed some other form of physical affection.

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Does living with a stepfather alter the quality of parenting children receive? Berger (2007) explored this question using the National Survey of Youth and found that for children under age 10, they were more likely to experience substandard parenting if they lived in mother–partner families. Substandard parenting was assessed with a multi-item index that measured personal warmth, outings and activities, learning environments, aspects of the home interior such as safety, frequent spanking, and whether the focal child experienced an accident requiring medical care. Contrary to King’s analysis, income did matter and represented a strong protective factor. As income increased, children were less likely to experience substandard parenting. Unfortunately, the data did not distinguish between married and cohabiting couples, so one cannot determine whether the marital status or other specific features of the mother–stepfather union accounted for varying levels of poorquality parenting. A few recent studies have taken advantage of other national survey data to compare stepfathers’ type and level of involvement with stepchildren to the activities biological and adoptive fathers have with their children. One analysis focusing on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and another national data set of younger fathers compared ‘‘father’’ involvement activities for stepfathers, coresident boyfriends of the mother, and biological fathers (Hofferth, Pleck, Stueve, Bianchi, & Sayer, 2002; see also Hofferth & Anderson, 2003). The analysis revealed that compared to biological fathers, stepfathers of children 0 to 12 years of age spent less time per day talking, playing, and otherwise engaged with their children and in close proximity to them. Whereas biological fathers were more engaged in general than the mother’s boyfriend, there was no difference for play time in particular or being available in general. In short, although stepfathers and mothers’ romantic partners can sometimes provide valuable assets to children unrelated to them (Marsiglio, 2004a), biological fathers are more likely to devote time, energy, and resources to their children (Cooksey & Fondell, 1996). STEPCHILDREN’S WELL-BEING Research tends to show that youth who live in stepfamilies do not fare as well socially, emotionally, or academically as children in biologically related, intact two-parent families (Astone & McLanahan, 1991; Hanson, McLanahan, & Thompson, 1996; King, 2006; Pong, 1997; Teachman, Paasch, & Carver, 1996; Tillman, 2007; Zill, Morrison, & Cioro, 1993). When compared to children from intact families, family structure appears to contribute to youth in stepfamilies having lower self-esteem, greater feelings of anxiety and isolation, higher levels of depression, greater suicidal ideation, and more antisocial behaviors such as vandalism, lying, and stealing (Cherlin & Furstenberg, 1994; Foley et al., 2004; Garnefski & Diekstra, 1997; McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994; Yuan & Hamilton, 2006). Children in stepfamilies also show evidence of poorer academic outcomes, as measured by lower grades, more deviant school behavior, and weaker expectations that they will someday attend college (King; Tillman). Because the majority of stepfamilies are stepfather families, researchers have increasingly focused on how stepfathers influence children (Flouri,

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2008). Much recent work has moved beyond crude analyses of family structure to explore stepfather family background characteristics, such as pathways to stepfamilies, (i.e., whether stepfamilies are the result of divorce, nonmarital births, or death of a parent), socioeconomic characteristics, and parental characteristics and practices, and how these are associated with negative outcomes for stepchildren (Beck, Cooper, McLanahan, & BrooksGunn, 2008; Cooper, Osborne, Beck, & McLanahan, 2008; Ginther & Pollak, 2004; Hofferth, 2006; Lansford, Ceballo, Abbey, & Stewart, 2001; Nicholson, Fergusson, & Horwood, 1999; Ram & Hou, 2003). One 18-year longitudinal study of children living in a stepfamily between the ages of 6 and 16 examined the relationship between living in a stepfamily and psychosocial outcomes, such as mental health (depressive symptomatology), antisocial behavior, substance use (nicotine, illicit drugs, alcohol), educational outcomes, and sexual risk-taking behaviors when stepchildren reached age 18 (Nicholson, Fergusson, & Horwood). These researchers observed that stepchild outcomes were better explained by some of the conditions that led to the child’s biological family dissolution, such as family conflict, than to the fact that children were raised in stepfamilies. This fits with the general literature showing the effects of parental marital dissolution on a range of factors, including academic, social, and emotional outcomes (Amato & Keith, 1991; Oldehinkel, Ormel, Veenstra, De Winter, & Verhulst, 2008; Strohschein, 2005). Family dissolution is often marred by intense conflict between parents and other family members. Added to the strife of marital dissolution is the stress of stepfamily formation as family members try to adjust to new expectations, routines, and power dynamics while incorporating the stepfather into the preexisting family. Thus, stepchildren’s poorer academic and behavioral outcomes stem more from issues related to instability and difficult transitions than family structure per se (Beck et al., 2008; Cooper et al., 2008; Ram & Hou, 2003). One approach to explaining differences in child outcomes is parental investment, or the time, attention, emotional support, and income parents provide to children. Children living with stepfathers typically receive fewer parental investments than those living in biologically intact families (Case, Lin, & McLanahan, 2000; Case & Paxson, 2001; Thomson, Mosley, Hanson, & McLanahan, 2001). Stepfathers’ investment in resident stepchildren increases as a function of time, so that the longer they live together, the more stepfathers invest (Anderson, Kaplan, & Lancaster, 1999). This may be why the length of time stepfathers have been in residence is inversely related to adolescent depression (Yuan & Hamilton, 2006). Stepfather investment is also related to perceptions of emotional closeness. The more time and attention stepfathers give stepchildren, the more opportunities there are for the relationships to strengthen and deepen (Marsiglio, 2004a). Generally speaking, time and attention are important factors in the development of trust in any relationship. Investment can foster situations where children feel comfortable confiding in stepfathers about academic, emotional, and social difficulties and, in turn, receive advice on how to manage potential problems. This may help explain why closeness is a good predictor of stepchild outcomes. In her national study of 11- to 18-year-olds, King (2006) found that among youth whose biological parents had separated,

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those with close relationships with stepfathers had better emotional (depressive symptoms and other symptoms of psychological distress), social (antisocial and delinquent behaviors such as lying, stealing, vandalism, and being unruly in pubic), and academic (grades) outcomes than those who perceived stepfathers to be emotionally distant. While this is also true for children who have close relationships with their noncustodial fathers, the effect is stronger for stepfathers (Yuan & Hamilton, 2006; White & Gilbreth, 2001). Not surprisingly, the best outcomes are seen in children who have close relationships with both step and biological fathers (King). Bzostek (2008, p. 959) also concluded, analyzing mothers’ reports of the well-being of 1- to-3 year-olds living with a ‘‘social father,’’ that the beneficial influence of positive involvement by such fathers is not diminished by frequent contact with a nonresident biological father. Moreover, involvement by the social fathers is just as beneficial as involvement by resident biological fathers. Stepfather–child closeness is also related to gender as is evidenced by King’s (2006) finding that male stepchildren had the closest relationship with their stepfathers, and they seem to benefit more from a close relationship with their stepfathers than young girls. Boys tend to display fewer antisocial behaviors and behavioral problems than girls when the relationship is close (Hetherington, 1991; Kapinus & Gorman, 2004). A study using Add Health data and a composite index that included items for adolescents’ perception of stepfather closeness and caring behavior, as well as nine activity-oriented items, found that stepfathers’ greater involvement was related to adolescent boys’ but not girls’ lower motivation to have sex (Menning, Holtzman, & Kapinus, 2007). Because stepfathers are often portrayed as potentially abusive toward their stepchildren, particularly stepdaughters, the perception of risk and heightened suspicion of stepfathers may limit men’s willingness to develop close relationships with stepdaughters, especially when it comes to giving them personal attention and spending time alone with them. This could partially explain why adolescent girls are less likely than boys to view stepfathers as supportive (Pink & Wampler, 1985). Men’s reluctance to develop close relationships with stepdaughters limits their parental investment, and this may provide clues to why girls living in stepfather families are at greater risk than boys of exhibiting behavioral problems (Foley et al., 2004), having lower self-esteem, feeling more anxiety, and expressing more suicidal ideation (Garnefski & Diekstra, 1997). Another approach to explaining child outcomes documents that stepfathers, compared to biological fathers, tend to have less effective parenting practices (Amato & Sobolewski, 2004; Berger, 2004, 2007; Coleman, Ganong, & Fine, 2000; Nelson, 2004; Simons, Chen, Simons, Brody, & Cutrona, 2006). For example, stepfathers are less likely to provide parental supervision (Fisher et al., 2003;Kurdek & Fine, 1995; Marsiglio, 1991), engage stepchildren in interaction, or be emotionally supportive (Cooksey & Fondell, 1996; Kurdek & Fine; Thomson, McLanahan, & Curtin, 1992). Recall that in his work on substandard parenting noted previously, Berger (2007) found that stepfather families have lower quality parenting practices and that parenting tends to improve as household income rises. As a counterpoint to his earlier conceptualization of parenting practices, Berger

Policy and Programmatic Issues 283

and colleagues more recently (2008) found that stepfathers provided better quality parenting than married and unmarried biological fathers when practice was measured by engagement (how often father engages child in interaction), shared responsibility in parenting, cooperation in parenting (how much the father acts like someone the mother would want to take care of the child), and trust. Notably, this is one of the few studies that show stepfathers having better parenting practices. It is hard to overstate the importance of income in stepfather families. Income is related to better parenting practices and child involvement (Berger, 2008), which are themselves predictors of children’s academic, behavioral, and social outcomes. Socioeconomic status, compared to family structure alone, plays a much more significant role in shaping child outcomes (Hofferth, 2006;Kapinus & Gorman, 2004; McLeod & Shanahan, 1993; Miller & Davis, 1997; Smith & Brooks-Gunn, 1997; Wen, 2008), although family structure appears to indirectly matter because the men who eventually become stepfathers tend to enter stepfamilies with somewhat lower incomes and fewer years of education (Anderson, 2000; Hernandez & Brandon, 2002). Stepfather families are themselves stratified by marital status, with married stepfather families possessing greater economic resources than cohabiting stepfather families (Clayton, Mincy, & Blankenhorn, 2003; Doherty & Anderson, 2004; Seccombe, 2000; White & Rogers, 2000). Thus, socioeconomic status, as an indicator of children’s academic, behavioral, and social outcomes appears to explain many of the differences in the outcomes of children living in biological vs. stepfather family homes as well as those living in married stepfather vs. cohabiting stepfather homes (see Hofferth (2006) and Tillman (2007) for evidence to the contrary). Finally, several additional outcomes associated with living with a stepfather are noteworthy. Qualitative research suggests that for adults who grew up in a stepfamily, the transition from living with a single mother to having a stepfather (often married) living in the home gave them a feeling of greater social and emotional support. In addition, they enjoyed the greater access to economic resources (Freisthler, Messick Svare, & Harrison-Jay, 2003). Men who grew up in stepfamilies show a greater willingness to enter into relationships with single mothers (Goldscheider & Sassler, 2006). Thus, one outcome is that adult stepchildren, both men and women, are more likely to form stepfamilies themselves (Goldschieder & Kaufman, 2006). In summary, it is quite difficult to assess precisely stepfathers’ influence on their stepchildren’s well-being independent of other conditions and processes that tend to shape stepfamily relations. Survey and qualitative data suggest, though, that when stepchildren, especially boys, are close to their stepfathers, stepchildren are more likely to experience positive outcomes. The positive outcomes may be more likely to occur in stepfamilies that incorporate stepfathers who are able to make a significant financial contribution. POLICY AND PROGRAMMATIC ISSUES Although various public and private initiatives have been launched in recent years to address fatherhood issues in general, and some may potentially help stepfathers, those efforts have done little to deal systematically with any of the

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unique aspects of the stepfather–stepchild relationship. That said, a series of innovative policy and legal initiatives in England and the United States have begun to expand stepparents’ rights (Fine, 1994; LexisNexis, 2001; Marsiglio, 2004a). These efforts, at their core, recognize that some stepparents have earned the right to be treated as parental figures. The Children Act of 1989, which became law in 1991 in England, provides a template for extending rights to stepparents. This provision enables resident stepparents to establish a legal relationship with a stepchild by petitioning for a residency order if they have been married to the biological parent for at least 2 years. The parents can retain their legal rights, but the stepparent is afforded most of the same rights as the parents. In the United States, efforts that could legitimize stepfathers’ relationships to their stepchildren have been proposed in the form of a new legal parental category, ‘‘de facto parent’’ (Mason, Harrison-Jay, Svare, & Wolfinger, 2002). It would . . . legally recognize stepparents as parental authorities but not cut off the rights of nonresident biological parents and not continue indefinitely in the event of a divorce. The concept of de facto parent is currently used loosely in the law with respect to those caring for children, but it has not taken on full form, with clearly delineated rights and obligation. Moreover, there is not consistency in the courts as to its use. (p. 519)

While possible advantages and disadvantages of this kind of innovation are discussed at length elsewhere (Marsiglio, 2004a), suffice it to say that incentives designed to prompt and enable stepfathers (and stepmothers) to become (and remain in cases of divorce) more invested in their stepchildren’s lives warrant careful attention. Researchers must be prepared to study systematically what types of influence new provisions might have on the matrix of relations between stepfathers, mothers, fathers, children, and child advocates in the community. Generally speaking, social service providers have done little to address stepfathers’ needs or involvement in stepfamilies, and researchers have paid scant attention to interventions that include stepfathers. One notable exception is DeGarmo and Forgatch’s (2007) innovative evaluation of how the Oregon model of Parent Management Training (PMTO) intervention affected stepfathers’ parenting skills and early elementary school stepchildren’s depression symptoms and level of noncompliance. This study, targeting couples who had been married for less than 2 years, used a randomized control experimental design and multimethod data, including videotaped observations of different combinations of interactions between stepfathers, mothers, and individual focal stepchildren. The researchers found that the PMTO intervention produced both positive changes in the quality of stepfathers’ parenting and improvements in stepchildren’s outcomes 2 years postintervention. Another small qualitative study of youth protection caseworkers in Quebec attempted to identify conditions that affected stepfathers’ involvement in psychosocial interventions (Parent, Saint-Jacques, Beaudry, & Robitaille, 2007). Caseworkers reacted in different ways to the stepfathers’ place in

Future Research Directions 285

their families and whether they should be encouraged or dissuaded from getting involved in interventions on behalf of their stepchildren. The authors focused particular attention on how caseworkers either entrusted or challenged the mother’s judgment regarding stepfathers’ involvement. FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS Dynamic cultural and demographic forces continuously alter how stepfamilies are represented and negotiated by its members, community agents, and the larger cultural discourses about families and gender. Consequently, the substantive map outlining the stepfathering terrain is in constant flux. In addition to generating intriguing insights about this landscape, the recent wave of studies on stepfathers and stepchildren has highlighted numerous and diverse avenues for future research. Critical questions, both established and new, warrant systematic attention. Research exploring these questions can be framed theoretically by social constructionist, symbolic interactionist, life course, developmental, and feminist perspectives, as well as others. We encourage scholars to consider more systematically the reciprocal processes associated with stepfathers’ and stepchildren’s relations while recognizing the potential direct and indirect influence of mothers, nonresident fathers, siblings, and others. Of course, the full research agenda on stepfathering will benefit if multiple methodologies, including longitudinal designs targeting multiple respondent perspectives are employed more often. Because mothers’ reports may differ significantly from those of fathers and stepfathers (Mikelson, 2008; Robertson, 2008), and children’s reports may diverge as well, care must be taken when interpreting the multiple perspectives. In addition, although most issues can be addressed with basic research approaches using survey designs and in-depth qualitative interviews, opportunities for doing needs assessments and important program evaluations also exist (DeGarmo & Forgatch, 2007). Here, we delineate critical questions regarding stepfather–stepchild relations and stepchild outcomes in the areas we reviewed. Efforts to address these questions would benefit from more systematic, collaborative work between the often separate camps of scholars interested in stepfamilies, fatherhood, and masculinities. Ideally, more research designs should target the healthy dimensions that are represented in many stepfather families (Coleman, Ganong, & Fine, 2000). Future research questions and sampling strategies need to be guided by both prevailing macro shifts in family demography and parents’ increasingly diverse life histories. Some analytic strategies for studying stepfather families can be applied effectively to only one or more members of the family, whereas others require comparisons between stepfather families and other family types, such as, resident two-biological parents, single mother, and stepmother families. Additionally, in light of the growing complexity to family transitions and interactions today, researchers should consider the relative value of romantic partner social fathers versus relative/friend social fathers for children’s wellbeing (Jayakody & Kalil, 2002).

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Thus, more attention needs to focus on cohabiting families in which the mother’s boyfriend interacts with her child(ren). Building on Marsiglio’s (2004a) qualitative work, researchers should strive to understand more fully how various participants interpret, develop, negotiate, and express their ‘‘familial’’ identities in both informal and formal stepfamilies. Part of this research path seeks to establish a richer sense of the structural conditions and individual characteristics that influence the process by which individuals embrace or reject a sense of familial ‘‘we-ness.’’ In addition, analytic frameworks should take into account whether the stepfamily emerged from a divorce or a nonmarital birth(s) (Sweeney, 2007). The field would be well served too if researchers incorporated men who had recently been involved as a husband or cohabiting partner in a stepfather family that dissolved. Including such men could generate fresh insights about the full range of stepfather families, and unearth possible concerns for stepfathers postrelationship that have received little attention. Survey researchers will also need to address the extent to which and how documented outcomes for stepchildren are produced by ‘‘selection effects.’’ Specifically, scholars need to determine the relative importance of factors intimately connected to the sorting processes that lead some people to form a serious relationship with a woman/man who already has children and to establish some type of stepfamily, versus causal processes that affect stepchildren that stem from stepfamily dynamics (Goldscheider & Kaufman, 2006). The importance of this issue is underscored by Hofferth and Anderson’s (2003) finding based on PSID data that, once they eliminated the negative selectivity of stepfathers being different than biological fathers by examining families with joint biological and nonbiological children, paternal investment differences between stepfathers and biological fathers were not statistically significant. Marsiglio (2004a) outlined numerous concepts/themes that can be incorporated into qualitative or survey-based studies to grasp more fully a stepfather’s perspective and experience: 1. Type and level of awareness of a stepchild’s previous and current life experiences and personality 2. Experience with claiming a stepchild as being ‘‘his’’—emotionally, psychologically, and financially 3. Previous anticipatory socialization experiences with children 4. Experiences with birth mother facilitating/restricting his involvement with stepchild 5. Strategies to develop/sustain affinity with stepchild 6. Personal experiences with being a stepchild themselves 7. Facilitating actions that preserve/enhance the biological father’s relationship with the child. Research that explores these issues should deepen understanding about the complex set of processes that influence stepfathers’ relations with stepchildren. Elsewhere, we detailed a focused research agenda to further develop the father ally concept (Marsiglio & Hinojosa, 2007). Efforts to study stepfathers’

Future Research Directions 287

involvement in cooperative cofathering and how such arrangements might influence stepchildren are particularly relevant in an era when men increasingly embrace less traditionally gendered styles of friendship. Such efforts are also consistent with pleas to study simultaneously the array of interrelated relationships that often shape stepfamilies. Of course, recommending research that incorporates multiple family members is far easier than marshaling the resources to conduct such work. As researchers study the properties that define the cooperative stepfather– father relationship and the conditions that foster it, including how it is mediated by a stepchild’s mother, they should explore how stepchildren alter and are influenced by it. Even though truly cooperative cofathering appears to be relatively novel, creative counseling strategies and workshops could make it more common and effective. Evaluation studies that assess initiatives to improve stepfather–father cooperation as part of the larger stepfamily ecology would be useful. Although a few studies have incorporated stepchildren’s reports directly, much more can be done to learn how stepchildren perceive and respond to having a stepfather. Because the literature has for some time pointed to various gender differences in how boys and girls respond to having a stepfather in their lives, researchers need to examine diverse child outcomes, including internalizing and externalizing problems, educational outcomes, social capital acquisition, and others. In recent years, survey data from the Add Health study have improved our understanding of adolescents, but we have very limited qualitative data from children of any age, and limited survey data on younger children and young adults. These data are essential for understanding the interpersonal mechanisms by which stepfathers form relationships with stepchildren and make a difference in stepchildren’s lives. Developing more nuanced insights about how stepfathers and stepchildren perceive, negotiate, and experience closeness is critical. Analyses that focus on how trust is defined, built, and violated would be worthwhile. Longitudinal studies, with high-quality data from children, will enhance our ability to determine how child adjustment to a stepfather family is sensitive to the developmental timing of parents’ relationship dissolution and the onset of a new union. Efforts to understand the reciprocal dimensions to stepfathering can consider the extent to which stepchildren’s personality characteristics, demeanor, and actions elicit from stepfathers warmth, social support, financial contributions, and so for forth. The following 10 questions provide the basis for a research agenda targeting stepchildren, with an eye on their specific experiences in stepfather families. Although the questions are designed to direct stepchildren in a narrative rendering of their life story as a stepchild and their relationship with the stepfather, survey interviewers can adapt some of the items to a closedended format. 1. From an adolescent’s perspective, what does it mean to be a ‘‘stepchild’’ during childhood and adolescence? 2. How do stepchildren characterize their feelings for the stepfather and how do they display them?

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3. Why are some stepchildren more likely than others to see or claim a stepfather as ‘‘their’’ father or legitimate adult authority figure? 4. How do stepchildren respond to and negotiate the use of labels and names to refer to stepfamily members (e.g., first name, dad, stepfather, daughter, stepdaughter)? 5. How do stepchildren interpret the way their relationship with their stepfather has affected their emotional, psychological, financial, and educational well-being? 6. To what extent and how do adolescents use impression management strategies to shape their ‘‘presentation of self’’ as stepchildren to others? 7. How do stepchildren describe and evaluate how their everyday rituals and affinity seeking/maintaining strategies have affected their relationship with their stepfather over time? 8. How do stepchildren manage their dual (and potentially competing) identities as stepchildren and biological children while negotiating relationships with their stepfather and biological father/birth mother? 9. How do stepchildren feel their relationships with their stepfather influences their relations with their biological father? 10. How do stepchildren specifically perceive their stepfather treats them differently than he does his biological children? Research issues like those outlined here will retain their significance for years to come because prevailing family demographic patterns ensure a high proportion of formal and informal stepfather families. If policy makers and researchers working in other countries secure more detailed data on stepfamilies, comparative work could explore the extent to which and how crosscultural conditions influence stepfather families. As cultural and social forces continue to challenge individuals and institutions to redefine the texture of family life throughout the world, researchers will be pressed to understand the evolving complexities associated with stepfather families. The convergence of identity processes (DeGarmo & Forgatch, 2002) and stepfamily dynamics in these arrangements will warrant diligent multidisciplinary efforts. Ideally, researchers will generate insights with theoretical, substantive, and practical significance so as to enhance the prospects that persons participating in stepfather families will be well served. REFERENCES Adler-Baeder, F. (2006). What do we know about the physical abuse of stepchildren? A review of the literature. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 44, 67–81. Amato, P. R., & Keith, B. (1991). Parental divorce and the well-being of children: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 110, 26–46. Amato, P., & Sobolewski, J. (2004). The effects of divorce on fathers and children: Nonresidential fathers and stepfathers. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (4th ed., pp. 341–367). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Anderson, K. G. (2000). The life histories of American stepfathers in evolutionary perspective. Human Nature, 11, 307–333. Anderson, K. G., Kaplan, H., & Lancaster, J. (1999). Parental care by genetic fathers and stepfathers I: Reports from Albuquerque men. Evolution and Human Behavior, 20, 405–431.

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CHAPTER 10

Fathers From Low-Income Backgrounds Myths and Evidence CATHERINE S. TAMIS-LEMONDA and KAREN E. MCFADDEN

FATHERS FROM LOW-INCOME BACKGROUNDS: MYTHS AND EVIDENCE This chapter is focused on the experiences of low-income fathers who, like all fathers, experience the joys and responsibilities of fatherhood, yet do so within contexts of significant challenge and constraint. Because low-income fathers by definition live near or below poverty thresholds, they struggle to provide their children with necessary resources (such as housing, food, clothing, and medical coverage). They typically reside in underresourced neighborhoods with high rates of concentrated poverty and few educational and employment opportunities. They are at best stably employed in lowwage work, or at worst unemployed, with many experiencing inconsistent employment without benefits. Many have not attained a high school diploma, and few have attended any college; thus, their prospects for future employment remain bleak. Over time, these challenges take a toll on both father– child and mother–father relationships: Low-income fathers are less likely to be formally identified as a child’s father, less likely to be married to the mother of their children, and less likely to reside with their children than men from more resourced households. Nonetheless, these broad-sweeping statistics tend to mask the true heterogeneity of men who are otherwise grouped together as ‘‘low income.’’ In the United States, low-income fathers live in both urban and rural communities; they are from Black, White, Asian, Latino, Native American, and mixed ethnic and racial backgrounds; they are immigrant and native born; Acknowledgements: We wish to thank the fathers and families who have participated in our ongoing research at New York University. We acknowledge members of the Early Head Start Fathers’ Research Consortium, who have been our close collaborators in the study of fathering in low-income, ethnically diverse families over the past decade. Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda is at the Center for Research on Culture, Development, and Education at New York University, NSF Grant Nos. 0218159 and 0721383.

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they are younger and older; some reside with their children and others do not; and they vary substantially in the extent to which they are involved in their children’s lives and how they express that involvement. In short, the diversity that characterizes low-income fathers mirrors that of U.S. fathers more generally. However, in contrast to these similarities, the majority of popular narratives surrounding low-income fathers rarely highlight this heterogeneity. A main reason for this limitation is the challenges of studying low-income fathers (especially nonresident fathers), who are difficult to recruit into largescale research studies and thus least likely to be represented in research findings (Coley & Chase-Lansdale, 1999; McAdoo, 1993). Thus, knowledge about low-income fathers lags behind research on fathers more generally, and has often led to ‘‘filling in the blanks’’ about the characteristics, behaviors, and influences of these men. Consequently, portrayals of low-income fathers in the popular press, media, and public at large are often oversimplified, and there exist long-lasting myths about these men that are remarkably resistant to contradictory evidence. Examples of such myths include views that lowincome fathers are ‘‘deadbeat dads’’ who do not care about their children and are uninvolved or absent; that low-income fathers who have been raised by deadbeat dads will become deadbeat dads themselves; and that low-income fathers reject social institutions such as marriage and family. Myths about low-income fathers, in many ways, can also be found in the research literature. Often, researchers get caught up in theoretical frameworks or politically correct positions about fatherhood, which may or may not be rooted in empirical evidence. This is particularly true in the literature on low-income fathers. For example, some researchers have responded to the statistics of low marital rates, low father residency rates, and high rates of father absence in low-income families by advancing arguments that may actually undermine the importance of fathers in children’s development. These arguments include discourse on the benefits of blended families, the notion that ‘‘social fathers’’ can replace biological fathers, and the idea that absentee fathers have a benign effect on children as long as family members are supportive and household income is sufficient. These claims risk leading to double standards whereby low levels of father involvement and absenteeism are viewed as an acceptable norm for some children (e.g., those living in poor communities) but not for others (e.g., those in more resourced communities). The goal in this chapter is therefore to challenge certain myths that prevail about low-income fathers, both in the popular media and scholarly literature. We describe and refute four prominent characterizations of lowincome fathers as: (a) nonessential, (b) deadbeat, (c) perpetuators of their own childhood histories, and (d) dissenters of marriage. In doing so, we highlight the heterogeneity that characterizes low-income fathers, and stress the ways that low-income fathers are both unique and similar to fathers more broadly. We draw on our own research with low-income fathers (where relevant) to support these points, and end with a discussion of the various pathways through which low-income fathers are found to influence their children’s development.

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THE NONESSENTIAL FATHER Surprisingly, one of the most prominent myths about low-income fathers is that they are unnecessary. Although few researchers explicitly state that fathers don’t matter for children, this idea implicitly underlies much discourse about low-income fathers. The argument goes something like this: Children from low-income families will do just fine, whether or not their fathers are around, as long as they are in a supportive home environment, or receive the necessary resources from other sources, or have someone else who functions ‘‘like a father’’ to them. In short, such claims seem to suggest that children in father-absent households (as defined by fathers having little or no contact with their children) are at no more risk than children with present fathers. This perspective is advanced in Silverstein and Auerbach’s (1999) deconstruction of the essential father, whereby they note that children need ‘‘at least one responsible, caretaking adult,’’ but this individual does not have to be male or female, does not have to live within a heterosexual family structure, and does not have to be a biological parent of the child. Following the publication of this article, the popular media soon pounced on the idea that ‘‘fathers don’t matter’’ (see Chavez, 1999; Jaccoby, 1999), and presented an overly simplified version of the complex points laid forth by Silverstein and Auerbach. In particular, Silverstein and Auerbach stressed that the practical and emotional demands of parenthood make meeting children’s needs highly difficult for the vast majority of single parents, and that although positive child outcomes are possible in single-parent families, under most circumstances they are not probable. These observations highlight the statistical distinction between ‘‘main effects’’ vs. interactions or ‘‘moderation.’’ That is, although there exist factors that may moderate or buffer the risks associated with absent fathers, the risks that accompany father absence persist for the majority of children (McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994; McLoyd, 1998).

FATHERS DON’T MATTER

IN

CERTAIN CULTURAL CONTEXTS

A part of the nonessential father argument is the idea that fathers do not matter as much in certain cultural contexts, such as in communities where father absence is prevalent (which often tends to be low-income communities). However, research on the fertility patterns of Caribbean men suggests otherwise (Roopnarine, 2002). Both ethnographic and quantitative research in various cultural groups of the Caribbean indicates that many Caribbean men procreate in a series of transitory unions before permanently settling into family and marriage. Thus, many children in the Caribbean reside in households where their fathers are minimally involved, whereas others reap the psychological, emotional, and financial benefits of present fathers. Comparisons of children fathered with initial partners vs. those fathered in later unions (when fathers settle down and remain with their children and partners) indicate that children of transitory unions face elevated risks in social, emotional and cognitive development compared to children born into the later, father-stable households (Evans & Davies, 1997; Leo-Rhynie, 1997; Roopnarine). For example, many children born into early transitory unions experience less sensitive

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and nurturing engagements with their fathers. In studies of young, low-income Caribbean parents, fathers’ interactions with their children were characterized by low levels of the types of behaviors that support cognitive development, such as encouraging exploratory play or offering positive emotional support and praise (Leo-Rhynie; Payne & Furnham, 1992; Wint & Brown, 1988). Furthermore, in the case of early union Caribbean children, their interactions with nonbiological fathers are typically more agonistic than those between children and their biological fathers (Flinn, 1992; Roopnarine). Finally, in lowincome Caribbean societies, children born into later more permanent unions are simply more likely to have a biological father in the home, which often results in better household resources and thereby increases the likelihood of positive health and behavioral outcomes in children (Roopnarine). Thus, despite relatively high levels of father absence in Caribbean communities, children are by no means ‘‘buffered’’ from the adverse effects of absent or uninvolved fathers just because others around them are living in comparable circumstances. Similar cultural arguments have been applied to Black communities in the United States. When fathers are absent or don’t provide for children, grandparents and other family members often ‘‘pick up the slack’’ and substitute for a lack of father involvement by providing resources or engaging in the caretaking of children (Dornbusch et al., 1985; Stack, 1974). Again, however, this research tends to emphasize statistical moderation, by describing the conditions under which low-income children without involved fathers fare as well as those with involved fathers. While some children in low-income, father-absent homes are bolstered by extra family support, many children in low-income, single-parent households do not receive substantial monetary or in-kind familial contributions. Furthermore, lower rates of negative outcomes such as school dropout and teenage pregnancy are found in households where adolescents live with a stepfather in comparison to teens who live in single-parent or mother–grandmother homes (McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994). As such, arguments founded on statistical moderation virtually ignore the generalized benefits of positive father involvement that cut across racial and ethnic lines. In our work on father involvement during children’s first years of life, we have investigated father involvement in low-income White, Black, and Latino households (e.g., Shannon, Tamis-LeMonda, London, & Cabrera, 2002; TamisLeMonda, Shannon, Cabrera, & Lamb, 2004; Tamis-LeMonda, Kahana-Kalman, & Yoshikawa, 2009). Across all studies, positive father involvement, reflected in the frequencies and quality of father engagements with their children, uniformly predicts the language and cognitive development of children from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds. Others also find that positive father involvement relates to children’s outcomes similarly when ethnic and racial groups are compared (Black, Dubowitz, & Starr, 1999; Dubowitz et al., 2001; Evans & Davies, 1997; Leo-Rhynie, 1997). FAMILY RESOURCES, NOT FATHERS PER SE, ARE WHAT MATTERS Another argument that reflects the position of the nonessential father is that ‘‘economic disadvantage,’’ not ‘‘father absence per se,’’ accounts for the

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adverse outcomes of children with absent fathers. The modus operandi of proponents of this idea is to ‘‘control for’’ the economic conditions of households with and without involved and/or resident fathers, and ask whether father effects diminish when these financial indicators are covaried. If associations between father absence and children’s outcomes attenuate after these controls, it is regarded as evidence that children are fine without fathers, as long as the family is compensated for the economic loss associated with father absence. For instance, longitudinal studies of teenage parenthood find that in situations where fathers remain in the household over time, financial stability is more probable and, as such, children are less likely to be subjected to the pervasive effects of poverty (Apfel & Seitz, 1996; Furstenberg & Harris, 1993; Furstenberg, Brooks-Gunn, & Morgan, 1987). Findings from such studies have at times been interpreted as evidence that, after controlling for increases in household income, father presence is not uniquely associated with additional benefits to child outcomes. Such conclusions are problematic on two levels. First, father presence is confounded with increases in household income such that although the variables may be statistically separated, due to their co-occurrence they cannot be theoretically decoupled. A major contribution of fathers is often the financial investments they make in their families. In other words, claims that fathers do not matter above and beyond their financial provisioning is akin to assertions that it was not the actual players on the 1999 U.S. women’s soccer team who were responsible for winning the World Cup, but rather their goal scoring and defensive tactics that explained the outcome. If possible to control for goals scored and goals defended, the U.S team no longer would have won. The same erroneous logic is evident when researchers consider a father’s economic assistance to the household as falling outside the purview of a father’s influence on children’s development. In low-income households, financial resources are especially important to children’s well-being and development, and the lack thereof can exert a major toll on the family. Thus, to the extent that involved fathers are more likely to contribute to household resources, and resources in lowincome households are already low, a core pathway through which lowincome fathers matter is their financial contributions. Second, claims that fathers do not make a difference in children’s outcomes above and beyond economic provisioning are based on studies that leave other dimensions of father involvement unmeasured. Father presence or absence is a static and often uninformative measure of fathers’ actual involvement with children, and in the event that some present fathers may have a positive influence on children (e.g., through cognitively stimulating play) while other present fathers may have a negative influence on children (e.g., through the effects of domestic violence), the benefits of positive father involvement would wash out when dichotomous measures of father absence/presence are examined. That may be one reason that studies using father presence as a measure of paternal influence in multivariate models have not predicted children’s developmental outcomes (e.g., Crockett, Eggebeen, & Hawkins, 1993; Mott, 1993; Furstenberg & Harris, 1993). Yet other studies of low-income families that examine the quality of the father–child

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interactions have demonstrated strong associations with children’s cognitive and language outcomes while similarly finding a lack of association between fathers’ sheer presence and these same outcomes (e.g., Black, Dubowitz, & Starr, 1999; Shannon et al., 2002; Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2004). SUMMARY Scholarship seeking to ‘‘deconstruct the essential father theory’’ (Silverstein & Auerbach, 1999) has often been dangerously co-opted by the popular media to support claims that fathers don’t matter and that children who grow up in single-parent households fare equally well as children who grow up with positively involved fathers. Such claims are refuted by countless empirical studies that show that children who experience absent fathers are more likely to confront an array of risks that compromise their well-being. Moreover, the ideas that fathers matter only in certain cultural contexts and that economic context rather than fathers per se matter are equally flawed. Rather, there are numerous benefits associated with positive father involvement, including financial support, and these benefits cut across socioeconomic, ethnic, and racial lines.

DEADBEAT DADS A second and related myth that has often been used in the characterization of low-income fathers is that of the ‘‘deadbeat dad.’’ The term deadbeat dad originated as a colloquial rendering of the official status of noncustodial parents who were noncompliant with, or behind on, court-ordered child support payments (Bartfeld & Meyer, 1994; Garfinkel, McLanahan, Meyer, & Selzer, 1998). This term soon came to encompass a father’s lack of other human or social capital investments in their children; thus, ‘‘deadbeat dads’’ were also fathers who did not spend time with or ‘‘weren’t there’’ for their children (e.g., Argys, Peters, & Waldman, 2001; Bartfeld & Meyer; Cherlin & Griffith, 1998). Over time, the term deadbeat dad was further generalized to men who did not reside with their children, based on the assumption that nonresidency reflected a lack of involvement. Consequently, because lowincome fathers are disproportionately nonresident, they were more likely to be referred to as deadbeat dads (Furstenberg et al., 1987; McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994). Researchers have since challenged this narrow characterization of lowincome fathers as deadbeat (Argys et al., 2001; Bartfeld & Meyer, 1994; Cherlin & Griffith, 1998; Mincy & Sorensen, 1998), and have sought to more accurately document the levels and forms of father involvement in these men. Such work confirmed that the vast majority of low-income fathers, both resident and nonresident, are involved with children in numerous ways (Cabrera et al., 2004). Large-scale studies, for example, indicate that of the 20% of American children who live in mother-headed households, the majority (about 87%) have regular contact with their fathers (Federal Interagency Forum on Child

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and Family Statistics, 2005; Flanagan & West, 2004; McLanahan, Garfinkel, Reichman, & Teitler, 2001). Statistics such as these suggest that although many low-income fathers may not reside with their children, they are present in their children’s lives in ways that remain understudied. Little is known about nonresident fathers’ involvement because it is often difficult for researchers to locate or contact these men, although what is known suggests that the majority of children from low-income families do see their nonresident biological fathers (Mincy & Oliver, 2003; Phares, 1996). While many of these men may have trouble making predetermined child support payments, they cannot be assumed to be absent from their children’s lives. In fact, many are very involved. In our own research in the Early Head Start evaluation study, we found that both resident and nonresident low-income fathers are highly accessible to their children as well as involved in all aspects of raising them. According to maternal reports, nearly 90% of fathers were present at the birth of their infants, and voiced a commitment to remain involved in their children’s lives (Shannon, Cabrera, Bradley, Tamis-LeMonda, & Lamb, in press). Over 80% of these lowincome dads remained involved in children’s lives by 2 years of age, and while these dads may not have always been able to provide financially for their children, they expressed the goal of ‘‘being there’’ for their children physically and emotionally (Cabrera et al., 2004; Summers et al., 1999). Although both marriage and residency ensure that children are consistently in contact with their fathers, over 90% of nonresident fathers managed to see their children a few times a week if they were in romantic relationships with the mothers of their children (Cabrera et al., 2004). Even 90% of nonresident fathers who considered themselves just friends with children’s mothers had contact with their children at least once over the prior 3-month period. Moreover, the majority of fathers reported engaging in a variety of activities with their infants and young children, such as feeding, bathing, and play, and also displayed responsibility through taking children to the doctor, caring for them when they were sick, and so forth (Cabrera et al., 2004). Most fathers reported engaging in these behaviors on a regular basis (i.e., daily or weekly), and mothers’ reports of fathers’ activities confirmed these estimates. Further, when fathers were observed at play with their children, they were rated as frequently engaging in supportive behaviors, and rarely displayed controlling or harsh behaviors (Shannon, TamisLeMonda, & Cabrera, 2006; Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2004). When the outcomes of these positive father behaviors were examined, fathers’ supportive behaviors (based on a summary score of cognitive regard, sensitivity, and warmth) predicted children’s cognitive and language outcomes (Shannon et al., 2002; Tamis-LeMonda et al.), and did so after controlling for the quality of mother–child interactions and a range of demographics (e.g., father work status, education) (Tamis-LeMonda et al.). Moreover, in lowincome families, fathers’ involvement, parenting satisfaction, and employment predicted lower rates of child behavior problems above and beyond mothers’ age, education, and parenting satisfaction, further demonstrating that father involvement plays a unique role in positive child development (Black et al., 1999).

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METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES

TO

REACHING NONINVOLVED FATHERS

Of course, research findings on the involvement of low-income fathers are not without limitations. Most centrally, data are based on descriptions of father involvement in a select group of fathers—those who were nominated for study participation by the mothers of their children (who are typically asked to provide contact information for fathers) and who themselves agreed to participate. Many studies on fathers rely on mothers for contact information on fathers. Many mothers are hesitant to provide such information to researchers, particularly when mother–father relationships are conflicted or complicated; in other situations, mothers may be unaware of fathers’ whereabouts. One example of the selection bias in studies with low-income men is seen in the Early Head Start National Evaluation Father Study. Researchers asked mothers for permission to contact the fathers of the target children. This was done to respect mothers’ parental rights, particularly in light of the fact that many men were noncustodial fathers and did not reside with their children. This request resulted in approximately 80% of fathers being identified for study participation. Of this pool of fathers, approximately 70% agreed to study participation, but even fewer ended up actually being seen due to scheduling and other difficulties. Thus, of the group of all potential biological fathers, only about half were actually studied at any given assessment. This selection bias means that findings are likely skewed to reflect positive father involvement since the accounts of fathers who are no longer in children’s lives are not represented. While this research shows that, nonetheless, overwhelming numbers of low-income fathers remain involved in their children’s lives over time, it is highly likely that nonparticipating fathers may be less involved with their children and may be more likely to resemble the deadbeat dads portrayed in the popular press. A major challenge, therefore, is to move beyond studies of low-income fathers that omit the voices of fathers who no longer see their children. Even exploratory studies on small numbers of presumed deadbeat dads promise to lend new insights into the experiences of fathers who are no longer involved with their children and the reasons for their lack of involvement. Although studying such fathers poses a significant challenge, and large-scale work with hard-to-reach low-income fathers is lacking, a handful of qualitative studies have yielded information on the experiences and perceptions of low-income fathers who no longer see their children and/or no longer provide for them. As one example, Nelson, Clampet-Lundquist, and Edin (2002) interviewed 40 noncustodial, low-income African-American fathers in the Philadelphia area and found that although most of these men ‘‘welcomed the opportunity to become fathers’’ and ‘‘were determined to embrace the responsibilities [of fathering],’’ they also found it difficult to live up to their intentions for a variety of reasons. A number of obstacles associated with economic disadvantage contributed to men’s inability to fulfill their fathering responsibilities, including substance abuse, incarceration, and difficulties finding and sustaining stable employment. The lack of job opportunities many of these men faced led some to pursue alternative forms of income, which often

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resulted in incarceration and other barriers to continued involvement with their children (Jarrett, Roy, & Burton, 2002).

REFLECTIONS

OF

PRESUMED ‘‘DEADBEAT,’’ NONINVOLVED FATHERS

In our own qualitative research, we also interviewed a small group of fathers who no longer saw their children in efforts to learn more about the circumstances leading to their absenteeism. This work is based on in-depth 2- to 3-hour interviews with a handful of fathers of pre-school-aged children who had been in our studies at earlier waves and yet had not had any contact with their children for at least a year (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2006). Although these fathers were not necessarily representative of ‘‘no longer involved lowincome fathers’’ at large, their personal reflections provided valuable information about the experiences of these rarely studied men. Two overarching themes were common to the stories of the low-income men who no longer saw their children: (1) perceptions of maternal ‘‘gatekeeping’’ (Allen & Hawkins, 1999; Fagan & Barnett, 2003); and (2) intentions for future reunification with their children. Moreover, underlying both of these themes was evidence of the obstacles posed by men’s low-income status, in terms of why they felt that the mothers of their children were gatekeeping and why they felt unable to yet unite with their children. Regarding the first theme, virtually all fathers spoke of the barriers created by the mothers of their children, who were viewed as preventing fathers from having access to their children. This finding accords with the observations of others (e.g., Nelson et al., 2002): that one of the greatest barriers to fathers’ remaining involved with their children after their romantic relationships with children’s mothers had ended was negotiating with their former partners about seeing their children. For the most part, their relationships with the mothers of their children were both complex and contentious, and fathers expressed a sense of futility in their ability to negotiate coparenthood with their children’s mothers. They uniformly perceived themselves as being excluded from making important decisions in their children’s lives. Moreover, fathers described mothers’ gatekeeping as an abrupt and sudden change that was either unexpected or else deemed to be unfair. These perceptions are illustrated in the following statements made by two fathers in our qualitative study: She was really mad, she was like I never wanna see you ever again, you know what I mean? Your daughter, you can just forget about your daughter. Then she just hung up on me, and then that’s it, that’s when everything started. Boom, I haven’t seen my daughter since then. She sent both of her daughters to Jamaica. They don’t even live in the country . . . I didn’t even know she had already planned to do this in advance. She didn’t tell me and, umm, she had already got her passports, but she didn’t tell me she was about to do this situation. So I like found out the day that they was leaving.

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Regarding the second theme, all fathers spoke passionately about their hopes and plans to someday reunite with their children. These plans were expressed as deeply rooted needs to be part of their children’s lives, although in most cases the conflicted relationships with their ex-partners had engendered obstacles to consistent father–child relationships. According to fathers, mothers simply did not facilitate father–child visitation or else actively sought to keep fathers and children apart. At least in their minds, fathers remained fervently attached to a desire to one day ‘‘be there’’ for their children, as reflected in the following statements: I wanna see my kid, and if I knew where my kid was I would go pick her up. You know what I mean? I would not leave her and never go see her . . . I would never just forget about my daughter and just and just disappear. I feel that on my heart and my life, I need them here with me . . . I want to do everything for my kids. I don’t . . . I’m focused on a future, you know? I really want them.

Nonetheless, despite fathers’ firm desires to reunite with their children, they did not have a well-formulated plan as to how to move forward, and they were not typically making special efforts to regain their parental rights through the legal system. In light of their enormous commitment to their children (at least as expressed to us), why were these men not actively pursuing seeing their children? Here it seems that their low-income status was a fundamental obstacle to moving forward. For example, many fathers noted that they first had to achieve certain goals before they could reunite with their children. These fathers felt that they would resume their involvement with their children ‘‘as soon as’’ their housing or employment conditions became more stable, at which point their children would be able to stay with them. The master plan is I’m in the process of buying a home right now. It’s the first step to a much greater goal I’ve set for myself, which is to have him just, just have him with me. Raise him up. You know, in the meantime I’m missing like the many you know precious time right now with him and, and it hurts.

Although this father dreamed of one day being a consistent figure in his child’s life, and recognized the material requirements that would accompany such a responsibility, he had not yet come close to working out the complicated negotiations with his child’s mother (and custodial parent) that would be necessary to make such a situation happen (though the child now lives with his mother in New York, this father lives in Florida, and would have to bargain for an out-of-state coparenting arrangement). Fathers ardently held on to admirable intentions that were not always coupled with plausible ways to navigate the coparenting relationship or their economic circumstances so as to achieve their dreams of someday being there for their children. These interviews reveal the dynamic trajectories that father involvement can take by illustrating the reality of low-income fathers moving in and out of

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their children’s lives in response to challenges in their own lives (Jarrett et al., 2002). Men remain fathers for a lifetime, and although they may often be unable to fulfill their responsibilities as fathers at a certain point in developmental time, it is still possible that they will later become involved under more stable life conditions, and it appears that many such men hold on to such dreams of the future. SUMMARY In summary, although the term deadbeat dad originally referred to fathers who were not meeting their full financial obligations to their children, the term has also been applied fathers who are not involved with their children in other ways (e.g., time). However, regardless of definition, the pervasive characterization of low-income fathers as deadbeat has been invalidated by studies that find the majority of low-income fathers to be highly accessible to their children and involved in a range of activities with them, ranging from bathing and feeding to play and reading. Moreover, relatively high rates of father involvement are also displayed by fathers who do not reside with their children, although the quality of the mother–father relationship can alter these patterns. Nonresident fathers who are in a romantic relationship with the mothers of their children are more likely to see their children and remain involved than those who are not. When fathers do not maintain at least a friendly relationship with mothers, rates of contact with children can decline rapidly. Finally, more research is needed on fathers who no longer see their children, so as to understand their perceptions of the barriers to sustained involvement. Recent qualitative research indicates that fathers who are not involved with their children hope to be reunited with them in the future and, at least in part, blame the mothers of their children for their current circumstances. Nonetheless, their goals of reunification do not include clear steps about to how to move forward, and without such a plan their absence continues, to the possible detriment of themselves and their children. DADS STUCK IN THEIR HISTORIES A third myth that permeates the popular and scholarly literature is the idea that low-income fathers will follow in the footsteps of their own fathers. This idea is largely grounded in attachment theory, which posits that an individual’s history of attachment-related experiences plays a major part in later child-rearing behaviors (Bowlby, 1969/1982; Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985). Bowlby and his followers hypothesized that early attachment relationships are translated into later social functioning through an individual’s development of a fairly stable mental model of the self in relationships (termed an internal working model; Benoit & Parker, 1994; Bowlby, 1969/ 1982, 1973; Main et al.; Sagi et al., 1994). The hypothesized links between an individual’s childhood experiences and current parenting are referred to as ‘‘the intergenerational transmission of parenting’’ (Cowan & Cowan, 1992; Main et al.; Ricks, 1985; van IJzendoorn, 1992).

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In many ways, the assumption that early attachment histories are linearly linked to current parenting styles may create unspoken expectations for lowincome men who may be more likely to have experienced inconsistent fathering in their own childhoods than men from more resourced backgrounds. In contrast, research that emphasizes possibilities for flexibility and adaptation in internal working models speaks to the potential of fathers to both overcome and even benefit from their past negative relationships (Carlson, Sroufe, & Egeland, 2004; Paley, Cox, Burchinal, & Payne, 1999; Pearson, Cohn, Cowan, & Cowan, 1994; Phelps, Belsky, & Crnic, 1998; Rohner, 1986). Indeed, links between fathers’ childhood histories to current fathering are not straightforward. Many times, men obtain strength from their own adverse experiences and seek to rectify these through positive relationships with their own children (Baruch & Barnett, 1986; Volling & Belsky, 1992). Our own research on father involvement indicates that although lowincome fathers’ childhood relationships with their fathers predict patterns of father engagement with their infants (Shannon, Tamis-LeMonda, & Margolin, 2006), these associations are modest in size and moderated by a host of other factors, including the quality of the mother–father relationship, fathers’ mental health, income, education, and age (Shannon et al., 2006; McFadden, Tamis-LeMonda, Howard, Shannon, & Cabrera, 2009). For example, in a recent study of 501 low-income fathers of 2-year-olds, various associations between childhood histories and current father involvement emerged. Men with positive recollections of their early relationships with their fathers were not by default ‘‘highly involved’’ with their own children, just as men with negative recollections of their early relationships with their fathers were not automatically low on father involvement. Rather, men’s current involvement with their children reflected the interplay between past and current experiences. For example, men who reported positive relationships with their fathers, positive current relationships, relatively higher incomes (within an otherwise low-income range), higher education, and so on, were highly involved with their children, whereas fathers with positive histories but low scores on these same measures displayed low involvement with their children on measures of financial provisioning, time with child, social involvement, and caregiving. Similarly, men who had poor childhood relationships with their fathers and difficult current circumstances were low on involvement with their children, whereas negative histories coupled with positive current circumstances resulted in men’s being highly involved with their children (McFadden et al., 2009). The positive side of this work indicates that low-income fathers who perceive rejection from their fathers in their own childhoods are not doomed to reject their own children. Rather, many men who perceive their fathers as uninvolved or rejecting during childhood express high motivation to remain involved in their children’s lives and are able to follow through on these aspirations, as measured by the time they spend with children as well as their involvement in the everyday care of and play with their children. Of special interest in our work is the group of low-income men who were able to overcome the risks associated with having a poor relationship with their own fathers. Through in-depth interviews with a subset of these men,

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we learned about their unwavering commitment to reverse the negative patterns of their own childhoods. These men were dedicated to remaining invested in their children’s lives and actively avoided becoming the types of fathers their fathers had been. They did not want their own children to think of them as they thought of their fathers, as evidenced in the following quotes by Latino and African-American fathers: I don’t wanna have my son growin’ up how I think of my father. . . . ‘‘Don’t like him, can’t stand him, I hate him, he can just die,’’ I use to jus’ think that, n’ like he could die I won’t even go to his funeral. I won’t even cry. I won’t even care. They don’ even got to tell me. . . . That’s how I used to think. You know what I mean? I don’t want my son growin’ up thinkin’ that way about me. I want him to be proud of me. My father was never there for me. You know, umm, I’m just doing the opposite of what my father did, was be there for my children. Especially for my boys, ’cause I never had a male figure around in my life.

Additionally, these men were well aware of the challenges associated with being low income, and they expressed desires to shelter their own children from those risks and experiences. Broken homes, street life, and sporadic visitation rights were viewed as experiences to avoid at all costs: I didn’t wanna have kids like he had in the street ‘cause me going through what I went through I don’t want none of my kids to go through anything, anything like that. You know the emotional drama and you know the broken home. . . . It’s nothing better than having two parents together. You know, raising one child. You know, it’s the greatest. ‘Cause like you know I wouldn’t wanna be the type that’s livin’ somewhere else and come and get my kids, like you know every now and then or you know every weekend or every other week. You know things like that and not being there on a daily basis cause, you know, I’m really not getting’ to know them. You know, not being there, so it’s like I’d rather be there for them every single day. You know me, you know I’m always there for them. It’s not like they have to call me and say, ‘‘Okay come by, you know, come by on the weekend.’’

In general, the expressed sentiments of these fathers align with findings obtained with middle-income fathers. Specifically, many low-income men with rejecting histories appear to have learned from their own experiences and are attempting to compensate for their own fathers’ lack of involvement by being more engaged with their own children (Baruch & Barnett, 1986; Volling & Belsky, 1992). SUMMARY Although men from low-income families are more likely to have experienced ‘‘absent’’ fathers than men from middle-income backgrounds, it is simplistic to assume that these patterns of engagement will be replayed in their current

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fathering. Low-income men are aware of the barriers of poverty, and many are also acutely sensitive to their own feelings of rejection from their fathers when they were children. These feelings often translate to a great desire to be better role models for their own children than their fathers had been to them. A shared goal of many of these men is to protect their children from the dangers of the streets and the experiences of single parenthood by being there for their children both emotionally and financially. DISSENTERS OF MARRIAGE A final myth surrounding low-income fathers is the idea that these men do not value marriage. Proponents of marriage promotion initiatives describe a ‘‘crisis of the family’’ and cite declining marriage rates as evidence that low-income parents no longer value the traditional family form (e.g., Haskins, McLanahan, & Donahue, 2005). Indeed, this logic is based on the exponential increase in out-of-wedlock births over the past 50 years in the United States (4% to 33%) (Heuveline & Timberlake, 2004; Ventura & Bachrach, 2000), which tend to be highest among poor minority parents, especially those from African-American backgrounds (Gibson-Davis, Edin, & McLanahan, 2005; Ventura & Bachrach). Even when these births occur within cohabiting relationships, the likelihood that low-income parents will establish a household together or get married appears to vary by race/ethnicity and economic factors, as, for example, in the United States low-income African-American mothers are less likely to marry than low-income White mothers (Edin, 2000; Gibson-Davis et al.; Lichter, McLaughlin, Kephart, & Landry, 1992; Manning & Smock, 1995). These statistics have left the impression that low-income parents, and particularly the fathers who have seemingly abandoned these unions, do not value marriage and customary family formation. Some of this work is based on interviews with mothers about their views and choices regarding family formation. For example, one study of low-income Black and White mothers demonstrated that single White mothers tended to have more positive views of marriage than Black mothers (Edin, 2000). In contrast, little information on low-income fathers’ views about marriage has been generated (Gibson-Davis et al., 2005). Some research suggests that difficulties finding and sustaining employment and the risks and realities of incarceration make many low-income men ‘‘unmarriageable’’ (DeParle, 2004; Edin, 2000; Lichter, LeClere, & McLaughlin, 1991; Lichter et al., 1992; Manning & Smock, 1995; Wilson, 1996), yet most conclude that this explanation does not come close to accounting for the variance in parent’s transition into marriage by socioeconomic status and race (Lichter, et al., 1991, 1992; Manning & Smock). Consequently, the lack of data on the views of low-income men regarding marriage stands the risk of leading to erroneous conclusions about the relatively low rates of marriage in low-income families. THE VALUE

OF

MARRIAGE

In our own qualitative work with low-income fathers in the New York City area, we sought to gain insight into what these men actually think about

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marriage and family formation. We interviewed 22 low-income Latino and Black fathers of preschoolers using in-depth, open-ended probes that asked men about their relationships to their children, partners, life circumstances, and views on marriage (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2006). These men had been in our studies of fathering since their infants’ births, and were therefore particularly forthcoming about their views on marriage and families given their history of study participation. Somewhat unexpectedly, nearly all men (88%) expressed positive views toward marriage and discussed the benefits afforded by marriage, even though only 27% of the men in the study were actually married. Thus, men’s marital status was not associated with their expressed evaluations of the institution of marriage. The overwhelming majority of fathers talked about the comfort and benefits that marriage offers in facing life issues with a partner or as a team. They talked of the ‘‘beauty’’ of marriage, shared responsibilities within marriage, the lifelong commitment of marriage, and a general sense that marriage is the ‘‘right thing to do.’’ These sentiments are exemplified in the quotes below, each by a different father, yet each sharing common themes around teamwork, intimacy, and the beauty and rightness of marriage: It’s a team that you always have somebody by your side that understands how you feel and that’s going to feel the pain that you feel. And that when you go through something, your significant other is going to go through it with you. It’s like working as a team really, that’s your team. Any problems, any hurdles that you have in life, you work on it together. I mean, a husband and wife would combine, like we’re one person. Marriage is a beautiful thing, and things are usually good in marriages unless you wasn’t ready or unless you really not compatible with that person. Not being alone, you know, coming home, if you had a bad day talking to someone, you know? Having somebody there. You don’t want to open your door and it’s an empty house. You know what I mean? You got no one to talk to so, you know, I believe just having somebody there for you that you could talk to at any time. And helping out and sharing the responsibilities, bills or whatever. So that’s a good thing. The growin’ together, you know. Experiencing certain things with that particular person. Someone that you’re gonna spend the rest of your life with. We’re not married but if it were up to me, we would be because that’s a way a family should be. It’s the right thing to do. It shows you know it’s just the way of life. I mean you get with someone, you marry, you have a family. Plus it keeps you more committed. If you’re not married, ain’t know what’s gonna happen. But when you married it’s more like a commitment. You know what I mean? Something’s still there. It keeps the tradition that’s one. Second of all that was again they [children] start learning by marriage. They know that their parents were married, and it was like real love. And it’s, it’s the right way. It’s the family way. I think that’s the right thing to do. It’s good to grow old with somebody.

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Additionally, these men expressed an unequivocal reverence regarding the integrity of marriage. In contrast to cohabitation, the decision to marry was viewed to be permanent. Thus, counter to common myth, these men did not view cohabitation as a replacement for marriage; instead, living together and getting married were described as very different forms of commitment: It’s supposed to be a more serious commitment. You know meaning that you gotta try to give more, you know. You know in my point of view right now, anybody could just decide to say, ‘‘Listen, I don’t want to be here.’’ You know, they could just take their stuff and leave. You’re living together, but, when you get married, it’s more responsible. Just living together you could walk out any day. When you’re married you try to work things out more. If you get married by the church they are very strict about divorce and none of that. It’s different. I think it is different.

The commitment and high value placed on the institution of marriage was paralleled by an equally strong distaste for divorce, and disdain toward people who took marriage and divorce lightly. Many men explained that marriage means ‘‘forever,’’ and that there was no point in getting married if there was a possibility that they might someday get divorced. For these men, divorce was worse than never marrying, and divorce was viewed as especially harmful to children: I don’t believe like in, how they call it, umm, divorces. I don’t think that you suppose to do that. Once you get married, to somebody, somebody that you really love and that you care about, it should always remain like that, no matter what. It should be no divorce, if you have to go to counseling or classes or anything, you should try to work it out, once you get married. There are so many divorces. You see people meeting in the club and next week they married. You know, ‘‘I met this person and we got married.’’ They don’t even know the person and then they’re in divorce court 2 months later, you know, I want a divorce and that’s not the way it rolls for me because, umm, I believe that. I believe in about till death do you part. When you get married make sure that you—just be sure that that’s the person you want to be with. Don’t make the mistake. That’s what my mother always used to tell me. Don’t marry just to get married just ‘cause you have a kid or you feel you have to. ‘Cause marriage is a big step. You get married and say it don’t work out. What’s the process to get out of the marriage? To put a child through a divorce to me is one of the meanest things you can do, because that gets very ugly. That’s when you start fighting over the child, fighting over custody, fighting over this. It’s no longer a household, it becomes mine, mine, mine, and the child gets stuck in the middle. Once you married and something like that you build that bond . . . but if you break that bond and get divorced, it’s even harder on the child.

312 FATHERS FROM LOW-INCOME BACKGROUNDS That’s one thing that it is today, that just get married and get divorced, you know? There’s so much divorce right now. Sometimes I think that hurts more.

As a part of this high regard for marriage and disapproval of divorce, men were very adamant about the requisites to marriage. Men expressed the need to have stability and to acquire certain material things before marrying—an engagement ring, a home of their own, a steady job—and felt they should not marry before these necessities were in place. Without these fundamentals, there was no reason to marry. Why should we get married? We ain’t got nothing to show for it. I figure when you get married with a person, you’re supposed to have everything already like an apartment or at least everything heading somewhere. You know what I mean? You have a plan, you know what I mean? Alright, I get married. Boom, I have an apartment we could stay in. You know what I mean? We have enough money to support each other, you know what I mean, and, um, I see for 5 years from now we probably have enough money to buy a house or something like that. You know what I mean? You just save up and do what you have to do. We didn’t have none of that. I mean, I was just like, you know, how am I really going to support a family? Like, I mean, I was doing like a full time job but it was like, you know, not really nothin’ that could be translated to like a career or nothin’ like that. Not till I have what I need. I have to get my GED. I know I have to do all of that. I’m gonna get my own apartment, I’m gonna do what I have to do.

Until the point of financial stability, many low-income men felt it was not right to marry. Other men focused on the importance of first obtaining what might otherwise appear to be minor material things. To these men, the proper steps to marriage included being able to afford an engagement ring, a car, and so on. When talking about marriage, men invariably noted, ‘‘First of all, I didn’t have money for a ring’’; ‘‘You know, gotta go buy a ring. I can’t just go buy a regular ring’’; ‘‘I wasn’t ready, I didn’t have a car, money.’’ This expressed need for rings, cars, homes, and stability suggest that low-income men view marriage as an entry into middle-income American values and lifestyle. Thus, they do not devalue marriage, but ironically, value marriage in ways they view to be currently unattainable; consequently, they may perceive insurmountable barriers to the lifelong commitments they hope to one day achieve with someone they truly love. SUMMARY The relatively low rates of marriage in men and women from low-income households have resulted in myths regarding men’s perceptions of marriage. Our qualitative research with low-income men indicates that despite many of these men not being married to the mothers of their children, they hold the institution of marriage in high regard and view the commitment and permanency of marriage as much greater than that of cohabitation. At the same time,

Conclusions: Countering Myths 313

they feel that marriage carries with it a set of requirements, including money and a stable job, and that the dissolution of a marriage, or divorce, is something to be avoided at all costs. Together, this constellation of views might partly explain why many of these low-income men choose not to marry, even if marriage is something they someday aspire to experience. CONCLUSIONS: COUNTERING MYTHS The findings from our research, as well as the work of leading scholars in the area of fatherhood, counter several prominent myths in the literature—that low-income fathers are nonessential or deadbeat, that they are destined to perpetuate cycles of poor parenting, and that they reject the institution of marriage. As we have shown, despite the challenges that low-income fathers confront on a daily basis, most are highly involved in the lives of their children, and even those men who no longer see their children express a strong commitment to one day reunite with them. In terms of low-income fathers’ influence in children’s development, studies over the past 2 decades highlight the importance of positive father involvement for virtually all aspects of children’s development (Amato & Gilbreth, 1999; Barth & Parke, 1996; Belsky, 1996; Clarke-Stewart, 1980; Furstenberg & Harris, 1993; Lamb, 1981; 1997; Parke, 1996; 2002; TamisLeMonda & Cabrera, 2002; Yeung, Duncan, & Hill, 2000). Children who grow up without a father in the home are at risk for low school achievement, school dropout, delinquency, and other problem behaviors (Furstenberg & Harris, 1993; McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994; Perloff & Buckner, 1996). Moreover, fathers influence their children’s development through multiple pathways, including their direct engagements, economic provisioning, and effects on the larger family context in which children develop (Argys, et al., 1998; Cabrera et al., 2002; Black, Dubowitz, & Starr, 1999; Cummings, Davies, & Campbell, 2000; Cummings, Goeke-Morey, & Raymond, 2004; King & Sobolewski, 2006; NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2008; Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2008), and these pathways of influence are common to fathers from both low-income and middle-income backgrounds. In light of these findings, it is time to dismantle myths about low-income fathers, and instead consider the multiple pathways through which these men affect their children’s development, both directly and indirectly. Future research and policies on fathering should be grounded in the evidence-based findings that fathers matter for all children, in all cultural and socioeconomic communities, and in families where fathers do and do not reside with their children. Finally, even when the behaviors of low-income men appear to ‘‘fit’’ with negative portrayals, for example, when fathers are seemingly absent from their children’s lives, caution should be heeded in drawing conclusions about men’s underlying motivations (or lack thereof). Many absentee fathers may harbor a strong desire to ‘‘be there’’ for their children, but may not have the skills to enact the small steps that are necessary to realize those goals. They may not be able to effectively negotiate complicated legal and interpersonal coparenting arrangements, and/or might feel that their lack of stability in

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housing, employment, and so forth are barriers to continued involvement with their children. Thus, initiatives aimed at promoting positive and sustained father involvement should acknowledge the high level of commitment and involvement that is already demonstrated by the majority of low-income men, but at the same time recognize the unique challenges that other lowincome men face in establishing the conditions necessary for maintaining a healthy and continuous presence in their children’s lives. REFERENCES Allen, S. M., & Hawkins, A. J. (1999). Maternal gatekeeping: Mothers’ beliefs and behaviors that inhibit greater father involvement in family work. Journal of Marriage and Family, 61(1), 199–212. Amato, P., & Gilbreth, J. G. (1999). Nonresident fathers and children’s well-being: A meta-analysis. Journal of Marriage and Family, 61, 557–73. Apfel, N., & Seitz, V. (1996). African American adolescent mothers, their families, and their daughters: A longitudinal perspective over twelve years. In B. J. Leadbeater & N. Way (Eds.), Urban girls: Resisting stereotypes, creating identities (pp. 149–170). New York: New York University Press. Argys, L. M., Peters, E., Brooks-Gunn, J., & Smith, J. R. (1998). The impact of child support dollars on cognitive outcomes. Demography, 35(2), 159–173. Argys, L. M., Peters, E., & Waldman, D. (2001). Can the Family Support Act put some life back into deadbeat dads? An analysis of child support guidelines, award rates and levels. Journal of Human Resources, 36(2), 226–252. Bartfeld, J., & Meyer, D. (1994) Are there really deadbeat dads? The relationship between ability to pay, enforcement, and compliance in nonmarital child support cases. Social Service Review, 68, 219–235. Barth, J., & Parke, R. D. (1996). The impact of the family on children’s early school social adjustment. In A. J. Sameroff & M. M. Haith (Eds.), The five to seven year shift: The age of reason and responsibility (pp. 329–361). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Baruch, G. K., & Barnett, R. C. (1986). Fathers’ participation in family work and children’s sex-role attitudes. Child Development, 57(5), 1210–1223. Belsky, J. (1996). Parent, infant, and social-contextual antecedents of father–son attachment security. Developmental Psychology, 22(5), 905–913. Benoit, D., & Parker, K. C. H. (1994). Stability and transmission of attachment across three generations. Child Development, 65, 1444–1457. Black, M. M., Dubowitz, H., & Starr, R. H. (1999). African American fathers in low income, urban families: Development, behavior, and home environment of their three-year-olds. Child Development, 70, 967–978. Bowlby, J. (1969/1982). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. New York: Basic Books. Bowlby, J. (1973). Attachment and loss: Vol. 2. Separation. New York: Basic Books. Cabrera, N., Brooks-Gunn, J., Moore, K., West, J., Boller, K., & Tamis-LeMonda, C. (2002). Bridging research and policy: Including fathers of young children in national studies. In C. Tamis-Lamonda & N. Cabrera (Eds.), Handbook of father involvement: Multidisciplinary perspectives (pp. 489–524). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Cabrera, N., Ryan, R., Shannon, J. D., Brooks-Gunn, J., Vogel, C., Raikes, H., et al. (2004). Fathers in the Early Head Start National Research and Evaluation Study: How are they involved with their children? Fathering: A Journal of Theory, Research, and Practice About Men as Fathers, 2, 5–30.

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316 FATHERS FROM LOW-INCOME BACKGROUNDS Furstenberg, F., & Harris, K. (1993). When and why fathers matter: Impacts of father involvement on the children of adolescent mothers. In R. Lerman and T. Ooms (Eds.), Young unwed fathers: Changing roles and emerging policies (pp. 117–138). Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Garfinkel, I., McLanahan, S. S., Meyer, D. R., & Selzer, J. A. (1998). Fathers under fire: The revolution in child support enforcement. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Gibson-Davis, C. M., Edin, K., & McLanahan, S. (2005). High hopes and even higher expectations: The retreat from marriage among low-income couples. Journal of Marriage and Family, 67, 1301–1312. Haskins, R., McLanahan, S., & Donahue, E. (2005). The decline in marriage: What to do. Future of Children, 15, 1–8. Heuveline, P., & Timberlake, J. M. (2004). The role of cohabitation in family formation: The United States in comparative perspective. Journal of Marriage and Family, 66(5), 1214–1230. Jaccoby, J. (1999, July 26). Attack on fatherhood a political screed masquerading as science. Boston Globe, p. A15. Jarrett, R., Roy, K., & Burton, L. (2002). Fathers in the ’hood: Qualitative research on low-income African American men. In C. Tamis-LeMonda & N. Cabrera, (Eds.), Handbook of father involvement: Multidisciplinary perspectives (pp. 211–248). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. King, V., & Sobolewski, J. M. (2006). Nonresident fathers’ contributions to adolescent well-being. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68, 537–557. Lamb, M. E. (1981). The development of social expectations in the first year of life. In M. E. Lamb & L. R. Sherrod (Eds.), The role of the father in child development (3rd ed., pp. 1–18, 309–313). New York: Wiley. Lamb, M. E. (1997). Fathers and child development: An introductory overview and guide. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), Infant social cognition: Empirical and theoretical considerations (pp. 155–175). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Leo-Rhynie, E. (1997). Class, race, and gender issues in child rearing in the Caribbean. In J. L. Roopnarine & J. Brown (Eds.), Caribbean families: Diversity among ethnic groups (pp. 25–55). Greenwich, CT: Ablex. Lichter, D. T., LeClere, F. B., & McLaughlin, D. K., (1991). Local marriage markets and the marital behavior of Black and White women. American Journal of Sociology, 96, 843–867. Lichter, D. T., McLaughlin, D. K., Kephart, G., & Landry, D. J. (1992). Race and the retreat from marriage: A shortage of marriageable men? American Sociological Review, 57, 781–799. Main, M., Kaplan, N., & Cassidy, J. (1985). Security in infancy, childhood and adulthood: A move to the level of representation. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 50(1–2, Serial No. 209). Manning, W. D., & Smock, P. J. (1995). Why marry? Race and the transition to marriage among cohabitators. Demography, 32(4), 509–520. McAdoo, H. P. (1993). Family ethnicity: Strength in diversity. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. McFadden, K., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Howard, K., Shannon, J. D., & Cabrera, N. (2009, April). Old roads, new paths: Men’s childhood relationships with their fathers and their current parenting. Presentation accepted to the Society for Research in Child Development conference. McLanahan, S., Garfinkel, I., Reichman, N. E., & Teitler, J. O. (2001). Unwed parents or fragile families? Implications for welfare and child support policy. In Wu, L. L. & Wolfe, B. (Eds.), Out of wedlock: Causes and consequences of nonmarital fertility (pp. 202–228). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

References 317 McLanahan, S., & Sandefur, G. (1994). Growing up with a single parent: What hurts, what helps. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McLoyd, V. C. (1998). Socioeconomic disadvantage and child development. American Psychologist, 53, 185–204. Mincy, R. B., & Oliver, H. (2003). Age, race, and children’s living arrangements: Implications for TANF reauthorization (Policy Brief B-53). Washington, DC: Urban Institute Publications. Mincy, R. B., & Sorensen, E. J. (1998). Deadbeats and turnips in child support reform. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 17, 44–51. Mott, F. L. (1993). Sons, daughters, and fathers’ absence: Differentials in fatherleaving probabilities and in home environments. Journal of Family Issues, 5, 97–128. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network (2008). Mothers’ and fathers’ support for child autonomy and early school achievement. Developmental Psychology, 44(4), 895–907. Nelson, T., Clampet-Lundquist, S., & Edin, K. (2002). Sustaining fragile fatherhood: Father involvement among low-income, noncustodial African-American fathers in Philadelphia. In C. S. Tamis-LeMonda & N. Cabrera (Eds.), Handbook of father involvement: Multidisciplinary perspectives (pp. 525–554). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Paley, B., Cox, M. J., Burchinal, M. R., & Payne, C. C. (1999). Attachment and marital functioning: Comparison of spouses with continuous-secure, earned-secure, dismissing, and preoccupied attachment stances. Journal of Family Psychology, 13(4), 580–597. Parke, R. D. (1996). Fatherhood: The developing child series. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Parke, R. D. (2002). Fathers and families. In Bornstein, M. H. (Ed.), Handbook of parenting: Vol. 3. Being and becoming a parent (2nd ed., pp. 27–73). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Payne, M., & Furnham, A. (1992). Parental self-reports of childrearing practices in the Caribbean. Journal of Black Psychology, 18, 19–36. Pearson, J. L., Cohn, D. A., Cowan, P. A., & Cowan, C. P. (1994). Earned- and continuous-security in adult attachment: Relation to depressive symptomatology and parenting style. Development and Psychopathology, 6(2), 359–373. Perloff, J., & Buckner, J. (1996). Fathers of children of welfare: Their impact on child well-being. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 66(4), 557–571. Phares, V. (1996). Conducting nonsexist research, prevention, and treatment with fathers and mothers: A call for a change. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 20(1), 55– 77. Phelps, J. L., Belsky, J., & Crnic, K. (1998). Earned security, daily stress, and parenting: A comparison of five alternative models. Development and Psychopathology, 10(1), 21–38. Ricks, M. H. (1985). The social transmission of parental behavior: Attachment across generations. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 50(1–2, Serial No. 209), 211–230. Rohner, R. P. (1986). The warmth dimension: Foundations of parental acceptance-rejection theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Roopnarine, J. L. (2002). Father involvement in English-speaking Caribbean families. In C. Tamis-LeMonda & N. Cabrera, (Eds.), Handbook of father involvement: Multidisciplinary perspectives (pp. 211–248). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Sagi, A., van IJzendoorn, M. H., Scharf, M., Koren-Karie, N., Joels, T. & Mayseless, O. (1994). Stability and discriminant validity of the Adult Attachment Interview: A psychometric study in young Israeli adults. Developmental Psychology, 30, 988– 1000.

318 FATHERS FROM LOW-INCOME BACKGROUNDS Shannon, J. D., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., & Cabrera, N. (2006). Fathering in infancy: Mutuality and stability between 8 and 16 months. Parenting: Science and Practice, 6 (2–3), 167–188. Shannon, J. D., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., London, K., & Cabrera, N. (2002). Beyond rough and tumble: Low-income fathers’ interactions and children’s cognitive development at 24 months. Parenting: Science and Practice, 2, 77–104. Shannon, J. D., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., & Margolin, A. (2006). Father involvement in infancy: Influences of past and current relationships. Infancy, 8(1), 21–41. Silverstein, L. B., & Auerbach, C. F. (1999). Deconstructing the essential father. American Psychologist, 54, 397–407. Stack, C. B. (1974). All our kin: Strategies for survival in a Black community. New York: Harper & Row. Summers, J., Raikes, H., Butler, J., Spicer, P., Pan, B., Shaw, S., et al. (1999). Lowincome fathers’ and mothers’ perceptions of the father role: A qualitative study in four early head start communities. Infant Mental Health Journal, 20, 291–304. Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Shannon, J. D., Cabrera, N., McFadden, K. E., Jolley, S., & Tarkow, A. (2006). Men in the mirror: A qualitative examination of fathers’ relationships and experiences. Final report prepared for Mathematica Policy Research. Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Shannon, J. D., Cabrera, N. J., & Lamb, M. E. (2004). Fathers and mothers at play with their 2- and 3-year olds: Contributions to language and cognitive development. Child Development, 75(6), 1806–1820. Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Kahana-Kalman, R., & Yoshikawa, H. (2009). Father involvement in immigrant and ethnically diverse families from the prenatal period to the second year: Prediction and mediating mechanisms. Sex Roles, 60(7-8), 496–509. Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Way, N., Hughes, D., Yoshikawa, H., Kalman, R. K., & Niwa, E. Y. (2008). Parents’ goals for children: The dynamic coexistence of individualism and collectivism in cultures and individuals. Social Development, 17(1), 183–209. van IJzendoorn, M. H. (1992). Intergenerational transmission of parenting: A review of studies in nonclinical populations. Developmental Review, 12, 76–99. Ventura, S. J., & Bachrach, C. A. (2000). Non-marital childbearing in the United States, 1940–99 (National Vital Statistics Reports, No. 16). Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. Volling, B. L., & Belsky, J. (1992). Infant, father, and marital antecedents of infant– father attachment security in dual-earner and single-earner families. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 15(1), 83–100. Wilson, W. J. (1996). When work disappears. New York: Knopf. Wint, E., & Brown, J. (1987). Promoting effective parenting: A study of two methods in Kingston, Jamaica. Child Welfare, 66, 507–516. Yeung, W. J., Duncan, G. J., & Hill, M. S. (2000). Putting fathers back in the picture: Parental activities and children’s adult outcomes. Marriage and Family Review. Special Issue: Fatherhood: Research, Interventions and Policies, Part I, 29(2–3), 97–113.

CHAPTER 11

Gay Fathers SUSAN GOLOMBOK and FIONA TASKER

A

always been the case that gay men have had children, it is only in recent years that children have been raised in gay-father families. This has occurred through several routes. First, children of previously married gay men are more likely to live with their father following divorce. Second, more gay men are adopting children both singly and as couples. Third, a small but increasing number of gay men are having children with lesbian women and sharing parenting with them. Finally, as a result of increasing accessibility to assisted reproductive technologies, gay men are beginning to have children through surrogacy arrangements. In their recently published report, the Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (2006) concluded that requests for assisted reproduction should be treated without regard for sexual orientation. Consequently, there is likely to be a rise in the number of gay men who become parents through assisted reproductive techniques. In spite of these new routes to parenthood, it remains the case that most gay fathers who no longer reside with the mother of their children do not have children living with them. This chapter traces the various ways in which gay men become fathers. We examine the experiences of those who had children in the context of a heterosexual relationship or marriage and those who planned their family after coming out as gay. The consequences for children are also explored, followed by a consideration of the implications of the existing body of research on gay-father families and the limitations of the findings. LTHOUGH IT HAS

PATHWAYS TO PARENTING It is difficult to accurately estimate how many gay men are involved in parenting. Given the prejudice that is regularly encountered by lesbians and gay men (homophobia) and mainstream society’s assumption of heterosexuality (heterosexism), many individuals are reluctant to disclose their sexual identity. Further, a universally accepted definition of sexual identity remains elusive (Savin-Williams, 2005) or even untenable (Alexander, 1999; 319

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Butler, 1990, 1993). Data from the National Health and Social Life Survey have indicated that between 2.7% and 4.9% of U.S. men have had a same-sex relationship (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, & Michaels, 1994). These data have been used to estimate that between 1% and 12% of children are being raised by a gay or lesbian parent (Perrin, 2002a, b). If we consider only the male same-sex couples who declared an ‘‘unmarried partner’’ in the U.S. census in 2000, then 22% of male same-sex partner households also contained resident children (Simmons & O’Connell, 2003). More detailed surveys using convenience and snowball sampling through the gay community have indicated that between 8% and 10% of gay men in the United States have parenting responsibilities (Bryant and Demian, 1994; Kaiser Family Foundation, 2001) and, as discussed later, more may be involved in the upbringing of children if broader definitions of parenting are considered. Changes in the sociohistorical context for gay men have raised the visibility of gay parenthood, and gay fatherhood is less likely to be viewed by either mainstream society or the gay community as the ‘‘social enigma’’ it once was (Barret & Robinson, 2000; Bigner, 1996). Moreover, fathers generally are becoming more acceptable as primary caregivers within mainstream society. The increasing proportion of fathers being awarded custodial responsibility for their children has meant that ‘‘motherless’’ families are less likely to be seen as unusual or to necessarily threaten the ‘‘best interests of the child.’’ Greater advocacy of gay fathers within increasingly diverse gay communities has meant that they are more accepted or tolerated by gay men not involved in parenting (Barret & Robinson). Gay parenthood seems more likely to be contemplated by younger cohorts of gay men than ever before. For example, for the 39 young adult gay men in Berkowitz’s U.S. study: ‘‘The so-called gay lens into the future has shifted from an imagined life of childlessness to a life with new potentialities that include many familial possibilities, some of which involve becoming a parent and some of which do not’’ (Berkowitz, 2007, p. 245). Stacey (2006) identified a passion-for-parenthood continuum in the interview transcripts of the gay male parents and non-parents in Los Angeles who talked to her about their views on becoming a parent: Of the 50 men interviewed, 22 revealed a passionate commitment to parenting, 26 indicated how situational factors (especially a partner’s interest in parenting) influenced their own decision making, while only two could be classed as completely rejecting the idea of parenthood. Gay men’s involvement in parenting arises through various routes in a wide diversity of circumstances. The largest group of gay parents so far researched appear to be those who had children in the context of previous heterosexual relationships and have subsequently identified as gay (Barrett & Tasker, 2001; Dunne, 2001). Both studies were conducted with nationwide samples in the United Kingdom. Most of these men then move out of the marital home, but some continue their relationship with the mother of their child. One common misconception is that gay men who fathered children through previous heterosexual relationships ‘‘are not really gay.’’ Some men would no doubt self-identify, or be identified as, bisexual rather than gay in many contexts. Dunne has argued that the sexual and emotional feelings and

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relationships narrated by the 50 gay fathers she interviewed were more complex than the identity categories available to them as descriptions (Dunne). A growing group of gay parents are men who have children after coming out as gay in planned gay-father families. Parenthood may be achieved through adopting or fostering a child, through a surrogacy arrangement, or through a formal or informal agreement to share parenting with a single lesbian mother or a lesbian couple. Surrogacy may appeal to gay men who want a genetic connection with their baby and those who do not wish to share parenting across households (Lev, 2006). However, the financial costs of surrogacy can be prohibitive for many gay men: Not only do they need to pay expenses (and in some cases a fee) to the surrogate mother and sometimes to an egg donor as well, but they also must fund the necessary legal costs to ensure assignment of custody once the child is born. Gay community surveys, such as the U.S. National Survey of Gay and Lesbian Parents have indicated that a sizeable group of planned gay-father families have been formed through adoptive parenting (Johnson and O’Connor, 2002). Nevertheless, gay men face a long and difficult journey when applying to adopt. A survey of adoption agencies in the United States has suggested that a growing number of agencies will consider lesbian or gay applicants (Brodzinsky, Patterson, & Vaziri, 2002). However, even when agencies are open to applications, studies surveying social workers in the adoption field have suggested that these professionals often hold negative and stereotypical views of gay men (Hicks, 2006), and gay parents have recounted previous instances of discrimination prior to successful adoption, for example, being placed last in the queue for babies, being matched with hard-to-place children, or experiencing ‘‘false starts’’ in the adoption process when a child’s birth family member registers an objection (Hicks & McDermott, 1999). In a study conducted in New England, Gianino (2008) concluded that facing discrimination by public agencies can make private adoption agencies seem a more attractive option for gay men who can afford them but may expose them to the possibility of exploitation. When joint adoption by a same-sex couple is not legal, couples are more likely than they would be elsewhere to conceal their relationship from the adoption agency, placing a strain on their relationship with each other and with the agency (Gianino, 2008). The gay father who is not legally recognized is left in a potentially vulnerable position, being unable to authorize medical or legal decisions for their child. The lack of legal recognition may also expose gay fathers to more subtle forms of prejudice. For example, the gay couples in Gianino’s study who were not able to jointly adopt were sometimes quizzed by others as to who was the legal (i.e., the ‘‘real’’) adoptive parent (Gianino). We can also catch glimpses of gay parenting in child-rearing arrangements with lesbian mothers in multiparental families (Gross, 2006; Stacey, 2006). In many of these cases, a gay father may be the known sperm donor and so be genetically related to the child he parents; or his partner may be the actual donor but the couple have planned fatherhood and both are involved in parenting. Children may be resident only part-time with their gay father(s) or may simply visit their fathers on a regular basis. Anecdotal reports indicate that these arrangements can be satisfying for the gay fathers involved, but if

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the living arrangements of the lesbian mother(s) change, it may be difficult for the father to claim legal rights (The Times, 2008). Studies of planned lesbian-led families have indicated that in the absence of any continued involvement with a donor father, lesbian mothers often identify a close male friend to be a male role model or play a significant mentoring role in their child’s life. Hare and Richards (1993) liken the mentoring role ascribed to these men by the lesbian mothers in their study to that of an older close friend rather than a father. Clarke (2006, 2007) has highlighted the hegemonic tensions involved for lesbian mothers in claiming gay men as role models. However, systematic research has not yet examined how gay men define their relationship to children in these family arrangements. Gay men also have planned families with single heterosexual women, for example, with an intermediary organization arranging donor insemination for gay men and single heterosexual women wanting parenthood without intimate partnership (Segal-Engelchin, Erera, & Cwikel, 2005). In these heterogay family configurations, the single heterosexual mother and single gay father maintain separate households and the child generally resides with only one parent (usually the mother) but both share parental responsibilities (SegalEngelchin et al.). The practical arrangements of coparenting between two households may in many ways be similar to those reached in harmonious divorce settlements, but the planned nature of these families may mean that their resemblance to postdivorce households is untainted by previous conflict. Segal-Engelchin and colleagues suggest several reasons why gay men may want to parent in this context, including perhaps wanting to coparent with a woman rather than a man in a quasi-traditional family arrangement, not wanting to be a resident parent, or the relative ease of this route to parenthood compared with the costs and difficulties associated with adoption or surrogacy. However, we do not know how gay men experience parenting in this context, or how the experience of growing up in a hetero-gay family may impact on child development. GAY MEN AS PARENTS: CONTEXT AND EXPERIENCE OF PARENTHOOD Given the diversity in routes to gay parenthood and the variety of family structures formed, the main issue that gay fathers have in common may not be related to parenting per se but to how to best prepare their children to deal with societal institutions, communities, and individuals that rarely affirm gay fathering, frequently ignore it, or sometimes are openly hostile toward it. Surveys that have assessed heterosexuals’ attitudes toward same-sex parenting have found that same-sex parents are rated more poorly than heterosexual parents (Morse, McLaren, & McLachlan, 2007). From other studies, we can see indications of the complexity of responses that gay fathers might encounter from heterosexuals. For example, McLeod, Crawford, & Zechmeister (1999) assessed the attitudes of heterosexual college students toward gay male parenting through comparison of the responses to two vignettes: the first one depicting a boy with a gay couple, the second portraying an identical parenting situation except with a heterosexual couple.

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In comparison to the control condition, students rated the child with the gay couple as experiencing significantly higher levels of general distress and, in particular, being more confused about their sexual and gender identity. While the gay fathers in the vignette were rated as being more loving, nurturing, and responsive to their adopted son than was the heterosexual father, this was paradoxically seen to count against the child’s well-being because the alleged effeminacy of the gay men was seen as a contravention of the traditional patriarchal concept of fatherhood. In another study where heterosexual students were asked to evaluate vignettes depicting parenting competency, gay male parenting skills were rated most positively and heterosexual female parenting skills most negatively perhaps because low expectations of men’s parenting meant greater praise for gay fathers who were seen as active parents (Massey, 2007). Armesto (2002) has suggested that parenting is inevitably more stressful for gay men than for heterosexual men because gay fathers are a socially stigmatized group. While studies have not systematically examined coming out and psychological adjustment among gay fathers, other research has indicated that whether or not gay men decide to disclose to others, coming out decisions are omnipresent, stressful, and associated with increased risk to mental health (Carragher & Rivers, 2002; Meyer, 2003). Gay fathers additionally fear that disclosure may mean that their child will be stigmatized by association or that they will be rejected by their child (Bigner, 1996). DIVORCED GAY FATHERS At first glance, one enigma of gay parenting is how gay men came to have children within a marital or long-term heterosexual relationship. Findings from earlier and more recent research suggest these gay fathers often married because they had wanted to be a traditional husband or father (Barret & Robinson, 2000; Benson, Silverstein, & Auerbach, 2005; Bigner & Jacobsen, 1989; Bozett, 1981, 1987; Dunne, 2001; Miller, 1979; Wyers, 1987). These retrospective studies have recorded a mixture of motivations underlying fatherhood. Some men felt they had been responding to societal or interpersonal pressure to marry. Others recalled that when they married they did not know what it meant to have a gay identity, thought that a gay identity was incompatible with fatherhood, or could not see a reflection of themselves in the negative stereotypes of gay men they had encountered. Some felt that marriage would change their sexual desires away from men or that having children would emphasize their manhood both to themselves and to others. Others cited more positive personal reasons for matrimony and fatherhood, such as the desire to have children or an affection for their wife. In Benson et al.’s (2005) qualitative study of 25 gay fathers living in metropolitan areas in the United States who had children while married, some highlighted having children as a catalyst that opened them up emotionally and from which they started to gain a sense of their own sexual identity (Benson et al.). Identifying as gay, however, meant that these fathers faced the challenge of whether and how to integrate their new sense of self within the traditional boundaries of fatherhood. Some fathers in Benson

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et al.’s study decided not to disclose their sexual identity to their families or attempt to integrate their sexual identity with fatherhood; prominent reasons in these men’s accounts were protecting their children from any problems disclosure might bring, feeling obliged to respond to pressure from their wife (or other family members) not to disclose a gay identity, or not knowing when to disclose or how to deal with the reactions they imagined their children or other family members might have (see also Dunne (1987) for reflections on group therapy with gay fathers around the issues involved in ‘‘coming out’’). Writing from his psychoanalytic work with homosexual men married to women, Isay (1998) suggested subconscious reasons connected with early emotional loss of a psychological relationship with their own mother as the motivation for some gay men to comply with matrimony and deny their sexual feelings for other men. Other authors have suggested that some gay or bisexual men reach an accommodation with their wives allowing for gay relationships while still remaining married to, residing with, and/or continuing an emotionally or sexually intimate relationship with her (Dunne, 2001; Matteson, 1987). For some fathers in Benson et al.’s study, the desire for greater authenticity became the drive for ‘‘coming out’’ and the reason for disclosing to their families (Benson et al., 2005). Other researchers have suggested that a key factor in coming out and precipitating the end of a prior heterosexual relationship was falling in love with a same-sex partner (Miller, 1979). Studies have not systematically addressed whether having their father come out as gay in the context of a gay partnership clarifies or compounds children’s ability to come to terms with their father’s gay identity. However, children’s acceptance may be complicated by disclosure of HIV infection (Shuster, 1996) or other family members’ objections (Lynch & Murray, 2000). Looking back at their experiences of disclosing, many gay fathers said that managing family reactions was generally not as difficult as they had anticipated (Miller). Nevertheless, one author has argued that emotional distress surrounding the process of ‘‘coming out’’ may last several years before resolution occurs (Bigner, 1996). No studies have yet compared the emotional well-being and parenting of gay fathers who have come out to their children versus those who have not. However, uncontrolled and retrospective studies have suggested long-term benefits for fathers of coming out to one’s children (Armesto, 2002). Nearly half of the fathers in Benson et al.’s study who had come out to their children regarded it as a transformative experience, increasing openness and honesty in their relationship with their children, and felt that this was reciprocated by their children (Benson et al., 2005). These men felt both lucky to be a father and satisfied with their gay identity: One father summed this up as having ‘‘the best of both worlds’’ (pp. 15). However, the gay fathers in Benson et al.’s study had to work hard to create a new social support network for themselves that both facilitated their parenting and recognized their new gay identity. Researchers have suggested that some of the gay fathers who had ‘‘come out’’ to their children had developed a new parenting ideology that separated fathering from (hetero)sexuality (Benson et al., 2005; Silverstein, Auerbach, & Levant, 2002). Here, the gay father’s parenting identity and sexual identity are

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seen as complementary rather than exclusive—sexuality was not important for gay men’s parenting; instead, it was the quality of their relationship with their children that mattered. Entering into a new partnership may be a goal for many previously married gay men who would again like to have the commitment of a long-term relationship initially sought in marriage (Bigner, 1996). While forming new gay relationships postseparation or divorce presents similar challenges to those encountered in heterosexual stepfamilies, the process is more complicated in a new gay stepfather family because family members need to negotiate how ‘‘out’’ they will be as a family group (Lynch & Murray, 2000). In nearly all of the lesbian and gay stepfamilies interviewed by Lynch and Murray, decisions about whether to be out as a family had been a family decision led by the child’s level of comfort with being out rather than by the biological parent and his or her new partner, who, for example, may have had to make compromises in openly expressing affection for each other. A couple of research studies have indicated that successful gay partnerships are associated with positive parenting, although as yet no longitudinal studies have investigated causal linkage. Barrett and Tasker (2001) found that gay fathers with cohabiting partners rated themselves as being more successful than single gay fathers at meeting a variety of emotional, practical, and financial parenting challenges. In another study of 48 gay-father stepfamilies, the level of integration of a gay partner into family life with the children was the factor most associated with positive ratings of family satisfaction as reported by either divorced gay fathers, their partners, or their children (Crosbie-Burnett & Helmbrecht, 1993). PLANNED GAY-FATHER FAMILIES Brinamen and Mitchell have proposed a six-stage model describing the transition to parenting delineated from their thematic analyses of interviews with 10 gay men living in the San Francisco Bay area who were parenting a pre-school-age child (Brinamen & Mitchell, 2008). Initially these gay men recalled abandoning a parent identity as during their youth they had viewed fatherhood as incompatible with their developing sense of a gay identity. Later on, a growing sense of comfort in a gay identity engendered greater confidence in working out their own life goals, which led them to reexamine previously held views of both fatherhood and gay identity. Subsequently, recognition (of the strength) of gay families engendered a feeling of confidence in the contribution that families of choice built on strong emotional ties could make in supporting parenthood. In Gianino’s study, the eight gay couples who had adopted children saw partnership as the foundation of their parenting and felt that their partnership was in turn strengthened by their experience of parenting together (Gianino, 2008). Prior to embarking on parenthood, Brinamen and Mitchell (2008) interpose a fourth stage in their model of gay fatherhood: seeking models and mentors. Other researchers also have noted that gay fathers have carefully explored the prospect of parenthood by getting to know other gay families with children (these were more likely to be lesbian-led families than families led by gay

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men) and by researching the growing literature on nonheterosexual parenting (Gianino, 2008; Schacher, Auerbach, & Silverstein, 2005). Once committed to the idea of parenthood, the gay men in these studies often made major adjustments to their lives, such as moving to a different neighborhood or changing jobs, to find a more conducive environment or access more support in bringing up children. Preparation for parenthood also involved telling others of their plans, and in particular sensitively informing their family of origin and coping with any negative responses. In Brinamen and Mitchell’s fifth stage of the transition to parenthood, the gay father is seen as recognizing the strengths of the gay father as a parent: valuing what he could offer as a parent through being a gay man, for example, in terms of valuing difference or in being more emotionally available than most heterosexual fathers were seen as being. In the final stage of Brinamen and Mitchell’s model, gay fathers are viewed as transitioning into parenthood through integrating an expanded identity as gay men and as fathers. As gay fathers, the men interviewed in various studies have indicated how they have valued drawing upon a variety of sources of social support, not only from their own family of origin, with whom they often felt a deeper connection through parenthood, but also from other types of nontraditional families and new friends made through common parenting experiences with heterosexual couples (Brinamen & Mitchell, 2008; Gianino, 2008; Schacher et al., 2005). Some of the gay couples in Gianino’s (2008) study described feeling isolated from mainstream parenting groups and children’s services but linked this to their observation that these revolved around mothers, not fathers, as primary caregivers; their experiences as gay fathers were thus different from those of lesbian mothers in this key respect. Most of the gay fathers studied have reported a positive response from the gay community to the announcement that they were expecting a child but also said that most of their gay friends would not choose to parent and indicated that some friendships had cooled over the years (Brinamen & Mitchell, 2008; Gianino, 2008; Mallon, 2004). In Brinamen and Mitchell’s study, gay fathers felt that they had expanded their identity to become more than just a gay man and more than just a father, although this expanded identity was also countered by the feeling that they were set apart from both other gay men and other (heterosexual) fathers. Single gay fathers seem to have been more vulnerable to these feelings of isolation than were men in gay couples (Brinamen & Mitchell). Gay couples also appeared to have an easier time being accepted by heterosexual parents and by mainstream parenting services, perhaps because they fitted a more traditional parenting model (Brinamen & Mitchell). However, parenting as a gay couple may also increase the public visibility of the gay-father family, raising the greater possibility of encountering prejudice and the need for vigilance (Gianino). In reflecting on the strengths they brought to parenthood, gay fathers have argued that they have been able to be more child centered than most heterosexual fathers could through their greater openness and tolerance of their child’s choices (Brinamen & Mitchell, 2008). Bigner (1999) additionally has argued that gay fathers may model androgynous behavior, particularly for their sons, as fathers in motherless families must necessarily incorporate

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nurturing roles into their parenting repertoire. The 21 urban American gay fathers interviewed by Schacher et al. (2005) described degendered parenting because their roles were not prescribed by gender as they were in the majority of heterosexual couples they knew. The gay fathers described themselves as having a hybrid parenting role, where both they and their partner divided child care duties by preference, aptitude, or equality, rather than splitting into ‘‘mother’’ or ‘‘father’’ roles, thus challenging the dominance embedded in (hetero)patriarchal fatherhood (see also Gianino, 2008; Silverstein et al., 2002). Schacher et al. (2005) reported that the gay fathers they interviewed described a variety of different examples of heterosexist gender role strain as they experienced double prejudice: first, against nonheterosexual parenting; second, against a man taking on the role of the child’s primary caregiver. They sometimes were the recipients of greater critical attention and comment even as they walked their children down the street. Within this context, gay fathers felt the responsibilities of trailblazing and the need to be ‘‘super-parents’’ to counteract cultural stereotypes, although pioneering social change also brought its own satisfactions. Nevertheless, these fathers described experiencing conflict, both internally and with their partner, as they made career compromises in order to look after their children. They sometimes felt personally devalued as a result of these compromises, despite clearly prioritizing children and fatherhood over monetary or career success and feeling immense personal satisfaction in their parenthood. A further advantage of gay men’s parenting may lie in the flexibility of multiparental child-rearing arrangements. There may be one, two, or more parents, some of whom live together in the same household while others live separately, some of whom may share the same ethnic identity while others do not, some of whom may be biologically related to a particular child while others are not. Many of the gay fathers in Schacher et al.’s study (2005) reconceptualized family relationships as being based on love rather than biology, encompassing a wide variety of family constellations. CONSEQUENCES FOR CHILD DEVELOPMENT Studies of children raised by same-sex parents have almost exclusively focused on families headed by lesbian mothers rather than gay fathers. This body of research was initiated in the 1970s and concentrated on women who had become mothers within a heterosexual marriage before making the transition to a lesbian relationship. The findings of the early investigations were strikingly consistent (Golombok, Spencer, & Rutter, 1983; Green, Mandel, Hotvedt, Gray, & Smith, 1986; Hoeffer, 1981; Huggins, 1989; Kirkpatrick, Smith, & Roy, 1981). With respect to psychological well-being, children with lesbian mothers did not show a higher incidence of psychological disorder, or difficulties in peer relationships, than those from heterosexual homes. In addition, there was no evidence of gender identity confusion for any of the children studied, and in terms of gender role behavior, no differences were found between children with lesbian and heterosexual parents for either boys or girls (for reviews, see Falk, 1989; Golombok, 1999; Patterson, 1992, 2002). A longitudinal study of adults who had been raised as children in lesbian-

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mother families found that these young men and women continued to function well in adult life (Tasker & Golombok, 1995, 1997). More young people from lesbian-mother families than from heterosexual families had experimented in same-sex relationships, although the large majority identified as heterosexual in adulthood (Golombok & Tasker, 1996). More recent studies of children born through donor insemination and raised in lesbian-mother families from birth produced similar results. The children were not found to experience difficulties in terms of gender development, peer relationships, or psychological well-being (Bos, 2004; Brewaeys, Ponjaert, Van Hall, & Golombok, 1997; Chan, Raboy, & Patterson, 1998; Flaks, Ficher, Masterpasqua, & Joseph, 1995; Gartrell, 2005; Golombok, Tasker, & Murray, 1997; MacCallum & Golombok, 2004). Findings from general population samples in the United States (Wainright & Patterson, 2006; Wainright, Russell, & Patterson, 2004) and the United Kingdom (Golombok et al., 2003) are also in line with those of earlier investigations in that the children were found to be well adjusted with no differences in sex-typed behavior between the children of lesbian and heterosexual parents for either boys or girls. CHILDREN

OF

GAY FATHERS WHO LIVE WITH THEIR MOTHER

Much less research has been conducted on children with gay fathers, and the few studies that do exist are of children who live with their mother. There are no indications, either from fathers’ reports or from the limited number of interviews with the children themselves, that children who live with their mother but remain in contact with their gay father experience emotional or behavioral problems (Barret & Robinson, 1994; Bigner, 1999; Bigner & Jacobsen, 1989; Bozett, 1987;Harris & Turner, 1986; Miller, 1979). However, no systematic evaluations of the self-esteem or psychological adjustment of children of gay fathers have been carried out, and no study has systematically investigated how children respond to the loss of contact with a gay father after divorce (Tasker, 2005). Estimates vary as to how likely children with gay fathers are to experience stigma and relationship problems with peers or adults outside the family. Wyers (1987) reported that 20% of children in his U.S. study were believed by their father to have experienced discrimination due to his sexual orientation. In a survey of 101 gay and bisexual fathers in the United Kingdom by Barrett & Tasker (2001), 37% reported that their children had experienced teasing by other children. In contrast, neither Bozett (1987) nor Miller (1979) recorded many instances of homophobia directed against children of gay fathers in their U.S. samples, although it was thought that the children may have avoided disclosing their father’s sexual orientation to those from whom they anticipated a negative response. A recent investigation has shed light on the experiences of young people with gay fathers from their own perspective based on an analysis of 67 published accounts from children of lesbian and gay parents in the United Kingdom, United States, and New Zealand, one-third of which were from those with a gay father (Fairtlough, 2008). Whereas 37 of the accounts were predominantly positive or neutral, and only three were rated as somewhat negative, 27 were characterized by both positive and negative feelings.

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Qualitative analysis of these accounts showed that the problems the young people experienced arose almost entirely from the negative views of others. In addition to negative societal views and institutional discrimination against lesbian and gay people, the adolescents and young adults described instances of homophobic behavior from family members, including parents, as well as from peers. Just as in Tasker and Golombok’s (1995, 1997) study of young adults raised in lesbian-mother families, these young people reported benefitting from both parental openness and from having control over when and how their family life was made public. Although the authors did not state whether the pattern of findings differed according to the gender of the samesex parent, it seems likely that homophobia is just as salient a problem to young people with gay fathers as it is for those with lesbian mothers. In a study of school experiences in Australia, Ray and Gregory (2001) found teasing and bullying to be common. The children were frustrated by peers’ lack of understanding about their families and lacked confidence in their teachers’ abilities to deal with homophobia. CHILDREN WHO LIVE WITH GAY FATHERS At present, little is known about the psychological development and wellbeing of the increasing number of children who are being raised by gay fathers, that is, children who live with their gay fathers and have done so from birth or early childhood. These children have generally been adopted by a gay couple or born through assisted reproduction procedures such as surrogacy and egg donation, although some are born within their gay father’s marriage to, or relationship with, their mother and reside with their gay father. Can we assume that the psychological outcomes for children who live with gay fathers will be the same as for children who live with lesbian mothers? Although the concern that children with lesbian mothers would show psychological problems was found to lack empirical support, the circumstances of children raised by gay fathers are more unusual. Not only are these children being raised by same-sex parents, but also it is rare for fathers, whether heterosexual or gay, to be primary caregivers. It is not known what the combined effect of these two factors will be on children’s social, emotional, identity, and gender development as they grow up. Whereas studies of other types of nontraditional family suggest that the quality of family relationships is more important for children’s psychological well-being than is family structure (Golombok, 2000), the psychological processes that operate in gay-father families may differ from those of other nontraditional family forms. Psychological Adjustment. With respect to children’s psychological adjustment, difficulties would not necessarily be predicted unless gay fathers differ from lesbian or heterosexual mothers with respect to the parenting processes that are associated with children’s healthy psychological development such as parental warmth, sensitivity, emotional involvement, appropriate discipline, and control (Baumrind, 1989, 1991; Bornstein, 2002; Bowlby, 1969, 1988; Darling & Steinberg, 1993; Maccoby, 1992). The literature on fathering

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suggests that fathers are just as capable of parenting as are mothers (Lamb, 1997; Parke, 1996), and that children are just as likely to develop a secure attachment relationship with their father as their mother (van IJzendoorn & De Wolff, 1997). However, relationships between parents and their children do not take place within a social vacuum. The wider social environment can have a marked impact on the quality of family life and can also have a direct effect on children’s psychological well-being irrespective of the quality of family relationships. It has been argued that children raised in gay-father families may be exposed to greater prejudice and discrimination than children who grow up in families headed by lesbian mothers and thus may be at greater risk of developing psychological problems. Although both lesbianmother families and gay-father families deviate from the heterosexual norm, gay-father families possess the additional feature of being headed by men in the absence of women and thus may be more likely to be stigmatized by the outside world. In spite of greater acceptance of nontraditional family structures over recent decades, it is often thought that mothers are more suited to parenting than are fathers. Adoption and assisted reproduction bring with them additional issues. In heterosexual families, adoption is associated with a greater incidence of emotional and behavioral problems for children, although it is important to stress that difficulties are most likely among those who are adopted later in childhood, especially those who have experienced trauma in their early years (Brodzinsky, Smith, & Brodzinsky, 1998). Assisted reproduction procedures such as surrogacy and egg donation have also been predicted to result in an increased risk of psychological problems for children in heterosexual families due to the absence of a genetic and/or gestational link with the mother. Although the existing empirical evidence does not support this claim (Golombok, Jadva, Lycett, E., Murray, & MacCallum, 2005; Golombok, MacCallum, Murray, Lycett, & Jadva, 2006a; Golombok, Murray, Jadva, MacCallum, & Lycett, 2004a; Golombok et al., 2004b; Golombok et al., 2006b), little is known about children born through surrogacy or egg donation beyond the early years, particularly the consequences of ongoing contact with the egg donor or surrogate mother. Moreover, studies of adoptive families and assisted reproduction families created through gamete donation demonstrate that the quality of communication about the nature of their family, and the circumstances of their birth including their genetic origins, is central to children’s psychological wellbeing and self-esteem (Daniels & Taylor, 1993; Freeman, Jadva, Kramer, & Golombok, 2009; Turner & Coyle, 2000) indicating that, for children with gay fathers, open communication about their origins and their family structure may be of crucial importance. Just as with adopted children (Grotevant & McRoy, 1998) and children conceived by donor insemination (Jadva, Freeman, Kramer, & Golombok, 2009), it appears that parents should talk to children about their nontraditional family at an early age. Children who were told about their gay father when young were reported to be more accepting than those who found out when older (Turner, Scadden, & Harris, 1990). In the first controlled study of parenting and child development in gayfather families conducted in the United States, Farr and Patterson (2009) compared 29 gay couples with 27 lesbian couples and 52 heterosexual

Consequences for Child Development 331

couples, all of whom had an adopted child aged between 1 and 5 years. The children in the various family types did not differ with respect to psychological adjustment as assessed by the parent or teacher version of the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000) or the gender development of boys or girls as measured by the Pre-School Activities Inventory (Golombok & Rust, 2009). Regarding parenting behavior, no differences in disciplinary techniques or parenting stress were identified according to family type. However, heterosexual fathers perceived themselves as less competent at parenting than the other parents and a greater division of labor in relation to child care was reported by the heterosexual couples than by the lesbian or gay couples. As with studies of other family types (Golombok, 2000), family processes were found to be the most important predictors of child outcomes. Gender Development. What about children’s gender development—are children who grow up with gay fathers likely to follow a different path from those with lesbian or heterosexual parents resulting from the presence of one or two male gay parents and the absence of a female parent from the home? Gender development is generally conceptualized according to three constructs: (a) gender identity, that is, a person’s concept of him- or herself as male or female; (b) gender role behavior, that is, behavior that is considered to be typical for boys or girls in a particular culture; and (c) sexual orientation, that is, whether a person identifies as heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian, or gay. Although a male gender identity, masculine gender role behavior, and a heterosexual orientation typically go together, as do a female gender identity, feminine gender role behavior, and a heterosexual orientation, different permutations of these three constructs are not unusual. For example, a man may have a male gender identity, masculine gender role behavior, and a homosexual orientation, or he may have a female gender identity, feminine gender role behavior, and a heterosexual orientation. Similarly, a variety of patterns can be found among women (Hines, 2004). A range of theories has been put forward to explain the processes involved in gender development, each suggesting a different developmental pathway for the sons and daughters of gay fathers. The most influential theories of gender development have arisen from biological (Hines, 2004), social learning (Bandura, 1977; Mischel, 1966, 1970), and cognitive developmental (Kohlberg, 1966; Martin, 1993) perspectives. It is now generally agreed that sex differences in behavior result from an interplay among biological, psychological, and social mechanisms from early fetal development onward (Bussey & Bandura, 1999; Golombok & Fivush, 1994; Hines, 2004; Ruble, Martin, & Berenbaum, 2006), with parents playing a minor, and possibly insignificant, role (Golombok & Tasker, 1996). A few studies have been conducted in the United States of the gender development of the sons and daughters of gay fathers, focusing on children who remained with their mother. With respect to gender identity and gender role behavior, a small survey found the children of gay fathers to be developing typical gender role identification and gender role behavior (Harris & Turner, 1986; Turner et al., 1990). Other investigators have examined sexual orientation. From interviews with gay fathers about the sexual

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orientation of 27 adult daughters and 21 adult sons, Miller (1979) reported that 3 daughters identified as lesbian, and 1 son identified as gay. Six sons and 13 daughters of gay fathers, aged between 14 and 35 years old, were interviewed by Bozett (1987). Two sons reported being gay, and one daughter identified as bisexual. In a more extensive study of 55 gay fathers and their 82 sons, the large majority of the sons were reported by their fathers to be heterosexual, with 9% classified as gay or bisexual (Bailey, Bobrow, Wolfe, & Mikach, 1995). Data obtained directly from around half of the sons generally validated the fathers’ reports. As suggested by Bailey et al., fathers with gay offspring may have been more likely to participate in research of this kind because they believed that the researchers would find them especially interesting. The only investigation to include a control group of young adults with heterosexual fathers, thus allowing a comparison between individuals with gay and heterosexual fathers using identical criteria for the assessment of sexual orientation, is a study of 24 gay fathers and 24 heterosexual fathers by Tasker and Barrett (2004) in the United Kingdom. Each group of fathers, matched for age and social class, had 36 adult sons and daughters who participated in a standardized, in-depth interview about their psychosexual development. The children of gay fathers were more likely than the children of heterosexual fathers to have been attracted to someone of the same gender and to have had a sexual relationship with someone of the same gender. All of the offspring of heterosexual fathers identified as heterosexual. Whereas the large majority of offspring of gay fathers also identified as heterosexual, six young adults did not. Of these, two sons identified as gay, one daughter identified as lesbian, and two sons and one daughter identified as bisexual. The investigations by Bailey et al. (1995) and Tasker and Barrett (2004) obtained additional data on family environment factors that potentially could be related to the development of a lesbian, gay, or bisexual orientation for the offspring of gay fathers. Examples include the young person’s frequency of contact with the father, acceptance of the father’s gay identity, the father’s response to the young person’s partners, and the quality of the young person’s relationship with the father. These possible influences were found to be unrelated to the young people’s sexual orientation, suggesting that family environment factors do not explain the greater same-gender sexual interest shown by the adult offspring of gay fathers. The lack of influence of family environment factors in their study led Bailey et al. to argue that genetic factors may be involved. Nevertheless, the significant association between samegender relationships and a more positive response by fathers to the young person’s partners found in Tasker and Barrett’s study is in line with Golombok and Tasker’s (1996) conclusion that children who grow up in lesbian-mother families may be more likely to engage in same-sex relationships because they are not subject to the disapproval experienced by their peers from heterosexual homes. Research on the sexual orientation of children of same-sex parents is in its infancy, and no conclusions can be drawn about the relative influence of family environment and genetic factors. As with other aspects of human development and behavior, the answer is likely to involve a complex interplay between the two (Rutter, 2005), with different individuals following different

Limitations and Implications 333

pathways from conception to adult life. What is more certain, however, is that the majority of children of gay fathers identify as heterosexual, indicating that the sexual orientation of parents is, at most, a minor influence on the sexual orientation of their daughters and sons. As described above, only one controlled study has been conducted of the development of young children who are actually living in gay-father families (Farr & Patterson, 2009). In this study, no difference was identified in the sextyped behavior of boys or girls in comparison with their counterparts from matched groups of lesbian and heterosexual families as measured by the PreSchool Activities Inventory (Golombok & Rust, 2009). Thus, the commonly held assumption that children raised by gay fathers would show atypical gender role behavior was not supported by the findings of this study. LIMITATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS In spite of the pioneering studies of a small group of researchers in the 1970s and 1980s, studies of gay fathers and their children lag well behind those of families headed by lesbian mothers. Whereas much is known about children in lesbian-mother families, there is currently only one controlled study of children who live with gay fathers (Farr & Patterson, 2009). This is largely because children with gay fathers have generally been raised by their heterosexual mothers. It is only in recent years, through adoption, surrogacy, and a variety of parenting arrangements between gay fathers and heterosexual or lesbian mothers that children have begun to reside with gay fathers. Research on gay-father families is currently at the same place as research on lesbian-mother families was in the 1970s. Although little is known about children who grow up with their gay fathers, the body of research that does exist has begun to shed light on the experiences of gay fathers and their children who live apart. These studies are not without their problems. Most are qualitative studies of small samples. Moreover, reliance on volunteers means that the samples may be biased. The nature of such bias is unknown and can be overcome only through the recruitment of representative samples. It is conceivable, however, that fathers whose children were experiencing problems may have been less likely to take part in research on children’s psychological well-being. A further limitation is the absence of comparison groups of lesbian or heterosexual families in the majority of studies conducted so far. As a result, it is not known whether the findings regarding gay-father families also apply to other family types, or whether they arise from confounding factors such as age of the children, socioeconomic status, or route to parenthood. For example, until demographically matched comparison groups of lesbian-mother families are assessed using identical measures, we shall not know whether children of gay fathers are more or less likely to experience homophobia than are children of lesbian mothers. It should also be noted that the majority of gay fathers who have participated in research are white, college-educated, and ‘‘out’’ about their sexuality. They also tend to live in cities or areas that are tolerant of diversity, and thus their experiences may not be generalizable to less accepting communities.

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Research on lesbian-mother families has helped dispel myths about the problems that were widely assumed to arise for children. The findings of the studies initiated in the 1970s and continuing to this day have contributed to policy making and legislation in relation to same-sex parenting, not just for lesbian women but also for gay men. Many changes have taken place over the past 30 years; it is now rare for lesbian mothers to lose custody of their children following divorce on the grounds of their sexual orientation; in some countries and some states of the United States, lesbian and gay individuals can adopt children, sometimes jointly; and an increasing number of fertility clinics are offering assisted reproductive technologies not only to lesbian women but also to gay men. Although gay men experience many more obstacles to parenthood than do lesbian women, there is a slow shift toward acceptance of gay men as fathers. This was highlighted in November 2008 when Florida’s 30-year-old ban on gay adoption was declared unconstitutional. In her ruling, the judge stated: Based on evidence presented from experts from all over this country and abroad, it is clear that sexual orientation is not a predictor of a person’s ability to parent. . . . The most important factor in ensuring a well-adjusted child is the quality of parenting.

The move toward same-sex marriage and other forms of legal recognition of same-sex relationships (Herek, 2006; Wintemute, 2004, 2005, 2006), as well as the greater openness of adoption agencies (Brodzinsky et al., 2002) and fertility clinics to offer treatment to gay men (Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, 2006), is likely to produce an increase in, and greater acceptance of, gay-father families in the years to come. REFERENCES Achenbach, T. M. & Rescorla, L. A. (2000). Manual for the ASEBA. Preschool forms and profiles. Burlington, VT: University of Vermont, Research Center for Children, Youth and Families. Alexander, J. (1999). Introduction to the special issue: Queer values, beyond identity. Journal of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Identity, 4, 287–292. American Civil Liberties Union (1999, April 6). ACLU Fact Sheet: Overview of Lesbian and Gay Parenting, Adoption and Foster Care. www.aclu.org/issues/gay/parent.html. Armesto, J. C. (2002). Developmental and contextual factors that influence gay fathers’ parental competence: A review of the literature. Psychology of Men and Masculinity, 3, 67–78. Bailey, J. M., Bobrow, D., Wolfe, M., & Mikach, S. (1995). Sexual orientation of adult sons of gay fathers. Developmental Psychology, 31, 124–129. Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Barret, R. L., & Robinson, B. E. (2000). Gay fathers: Encouraging the hearts of gay dads and their families. New York: Jossey-Bass. Barrett, H., & Tasker, F. (2001). Growing up with a gay parent: Views of 101 gay fathers on their sons’ and daughters’ experiences. Educational and Child Psychology, 18, 62–77.

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336 GAY FATHERS Chan, R. W., Raboy, B., & Patterson, C. (1998). Psychosocial adjustment among children conceived via donor insemination by lesbian and heterosexual mothers. Child Development, 69(2), 443–457. Clarke, V. (2006). ‘‘Gay men, gay men and more gay men’’: Traditional, liberal and critical perspectives on male role models in lesbian families. Lesbian and Gay Psychology Review, 7, 19–35. Clarke, V. (2007). Men not included? A critical psychology analysis of lesbian families and male influence in child rearing. Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 3, 309–349. Crosbie-Burnett, M., & Helmbrecht, L. (1993). A descriptive empirical study of gay male stepfamilies. Family Relations, 42, 256–262. Daniels, K., & Taylor, K. (1993). Secrecy and openness in donor insemination. Politics and Life Sciences, 12(2), 155–170. Darling, N., & Steinberg, L. (1993). Parenting style as context: An integrative model. Psychological Bulletin, 118, 487–496. Dunne, E. J. (1987). Helping gay fathers come out to their children. Journal of Homosexuality, 13, 213–222. Dunne, G. A. (2001). The lady vanishes? Reflections on the experiences of married and divorced non-heterosexual fathers. Sociological Research Online, 6(3), www. socresonline.org.uk/6/3/dunne.html. Ethics Committee of American Society for Reproductive Medicine (2006). Access to fertility treatment by gays, lesbians and unmarried persons. Fertility and Sterility, 86(5), 1333–1335. Fairtlough, A. (2008). Growing up with a lesbian or gay parent: Young people’s perspectives. Health and Social Care in the Community, 16(5), 521–528. Falk, P. J. (1989). Lesbian mothers, psychosocial assumptions in family law. American Psychologist, 44(2), 941–947. Farr, R., & Patterson, C. (2009). Adoptive families led by gay fathers: Family processes and outcomes. Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child Development, Denver, CO. Flaks, D. K., Ficher, I., Masterpasqua, F., & Joseph, G. (1995). Lesbians choosing motherhood: A comparative study of lesbian and heterosexual parents and their children. Developmental Psychology, 31(1), 105–114. Freeman, T., Jadva, V., Kramer, W., & Golombok, S. (2009). Gamete donation: Parents’ experiences of searching for their child’s donor siblings and donor. Human Reproduction, 23(3), 505–516. Gartrell, N. (2005). The national lesbian family study: 4. Interviews with the 10-yearold children. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 75(4), 551–572. Gianino, M. (2008). Adaption and transformation: The transition to adoptive parenthood for gay male couples. Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 4, 205–243. Golombok, S. (1999). Lesbian mother families. In A. Bainham, M. Richards, & S. D. Sclater (Eds.), What is a parent? A socio-legal analysis (pp. 161–180). Oxford, UK: Hart. Golombok, S. (2000). Parenting: What really counts?London: Routledge. Golombok, S., & Fivush, R. (1994). Gender development. New York: Cambridge University Press. Golombok, S., Jadva, V., Lycett, E., Murray, C., & MacCallum, F. (2005). Families created by gamete donation: Follow-up at age 2. Human Reproduction, 20(1), 286–293. Golombok, S., Lycett, E., MacCallum, F., Jadva, V., Murray, C., Rust, J.,et al. (2004b). Parenting children conceived by gamete donation. Journal of Family Psychology, 18(3), 443–452. Golombok, S., MacCallum, F., Murray, C., Lycett, E., & Jadva, V. (2006a). Surrogacy families: Parental functioning, parent-child relationships and children’s

References 337 psychological development at age 2. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 47 (2), 213–222. Golombok, S., Murray, C., Jadva, V., Lycett, E., MacCallum, F., & Rust, J. (2006b). Non-genetic and non-gestational parenthood: Consequences for parent-child relationships and the psychological well-being of mothers, fathers and children at age 3. Human Reproduction, 21, 1918–1924. Golombok, S., Murray, C., Jadva, V., MacCallum, F., & Lycett, E. (2004a). Families created through a surrogacy arrangement: Parent-child relationships in the first year of life. Developmental Psychology, 40, 400–411. Golombok, S., Perry, B., Burston, A., Murray, C., Mooney-Somers, J., Stevens, M., et al. (2003). Children with lesbian parents: A community study. Developmental Psychology, 39, 20–33. Golombok, S. & Rust, J. (2009). Pre-school activities inventory. London: PsychCorp. Golombok, S., Spencer, A., & Rutter, M. (1983). Children in lesbian and single-parent households: Psychosexual and psychiatric appraisal. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 24, 551–572. Golombok, S., & Tasker, F. (1996). Do parents influence the sexual orientation of their children? Findings from a longitudinal study of lesbian families. Developmental Psychology, 32(1), 3–11. Golombok, S., Tasker, F., & Murray, C. (1997). Children raised in fatherless families from infancy: Family relationships and the socioemotional development of children of lesbian and single heterosexual mothers. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38(7), 783–792. Green, R., Mandel, J. B., Hotvedt, M. E., Gray, J., & Smith, L. (1986). Lesbian mothers and their children: A comparison with solo parent heterosexual mothers and their children. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 15(2), 167–184. Gross, M. (2006). Biparental and multiparental lesbian and gay families in France. Lesbian and Gay Psychology Review, 7, 35–46. Grotevant, M., & McRoy, R. (1998). Openness in adoption: Exploring family connections. New York: Sage. Hare, J., & Richards, L. (1993). Children raised by lesbian couples: Does the context of birth affect father and partner involvement? Family Relations, 42, 249–255. Harris, M., & Turner, P. (1986). Gay and lesbian parents. Journal of Homosexuality, 12, 101–113. Herek, G. (2006). Legal recognition of same-sex relationships in the United States: A social science perspective. American Psychologist, 61, 607–621. Hicks, S. (2006). Maternal men—perverts and deviants? Making sense of gay men as foster carers and adopters. Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 2, 93–114. Hicks, S., & McDermott, J. (1999). Lesbian and gay fostering and adoption: Extraordinary yet ordinary. London: Kingsley. Hines, M. (2004). Brain gender. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Hoeffer, B. (1981). Children’s acquisition of sex-role behaviour in lesbian-mother families. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 24, 518–530. Huggins, S. L. (1989). A comparative study of self-esteem of adolescent children of divorced lesbian mothers and divorced heterosexual mothers. In F. Bozett (Ed.), Homosexuality and the family (pp. 123–135). New York: Harrington Park. Isay, R. A. (1998). Heterosexually married homosexual men: Clinical and developmental issues. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 68, 424–432. Jadva, V., Freeman.T., Kramer, W., & Golombok, S. (2009). The experiences of adolescents and adults conceived by sperm donation: Comparison by age of disclosure and family type. Human Reproduction, 24(8), 1909–1919.

338 GAY FATHERS Johnson, S. M., & O’Connor, E. (2002). The gayby boom: The psychology of gay parenthood. New York: New York University Press. Kaiser Family Foundation (2001, November). Inside-OUT: A report on the experiences of lesbians, gays and bisexuals in America and the public’s views on issues and policies related to sexual orientation. Publication #3193 (Menlo Park, CA: Henry J. Kaiser Foundation), www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/3193-index.cfm (retrieved January 7, 2009). Kirkpatrick, M., Smith, C., & Roy, R. (1981). Lesbian mothers and their children: A comparative survey. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 51, 545–551. Kohlberg, L. (1966). A cognitive-developmental analysis of children’s sex-role concepts and attitudes. In E. E. Maccoby (Ed.), The development of sex differences. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Lamb, M. (Ed.) (1997). The role of the father in child development. New York: Wiley. Laumann, E. O., Gagnon, J. H, Michael, R. T., & Michaels, S. (1994). The social organization of sexuality in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lev, A. I. (2006). Gay dads: Choosing surrogacy. Lesbian and Gay Psychology Review, 7, 73–77. Lynch, J. M., & Murray, K. (2000). For the love of the children: The coming out process for lesbian and gay parents and stepparents. Journal of Homosexuality, 39, 1–24. MacCallum, F., & Golombok, S. (2004). Children raised in fatherless families from infancy: A follow-up of children of lesbian and single heterosexual mothers. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45, 1407–1419. Maccoby, E. E. (1992). The role of parents in the socialization of children. Developmental Psychology, 28, 1006–1017. Mallon, G. P. (2004). Gay men choosing parenthood. New York: Columbia University Press. Martin, C. L. (1993). New directions for investigating children’s gender knowledge. Developmental Review, 13(2), 184–204. Massey, S. G. (2007). Sexism, heterosexism, and attributions about undesirable behavior in children of gay, lesbian, and heterosexual parents. Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 3, 457–483. Matteson, D. R. (1987). The heterosexually married gay and lesbian parent. In F.W. Bozett (Ed.), Gay and lesbian parents (pp. 138–161). New York: Praeger. McLeod, A. C., Crawford, I., & Zechmeister, J. (1999). Heterosexual undergraduates’ attitudes toward gay fathers and their children. Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality, 11, 43–62. Meyer, I. H. (2003). Prejudice, social stress, and mental health in lesbian, gay and bisexual populations: Conceptual issues and research evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 674–697. Miller, B. (1979). Gay fathers and their children. Family Coordinator, 28, 544–552. Mischel, W. (1966). A social learning view of sex differences in behavior. In E. E. Maccoby (Ed.), The development of sex differences (pp. 56–81). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Mischel, W. (1970). Sex-typing and socialization. In P. Mussen (Ed.), Carmichael’s manual of child psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 3–72). New York: Wiley. Morse, C. N., McLaren, S., & McLachlan, A. J. (2007). The attitudes of Australian heterosexuals toward same-sex parents. Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 3, 425–455. Parke, R. D. (1996). Fatherhood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Patterson, C. J. (1992). Children of lesbian and gay parents. Child Development, 63, 1025–1042. Patterson, C. J. (2002). Lesbian and gay parenthood. In M. Bornstein (Ed.), Handbook of parenting (Vol. 3, pp. 317–338). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

References 339 Perrin, E. C. (2002a). Coparent or second parent adoption by same-sex parents. Pediatrics, 109, 341–344. Perrin, E. C. (2002b). Sexual orientation in child and adolescent health care. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum. Ray, V., & Gregory, R. (2001). School experiences of the children of lesbian and gay parents. Family Matters, 59, 28–34. Ruble, D. N., Martin, C. L., & Berenbaum, S. A. (2006). Gender development. In N. Eisenberg (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology (Vol. 3, pp. 858–932). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Rutter, M. (2005). Genes and behavior: Nature-nurture interplay explained. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Savin-Williams, R. C. (2005). The new gay teenager. London: Harvard University Press. Schacher, S. J., Auerbach, C. F., & Silverstein, L. B. (2005). Gay fathers expanding the possibilities for us all. Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 1(3), 31–52. Segal-Engelchin, D., Erera, P. I., & Cwikel, J. (2005). The hetero-gay family: An emergent family configuration. Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 1(3), 85–103. Shuster, S. (1996). Families coping with HIV disease in gay fathers: Dimensions of treatment. In J. Laird and R.-J. Green (Eds.), Lesbians and gays in couples and families (pp. 404–419). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Silverstein, L. B., Auerbach, C. F., & Levant, R. F. (2002). Contemporary fathers reconstructing masculinity: Clinical implications of gender role strain. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 33, 361–369. Simmons, T., & O’Connell, M. (2003, February). Married-couple and unmarried-partner households: 2000. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, www.census.gov/prod/ 2003pubs/censr-5.pdf (retrieved January 7, 2009). Stacey, J. (2006). Gay parenthood and the decline of paternity as we knew it. Sexualities, 9, 27–55. Tasker, F. (2005). Lesbian mothers, gay fathers, and their children: A review. Developmental and Behavioural Pediatrics, 26(3), 224–240. Tasker, F., & Barrett, H. (2004, May 12–16). The sexual identity of young adult sons and daughters of gay fathers. Paper presented at the 7th Congress of the European Federation of Sexology, Brighton, UK. Tasker, F., & Golombok, S. (1995). Adults raised as children in lesbian families. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 65(2), 203–215. Tasker, F., & Golombok, S. (1997). Growing up in a lesbian family. New York: Guilford Press. The Times (2008, December 18). Gay father hunts for lesbian mother who vanished with son. www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article5362610.ece (accessed January 14, 2009). Turner, A., & Coyle, A. (2000). What does it mean to be a donor offspring? The identity experiences of adults conceived by donor insemination and the implications for counselling and therapy. Human Reproduction, 15(9), 2041–2051. Turner, P., Scadden, L., & Harris, M. (1990). Parenting in gay and lesbian families. Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy, 55–66. van IJzendoorn, M. H., & De Wolff, M. S. (1997). In search of the absent father—metaanalyses of infant-father attachment: A rejoinder to our discussants. Child Development, 68(4), 604–609. Wainright, J., & Patterson, C. (2006). Delinquency, victimization, and substance use among adolescents with female same-sex parents. Journal of Family Psychology, 20 (3), 526–530.

340 GAY FATHERS Wainright, J., Russell, S., & Patterson, C. (2004). Psychosocial adjustment, school outcomes and romantic relationships of adolescents with same-sex parents. Child Development, 75, 1886–1898. Wintemute, R. W. (2004). Sexual orientation and the charter: The achievement of formal legal equality (1985–2005) and its limits. McGill Law Journal, 49, 1143. Wintemute, R. W. (2005). From ‘‘sex rights’’ to ‘‘love rights’’: Partnership rights as human rights. In N. Bamforth (Ed.), Sex rights. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Wintemute, R.W. (2006). Same-sex marriage: When will it reach Utah? Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law, 20, 527. Wyers, N. L. (1987). Homosexuality in the family: Lesbian and gay spouses. Social Work, 32, 143–148.

CHAPTER 12

Fathering in Japan, China, and Korea Changing Contexts, Images, and Roles DAVID W. SHWALB, JUN NAKAZAWA, TOSHIYA YAMAMOTO, and JUNG-HWAN HYUN

T

HE FIELD OF research on fathering in East Asia has expanded dramatically in recent years. This growth first reflected a popular interest in father–child relations in East Asia, and also the tendency of some East Asian social scientists to study topics (e.g., fathering) that had become mainstays of Western research. A third reason for the proliferation of fathering research was that under the impact of globalization, the images and behavior of fathers changed rapidly throughout East Asia. When we reviewed the research on Japanese, Chinese, and Korean fathering 7 years ago (Shwalb, Nakazawa, Yamamoto, & Hyun, 2003), we focused on the Confucian heritage that was transmitted from ancient China throughout East Asia. Confucian ideology and ethics led to the long-standing popular image of ‘‘strict father, kind mother’’ (in Chinese yan-fu-ci-mu 严父慈母) and assigned fathers responsibility for children’s discipline and training. But this orientation changed in modern times. This chapter examines traditional images of East Asian fathers, and considers whether such image represent the current attitudes and behavior of contemporary fathers. Most research on fathers in Asia has been conducted on three East Asian cultures: Japanese (population 128 million), Chinese (population over 1.33 billion in the People’s Republic (PRC) and 22.9 million in Taiwan), and Korean (48.4 million in South Korea and 23.5 million in North Korea). These cultures are geographical neighbors and share a long history of interaction.

This chapter is dedicated to Richard Shwalb, Shirou Nakazawa, Atsushi Yamamoto, and Mar-Sun Yi, and was prepared with the support of the Southern Utah University Department of Psychology (Steve Barney, chairman). Correspondence about this chapter may be directed to [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]. jp, or [email protected]. All four co-authors contributed equally to this chapter.

341

342 FATHERING

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CHINA,

AND

KOREA

For instance, both Japan and Korea were profoundly influenced by Chinese culture, religion, philosophy, politics, science, language, and literature, and China and Korea were both subject to Japanese invasion and colonization. Confucian ideology was once especially relevant to the paternal role across these cultures because it made the father–son relationship a central pillar of the family system. Yet China, Japan, and Korea are distinct cultures, and despite the image of a shared Confucian legacy, they have always maintained different brands of Confucianism, family relations, and fathering. Each culture has also experienced modernization, economic growth, and globalization in a unique manner. Therefore, we must understand East Asian fathering from distinct cultural and historical perspectives. GROWTH AND LIMITATIONS OF FATHERING RESEARCH We would like to compare fathers directly between Japan, China, and Korea, and comparative studies have begun to appear over the past decade. But objective comparisons are problematic based on the current literature for four reasons. First, empirical research on fathering has seldom involved crossnational comparisons. Second, the few comparative studies of East Asian fathers have relied on self-report measures with limited internal validity. Third, the external validity of findings was often limited because most comparative fathering studies in East Asia used convenience sampling. Finally, research on almost every topic related tofathering includedvarious samples (age groups, geographical regions, social class groups), research designs, and theoretical perspectives. This latter characteristic of East Asian research makes it difficult to integrate the literature within each culture (Ho, Spinks, & Yeung, 1989; Kashiwagi & Takahashi, 2008; Kim & Choi, 1994), let alone to compare it between cultures. QUALITY Over 20 years ago we wrote that research on Japanese fathers suffered from a lack of objective measures and a tendency to replicate Western research (Shwalb, Imaizumi, & Nakazawa, 1987). Although the scope and quality of Japanese fathering research have broadened, many Japanese fathering studies still utilize questionnaires and correlational analysis. In addition, until recently it was nearly impossible to obtain the cooperation of fathers as research participants. But it became common over the past decade to include Japanese fathers in developmental research, and indeed the Japanese public generally approves of men’s involvement in childrearing and research. Deficient sampling, design, and analysis are more pronounced in fathering research in China and Korea, where research quality has changed little over the past decade. But we must put in perspective why the quality of research has not increased as quickly as its quantity. For example, Chinese psychology as a field was stunted in its growth by social upheaval for the past century, including its shutdown during the Great Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), and as a result fathering research is still in its infancy. In Korea there are simply few social scientists, and many studies of fathers are conducted as masters or doctoral thesis projects by students with limited resources.

Growth and Limitations of Fathering Research 343

QUANTITY The numbers of publications on fathers in the three cultures from 1975-2008 appear in Table 12.1. Japan. Research publications on fathering research have been far more numerous in Japan than in either China or Korea (Kanai, 2007; Saitoh, 1984, Shwalb & Shwalb, 1996, Shwalb, Nakazawa, & Shwalb, 2005). Since 2000 there have been four research-oriented books and two special journal issues on fathers published in Japanese. A search of a National Diet Library database of Japanese journals, using the CiNii electronic database, showed that the quantity of Japanese articles with father as a keyword began to grow around 1975. The impetus for Japanese fathering research was initially from social problems such as school refusal/non-attendance, and from public awareness from the 1980s that men spent insufficient time with their children (Shwalb et al., 1987). In the 1990s, incidents of bullying, childhood suicide, and religious cult terrorism (Furuhata, 1998) were all related by experts to paternal disengagement. The Japanese government responded to such concerns with legislation, albeit ineffectively, for example by providing for paternal work leave. Since 2000, the Japanese public has become increasingly aware of the importance of fathering, and an increase in maternal employment underscored the need for men to become active in housework and childrearing. China. The quantity of fathering reference citations in Chinese increased gradually from the 1980s (Ye et al., 1981) and rapidly since the year 2000. This expansion of research about Chinese fathers since 2002 reflected a general growth in psychological research, a surge in popular interest in fathering, and better dissemination of research data through improved technology. For example, a search of an electronic database at the National Library in Beijing produced numerous references to fathering, many of which were novels, films, and children’s biographies of their celebrity fathers (see Figure 12.1). This search revealed that fathers were more often the subject of biographies than mothers, and an online search of Chinese trade books produced three times more hits for the keyword father than mother. There has also been a deepening of Chinese academic interest in Western fathering, and since 2002 there have also been five review articles published in Chinese about Western fathering research. Our literature review benefited from new access to the China Academic Journals Full-Text Database, which includes bulletins (in-house research journals) published at regional Table 12.1 Quantity of East Asian Publications on Fathering

Japan

1975– 1979

1980– 1984

1985– 1989

1990– 1994

1995– 1999

2000– 2002

2003– 2008

78

146

115

81

372

421

426

China

2

13

16

21

38

59

158

Korea

11

32

54

87

99

31

52

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KOREA

Figure 12.1 Numerous biographies of famous Chinese fathers have been published by their children, typically titled ‘‘My Father.’’ The father on this book cover is Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong (1893–1976). Source: From Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor, & Welfare (2008).

universities. A unique reason for the increase in publications is the popularity of the EMBU (a Swedish acronym for ‘‘My Memories of Parental Upbringing’’ questionnaire (Perris, Jacobsson, Lindstrom, von Knorring, & Perris, 1980), an 81-item scale published in Chinese translation that assesses memories of the childrearing styles of one’s parents. The EMBU originally produced a structure of four parenting dimensions: rejection, emotional warmth, overprotection, and favoring; Chinese data added a fifth ‘‘punitive’’ factor. From 1993 to 2002, 15 EMBU studies were published in Chinese, but from 2002 to the present there have been an astounding 293 Chinese EMBU publications. Chinese researchers have related EMBU scores to mental health, adjustment, school adaptation, anxiety, aggression, gender roles, motivation, and so on, and have revealed differences between social classes, ethnic groups, and mothers versus fathers. Korea. The number of Korean scholars studying fathers increased from about 1985, reflecting a growing public awareness of the impact of fathers on child development (Kim & Kim, 2007). But the relatively small number of family specialists in Korea continued to focus primarily on mother–child relations. One analysis of 19 Korean master theses on fathering between 1970 and 2002 (Suh, 2007) indicated that the most common subjects of investigation were the paternal role, father–child relations, and images of fathers. A second

Contexts of Fathering 345

review, of 19 doctoral theses about fathers of adolescent children between 1970 and 2002, showed that the most common themes were paternal role fulfillment, communication with adolescents, and attitudes toward childrearing (Cho, 2004). These emphases were very similar to those observed in our mid-1980s review of the Japanese fathering literature (Shwalb et al., 1987) SUMMARY/COMMENTARY The quantity of research on fathering has increased significantly in Japan and Korea since the mid-1990s, and in China since 2002. The impetus for and timing of this expansion differed between cultures, yet in all three cultures we noted a surge in popular interest in the paternal role, academic interest in Western fathering research, and improved technology to disseminate the literature. Deficiencies in sampling, measurement, and comparability between studies within and across cultures persist in China and Korea, although the quality of Japanese research has improved over the past decade. CONTEXTS OF FATHERING Research on East Asian fathering is best understood in the context of historical changes in cultures, families, work and educational settings, women’s roles, and husband–wife relationships. In addition, the governments of Japan, China, and Korea have implemented policies intended to have an impact on fathers, although no controlled studies have directly tested the effects of these policies. HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT Japan: ‘‘Once Confucian, Now Fatherless?’’ The Confucian code of ethics formerly made Japanese fathers (Wagatsuma, 1977) the legal, social, moral, and economic leader of the traditional family system (ie). But filial piety (koh 孝 —devotion to and reverence for one’s parents and ancestors) was channeled into a form of Japanese patriotism and loyalty during the pre–World War II era of militarism. In another example of assimilated Confucianism, the central relationship of the Japanese father to his eldest son was taken lightly, and adoption of a male heir was entirely possible. A third aspect of Confucian fathering was to train an heir in the moral, occupational, and financial domains, but in modern times, schools took over these educational functions. Paternal authority declined further after World War II, when the American Occupation imposed democracy on families. The ideology of the Japanese family evolved over the 6 decades since the Occupation to become democratic, individualistic, and achievement oriented. But shifts in Japanese paternal images and ideology did not necessairly translate into changes in paternal behavior. China: Diversity and Ideology. Chinese society has 56 major ethnic groups, and important cultural divisions between rural (56% of the PRC population in 2007) and urban areas, and between ethnic groups, according to the Chinese

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National Bureau of Statistics (CNBS). The rural population in China had been 64% of the total 1.3 billion in 2001 and 74% of the total 1.14 billion in 1990, marking a huge shift of tens of millions of people in the rural/urban balance in just 18 years. By contrast, in 2005 the rural population of Japan was 13.7% (Japan Statistics Bureau, 2008) and in South Korea it was 19% (www.fao.org). The Han (汉) race accounts for about 90.6% of the PRC (Chinese National Bureau of Statistics, 2005), a slight recent decline in the percentage of the Han race over recent years. Yet even the Han race is very heterogeneous. Researchers have noted within-culture variations in Chinese fathering, parenting, and families (Ho, 1996; Wu, 1996), which make generalizations about Chinese fathers difficult. Despite this diversity, the concept of the Confucian Han Chinese father as exemplified by the expression ‘‘strict father, kind mother’’ unified Chinese images of fathers for centuries (Xiane, 2002), with notable non-Han exceptions such as the influences of Islam in western China and Buddhism in Tibet. Unfortunately, there have been no comparisons between ethnic groups in research on Chinese fathering (Qian, 1999). Li (2004) discussed the evolution of filial piety and concluded that Confucianism never had a monolithic or constant influence, even in China. For example, filial piety in Confucianism made it natural to want to repay one’s indebtedness to parents. But over the centuries filial piety was extended to employer/worker relationships and a familial view of society invoked filial piety to produce social stability and unify the population. Meanwhile, the paternal role as master of the family produced a level of household security. In an intergenerational study of Shanghai fathers and grandfathers, Liu (1995) found that grandfathers were more supportive of the traditions of strict behavioral training of the child and filial piety. Liu suggested that younger fathers’ rising level of education explained this generational change, especially in urban centers like Shanghai and Hong Kong. Chinese filial piety and Confucianism have thus changed, and apparently did not have a uniform effect on all fathers, past or present (Liu, 2008). Korea: Stability and Change. Korea experienced cycles of social upheaval from the time of the introduction of Confucianism in the third and fourth centuries A.D., during the Japanese colonial period and Korean War, and through recent cycles of economic growth and downturn (Lee, 1984). As in China, Confucianism provided stability in values and ideology despite these upheavals. We believe that Confucianism was adopted more genuinely in Korea than in Japan, and that it influenced paternal values and behavior as the Korean father was established as a patriarch with power over his wife and children. Because a male heir was needed to extend the family bloodline, a preference for male children developed over Korean history. As recently as the year 2000, 114.6 Korean boys were born for every 100 girls, in contrast with the natural ratio of 106:100 births of boys to girls. But the preference for male children has now disappeared in Korea, and in 2007 the ratio fell to the natural 106:100. The reasons for this shift are that many parents now prefer to have daughters, who are more likely to take care of them in old age than sons, and

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also the small size of families and increasing status of females in Korean society. The ratio 106:100 ratio in 2008 was identical in Japan, where a preference for girls also became notable in recent years. Finally, Confucianism emphasized vertical relationships, which still exist in Korean status differences between parent/child, male/female, and older/younger people. As in China and Japan, the expression ‘‘strict father, kind mother’’ is familiar in Korea (Ryu, 1994), although this expression is becoming less relevant as the Confucian influence weakens and the influence of Christianity spreads (26% of Koreans now identify as Christian, compared with 23% as Buddhist and 49% as ‘‘no religion’’). North Korea. In 1945, at the time of liberation from Japan, Korea divided into North and South, with different political systems and ideologies. Yi et al.’s (1999) survey of 158 men who had left North Korea suggested that paternalism had a pervasive influence on fathering and families. They also found that devotion to the leader of society as a father figure was even more important than filial piety, despite the Confucian primacy of father–son relations. We cannot know whether this report reflected political ideology or men’s genuine feelings, or both, and its findings have severely limited internal and external validity as self-reports by evacuees. SUMMARY/COMMENTARY Despite their apparent common heritage, Japan, China, and Korea have always been distinct cultures and incorporated Confucianism differently. Japanese transformations during periods of modernization, militarism, Americanization, and postmodern globalization, have gradually minimized or altered the influence of Confucianism. The Chinese population has always been more diverse than the Japanese, yet most Chinese fathers until recently shared a common and unifying Confucian code. The influence of Confucianism has also evolved in China and weakened in recent years, reflecting changes in cultural values, political ideology, and population shifts. Originally, Confucianism was accepted more genuinely in Korea than in Japan, but its influence is now moderated by globalization and Christianity. In all three cultures, the Confucian father of the past is being replaced by a 21st-century father, and the image of the ‘‘strict father, kind mother’’ has faded.

EMPLOYMENT AND WORK ROLE CONTEXTS JAPAN Japanese unemployment rose from 2.1% in 1991 to 4.0% in 2008 (Japan Statistics Bureau, 2009), and approached 5% in early 2009. At the same time, workers’ average annual labor hours fell below 2,000 hours in 1995 (from 2,269 in 1970), to 1,828 in 2003, and to 1,792 hours in 2008; the percentage of workers who took 2 full days off weekly rose from 39% in 1990 to 60% in 1996 and 87.9% in 2008 (Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare, 2009b; Makino, 2007). One cause of the decreased work hours, along with a decline

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in economic activity, was the widespread notion that Japanese fathers spent too much time at work. With overtime work hours reduced during the economic decline, some fathers spent more time with their children. Yet many Japanese fathers gained no relief from their hard work, due to a prolonged recession. An important research topic in Japan has been ‘‘spillover’’ of work into men’s family life. Typically, this was negative spillover, that is, work roles obstructing family roles. Another negative spillover occurs when family life negatively impacts work, and there can also be positive work–home spillover. Fukumaru (2001) studied fathers and mothers of preschoolers (n ¼ 124 pairs) and through path analysis investigated the relationship between spillover and depression. For mothers and fathers alike, length of work hours and overtime hours had a negative spillover on family roles. Fukumaru, Muto, and Iinaga (1999) also investigated the connection between men’s attitudes toward work and children, and involvement in childrearing of preschoolers and infants. They showed that participation in childrearing was negatively correlated with men’s weekly work hours, and agreement that ‘‘work is of utmost importance to me.’’ Meanwhile, paternal involvement was positively correlated with harmonious husband–wife relations. Ogata (2007), in a study of 104 triads of fathers, mothers, and college students, looked at the connection between fathers’ spillover and student’s feelings. Students of fathers with spillover from work to family life had more negative feelings about themselves (e.g., low self-esteem, lack of purpose), while students whose fathers had more negative spillover from family to work reported more negative feelings about the family (e.g., wished they had been born into another family). The more fathers had a positive spillover from family to work roles, the more their children understood the family’s intentions and felt fortunate to be a member of their family. In a comparative study of Japanese (n ¼ 218) and Korean (n ¼ 166) fathers of preschoolers and schoolchildren, Makino, Kan, and Lee (2003) studied role conflict between home and family life. Japanese chose the following roles as most important: fathering of children (46.3%), worker (30.3%), husband (19.3%), and child of one’s own parents (1.8%). In Korea the percentages were different: child of one’s own parents (31.3%), father of one’s children (27.7%), worker (23.5%), and husband (21.7%). Most notable was the different value Korean fathers placed on being the ‘‘child of one’s own parent,’’ which was relevant to filial piety. More Japanese than Korean fathers reported returning home late from work, high stress levels at work, and insufficient time with their children, all of which predicted their involvement in childrearing and role conflict between work and family settings. In sum, the work of Fukumaru, Ogata, and Makino demonstrated that men’s family and work roles were inseparable. Sakai (2007) also drew specific comparisons between fathers of young children in Japan and Korea. Fathers in both cultures expressed the worry that ‘‘because of work I cannot take enough time to be with my family.’’ In Japan, the longer one’s work hours, the less involved fathers were in discipline and the more they left discipline to their wives. In addition, regression analysis indicated that in Japan, fathers who worked shorter

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hours participated more in discipline; that is, Japanese fathers who had more time available spent it with their children. But Korean fathers’ participation in discipline was not related to their work hours. In Sakai’s view, Japanese mothers and fathers raised their children together, but if the father was too busy to discipline the children, the mother took over as disciplinarian. In contrast, the Korean paternal role was to discipline children, and fathers did not give up this role even when they were constrained by long work hours. Sakai concluded that Japanese fathers entrusted discipline to mothers, whereas Korean fathers felt more responsible for discipline even if they lacked the time to fulfill this duty. Father absence due to a job transfer (tanshin funin) occurs when a Japanese father’s job transfer requires him to live in a different city, away from his family. For various reasons—for example, children’s schooling, home mortgages, need to care for elderly parents—it is difficult for women and children to accompany these fathers. In a study of families of children between 5th and 12th grades, transfer isolation had an especially strong effect on maternal stress and anxiety about childrearing when mothers had sole responsibility for childrearing (Tanaka & Nakazawa, 2005). CHINA By law, the Chinese government established 44 hours and 5 days as the maximum work week; this policy was amended in 1997 to restrict work to 40 hours/week. The CNBS (2001) surveyed of 1,952 men and women ages 18 and 64, and found that 87% of women had paid jobs, compared with 94% of men. However, the percentages were lower in urban areas, that is, 64% of women and 81% of men. Women had difficulty finding employment in urban areas, although four out of five wives wanted to work. The gender gap for income is widening in the PRC, and employment turnover of women is especially high in urban centers, where men earn 43% more than women. In addition, women generally have shorter careers, higher turnover rates, lower job status, and tend more to work part-time. These gender differences may be related to the transition to a market economy where businesses are freer to treat male and female employees differently (CNBS, 2001). Most recently, Gong (2008) reported that dual-income families have become the norm in urban China, where men are more likely to be employed outside the home. Among the possible effects of these trends are deficient paternal involvement in children’s education, and a growing number of Chinese latchkey children who are at risk for difficulty in cognitive, gender role, personality, and physical development. KOREA Lee and Han (1998) studied the attitudes of 30- to 50-year-old fathers of children between preschool and middle school (n ¼ 270). They noted that while men in their 30s and 40s wanted to be more active with their children, the main obstacle to paternal involvement was being too busy at work. Children are also aware that fathers want to be involved but do not have time to do so. Lee and Han, and also Lee (1995), found that the more men were

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satisfied at the workplace the more involved they were as fathers. In the era of the small Korean family, the father is usually the primary wage earner, and maternal income typically supplements the man’s wages (Han, 1989). Therefore, families are vulnerable if fathers lose their jobs or take a pay cut. Choi (1998) found that when fathers face economic hardship, the stress leads to tension and anxiety in father–child relations. For example, paternal unemployment has been associated in the Korean media with increased homelessness, paternal suicide, child abuse, family violence, and divorce (JoongAng Ilbo, 1998). Park and Park (1999) also indicated that when families had financial difficulties, fathers exerted a greater influence than mothers, and under economic stress fathers became more erratic, authoritarian, and unaffectionate. SUMMARY/COMMENTARY The paternal role cannot be separated from the worker role. In Japan, fathers were under such great pressure in the post–World War II era to support an improving standard of living that they forfeited their role in family life. However, Japanese fathers in the past generation came to value the fathering role over the work role. Unfortunately, corporate culture and economic conditions continued to put pressure on men to work long hours, which has a negative spillover influence on family life and even (in the case of tanshin funin) breaks up families. In both Japan and Korea, growing awareness of the importance of the paternal role is increasing the amount of role conflict between work and family roles. However, while Japanese fathers tend to entrust discipline to mothers, Korean fathers still feel responsible for discipline, even though they do not have time to perform this function. Korean fathers also experience negative spillover from work to family life, and many are under extraordinary pressure as breadwinners during hard economic times. In China, both men and women are typically employed while raising a family, and the PRC’s transition to a market economy has been related (particularly in urban areas) to gender inequalities and to deficient paternal involvement in children’s lives.

FAMILY AND SCHOOL CONTEXTS JAPAN Japanese mean family size decreased to a record low 2.55 in 2005, down from 2.99 in 1990, and the elderly proportion of the overall population grew from 12.0% in 1990 to 20.1% in 2005 (Japan Statistics Bureau, 2008), exceeding the percentage of children in the population. Another demographic trend is toward negative population growth; for example, Japan’s population may decrease by 20% over the next 40 years. As families became smaller and more nuclear, housework became much less time-consuming in the post–World War II generation. The growth of the Japanese economy from the 1960s, meanwhile, left childrearing and housework entirely to most wives (Vogel, 1996). In addition, the annual number of divorces doubled between 1990 and 2004, and approximately one in four Japanese marriages now ends in divorce.

Family and School Contexts 351

Japan’s educational curriculum, criticized in the 1980s as too harsh on children and adolescents, was relaxed in the 1990s. But when school achievement declined after this reform, the government added rigor back into the curriculum and increased the number of hours of school instruction. Despite declines in the birth rate and student population, competition for entrance to prestigious high schools and colleges remains intense. Fathers continue to be strained by pressure to pay children’s school and college tuition and for after-school preparatory classes (Shwalb, Sugie, & Yang, 2005). CHINA Chen (2000) reported that family size changed throughout Chinese history and decreased over the past century. The number of individuals per household was 4.87 about 2,000 years ago, rose to 6.57 in 280 A.D., and fluctuated between 4 and 7 members through the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1912. Average family size was 5.17 at the time of the 1911 revolution, and after a slight increase after the founding of the PRC it decreased to 3.96 in 1990 and 3.38 in 2003. Mean family sizes in 2001 were even lower in Shanghai (2.8) and Beijing (2.9) and continue to decline. Despite the trend toward small nuclear families, childrearing in China retains a traditional kinship-based quality in rural China. For example, Zhou & Liao (1999) found in a rural town in northern China that while parents and their adult children lived in separate dwellings, homes were close by and childrearing was based on mutual assistance between households. Another demographic trend that impacts Chinese families and fathers is an increase in divorces. The number of divorces began to rise from 341,000 in 1980, just after the institution of the One Child Policy, to over 1.4 million in 2007, according to the Chinese Civil Affairs Department. The increase in divorces is attributable to many factors, including urbanization, relaxed divorce laws, and problems associated with two-career families working outside the home. KOREA The average Korean household size was 3.12 persons in 2000 (Korea National Statistical Office, 2000), and the number of children per family fell to 1.26 in 2007 and 1.19 in 2008 (Korea National Statistical Office, 2008). One reason for the trend toward smaller families is that the marriage age for women has risen. In 1990, 83% of Korean women had married by age 27, but this number fell to 37% by 2005. Another reason for a declining birth rate is that the cost of education is so high that most families can only afford to raise one or two children. The Korean divorce rate in 2000 was seven times the 1970 rate (DongA Ilbo, 2002). The divorce rate then held steady from 2000 to 2007 and decreased by 6.1% in 2008 (Chosun Ilbo, 2009). A new trend in Korean divorces is the growing tendency for middle-aged couples to divorce following the college graduation and marriage of their children. While South Korea faces zero population growth, North Korea’s

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population, which despite urbanization is still 40% rural, is projected to exceed 34 million before stabilizing. Although three-generation households are now uncommon (only 6.9% of households in 2007, compared with 8.6% in Japan; Japan Statistics Bureau, 2008), Korean grandparents, like their Chinese counterparts, often live near their children’s homes. Because of this proximity and also the increase in twocareer families, it is common that until age 3 children are cared for at home by their grandparents rather than in day care centers; this is thought to be good for the emotional development of children (Hwang, 2007). According to Yeo and Chun (2007), some recent research has focused on grandfathers because the most important role of parents of adult children is assisting them with their grandchildren. An Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) evaluation of Korean early childhood educational programs (Song, 2004) noted that Korean parents begin children’s academic training at an increasingly early age. Social standing in Korea often depends on the prestige of the college one attends, and parents put all their energy into helping children gain admission to the best possible college. The OECD found that many Korean parents instruct their children in reading, writing, and arithmetic before age 3, and even treat their young children as little students rather than as children. This mentality is currently being seriously reconsidered within Korean society. According to Song, Korean mothers are responsible for promoting the child’s academic achievement as a day-to-day ‘‘tactician,’’ while fathers play the general role of a ‘‘strategist’’ in the family’s battle for educational success. SUMMARY/COMMENTARY In all three cultures, traditional family life patterns appear to be obsolete. For example, Japanese families evolved from extended families into small, nuclear units, most often with breadwinner fathers, home-oriented mothers, and education-oriented children. Along with a trend toward two-income families, the Japanese have become much more aware since about 2000 of the potentially important role of fathers in child development. But difficult economic conditions have precluded a shift from the traditional breadwinner role, and paternal behavior has not kept pace with societal changes in attitudes about fathering. Chinese families under the One Child Policy have also become small and nuclear, despite ethnic group and regional variations. Multigenerational childrearing is still observable, despite the surface trend toward nuclear families. Korean families have also become smaller (as in Japan, facing negative population growth) and nuclear in response to modernization, and now suffer from financial pressures. Across East Asia, the ideology of clearly defined paternal and maternal roles has been replaced by the reality of economic struggle and blurred division of labor and responsibility. Cross-cultural similarities also include the decreasing size of nuclear families and increasing divorce rates, both of which are relevant to the paternal role.

Contexts of Women’s Roles and the Husband–Wife Relationship 353

CONTEXTS OF WOMEN’S ROLES AND THE HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP JAPAN Changes in maternal employment, family demographics, and husband–wife relations all affect the Japanese paternal role (Ishii-Kuntz & Maryanski, 2003; Kashiwagi & Hirayama, 2003). For example, 53% of Japanese mothers of 3- to 5-year-olds were employed in 2007, up from 39% in 1996 (Koseirodosho, 2007), which may affect expectations for paternal involvement. More dramatically, 80% of both men and women in a 1972 survey agreed that ‘‘husbands should work outside and wives should take care of the household,’’ but these figures fell to only 12% of women and 15.9% of men in 2007 (Cabinet Office, 2007). Maternal anxiety and stress about childrearing appears to lessen when fathers share responsibility for childrearing and are supportive of mothers. Specifically, a study of parents of infants revealed that fathers’ familycentered attitudes correlated with maternal satisfaction about childrearing, sharing of housekeeping and childrearing, and positive husband–wife relations (Oyabu & Maeda, 1997). Similarly, Ogata and Miyashita (2000) found that when fathers communicated better with their wives and preschoolers, women felt less stressed, distracted, and isolated. Both of these studies illustrate the supportive role of fathers within the family system. Shimizu (2006) conducted a survey of 93 fathers of preschoolers and found that fathers had the same types of stress and anxiety as mothers about childrearing. These stresses were due to children’s willfulness (crying, disobedience, selfishness), worry about children’s growth and development (personality, peer relations, sickness), and lack of confidence (feeling unskilled in childrearing, anxiety over not understanding the child). These selfreports, and similarities between the worries of men and women, do not fit with the ‘‘strict father, kind mother’’ image. CHINA Many PRC fathers may be somewhat more involved with housework than Japanese fathers on a daily basis. Supporting a pro-fathering view, 77% of men in a CNBS (2001) survey agreed that ‘‘Men should perform half of domestic housework.’’ This view of responsibility contrasted with the agreement by 54% of men in the same sample, with the statement that ‘‘Men are chiefly responsible for activity in society while women are responsible for the home’’ (in Chinese 男主外、女主内). These responses were almost identical to the the 1990 CNBS survey. Chinese fathers typically do more than provide economic support, and mothers are active both in the family and at work. According to Lin Zhongde (personal communication, August 18, 2002), Chinese men tend to combine strictness and kindness in their behavior, and blend a ‘‘maternal love’’ based on benevolent affection with a ‘‘paternal love’’ based on dignity and respect. Actually, we would expect most men and women anywhere to blend strictness and kindness, and comparing the

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patterns of these blended characteristics should be one focus of cross-cultural research. KOREA Korean women have increased their access to higher education and employment. According to the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (1996; www.moe.go.kr), only 25.3% of females went to college in 1970, but the figure was 67.3% in 2001 and 81.1% in 2006. The percentage of employed women also rose, from 42.3% in 1980 to 48.8% in 2001 (including 51.7% of married women), and with greater economic power the number of women who never marry is also increasing. The impact of these trends was seen in a recent study of 1,156 young married women (Ministry for Health, Welfare, and Family, 2008), which found that 53.6% did not plan to have children; one reason they gave was the high cost of child care and education. As Korean maternal employment increased, expectations for paternal involvement with children and domestic tasks rose (Oh & Ohm, 1997; Wui, 1983). Yet research on the relationship between Korean maternal employment and paternal behavior has produced mixed results. Three surveys showed, respectively, that fathers became more active when mothers are employed (Yoon & Chung, 1999), less active (Jeung & Park, 1996), or did not differ according to maternal employment (Ko & Ok, 1994). Because it is common for an employed mother to rely on a grandparent for child care, paternal involvement may not change even when mothers start work. According to Lee (2007), there is also a new interest in research on paternal involvement in bicultural Korean families. Since the 1990s, foreign workers have increasingly moved to Korea to fill a chronic labor shortage, resulting in a growing number of international marriages. The number of marriages termed multicultural in Korea was only 1.2% in 1990, but this figure rose to 13.6 % by 2005 (Korea National Statistical Office, 2006). Such families are more common in rural Korea, and typically include a native Korean husband and foreign-born wife. Being multicultural requires a stressful adaptation for women, and the participation of husbands in these households is especially valuable. Lee’s (2007) data suggested that in multicultural fathers are more involved with children’s guidance and education than with everyday care, because these fathers have to support wives who lack Korean language abilities. Lee also suggested that such families were at risk for spousal violence, financial problems, and divorce. SUMMARY/COMMENTARY In both Japan and China a distinction was evident between fathers’ attitudes vs. behavior, with regard to sharing responsibility for childrearing and housework. Both fathers and mothers in Japan experience levels of stress and anxiety as parents, and no longer agree that men belong at work and women in the home. Korean parents are heavily invested in their children’s education, and research on parenting now includes a focus on multicultural

Public Policies and Fathering 355

families. An important aspect of the paternal role in all three cultures is as an emotional support to the mother. The ‘‘strict father, kind mother’’ model, while it may once have been effective for families, may not apply in an era of intense social pressures and change (economic, educational, multicultural, and demographic). Fathers, particularly in Japan and Korea, are still breadwinners in a social context that requires parents to sacrifice for their children’s education. A similar tendency may emerge in China as aspirations for higher education increase in the next generation.

PUBLIC POLICIES AND FATHERING JAPAN In 1999, the Ministry of Health and Welfare conducted a public relations campaign to promote paternal involvement, and since then the government has implemented new policies to encourage men to participate in childrearing and housekeeping (Ota, 1999). It also issued an ‘‘Angel Plan’’ (Ellis, 2005) for 1995 to 1999 and a ‘‘New Angel Plan’’ for 2000 to 2004, to encourage families to have more children. The latest ‘‘New Angel Plan’’ for 2005 to 2010 also provided government funding to increase the availability of day nurseries and family support centers. Other legislation was instituted in 1992 (IshiiKuntz, 2001) and revised in 2005 to promote paternal and maternity leave. Paternity leave is for 8 weeks if the mother is at home and for up to a year if the mother is working at least 3 days a week. Paternal leave payments take two forms: (a) 30% subsidy of wages during the leave period, when many employers reduce or stop wages, and (b) 20% subsidy of total wages due during the leave period when men return to work. It was the goal of the government for 10% of eligible fathers to take paternity leave by 2009, but in 1999 the percentage was a mere 0.42% and by 2006 it rose to only 0.57%. This contrasted with the percentages of eligible women who took maternity leave: 56.4% in 1999 and 88.5% in 2002 (Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare, 2009b). Most recently, the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (2008) published a new brochure encouraging male participation in child care (see Figure 12.2). CHINA In 1979 the PRC instituted a One Child Policy (独生子女政策—De Sheng Zi Nu€ Zheng Ci). The policy, which became a law on September 1, 2002 rather than just a decree, was formulated to stabilize the huge Chinese population. The vast majority of urban families now have only one child, and the first cohort of these children is about age 30 and having their own children. There has been resistance to the program in rural China, where children are needed to become laborers and to take care of their aging parents. In some cases there are unregistered second children, sometimes known as heihaizi (literally, ‘‘black child’’). Some parents use abortion to avoid having an only-daughter, creating disproportionate birth rates for males and females (currently 115 males born for every 100 females and in stark contrast with

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Figure 12.2 The cover of a brochure published in 2008 by (and courtesy of) the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor, & Welfare (2008), titled ‘‘Work/Life Balance for Fathers: Let’s Support Compatibility Between Work and Childrearing.’’ The Western facial features of the fathers are typical of Japanese animation and manga (comics).

the 106:100 ratio in Japan and Korea—http://data.un.org), while others avoid registering children until they have a son, or have more children while abroad. In light of all these practices, one report warned that there may be a surplus of 30 million unmarriageable Chinese males in the coming generation (Hudson & Den Boer, 2002). As the policy evolved, the government allowed a second child (in rural areas) if the first child was female or handicapped, couples have paid fines when they violate the law, and the government announced plans to reevaluate the law in 2010. Nonetheless, most Chinese recognize that the policy has prevented a population explosion and is needed to prevent a future explosion. Most recently, the BBC reported that according to a 2008 Chinese government survey over 70% of Chinese women wanted more than one child and were concerned that single children will grow up to become self-centered and lonely (www .excite.co.jp/News/china/20090118/Recordchina_20090118007.html).

Empirical Studies of Fathers 357

KOREA As in Japan, the Korean government has mandated a 5-day workweek policy, reducing work from 44 to 40 hours. Most Koreans (77.8%) favor these policies, although they face resistance from some companies. According to Yun (2006), the government has also sought to give men more opportunity to participate in childrearing, following up on the 1987 Gender Equality Law. Since that time, the most important policy change was the 1995 extension of maternal child care leave to husbands. The policy has been amended twice since that time, and the Unemployment Insurance Law was reformed in 2001, giving men the right to take child care leave. However, according to the law, men who take such leave would receive only 200,000 Korean won per month (about US$130), which is not a realistic incentive. As a result, very few men take child care leave. The number of women taking child care leave was 3,685 in 2002 and 10,561 in 2005, an increase of 187% in just 3 years. But only 225 men in 2002 and 204 men in 2005 took child care leave, less than 2% of the number of women taking child care leave (Yun, 2006). Here we see a clear discrepancy between policy goals and reality. SUMMARY/COMMENTARY National and local governments have influenced the paternal role through laws, policies, and publicity campaigns. For example, the Japanese national government has promoted maternal employment, paternal involvement in childrearing, equal employment opportunity, and most recently, increasing family size. In China, the One Child Policy has restricted most urban families to a single child and remains controversial; there have been many exceptions to the policy, especially in rural China. Population control, the ultimate goal of the One Child Policy, is widely understood to be necessary by the general public. The most notable Korean government policy to affect fathers was the institution of a 5-day workweek, and its paternal child care leave policies have had minimal influence on paternal behavior. The effect of these public policies on child development will be seen in the next generation and beyond, although systematic research has rarely evaluated the impact of the policies. Governments nevertheless continue to seek to alter paternal behavior through policies and information campaigns.

EMPIRICAL STUDIES OF FATHERS IMAGES OF FATHERS Japan. The traditional Japanese expression ‘‘earthquake, thunder, fire, and father’’ (jishin, kaminari, kaji, oyaji; Wagatsuma, 1977) reflected an idealized image of fathers as strong and fearsome. In contrast, the stereotype of fathers in post–World War II Japan changed to a weak figure who was physically or psychologically absent. Most Japanese families recognized that this absence was due to men’s dedication to being good providers rather than to selfishness or negligence, and another modern image of the fathers is of a

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hardworking breadwinner (Shwalb et al., 1987). Wagatsuma had cautioned that pre- and postwar Japanese fathers may not have differed significantly, and that we cannot verify the actual behavior of past generations. Aramaki (2000) reported on a nationwide survey (n ¼ 3,900) on paternal images, with data from fathers, mothers, and 12- to 18-year-old children. Common descriptors of the men’s own fathers were as follows: ‘‘reliable but stubborn’’ (35%), ‘‘we hardly had any contact’’ (25%), and ‘‘gentle and understanding’’ (22%). In contrast, adolescents more often described their fathers as ‘‘understanding and gentle’’ (43%) than ‘‘we hardly have any contact’’ (11%), which suggests that paternal images softened between the two generations. In a related survey of 1,160 fathers of preschoolers (Shwalb, Kawai, Shoji, & Tsunetsugu, 1995, 1997), the following percentages of men described their functions in the family: ‘‘economic provider’’ (74%), ‘‘support for child to go out into society’’ (71%), ‘‘emotional support to my wife’’ (68%), ‘‘protect the family’’(53%), ‘‘family leader and decision maker’’ (35%), ‘‘support wife’s childrearing and housekeeping’’ (34%), ‘‘supportive of mother– child relations’’ (33%), and ‘‘participate in housekeeping’’ (30%). Together, these two studies provide an image of fathers as breadwinners who are gentle at home. More recently, Tobari, Honda, and Hosaka (2007) asked college students and their parents (n ¼ 653 triads) about their perceptions of the roles of father, husband, homemaker, employee, and member of society. Fathers, mothers, and students all rated ‘‘employee’’ as men’s primary role, and ‘‘member of society’’ and ‘‘homemaker’’ as men’s fourth and fifth priorities. But while fathers rated the roles of ‘‘husband’’ and ‘‘father’’ as equally important, mothers rated ‘‘father’’ higher, and students rated ‘‘husband’’ higher than the other. These data suggested that for men the work role is primary and domestic work is a low priority. Shwalb’s (1996) survey about paternal images asked college women and their parents (n ¼ 150 families) to recall how their paternal role changed between infancy and college. Fathers, mothers, and daughters agreed that men spent the most time with daughters as preschoolers (followed equally by the periods of infancy and lower primary school), and the least time from the upper primary school years and on. High school was recalled as the time of peak paternal responsibility for daughters, and more mothers than fathers or daughters saw the college years as an important time for paternal responsibility. The low points for paternal influence were infancy and college age, and influence was about equal throughout childhood and adolescence. Closeness of father–daughter relationships was noted most often for preschool and college years, and least often for infancy and upper primary school. Finally, middle school was chosen by daughters as the period when fathers were most important to daughters. These data indicated that paternal images depended on whether the focus was on fathers’ involvement, responsibility, influence, closeness, or importance, and also on the source of the image. In addition, these data showed that perceived images of the paternal role (albeit based on retrospective accounts) may differ according to the developmental level of children.

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China. In a rare urban/rural comparison, Zhang (1997) studied perceptions of Chinese fathers in Shandong Province. This study used the EMBU scale with middle school students (n ¼ 895; Han Chinese, n ¼ 858; one-child family, n ¼ 455). Because urban families were more affluent and had higher aspirations, urban fathers had higher expectations for children’s education than did rural fathers. These expectations were associated with a more demanding and controlling style among both urban fathers and mothers. In addition, teenage children of urban fathers reported a warmer father–adolescent relationship than did their rural counterparts. This indicated to Zhang that urban fathers were more maternal, yet more demanding in higher expectations for their children. Urban sons rated their mothers and fathers higher for strictness of punishment, rejection-disapproval, and excessive interference, compared with daughters. These data suggested that images of fathers differed both by gender and between rural/urban locations, and were related to the rising educational standards of urban fathers. Based on ideology, we might predict that ‘‘strict fathers’’ in China would have cold rather than warm relationships with children. However, in a study of fathering in the PRC and Taiwan, daughters perceived fathers as warmer while sons perceived them as more controlling (Berndt, Cheung, Lau, Hau, & Lew, 1993). In this sample, individual fathers balanced and combined authoritarian and authoritative parenting styles. The same pattern was observed in schoolchildren’s perceptions of fathering styles in Zhejiang Province (Zhejiang-Sheng Fuyang City Fuyang-Zhen Disan Primary School Research Group, 2002) and in Beijing and Shanghai (Chen et al., 1998). Other studies of images suggested that fathers were secondary parents in their families. Feng (2002), in a questionnaire survey of middle school students in 14 cities, found that students rated their relationships with mothers as stronger than those with their fathers. Likewise, Yu and Zhou (2002) reported in a survey of 505 children in grades 4, 5, and 6 that children reported a higher level of attachment security with their mothers than their fathers. These studies provided images of relatively distant relationships with fathers. Comparative studies (within China and cross-cultural) are needed to clarify whether these images of fathers as controlling, demanding, warm, or distant reflect the actual personalities or behavior of fathers (Zhai, 1994). Finally, Zhang and Shen (2008) found in a study of 651 adolescents and college students that while fathers were perceived in a positive manner and as placing importance on education, their children saw them as less than up-todate with modern times. Korea. Korean children generally perceive fathers as breadwinners (Chung & Kim, 1996), and other studies showed that fathers are viewed as gentle friends of children (Han, 1995, 1997; Yoon, 1996). In addition, in a study of 130 boys and girls at a middle school and high school (Kwak & Choi, 1997), 83.6% of children rated the father as ‘‘close.’’ However, of those who felt close to the father, half reported they spent under 30 minutes together daily, and only 16.2% said they talked to fathers about problems, compared with 60.1% who talked with mothers. Most (87.7%) also reported that the role of fathers in the home should be to build close and egalitarian family

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relationships through active involvement rather than as authority figures. Here, we can see a discrepancy between paternal images (breadwinners or friends) and behavior (less time with children; not as involved as mothers with children’s problems). Recent studies indicate that a new image of the Korean father is emerging. In Cho and Choi’s (2004) study of adolescents and college students, the preferred paternal image was of a mature personality who loves, counsels, advises, and is a friend to his children; respects his own father; is competent with finances; and is family centered. According to Kong (2006), the ideal father now actively takes care of his children, helps with housework, and helps satisfy the emotional needs of his family. Most recently, Cho, Park, and Ryu (2008) found in a survey of fathers of infants that men aspire ideally to be fathers who are warm in contact with the child, provide guidance, set a good example, are democratic, and are effective with finances. Cho’s (2005) survey of male college students revealed several negative qualities of fathers, for example, fighting with them over schoolwork, mistaken in their thinking and behavior, not in harmony with their wives, misunderstanding differences between the generations, and stubborn in their attitudes. The same sample also provided several positive examples of fathers, for example, providing for their families, giving them recognition and presents, friendly, gentle, and humorous. According to a commentary by Lim (2006) in Korea’s leading newspaper, a significant loss of paternal authority has been noticeable since about 2000. His analysis of 116 newspaper articles depicted historical changes in the image of fathers. In the 1970s the father was akin to a ‘‘declawed and toothless tiger.’’ In the 1990s, when Korea’s economy faltered and unemployment increased, the expression ‘‘loss of paternal authority’’ was notable. Another newspaper article (DongA Ilbo, 2005) described the image between 2000 and 2005 of a ‘‘shrinking Korean father’’ who walked with his head hanging down, and cited Internet stories about the ‘‘disappearance of paternal authority.’’ The article concluded that ‘‘the absolute authoritarian and strict father no longer exists in Korea’’ (p. 2). In explaining this situation, commentators pointed to the increasing status and economic power of women. Apparently, the image of a powerful father as the central figure in the family is vanishing. COMPARATIVE RESEARCH Makino, Kan, and Lee (2003) contrasted Japanese and Korean fathers in their study of paternal images among fathers of preschoolers and primary schoolchildren. Their results showed that the Japanese ideal was a father who was accepting and helpful when the child was troubled (41.4%), followed by the image of a father who ‘‘directs and guides the child’’ (22.3%), and ‘‘supports our life of comfort’’ (13.3%). In their Korean sample, the highest rated ideals were ‘‘directs and guides the child’’ (32.1%), ‘‘is gentle like a friend to the child’’ (27.3%), and ‘‘is a model in every way for the child’’ (23.6%). These data suggested that the image of Korean fathers with children was relatively directive, whereas the idealized Japanese father was more helpful and receptive.

Father–Child Relations 361

Fukaya (1995) compared Japanese and Taiwanese middle school pupils’ perceptions of their fathers. She noted that more Taiwanese fathers than Japanese fathers had frequent contact with their children. Adolescents in her study described fathers differently in the two cultures, as more ‘‘reliable,’’ ‘‘egocentric,’’ and ‘‘stubborn’’ in Japan, and as more ‘‘gentle,’’ ‘‘respected,’’ ‘‘dignified,’’ and ‘‘interested in education’’ in Taiwan. More Taiwanese students rated their fathers as important for ‘‘family support’’ (82%, vs. 65% in Japan), ‘‘making important family decisions’’ (73%, vs. 51% in Japan), and ‘‘creating a positive family atmosphere’’ (76%, vs. 42% in Japan). Fukaya concluded that Japanese fathers were seen as more old-fashioned and alienated from family life, whereas Taiwanese fathers were seen as more involved, respected, and gentle. SUMMARY/COMMENTARY The image of the 21st century Japanese father differs from that of the post– World War II father, and further from that of the prewar father. In addition, paternal self-perceptions differ from mothers’ or children’s images of fathers. Overall, the image of Japanese fathers as revealed by research data is a helpful, gentle, and understanding breadwinner who is secondary to mothers in importance at home. Chinese research indicates that perceptions of paternal expectations for children differ between urban vs. rural fathers, and that urban fathers may be (depending on the study) relatively more demanding, controlling, warm, and/or distant toward their children. Korean fathers have an image as hardworking breadwinners who are directive toward their children and yet have lost their traditional authority because they are absent from family life. Some research also suggests that Korean fathers aspire to become gentle and involved at home, although their behavior does not coincide with this goal. Images of fathers in all three cultures are changing as they are redefined within families and across society. FATHER–CHILD RELATIONS Japan. According to government estimates, Japanese fathers on average spent 1 hour and 39 minutes daily taking care of children (up to age 5), compared with 2 hours and 54 minutes by mothers (Japan Statistics Bureau, 2006). Unfortunately, these data were not broken down by parental age. The most recent publication about Japanese father–child relations (Koseirodosho, 2009a) showed that paternal behavior has long-term impact between the ages of 1½ and 5½ years. Specifically, the more time fathers reported spending with their 1½ year-old babies, the more patient and relaxed their children were, as rated at age 4½. In addition, the more fathers preferred to spend their free time with their families rather than alone, asleep, or away from the family, the more highly their children were rated at age 5½ as relaxed, patient, attentive, and able to keep promises. This study, which was unusual in its longitudinal design, suggested that paternal involvement at home has consequences for child development.

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The latest study of father–adolescent relations (Kotake, 2008) compared relations with mothers and fathers for a sample of 1,740 youth ranging from middle school (seventh grade) through college seniors. In general, they perceived their relations with mothers as having a more positive influence and including more conflict and a loving bond, whereas they rated their relations with fathers as more obedient. This obedience toward fathers was not related to students’ age, but obedience toward mothers reached a reported low point in the ninth grade. Finally, mothers were rated more highly for ‘‘having an individual human relationship,’’ with the highest ratings for the mother–daughter relationship and lowest ratings for the father–son relationship. China. Nonmaternal childrearing often takes the form of multigenerational childrearing in rural China and the hiring of caretakers and day care facilities (both daytime and residential) in urban areas (Chen, 2000); both approaches tend to reduce the need for paternal involvement. For example, Zhou et al. (1999) found in rural Hebei Province that most fathers worked outside the home and had little contact with children or involvement in childrearing. Similarly, in urban Fuyang, Chinese mothers reportedly had far greater influence than fathers on the development of school children (Zhejiang-Sheng Fuyang City Fuyang-Zhen Disan Primary School Research Group, 2002). Wang and Zhang (2007) studied parent–child conflict in a sample of 684 students in grades 7, 9, and 11. They found that (1) the level of perceived conflict between mothers/fathers and children was related to the proximity of relations between parents and children; (2) children’s conflicts with mothers were more common in grade 9 than in grade 7; and (3) with age, relationships with mothers weakened, whereas conflict and relationships with fathers were stable. In a related questionnaire survey of 294 students between grades 7 and 11, Li and Zou (2007) found that in middle school, boys reported the same degree of self-disclosure to both parents, whereas girls reported less disclosure to their fathers. Together, these two studies suggested that Chinese adolescents have different levels of conflict and communication with mothers and fathers, although the developmental course of these dynamics is not well understood. Korea. The division of labor between Korean fathers as providers and mothers as homemakers resulted in father absence from the family (Suh, 2007), particularly when children reached adolescence (Park & Kim, 2004). For example, in Yeo and Chun’s (2007) study, when asked, ‘‘Whom do you talk to the most?’’, 44.8% of primary schoolchildren replied ‘‘mother,’’ 19.0% ‘‘friends,’’ and 14.9% ‘‘father.’’ Among middle school students the responses were 51.2% friends, 22.0% mother, and only 8.9% father. In high school, 63.2% chose friends, 26.3% mothers, and only 1.8% fathers. There was also a sharp decline in paternal time spent with children from the middle school years. Percentages of children reporting that they spent less than 20 minutes daily with their fathers were 29.8% in primary school, 52.9% in middle school, and 64.8% in high school (Yeo & Chun, 2007). Their data also showed that the percentage of adolescents who reported consulting their fathers about

Father–Child Relations 363

personal problems was only 4%, and that the adolescents viewed their relationship as weaker than did their fathers. Overall, studies in this area show a decline in father–child interaction during adolescence. Korean paternal characteristics such as level of education and income level have been correlated with paternal involvement (Lee & Min, 2006). In addition, Kim and Lee (2005) related men’s degree of participation in child care to the gender and age of preschoolers, and the employment status of mothers. Elsewhere, Lee (2003) found that fathers who were more active in childrearing had a negative view of traditional gender roles and a childcentered viewpoint. In Lee’s study, fathers’ participation in childrearing was positively correlated with better husband–wife relations, fewer work hours, and more work hours by their wives. These data showed the influence of both person variables and contextual factors on paternal behavior. COMPARATIVE RESEARCH There is a growing number of comparative studies of East Asian fathers, but the literature reviewed below included no three-way comparisons of fathers between Japan, China, and Korea. Japanese vs. Chinese. Unfortunately, there have been no comparative studies of fathers between Japan and the PRC, although it has been observed that for many centuries that Chinese fathers were historically more controlling and strict about education and training than Japanese fathers (Emori, 1989; Yamamoto, 1997). Japanese vs. Korean. Makino (2007) conducted a six-culture study of fathers of children ages 0 to 12 years, and showed that Japanese and Korean fathers worked longer hours and spent less time with their children than fathers in other cultures. Her study of approximately 1,000 fathers in each country revealed that Japanese and Korean men had the longest work hours (51.4 and 51.3 hours/week, respectively), followed by Thai (45.4), American (45.2), French (39.1) and Swedish men (37.5 hours/week). In this survey wave, Koreans (3.62 hours in 1995; 2.78 hours in 2005) replaced Japanese fathers (3.32 hours in 1995; 3.08 hours in 2005) as the group reporting the least time spent with their children. By comparison, Thai fathers spent the most time with their children in both 1995 and 2005 (about 6 hours/day), followed by Americans, British, and Swedish fathers (all about 4.6 hours in 2005) and French fathers (3.8 hours/day in 2005). The most notable change in time use between 1995 and 2005 was the decline for Korean fathers. Kang (1997, 2000) compared paternal reports of relationships with schoolage children in Japan and Korea. She found two dimensions of fathering through factor analysis: (a) relationship quality, that is, communication, listening, and encouragement; and (b) quantity of activities, that is, degree of involvement, knowing the child’s teachers or friends, and watching television together. Japanese fathers rated themselves as closer to children than did Korean fathers on the qualitative dimension. But on the quantitative dimension, Korean fathers rated themselves as more involved than Japanese fathers.

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In addition, Japanese rated themselves as more active with daughters than sons on the quantitative dimension, whereas Korean fathers were closer to their daughters, too, but only on the qualitative dimension. In both cultures, relationship quality was correlated with paternal educational attainment. Here, the perception of ‘‘involvement’’ depended on how involvement was understood, that is, as high-quality communication vs. time use. Another comparative study contrasted Japanese vs. Korean images of father–child distance. First, Tanaka and Back (2003) assessed perceptions of families among Japanese (n ¼ 57) and Korean (n ¼ 50) college students; both Japanese and Koreans reported greater distance from their fathers than mothers. There was no difference in distance from mothers between male and female college students, but Japanese daughters felt closer to their fathers than did sons. Among Koreans, there was more awareness of males as family leaders and that the father–son relationship was closer than among the Japanese. Korean vs. American. Park and Kim (2003a, 2003b, 2004) made several comparisons between father–child relations in Korea and the United States. For example, in their analysis of the relationship between paternal childrearing attitudes and children’s achievement motivation, Korean fathers scored higher on control and pressure to succeed, and the depth of their love was associated with children’s achievement motivation. They reported the opposite tendency in the United States and explained this contrast as follows. Children in collectivistic Korea take paternal intrusion and interference as an affirmative reflection of interest and love, while for children growing up in individualistic American culture, parental intrusion or intervention is felt as recognition of individuality and personality. Moon (2005) wrote that in contrast with Western father–child relations, Korean culture emphasizes mutuality, dependence, and that the ideal image of Korean fathering is one of self-sacrifice. According to Moon, Western father–child relations emphasize individuation and individuals, whereas in Korea feelings between father and child are based on intimacy and trust. The preceding accounts showed the difficulty of making comparisons between cultures where paternal behaviors may not have equivalent meaning. SUMMARY/COMMENTARY Research on Japanese father–child relations confirmed that although fathers’ stated priorities have become more family oriented than work related, they spend very little time with children or performing domestic tasks. Chinese fathers may be somewhat more involved than Japanese fathers, but their contribution to childrearing and domestic tasks is still secondary to that of their wives, and society offers nonmaternal alternatives for child care, for example, extended family, day care facilities, and the like. Korean research has shown the importance of communications style and quantity of interactions in distinguishing father–child relations from mother–child relations. Other studies have documented the absence of Korean fathers from family life, particularly in relation to adolescent children. Korean paternal behavior appears to

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vary according to several characteristics of fathers, including their age and educational background, work hours, and the child’s age. Direct cross-cultural research on father–child relations within East Asia is rare, and the few East– West comparisons have shown that Japanese and Korean fathers were not as involved with children as their Western counterparts (Makino, 2007). Observational research on East Asian father–child relations has been almost nonexistent, and the limited data showed that fathers across the cultures spend little time with their children. However, the next section suggests that father– child relations may still correlate with developmental outcomes.

THE INFLUENCE OF FATHERS ON CHILD DEVELOPMENT COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

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There has been a lack of research on fathers’ impact on cognitive development or learning in Japan since the publication of the 4th edition of this book in 2003, despite the centrality of education in Japanese society. China. The literacy rate of Chinese boys and girls is over 95% (Ministry of Education, PRC, 2002; by comparison it is over 99% in Japan and Korea; UNICEF, 2008), and both fathers and mothers support their children’s education by providing financial support. One study of parental support (Abbott, Ming, & Meredith, 1992) reported that PRC fathers helped more with children’s homework than mothers. Elsewhere, Song, Zhu, and Zhang (2002) studied characteristics of fathers’ work and found that fathers whose work was intellectual in nature had a greater impact on children’s cognitive development than fathers who performed physical labor. Other studies of Chinese fathers’ influences on education or cognitive development have centered on the father’s parenting style. For example, Liu and Chen (2005) studied the temperament and language development of 7year-olds (n ¼ 64) in relation to the parents’ child-rearing styles. Specifically, fathers’ strict style was correlated with children’s verbal expression abilities. Chen, Li and Li’s (2000) 2-year longitudinal study showed that paternal warmth for 12-year-olds predicted school achievement, whereas maternal warmth predicted emotional adjustment. Wang and Xi (2004), in a study of 187 middle school students, found a correlation between reported parenting styles and students’ creativity. Specifically, fathers of more creative students were reportedly more strict, and mothers were more warm and loving, reminiscent of the ‘‘strict father, kind mother’’ image. Boys also recalled that fathers showed more selfdenial and self-refusal, whereas mothers were recalled as too strict on themselves. Elsewhere, Feng (2007) studied the childrearing styles of mothers and fathers of 323 middle school students. He found that both mothers and fathers who were warm, understanding, and loving toward their children had a positive effect on children’s learning, and that when they were punitive or harsh it had a negative effect on children’s learning. Feng also noted that fathers had more influence on children’s study tactics and motivation than did mothers. More research will be needed to

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determine if the influence of Chinese paternal style on cognitive development reflects the ‘‘strict father’’ ideology, other aspects of Chinese culture, or men’s emphasis on the instrumental role. Chinese research in this area, mostly correlational in design, suggests that paternal behavior in the form of parenting style and support has an effect on various aspects of children’s cognition, for example, verbal expression, achievement motivation, academic achievement, creativity, and learning. But some results were inconsistent; for example, the efficacy of paternal strictness was shown by one study, and the efficacy of paternal warmth and understanding was shown in another. Korea. Research has shown that Korean fathers influence children’s achievement motivation (Kim, 1993), self-competence (Choi, 1991, 1992), and conceptual abilities (Roh & Park, 1999). According to Roh and Park, who surveyed 649 fathers of 4- to 5-year-olds, fathers provided logical guidance and rational explanations when disciplining their children. They also noted that cooperation and emotional expression between fathers and children was associated with children’s cognitive development. Similar to the results of Chinese research, fathers’ style seemed to be associated with Korean cognitive developmental outcomes.

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT JAPAN Most research on Japanese paternal influences on social development has been about preschool children. For example, Katoh, Ishii-Kuntz, Makino, and Tsuchiya (2002) found correlations between paternal involvement and preschool teachers’ ratings of children’s social skills. Similarly, a survey by Ogata (1995) showed that paternal involvement in childrearing was associated with preschoolers’ social skills. Specifically, Ogata correlated paternal involvement and social adaptability among 1- to 3-year-old sons in dualincome families, and both sons and daughters in single-income families. In a follow-up, Ogata and Miyashita (2000) also observed that children’s social skills were higher when fathers had frequent communication with their children and wives. The key positive correlate in these three studies was paternal involvement. A second group of studies in this area showed that fathering style also had an important influence. Specifically, paternal acceptance had positive effects, and paternal control and authoritarian style had negative effects. For example, Morishita (2001) looked at correlations between maternal and paternal control and acceptance, and teacher ratings of preschooler’s self-control, prosocial behavior, and aggression. Fathers who were more accepting and less controlling had more prosocial sons and more self-controlled daughters; fathers who were less accepting and more controlling had girls who were less prosocial and more aggressive. Daughters tended to have more self-control if both mothers and fathers were accepting, and when neither parent was accepting, girls had less self-control and both boys and girls were more

Social Development 367

aggressive. These data showed that both mothers and fathers influenced children’s social development, and this influence differed for sons vs. daughters. In a related study, Nakamichi and Nakazawa (2003) related preschoolers’ (n ¼ 59) aggressive behavior and maternal and paternal parenting style. When fathers had an authoritarian style, their children were more likely to display reactive aggression than if fathers had a permissive or authoritative style. Maternal parenting style, however, was not related to children’s aggressive behavior. CHINA Three studies of Chinese father–child relations all reported correlations between paternal behavior and aspects of social development. First, Zhang and Chen (2008), in a study of father–, mother–, and teacher–child relations (n ¼ 443), found that preschoolers’ social skills were significantly influenced by all three adult figures. Zeng, Lu, Zou, Dong, and Cheng (1997) examined the association between parenting style and second grade children’s (n ¼ 304) adaptation to school. They found that both paternal and maternal strictness had a negative effect on children’s shyness, and claimed this was the opposite result from that found in Western research. They also noted that fathers in their study had more influence on children’s social adaptation than did mothers. Fang, Zhang, Sun, and Liu (2003) studied adolescents’ social adaptation in a sample of Beijing students in grades 7, 8, 10, and 11 (n ¼ 829), looking at adolescent behaviors associated with parent–adolescent conflict. Fang et al. found that the frequency of mother–adolescent conflict was higher than that of father–adolescent conflict, especially for girls; boys had more conflicts with fathers than girls on the issue of allowance money. According to their results, parent–adolescent conflict peaked in the eighth grade and declined thereafter. Wang and Lei (2004) studied parent–adolescent communication at several high schools. They reported no difference in the influence of mother–child vs. father–child communication on adolescent friendships, problem behavior, or academic achievement. Quantity of father–child communication was associated with adolescent friendship relations and problem behavior, and paternal communication and involvement were correlated with students’ grades. KOREA Korean fathers also appear to have an impact on children’s social and emotional development. For example, Kim and Lee’s (1998) data showed that paternal cooperativeness and involvement with 4- to 5-year-old children was correlated with children’s self-control, activeness in peer groups, and curiosity. Kim and Park (2002) surveyed teachers of 3- to 6-year-old preschoolers (n ¼ 194) about their social behavior and fathers’ beliefs about socialization, and concluded that fathers influenced children’s goals and values. In addition, a study of fathers and first- through sixth-grade children (n ¼ 407) revealed a positive correlation between paternal involvement (time spent with children) and children’s social adaptability (Yoon & Chung, 1999).

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Similarly, Song and Hyun (2006) found that paternal role fulfillment by fathers who take a receptive attitude and grant their children autonomy fostered their children’s social development. According to Woo and Chong (2003), fathers’ emotional expressions influence preschool children’s social competence. Specifically, affirmative emotions and both maternal and paternal behavior were associated in their data with preschooler’s social competence. Likewise, Hong (2007) analyzed the contents of expressions used by fathers, and found that when paternal speech was more status oriented, children were more diligent and sociable. Meanwhile, fathers who were more directive in their communication had children who were low in sociability. Elsewhere, Hwang, Chong, and Woo (2005) found that fathers’ educational attainment, income, involvement in childrearing, and role satisfaction were all positively correlated with children’s level of social competence. Overall, the Korean research emphasized, as did the Japanese and Chinese data, the influence of involvement and fathering style on children’s social development. PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT Japanese research on paternal influences is notably lacking in the literature on personality development since about 2003; several studies have been published recently in both China and Korea. China. Hou, Chen, and Chen (2005) conducted a rare observational study of 4-year-old Chinese preschoolers (n ¼ 53) interacting with parents in free play and on structured tasks. They found that the more emotionally expressive and intimate fathers were with their wives, and the more physically and emotionally expressive fathers were toward their children, the more advanced children were at age 7 in their impulse control. He and Liu’s (2008) correlational study of parents and their children (grades four through nine, n ¼ 3,754) found that children raised in twoparent families had higher levels of morality, intimacy, and emotional expression. Meanwhile, children raised in single-parent families (lacking a father) were higher in conflict and neurotic qualities. They concluded, albeit with no direct evidence from fathers, that fathers contributed to the healthy personality development of children and young adolescents. Yang (2007) conducted a questionnaire survey on an unusual sample of 240 middle school students in an impoverished rural area. He found that fathers of adolescents who were actively involved in childrearing had a positive influence on adolescents’ self-concept. Conversely, when fathers had a passive style of childrearing, there was a negative association with adolescents’ self-concept. The contrast between the preceding two studies was that one emphasized father absence and the other emphasized fathering style. Two correlational studies using the EMBU scale focused on the personalities of emerging adults. Fu, Chen, and Qin (2007) conducted a questionnaire survey of medical students. Recollections of parenting styles showed that selfesteem was correlated positively with paternal warmth, understanding, overprotection, independence, level of organization, and positive orientation

Social Development 369

toward recreation/activity. Elsewhere, Zhang and Zhang’s (2007) EMBU study of college students’ (N ¼ 888) perceptions found that self-concepts were correlated positively with both parents’ warmth and understanding. But mothers and fathers had different negative correlates with students’ selfconcepts. Specifically, paternal refusal, rejection, and punishment, and maternal overinterference and overprotection, correlated negatively with selfconcept. Thus, paternal style had both positive and negative influences on personality development. Korea. Several recent correlational studies have shown that paternal attitudes toward childrearing and behavior/communication styles were associated with children’s self-esteem and ego identity (Shin & Kim, 2004). Ko (2003) found that when fathers’ childrearing attitudes were receptive and accepting, children’s self-esteem and ego identity were stronger. Eo (2004) similarly associated higher frequency of fathers’ free-time activities, involvement with children’s learning, and advice on daily living with children’s positive self-esteem. Kim and Jang (2007) likewise found that among primary schoolchildren, paternal involvement in childrearing was correlated with children’s self-esteem and adaptation to school. Choi (2003) reported that fathers’ affectionate attitudes toward children were associated with middle school students’ autonomy, rationality, self-esteem, and ego identity. Kim (2005) showed that paternal involvement in childrearing was associated with higher levels of children’s self-efficacy. In particular, when fathers reported advising children about their use of free time and daily life, children’s self-efficacy and self-adjustment were higher. In addition, Oh (2004) found that communication between fathers and their school-age children, in closeness of mutual relationships, was associated with self-efficacy. Oh concluded that more functional communication between father and child was connected with greater self-efficacy and self-adjustment of the child. In sum, Korean paternal involvement, communication, and positive attitudes toward the child, were all associated with healthy personality development. CHILDHOOD PSYCHOPATHOLOGY Studies in this area began in East Asia in the context of public concerns about both absent and inept fathers. Japan. As noted earlier, school refusal (or school non-attendance) is an important problem in Japanese society. To address this issue, Sakai, Sugawara, Maeshiro, Sugawara, and Kitamura (2002) conducted a questionnaire survey of middle school students (131 boys and 137 girls) and their fathers (n ¼ 241) and mothers (n ¼ 279). Students’ trust in their parents and parents’ trust in them were related to students’ adaptation to school (refusal/ truancy, anxiety, relaxed style) and maladaptive behavior (isolation, antisocial behavior). Trust in mothers was correlated positively with a relaxed demeanor, and negatively with antisocial behavior. Trust in fathers was associated with different outcomes, that is, negatively correlated to children’s disobedience, anxiety, and isolated demeanor. Apparently students’

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levels of trust in their mothers and fathers were related to different aspects of adaptation to school life. Japanese psychologists have also focused on a problem called shutting-in (hikikomori), a form of chronic social withdrawal whereby adolescents or emerging adults refuse to come out of their rooms to eat, attend school, or go to work. Hanashima (2007) compared fathers of normal male college students (n ¼ 231, m age ¼ 20.1 years) with fathers of youth classified as hikikomori who had no social contacts for over 6 months, no other psychopathology, and under age 30 (n ¼ 33, m age ¼ 26.9 years, m withdrawal duration ¼ 4.1 years) in a questionnaire survey about their paternal images. Hikikomori youth were more likely to report that their fathers were strict, harsh, and stubborn; talked down to them; lacked intimacy, understanding, respect/trust, or sacrifice for the sake of love; and did not face up to the child or his problems. Strictness and harshness correlated positively with duration of withdrawal, while intimacy, facing up, and respect/trust were negatively correlated with duration of symptoms. Hanashima concluded that withdrawn students’ fathers lacked the ability to face children directly or to be intimate. Here, a whole complex of paternal behaviors was associated with psychopathology; this phenomenon has begun to appear in Korea and China, too, although it is not yet reported in empirical research. In a rare longitudinal study of Japanese child psychopathology, Sugawara et al. (2002) examined married couples and their children (N ¼ 313 couples) over an 11-year period, about the couples’ love, childrearing, and influence on children’s depression. Path analysis revealed that fathers’ love for their wives and warm paternal attitude toward children influenced children’s depression and was associated with an affirmative home environment and family cohesion. When family cohesion and affirmative environment were higher, children had lower levels of depression. In sum, the three Japanese clinical studies indicated that fathers influenced both children’s mental health and mental illness. China. Yin, Zhao, and Liu (2002) studied the problem behaviors of children at a primary school in rural Yuanling County (Hunan Province). They found that over 14% of the children at this school reported problem behavior (on the Rutter Scale), with greater frequency for boys than girls. Among boys’ risk factors for behavior disorders was the absence of fathers and mothers from home life. A related study found a correlation between problem behavior of first-grade schoolchildren (n ¼ 92) and conflicts between parenting styles of fathers and mothers (Zhejiang-Sheng Fuyang City Fuyang-Zhen Disan Primary School Research Group, 2002). Specifically, these data suggested that paternal strictness was not conducive to healthy child development. Shek (1998) examined the relationships between parent–adolescent conflict and adolescent psychological well-being, in a sample of adolescents and their parents (N ¼ 378 families). His results indicated that ratings of parent– adolescent conflict were related to adolescents’ hopelessness, life satisfaction, self-esteem, life purpose, and psychiatric morbidity, at two times of measurement. Longitudinal analyses showed a bidirectional relationship between parent–adolescent conflict and adolescent psychological well-being. The strengths of these associations were similar for male and female

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adolescents, but father–adolescent conflict exerted a stronger influence on well-being than did mother–adolescent conflict. Mao, Han, Liu, Wang, and Pan (2006) conducted a correlational study of fathering style and adolescents’ adjustment disorders, using the EMBU and Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Mao et al. related fathering style to psychopathologies, as did Ma (2005) in a study of 165 medical students. Ma’s data suggested that paternal strictness, favoring, and over protectiveness (also on the EMBU) had an association with negative symptoms, whereas the father’s warmth had positive correlations with students’ mental health. Similarly, Duan, Yan, and Huang (2006) compared 137 juvenile delinquents with students at a normal middle school. They found that delinquents, more than normal adolescents, had fathers who were more controlling and estranged from their children. This type of paternal behavior was associated with lack of self-control among their children. Looking across these mental health studies, paternal absence, strict fathering, and father– child conflict were clearly implicated in Chinese child psychopathologies. Korea. Choi (1991) showed that Korean paternal absence, measured as fathers’ long work hours, had a negative effect on children’s moral development and aggressive behavior. These findings were similar to the effects of Japanese tanshinfunin father absence due to job transfers. Years later, in the context of massive layoffs and corporate restructuring, Korean families suffered in terms of stress, anger, and disintegration. For example, Kim (1998) and Choi (1998) found that economic stress and anxiety among fathers had an important influence on their children. In another study, Heo (1998) showed that financial stress threatened family unity, and was related to depression and withdrawal in children. Although limited in number, the Korean studies in this area point to paternal absence and stress as possible determinants of child psychopathology. SUMMARY/COMMENTARY Research on paternal influences on their children was diverse, spanning the domains of cognitive, social, and personality development, and psychopathology. Confucianism had assigned fathers responsibility mainly for children’s education, morality and gender role socialization, but research on influence has mostly been outside these domains. The focus of this mainly correlational literature was on a broad array of paternal variables, including paternal absence, style, communication, conflict, stress, support, and personality. This range of variables make it difficult to integrate findings, but it suggests as a whole that East Asian fathers influence child/adolescent development and psychopathology in many ways, in the context of men’s relative lack of time at home with their children. TRANSITION TO FATHERHOOD JAPAN Japanese men react to fatherhood both with mixed feelings and new perceptions of the roles they play. In fact, the transition begins well before men

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become fathers (Onodera, Aoki, & Koyama, 1998). Sasaki (2001, 2005) studied this transition during the fetal period, conducting a questionnaire survey of mothers and fathers during their first pregnancy (n ¼ 228 couples). Multiple regression analysis showed that the more a mother felt the existence of the fetus as a reality, the better her communication was with the father. Fathers reported that the more they sensed the reality of the fetus and the more contact they felt they had with the fetus, the more their personalities changed during the prenatal period. In a related study, Onodera and Kashiwagi (1997) began their longitudinal survey a month before their middle-class respondents became fathers, and followed up when the children were 7–8 months and 2 years of age. Men rated the roles of father, worker, and husband in order of importance for their identities. Their results indicated that the worker role became a higher priority after childbirth, reflecting the tendency of some parents to follow stereotypical gender roles after they had children. In addition, compared to life before becoming fathers, men reported more responsibility and restriction on their lives, and less worry or annoyance about taking care of a baby, when their children were 7 to 8 months old. When children were 2 years old, fathers reported that they understood their children better and had adapted to the paternal role, but also felt annoyed about taking care of a child, more irritated and restricted by the child, and less confident about supporting their families. The Japanese father’s appearance at the birth of his child became more common since the 1980s, when the percentage of fathers who witnessed childbirth was only about 15%. In the early 1990s this figure rose to 20%; by 2000, it rose to 30%; and since 2000 it has surpassed 40% (Aono et al., 2005). Aono et al. compared men who did (n ¼ 83) vs. did not (n ¼ 41) witness the birth, and found that a slightly higher percentage of fathers who witnessed the birth (97.6% vs. 87.8%) had a strong interest in childrearing. Chiga et al. (1990) had found that fathers who were present at the birth played with and took care of children more often, had more positive feelings for the babies, and communicated better with their wives. We cannot know from either study whether men’s interest in children increased because they witnessed a birth or whether these fathers had already been more motivated. In China, witnessing the birth has become common for fathers in Shanghai, whereas in Beijing fathers are generally allowed to witness childbirth only at some hospitals serving high socioeconomic status families (Zhou Nianli and Pian Chengnan, personal communication, March 29, 2009), or where mothers have private rooms (not common at public hospitals). Meanwhile, fathers seldom witness childbirth in Korea. Kashiwagi and Wakamatsu (1994) conducted a factor analysis of paternal and maternal self-reports (n ¼ 346 couples), and derived six dimensions of change in the transition to parenthood: (a) flexibility, (b) self-control, (c) acceptance of fate and faith, (d) widening perspective, (e) sense of a worthwhile existence, and (f) strength of self. Mothers reported more change than fathers on all six dimensions. In addition, fathers who were more involved with children reported more change on every dimension than less-involved fathers. This suggested that degree of involvement rather than merely becoming fathers influenced men’s development. Kashiwagi and Wakamatsu also

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reported that the greatest changes were among fathers who had more education and employed wives. In a similar study of fathers of preschoolers and adolescents, Mera (2001) added another dimension (‘‘self-assertion’’) to those reported by Kashiwagi and Wakamatsu. She replicated their finding that mothers reported more personal change than did fathers. More recently, Morishita (2006) conducted a path analysis of questionnaire data from 381 fathers of preschoolers about influences on the men’s development after becoming fathers. They reported five types of changes associated with the transition to fatherhood: increased love for his family, responsibility and calm, a broader perspective, a new way of looking at the past and future, and loss of freedom. There was a positive relationship between father’s affirmative attitude toward the paternal role, egalitarian view of gender roles, marital satisfaction, and attitudes toward being approached by the child. In addition, fathers who felt their families understood their work and those who worked shorter hours were more likely to play with and take care of children. Their interest in childrearing was predictive of love for the family, calmness, responsibility, a wider perspective through the child, and a new time perspective. These data indicated that awareness of the paternal role, quality of the spousal relationship, and satisfying work hours, all had important effects on young fathers. KOREA Lee and Han (1998) studied changes in new fathers in their 30s and 40s (n ¼ 270). Many fathers reported feeling ‘‘greater responsibility’’ (92.6%), ‘‘increased obligation to provide financially’’ (53.3%), and ‘‘life became centered around my children’’ (48.5%). Fewer agreed that ‘‘having children has improved my relations with my own father’’ (34.4%) or ‘‘having children improved my marital relationship’’ (38.9%). Some fathers also reported that becoming a father helped them to better understand their own fathers’ experience, and that sharing the joy of childbirth gave them the opportunity to join with their wives in raising children. In other studies, fathers reported that having children shifted their identity from provider to parent (Han, 1997) and made them rethink their priorities at work vs. home (Lee, 1995). SUMMARY/COMMENTARY Research on the transition to fatherhood in Japan and Korea showed that becoming a father had important effects on men. In fact, the transition was shown by one study to begin well before childbirth, at the point Japanese prospective fathers recognized the pregnancy as a reality. Increasing numbers of Japanese fathers are witnessing children’s birth, and this experience appeared to have an effect on later fathering behavior. Compared with their responses prior to the child’s birth, and over the years of early childhood, Japanese and Korean fathers reported important changes in their personalities, relative priorities of work vs. family, and in their emotions. Some reported stress and dissatisfaction in the transition to fatherhood, but these studies overall suggested that parenthood transformed men’s lives and

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thinking. Although changes in personality were not as profound as those for mothers, longitudinal data showed that Japanese fathers reassessed their roles and changed significantly when they became involved with children. Findings on this topic were consistent, but also subject to social desirability bias. CONCLUSIONS The paternal role in Japan, China, and Korea may be changing even more quickly than has been reported in scientific research. The subtitle of this chapter (‘‘Changing Contexts, Images, and Roles’’) suggested that there is a difference between the roles and images of fathers. Questionnaire data that dominate the fathering literature across the three cultures revealed consistent images, but they may not always represent the objective truth. For example, when Japanese reported higher levels of responsibility and flexibility after becoming fathers, these images that were influenced by the socially desirable image of a flexible (i.e., healthy) man. Likewise, when Chinese students rated their fathers on the EMBU scale, they invoked retrospective images of fathering styles from their childhood, which may reflect stereotypes of fathers and accentuate cross-cultural differences. For example, informal comparisons of Chinese and Japanese fathers described Japanese men as softer or more feminine, and more likely to adjust themselves to achieve family harmony rather than to be self-assertive. This image contrasted with a more masculine and assertive image of Chinese fathers. Because fathers are typically viewed as a bridge between society and the family, paternal images may tend to mirror the broad society’s images and ideologies. We must be cautious about making general statements about the ‘‘national’’ characteristics of fathers in Japan, China, or Korea, or referring to East Asian fathers as a group. Knowing that images, perceptions, and stereotypes are all reflected in the self-report data reviewed in this chapter, we expanded our coverage to include government reports, newspaper, and Internet articles, and other sources, to provide a variety of perspectives on fathers. The following conclusions are drawn in the context of changing economic, social, and historical conditions, and with knowledge of the limited quality of the research. CROSS-CULTURAL SIMILARITIES Fathers in the three cultures first appear to have in common a strong emphasis on economic activities (as in the 1980s slogan, ‘‘Japan, Inc.’’). East Asian fathers are often work centered, and father absence due to long work hours is a problem throughout East Asia. Meanwhile, as family size continues to shrink fathers in all three cultures may find more time to devote to individual children. The governments of both Japan and Korea have responded to public opinion with a concern for men’s balance between work and family, although their paternal leave programs have had little impact. We anticipate a growing conflict between fathers’ child-centered attitudes and demands of the work environment in all three cultures.

Conclusions 375

Second, the legacy of the expression ‘‘strict father, kind mother’’ has weakened to different degrees in Japan, China, and Korea. Indeed, the clash between the Confucian image of a strict father and the modern image of a gentle father (Chen, 1996) was one impetus for the recent increase in research on East Asian fathering. Father–son relations have lost their central power in East Asian families, and in recent years families have come to look more to their daughters to express filial piety by taking care of their aging parents. The weakened image of the Confucian father in Japan was noted over 30 years ago by Wagatsuma (1977), who subtitled his article ‘‘Once Confucian, Now Fatherless?’’ This trend has extended more recently to Korean and urban Chinese fathers. A third similarity across the three cultures is that they all encourage high academic aspirations and achievement. This has an important influence on children’s cognitive, social, and personality development. Fathers have a role in supporting children’s educational activities, as shown in research in China and Korea. Educational and material aspirations have transformed family life in Japan and Korea, and it is possible that increased aspirations for higher education and material wealth will change Chinese fathers. These similarities are important and may distinguish East Asian fathers, as a regional group, from fathers elsewhere. Yet East Asian fathers may have as much in common with non-East Asian fathers as they do with each other, in their shared humanity. THE FUTURE: THREE CULTURAL SNAPSHOTS The following projections include some degree of reality and some degree of image and ideology. We have emphasized throughout this chapter that an image of fathers has evolved in each culture. When images are widely shared, members of any society incorporate them as an ideology of fathering, and as ideology becomes socially accepted it affects the responses of participants in questionnaire surveys. Wagatsuma’s (1977) caution that researchers must distinguish between ‘‘what fathers think they should do, what they think they do, and what they actually do’’ (p. 204) remains relevant as we interpret a literature that still consists mainly of self-report measures. We therefore offer these snapshots with caution. Japanese fathers in the new millennium often face obstacles that discourage them from getting involved with their children. Due to powerful and enduring pressures from the corporate world, many remain a shadowy secondary parent at home. But their attitudes are generally pro-family, and many Japanese fathers aspire to be ‘‘new fathers.’’ We expect a profathering identity to pervade Japan in the next generation, as already evidenced by such advocacy groups as ‘‘Fathering Japan’’ (www.fathering.jp), which collects funds for single-parent fathers. China has the most diverse population of the three cultures, and in light of its rapid social, demographic, and economic changes, it is the most difficult to speculate about the future of Chinese fathering. We may witness in the next generation an increased divergence of Chinese culture and fathers, as a counterpoint to globalization, as China becomes an increasingly strong world power. In the coming years we expect to see more divergence between rural

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Figure 12.3 Two photos taken at class meetings of a church-based ‘‘Fathering School’’ in Buchon City, near Seoul. (a) Two participants are hugging, which is the standard greeting at classes. (b) Fathers are rubbing each other’s shoulders in a line formation, to relieve tiredness. Photos courtesy of Jung-Hwan Hyun.

and urban Chinese fathers, and as urbanization proceeds, rural men will bring values more typical of a rural area to the cities. In the context of the one-child family, Chinese fathers, like their Japanese and Korean peers, may devote more time to each child. Chinese fathers also are changing as societal gender roles change, in the transition from Chinese-style socialism to Chinese-style capitalism.

Conclusions 377

Meanwhile, Korean fathers face intense pressure at work, as economic rivals of Japanese and Chinese. The exorbitant costs of education from nursery school through college place the Korean father as breadwinner in a highly stressful position. At the same time, Korean fathers are influenced by globalization to become directly involved with children. An example of the current interest in Korean fathering is the popularization of ‘‘Fathering Schools’’ (www.father.or.kr), conducted nationwide by Protestant churches. Between 1995 and 2008, 138,263 fathers completed this church-based 5-week program of study, under the motto of ‘‘Diligent Fathers Are Necessary to Build Families.’’ Figure 12.3 includes two photographs taken at sessions of a fathering class in Buchon City. City ward offices, preschools, and other organizations have organized similar fathering classes. We predict that these activities, though not reported in any research data, will become even more widespread. As a counterpoint to globalization, future Japanese, Chinese, and Korean fathers might be increasingly influenced by a regional East Asian identity, as their geographical region continues to ascend on the world stage. If this comes to pass, we may see convergence between attitudes and behaviors of fathers in the three cultures. In light of their proximity and shared heritage, these societies may follow a sequence of cultural divergence, followed by a cultural convergence. EAST ASIAN FATHERING RESEARCH

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The native-language literature reviewed here represents an imperfect but growing and improving field of East Asian fathering research. As pointed out earlier, there remain important deficiencies in social scientific research on fathers in Japan, China, and Korea. Space limitations precluded a critique of the design and methods of individual studies. We expect future research to use more objective and direct measures, with more emphasis on causal explanations rather than correlational descriptions. Most of the research reported here has been based on questionnaire surveys. However, in Japan, a growing number of studies take a family systems approach, consider the effects of the spousal relationship, and use longitudinal and comparative designs, random sampling, and multivariate statistics (Makino, 2007; Sugawara et al., 2002). Another important change is that Japanese fathers have become more available to researchers. In the past it was widely assumed that fathers could not be recruited to participate in research, but it now is natural to assume that fathers should be involved in childrearing, and this viewpoint has been internalized by many young fathers who participate in research. All of these trends in Japan may spread over time to Chinese and Korean fathers and research. We and other scholars often use the words modernization and Westernization in writing about historical influences on fathers. But we now live in a postmodern era of globalization, and comparisons between Western and Eastern (or East Asian) cultures and fathers may become inappropriate. For example, what scholars call non-Western or Asian encompasses a wide range of cultures and fathers. Future comparative studies between fathers in Japan,

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China, and Korea, and consideration of indigenous constructs related to fathering, may reveal a new convergence or divergence in culture-related patterns of fathering.

CHAPTER SUMMARY Research on fathering in Japan, China, and Korea has expanded over the past decade in response to growing public interest in the paternal role and a widening belief that fathers influence child and adolescent development. The quality of empirical studies has improved during this period in Japan (in terms of sampling, design, measurement, and analysis), and the quantity of studies has increased dramatically in all three cultures. Although contextual factors have not been the focus of most research, fathering in East Asia continues to be influenced by historical, cultural, and economic changes within each society. For example, the impact of Confucianism on fathers and family relations is diminishing across East Asia as the paternal role is redefined. Fathering in the postmodern era is changing in the context of small families, a shifting division of labor, and preoccupation with children’s education. The paternal role is also strongly affected by men’s and women’s changing employment conditions. Although government policies (e.g., paternity leave) in Japan and Korea appear to have had little impact on fathering, the Chinese One Child Policy has transformed family life for the world’s largest population, demonstrating that a government can alter families and the paternal role. Research on images of fathers (as perceived by fathers, mothers, and children) showed that traditional images such as the ‘‘strict father, kind mother’’ have been replaced by a more complex view of fathering styles, roles, and personal characteristics. Across the three cultures there appears in these images to be a historic decline in paternal authority, although the image of the strict father persists in rural China. Fathers in all three cultures reportedly spend relatively little time with their children, and Japanese and Korean fathers as breadwinners often appear to be distant secondary parents. It is more difficult to generalize about Chinese father–child relations because of urban/rural differences, a more heterogeneous population, and a more rapidly changing economic/employment landscape. The bulk of fathering data across the three cultures are correlations linking paternal behavior and style with various developmental outcomes, including cognitive, social, and personality development, and several forms of psychopathology. Although the public in the three cultures generally considers paternal time with children to be inadequate, the data consistently show that fathers can have a significant influence on their children. However, as seen most clearly in the case of Korea, the father’s greatest impact may be in providing financial resources, supporting the mother’s activities, and in making decisions along with the mother, rather than in daily interactions with children. Finally, research on the transition to fatherhood in Japan and Korea showed that fathers’ perspectives, personalities, stress levels, and emotional

References 379

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CHAPTER 13

Fathers, Families, and Children’s Well-Becoming in Africa A. BAME NSAMENANG

INTRODUCTION Children in all cultures yearn for a father or a father figure. All children need both a mother and a father. There is no such thing as a fatherless child. All children had or have a father somewhere, even if they do not know him, do not live with their father, do not see or have contact with him, or do not have access to him very often or at all. The children this author saw in clinical practice (Nsamenang, 1984, 1987) needed, desired, and deserved the care of a man, especially their biological father. Fatherhood conjures a social status about a biological or procreative reality and/or the actuality of playing the role of father. It is a relational status that connotes a partnership in the preparation of the next generation (Reagan, 1996) by procreative partners—a male and a female. The status of father is attained through paternity, but sometimes through a social process of sustaining and supporting the development of children without regard to whose paternity is involved. This implies that in spite of the putative biology of being ‘‘pater,’’ the person who plays the real paternal or father’s role may or may not be the child’s biological father. Any man can play the role of father to a child, and indeed African grandfathers, uncles, stepfathers, foster fathers, older brothers, cousins, family friends, and other men who take responsibility to care for nonbiological children do play and have played this role. Men who play the role of father to nonbiological children are called social fathers. ‘‘A ‘social father’ may take responsibility for all of the children a woman has even though some were biologically the children of another man’’ (Engle & Breaux, 1998, p. 2). If procreative partners took responsibility for offspring survival and development, social parents would not be needed. However, disputed paternity or situations in which the identity of the father is not known or the father has abandoned the mother and the child exist and are escalating worldwide, creating a landscape of absent or negligent fathers. It is for this and other undesired aspects of reproductive life that African cultures and religious creeds approve parenthood within acceptable social 388

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institutions. Thus, nonmarital reproduction raises critical issues, one of which is teenage girls and women who trick adolescent boys and men into becoming fathers (www.readingislam.com, 2008). The DNA tends to be used as proof of paternity to oblige the father’s payment of alimony. The reason for Islam not accepting DNA as sole and complete evidence is that DNA testing cannot tell us whether the man or woman who committed adultery did it willingly or unwillingly (www.readingislam.com). Christian and African principles of procreation mirror those of Islamic law, the Shari’a, but they diverge somehow from the Westernizing sway on Africa. The Western views are vague on nonmarital reproduction and controversial on same-sex marriages. A society where nonmarital reproduction is prevalent can be said to permit sexual pleasures free from the responsibilities of caring for and raising children, with all the uncharted effects this has on societal morality and who will take the responsibility for future generations. This is a critical point for most African countries, where organized governmental social security services are remarkable for their scarcity, inefficiency, or nonexistence (Nsamenang, 2002). This chapter implicitly addresses all these images and issues from a position that boys and men in general, and not just ‘‘fathers,’’ should be the focus of fatherhood work. Nevertheless, the chapter focuses on fathers as men in African families and their children’s ‘‘well becoming’’ (Dawes, 2006), albeit with occasional allusions of how to extend work to boys and men in general. It briefly summarizes the scanty literature available to the author, but the bulk of the chapter is intended to animate discussion about and to prompt research into the emerging ‘‘new fatherhood,’’ that is, on how today’s fathers are men in African families and with their children. I assume, from my previous research (Nsamenang, 1984, 1987, 2000), that it is a ‘‘good thing’’ to secure and enhance African fathers’ involvement with their children and families. I am aware that considerable research efforts have focused on teasing out the relative contributions that fathers make to outcomes for children and that accumulated evidence supports the hypothesized role of father’s involvement in positive outcomes for children (e.g., Allen & Daly, 2002; Lamb, 1976; Nsamenang, 1984). However, the bulk of the published research has been undertaken in western Europe and North America, and much of it has been characterized as mothercentric (Ball & Moselle, 2007), implying that we know little about African men, especially how they should be or are fathers in their cultural contexts. ‘‘The wide variety of ways in which fathers have been presented in differing media and at different times serve to remind us that the content of fatherhood is contested rather than fixed’’ (Clowes, 2006, p. 109; Morrell, Posel, & Devey, 2003). ‘‘Clearly, African culture is not homogeneous, but there are sufficient communalities to enable us to draw a common picture of what fatherhood within the broad value system’’ of Africans (Lesejane, 2006, p. 173). I must stress, however, that the communalities I am invoking are no more than ‘‘universals’’ or a ‘‘certain common quality’’ (Maquet, 1972) perceived as one traverses Africa’s ‘‘bewildering diversity and extraordinary dynamism’’ (Olaniyan, 1982, p. 1). So this chapter presents broad strokes of

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fathers, as men with their children and families in Africa’s 53 countries that differ in landmass, vegetation, population, social and economic development, as well as cultural, linguistic, and ethnic composition. However, it excludes enclaves of indigenous peoples across Africa, which Hewlett and MacFarlane (Chapter 14) have handled. It does not preclude reference to or inference of mothers or women and girls, because ‘‘to consider the status of either sex without reference to the other is to distort the reality we are trying to understand’’ (Fortes, 1950, p. 363). There is growing affirmation in the field of gender studies and gender equity work that studying and targeting females or males alone is not enough to redress gender inequalities, which are global realities that reveal themselves differently in Africa. Therefore, fathers should not be studied in isolation; fatherhood has to be understood within a network of familial and societal relationships and appropriately should begin with the roles of boys and girls in the family and society. The chapter is organized into seven sections. A historical background follows this introduction and briefly explains why multiple images of fatherhood coexist in Africa. I describe the social anthropological landscape of fathers as men in African social thought and cultural world in the third part. The fourth section selectively summarizes the anthropological, sociological, and psychological theories that seem germane to African circumstances. The fifth part overviews the state of fatherhood research in Africa. Section six attempts to articulate broad strokes of a rights-based vision for fatherhood research in Africa’s hybrid cultural contexts. Finally, a befitting conclusion terminates the chapter. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND TO MULTIPLE IMAGES OF FATHERHOOD Africa should be a significant world region by virtue of its vast landmass, the out-of-Africa-theory origin of modern humans, precious resources, a natural laboratory for all human races, and heir to three major world civilizations— African, Islamic–Arabic, and Western–Christian. Africans dangle marginally on the edge of every sphere of global geopolitics, including national sovereignty, own resource exploitation, and ability to generate its own knowledge and garner the means for fatherhood research ‘‘in spite of its rich material and human resources, which have thus far been drained by and for foreign interests’’ (Pence & Nsamenang, 2008). Part of Africa’s marginality derives from the Balkanization of the continent in 1884 at the Berlin conference into spheres of Europe’s imperial nations (Asiwaju, 1984). The colonial forces activated then continue to fan outmigration from Africa, as an important source of father absence for significant numbers of Africa’s children and mothers. In addition, global structural systems and discourses, which fracture Africa—a single geographical entity—into North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), exacerbate its incoherence and tangential status. For example, the international community, including United Nations (UN) agencies, adds to the affiliative gulf between North Africa and SSA by regionalizing North Africa with the Islamic–Arabic world, therein setting North Africans and sub-Saharan Africans into divergent mind-sets, family patterns, and images of fatherhood.

Historical Background to Multiple Images of Fatherhood 391

In spite of being immersed in a triple heritage (Mazrui, 1986), which is ‘‘a restive intermingling, like strands in a braid, of Eastern and Western legacies, superimposed on a deeply resilient Africanity’’ (Nsamenang, 2005, p. 276), contemporary Africans are under ‘‘considerable pressure to understand and adapt to the world as defined by Western civilization’’ (Nsamenang & Dawes, 1998, p. 75). Each strand of civilization exudes a specific image of family formation, fatherhood, and the paternal role. In more specific terms, Africa’s triple heritage refers to the coexistence in the same communities and families of images of fatherhood from Africa’s indigenous timeless traditions (Callaghan, 1998), Islamic–Arabic legacies and Western–Christian bequests (Nsamenang, 2002). According to Evans (1995, p. 7): All the major religions of the world define the roles of men and women clearly and separately. Yet within each of these religions there are significant differences in interpretation, presenting us with a continuum in terms of how strictly these definitions are adhered to in modern times

Thus, fatherhood is understood and expressed within the differing reproductive ideologies of cultural groups and religious creeds. In indigenous African cultures ‘‘the legitimate way to procreate and have socially integrated children is through marriage’’ (Nsamenang, 2002, p. 71), with the conjugal pair within the extended family network as the functional framework for reproduction and care and education of children. Marriage is regarded as ‘‘a seed to bear fruits’’: children (Nsamenang, 1987). Without children, marriage in principle loses its significance (Erny, 1987). Cameroonian teens expressed the view that ‘‘marriage cannot work well without children’’ (Yana, 1998, p. 103). For African reproductive ideology, as with Islamic and Christian dogma, the institution of marriage establishes simultaneously a clear, legally recognized consent of the parties for intimate relations as well as the intent to accept maternity and paternity for any offspring begotten therein. The marriage rite confers sole access to sexual relations and establishes paternity rights (Maquet, 1972; Nsamenang, 1987). African traditions and Islam permit polygyny, whereas Christianity sanctions only monogamy. Nowhere in Africa or Islamic communities is polygynous fatherhood universal. Although Ssennyonga (1997) claimed it was prevalent in the Lake Victoria Basin of Kenya, he cited a 1984 survey as revealing percentages of ‘‘thirty-eight, fortyseven, and forty-one for Kisumu, Siaya, and South Nyanza districts,’’ while Nsamenang (1992a) reported 17 percent for an African, Islamic, and Christian sample of Nso fathers in Cameroon. All this implies that paternity and the father role perception and expectation in Africa is more convoluted than has been contemplated or theorized about. In fact, no existing theory fittingly explains the melange of father images in African societies, and no antecedent evolutionary template exactly corresponds to its triple-strand concoction (Nsamenang, 2005). This intricacy obliges a search for conceptual and theoretical models that would ‘‘find’’ the African father within the ‘‘confrontations’’ of Africa’s three coexisting cultural heritages and traditions.

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FATHERHOOD WITHIN AFRICA’S CULTURAL WORLD An African theory of the universe is holistic and pronatalist, ascribing a theocentric value on fertility and childbearing (Nsamenang et al., 2008). For Africans, ‘‘fertility in all its forms represents the primary value’’ (Erny, 1972, p. 20), which is unattainable without individual reproductive fitness. As such, African cultures ‘‘direct’’ that the paramount destiny of a man or woman is to become a parent of biological children, hence the deeply ingrained desire for biological children ‘‘in the hearts of both men and women,’’ as ‘‘they regard procreation as their first and most sacred duty’’ (Nsamenang, 1992a, p. 130). Accordingly, infertility ‘‘is felt by both men and women as the greatest of all personal tragedies and humiliations’’ (Fortes, 1950, p. 262), such that the familiar but largely muted idea is that without at least a child, a man or woman will ‘‘leave’’ no ‘‘blood’’ (i.e., surviving gene) to outlive him or her. In their inclusive fitness thinking, Africans see offspring as the only insurance against ‘‘complete death’’; hence, a Kongo proverb asserts, ‘‘If you are a father, you are immortalized. To leave no heirs behind is the worst evil that can befall a man’’ (Jahn, 1961). ‘‘A child is the only remedy against [complete] death’’ (Erny, 1972, p. 21). Consequently, most Africans prefer to die in poverty and be survived by offspring than to die rich but childless (Nsamenang and Laosebikan, 1981). Inclusive fitness considerations, which vary across space and time, underwrite the strategies and efforts that cultural communities, families, and parents deploy to prepare their next generations, involving reproduction, caregiving, education, and the guidance of offspring into productive trajectories and ultimately into their own family formation. In brief, the inclusive fitness strategies of African societies converge on ‘‘the supply and maintenance of new members without whom the society would disappear’’ (Nsamenang, 1987, p. 278). Rare are indigenous African societies that normatively permit nonmarital reproduction for both women and men. Of course, children of unwed mothers do exist, nevertheless. In general, children of unwed women or girls belong to their families of origin, at least with the Nso of Cameroon. ‘‘Parents may be disappointed about their daughter’s unwed motherhood, which seems to be attaining alarming proportions in many communities. Nevertheless, they readily accept and assume responsibility for the care of such children’’ (Nsamenang, 1992a, p. 131). Thus, illegitimate children do not exist in the Western sense; in many communities, cultural scripts make the ready availability of social fathers. The acceptable reproductive institution is marriage, which is best contracted between a mature man and woman (Nsamenang, 2002). Accordingly, ‘‘normative’’ adulthood is best visualized as being ‘‘married with children’’ (Nsamenang, 1992a, 2002). This cultural institution acknowledges the partnership between a man, as pater, and a woman, as mater, in ultimate reproductive fitness. Draped in invisible norms, it tacitly binds the conjugal union of spouses and their agnatic networks into a collective enterprise in which parents and kin, including sibs, are active participants in the care of children and preparation of the next generations for life and successive reproductive fitness. A useful hypothesis that is consistent with African

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reproductive values is that differences in men’s fertility desires and decisions are to be sought in the context of their conjugal union (Nsamenang, 1996, 2002), whose acceptable values vary across cultural contexts and kinship structures. Caldwell, Orubuloye, and Caldwell (1992) and Renne (2003) have provided convincing evidence and argument for the salience of kinship and other social structural and cultural factors in shaping West African fertility values and behaviors. Of course, fathers are centrally implicated in these factors and kinship patterns, many of them implicit cultural norms that have not been imagined in theories and research paradigms and are mainly inaccessible to conventional fatherhood research processes and tools. Although infertility is a major problem, male infertility has often been ignored, at least in Cameroon, to the effect that only female partners of sterile unions have tended to be subjected to medical scrutiny (Lantum, 1976). Findings show that African men who desire fewer children are younger, educated at least to the elementary school and often to the secondary level, have wives who have also completed at least primary school, are more affluent, and are likely to be Christian (www.africanfathers.org, 2008). Most of them are in a marital relationship where the partners chose each other. The men communicate with their wives about important issues and make joint decisions, including the number of children they should have. The actual reality is not as ‘‘neat’’ as portrayed, however; differences in the marital patterns and fertility preferences are to be expected in the life plans of Christians and Muslims (Evans, 1995; Nsamenang, 1992a). In-depth interviews with a convenience sample of six Cameroonian fathers in the southwest region of Cameroon focused on respondents’ views about biologically childless women; suspected reasons for their childlessness; how they would have confronted infertility in their own relationship; and thoughts about fatherhood, childless men, and gender roles. Weinger (2006) revealed that most respondents upheld that a legitimate wife produces children, and that a man without biological children is less respected. In Kenya, as in much of Africa, for instance, ‘‘the social position of a married man and woman who have children is of greater importance and dignity than that of a bachelor or spinster’’ (Kenyatta, 1965, p. 158). However, Weinger’s respondents did not speak with one voice, and there is evidence of diversity of opinion and changing attitudes. This gives the impression that, as in South Africa, fatherhood today ‘‘is understood in different and contested ways’’ (Richter & Morrell, 2006, p. v). Muslim and Christian dogma, for example, respectively, permits four wives and one wife. This author (Nsamenang, 1992a) reported that of 11 Nso fathers he interviewed with 15 or more children in the northwest region of Cameroon, 91% (9) were Muslim. The foregoing is only a glimpse of Africa’s social landscape and reproductive ideas and practices, which scholars have so far interpreted within epistemological frames and conceptual systems that largely diverge from those of Africans. For example, Africans ‘‘who are having children do not conceptualize what they are doing in the language or formulas of demography’’ and researchers (Smith, 2004, pp. 222–223). In addition, the cultural world of the extended African family is the hub of procreative life and communitarian child care ethos that differs from the Euro-Western, which

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has offered the analytical grids for fatherhood research. Zimba (2002, p. 94), for example, reported ‘‘indigenous network of support’’ in the southern Africa region as reserved for newborns and their mothers. Indeed, newborns are ‘‘precious treasure[s] . . . nurtured, and enjoyed by the whole family’’ (Harkness & Super, 1992a) in a ‘‘deep and comforting sense of tradition and community’’ that receives and sustains newborns (Nsamenang, 1992b, p. 427). This landscape rouses curiosity about the father’s status and role in such an alleged ‘‘comforting’’ social net. In Cameroon, for example, as in much of SSA, the conjugal pair is the productive economic unit in which men and women play different but complementary roles (Nsamenang, 1987). Therefore, it is reasonable to conceive of a traditional farmer not as an individual male or female but as a man and woman in a symbiotic farming relationship (Hill, 1978). However, the cultivation of commercial crops was gendered, as male restrictions on female mobility structured access to the market in ways that shifted the business advantage to men (Turrittin, 1988). But today, paid work for both men and women, the steady decline of commercial crops, and the accenting value of food crops have opened a business edge for women. In fact, the purchasing power of many women now surpasses that of their husbands. This and other schisms have ‘‘wrought significant changes in family life, particularly in the image and role of the father. The father is increasingly becoming simply one of the family instead of its undoubted head and focal authority’’ (Nsamenang, 2000, p. 5). The African father’s authority is still considerable, nevertheless, but his powers are eroding rapidly as other members of the family are gaining in status and independence by virtue of physical and social mobility and personal achievements. How all these changes play out in traditional, Christian, and Islamic families and communities further convolutes the schisms and the paternal role. From this backdrop, I summarize, in the next section, theoretical frameworks I judge to be connected to the African fatherhood situation. THE SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF FATHERS’ ROLES IN AFRICAN CONTEXTS A social anthropological reality, albeit largely unspoken, is the manner in which procreation is imprinted in the human psyche and located in the life cycle (Nsamenang, 1992a). Societies the world over comprise male and female members of various statuses and developmental stages, but everywhere it is adult members, particularly parents and cultural experts, who determine or provide the norms by which to make judgments about childbearing and child rearing. African ‘‘elders formulate a pattern of behavior which they consider fulfills the wishes of their ancestors’’ (Musoke, 1975, p. 315) to guarantee procreation. African social norms advocate parenthood as an ultimate path to personal fulfillment. Parents, that is, mothers and fathers, are important in reproductive outcomes because they ‘‘provide the ideal environment for the child [and themselves], both physical and psychological’’ (Musoke, p. 315). Although fathers everywhere share a fundamental commitment to the successful growth and development of their children, social scientists and

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other observers have documented wide variations in the ways that fathers in different cultures interact with their children and construe their own roles as fathers (Harkness & Super, 1992a). For example, Mead (1935) noticed that while some fathers in three Pacific societies were indulgent playmates with their children, others were feared disciplinarians. In polygynous societies where the wives maintained geographically separate households, fathers were present in the lives of their young children only intermittently (Harkness & Super, 1992a). This was the traditional pattern in some African communities (e.g., Abbot, 1976; Harkness & Super, 1992a; Nsamenang, 1992a; Weisner, 1976), which has now been recreated by a trend toward urban employment and migrant labor for men, while most women and children stay at home (Nsamenang, 1987, 1992a) or mothers are in the paid labor market. Munroe and Munroe (1992) reported that ‘‘traditional subsistence practices have been supplemented by wage labor activities that engage at least half the fathers in each of the (Kenyan) communities’’ (p. 213). All this now constitutes a crisis of social change in which the roles of mothers, fathers, and children are ‘‘shifting’’ (Nsamenang, 1992a; Weisner, Bradley, & Kilbride, 1997). Nested in each nontraditional status and role ‘‘shift’’ are multiple layers of questions and issues facing fathers, mothers, children, and their families. Understanding of the forces must be sought in each contextual nexus. The sociological framework of ‘‘functions’’ (Popenoe, 1988) suggested that with ‘‘modernization,’’ the basic tasks carried out by the family are increasingly delegated to other social institutions, such as the school or day care center, with the result that the family is declining as an institution in its own right (Harkness & Super, 1992b). For example, traditional African education kept children in contact with their parents, their social context, and the activities of daily life, permitting them to learn from their parents’ interactions how to develop an identity as a husband/father or wife/mother. But as today’s parents have one foot at home and the other outside the home, many children find it difficult to develop a comprehensive image of their parents, especially of their fathers (Nsamenang, 2000, p. 5). The mixture of old and new ways occurs in diverse shades across countries, communities, families, and individual lives. LeVine’s (1974) framework for understanding cultural patterns of variation in parenting argued that variations in the health condition of different populations determine a great deal of variation in parenting behaviors. This framework posits a hierarchy of parental goals, the most basic being assuring the physical survival and health of the child, followed by the development of the child’s capacity for economic survival in adulthood, and finally development of the child’s ability to represent important cultural values, such as morality and prestige (Harkness & Super, 1992b). It implies that in African societies where child mortality is high and the risks of survival are great, parental practices focus on the most basic level of the hierarchy, paying only minimal attention to the psychosocial and behavioral development of the child. At first sight, this theory sounds plausible within EuroAmerican indicators, but awareness that most African parents tend to notice the failure to thrive in their children from social and behavioral markers implies they do not ignore the emotional and social development of children;

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they attend to them in ways that diverge from the Euro-American. Furthermore, the theory is silent on which parent does what; African mothers often invoke the image of even absent fathers to control their erring children (Nsamenang, 1984, 1992a). The functionalist theory of Whiting (1977) and Whiting (1980) proposed that cross-cultural variation in parenting is linked to the socioeconomic circumstances of adult life, especially the constraints on parents’ own lives. For example, as homemakers, African mothers must carry out the burden of household subsistence activities, and they rely on the help of their children to accomplish these tasks, while as ambulatory laborers, African fathers are likely to be absent from their homes and children’s lives. In East Africa (e.g., Whiting & Edwards, 1988), as in West Africa (e.g., Nsamenang, 1992a), mothers assign chores or infant care and teaching etiquette to young children (LeVine, 1974; Weisner, 1987). They actualize their belief ‘‘that responsibility and obedience can and should be taught to young children’’ (Whiting & Edwards, 1988, p. 95). The contrasting view that American middle-class mothers do not need their children to help with basic subsistence because they are assisted by fathers and need their children for company is partially correct but ignores the help of domestic aides with household work. Therefore, culturally structured daily life determines the nature of parent– child interactions, thereby highlighting the importance of settings in defining the parameters of social behavior (Whiting & Edwards, 1988). Accordingly, Whiting (1980) conceptualized culture as a ‘‘provider of settings,’’ which, in their recurrent nature, encourage the development of certain kinds of behavioral or personality dispositions in preference to others. Although this perspective has been used primarily to compare mothers across cultures, it can equally be applied to ‘‘the issue of cultural variation in fathers’ roles as socializers of infants and young children’’ (Harkness & Super, 1992b, p. 194), especially in Africa’s agrarian societies where a horizontal distribution of farming tasks by gender is combined with a vertical distribution between adults and the young (Boserup, 1970). We could ask, for example, ‘‘in what settings of the child’s daily life is the father present and where is he the designated caretaker’’ (Harkness & Super, 1992b, p. 194). Differences in the paternal role are sure to emerge from such a comparison, as would differences in the ways that childhood itself is structured and gendered. In the next section, I present only a concise review of what the available literature informs us about fathers and fatherhood in Africa to devote more space to point to the possible directions future fathering research may take in Africa. OVERVIEW OF RESEARCH ON FATHERS IN AFRICA African fathers, compared to fathers on other continents, have had little opportunity to be heard by researchers (Nsamenang, 2000). As such, Africa perhaps is the least known world region in research-based knowledge on men’s roles and fatherhood. The prevailing science-based image of the African father in the literature has emerged largely from the accounts of itinerant Western researchers with small-scale samples in ‘‘disconnected’’

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enclaves of aboriginal populations across the continent, data sources, and a database that Hewlett and MacFarlane cover in this volume (Chapter 14). Over 2 decades ago, this author (Nsamenang, 1987) regretted the scientific neglect of the father in West African cultures, a surprising state of affairs in the face of the male dominance of those cultures and the high esteem accorded men in general and fathers in particular. More specifically, he noted ‘‘the palpable lack of scholarly interest in fathering among researchers in West Africa’’ (Nsamenang, 1987, p. 284) and pointed to only passing mention of the father in accounts of child rearing by Bekombo (1981) in Cameroon, Hake (1972) and Uka (1966) in Nigeria, Lombard (1978) in Ivory Coast, and Kaye (1962) in Ghana. Hewlett (1996) lamented the ‘‘striking absence’’ of anthropological literature on fathering research in the extensive reviews of the literature by the U.S.-based National Center for Fathers and Families and Child Well-Being Research Network, some of which is research on African men and fathers as family members. Impelled by clinical observations of academic underachievement and childhood psychopathology in Nigerian pupils caused by absent, inconsistent, or neglectful fathering (Nsamenang & Laosebikan (1981), the author (Nsamenang, 1984) undertook an experimental improvement of the quality of fathering adolescent students in Cameroon, which corroborated the Nigerian observations and actually enhanced father–adolescent relationships. Being ‘‘without my dad’’ causes most children and young people a lot of distress, anger, and self-doubt (Fortin, Ritchie, & Buchanan, 2006; Laumann-Billings & Emery, 1998) and can contribute to difficulties with peer relationships, including bullying (Parke et al., 2004; Berdondini & Smith, 1996). And when fathers’ absence leaves mothers more stressed because they are struggling to parent alone or because they have fewer resources, then children suffer again (McLanahan, 1997; McLanahan & Teitler, 1999). In spite of the anecdotal evidence of the importance of fathers, today organized research knowledge on African fathers is still conspicuous by its dearth, except in South Africa, where programmatic research on fatherhood is just emerging. The need to rapidly reorient the African society, and the continent’s children and family services, toward a stronger expectation of the involvement of African fathers in the lives of their children—through caring, providing financially and supporting their children’s learning—cannot be overstressed and is increasingly being voiced. Although this will benefit the child, the mother, the family, and the father, this call is being reinforced from a very slim and incoherent research database. Culture is one source of the neglect of the father’s role in child care and child development. The Cameroonian culture, for instance, assigns the bulk of domestic chores and routine child care duties to mothers, sanctions the father’s authority over the family and its resources, but fails to specify his child care role (Nsamenang, 2000). That is, nurturing is simply not defined as ‘‘manly.’’ Many men who take on domestic chores or caregiving still feel they are doing ‘‘women’s work’’ or ‘‘helping out the wife’’ of necessity and gain little positive self-identity or purpose in exercising these skills (www.africanfathers.org, 2008; Nsamenang, 1987). Until recently, UNICEF was party to the devaluation of fathers, as it did not play a major role in supporting fathering

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prior to 1994, the Year of the Family. Even the well-known logo of UNICEF, often interpreted as a mother–child dyad, had seemed to suggest that the father was not a major focus of the agency’s work. Fortunately, this has changed since 1994, although UNICEF’s fatherhood agendas in most African countries are still sketchy and in dire need of lucid policy and knowledgeable and skilled practitioners. Achanyi-Fontem (2008) recently identified ‘‘the challenge’’ to Cameroonian fathers as ‘‘that not enough is said about paternity, as men are relegated to the position of simple providers.’’ Preliminary qualitative research evidence from Cameroon reveals fathers as ‘‘significant figures in their children’s lives, even when absent’’ (Nsamenang, 2000, p. 1). This means that some African fathers do care, even if that caring is not shown in conventional ways (Nsamenang). The extent to which African fathers matter to their families and in child development remains mostly uncharted. That is, how fatherhood complements motherhood in African reproductive investment is an ambiguous issue. The wish to understand African fathers and fatherhood in African societies comes in the wake of increasing global interest in men’s roles in family life and involvement in childbearing and child rearing. Although Lamb’s (1976, p. xiii) seminal work revealed a realization of the multiple roles fathers play in the family and the need to consider them all, even when concerned narrowly about paternal effects on young children, it was not until almost 4 decades later that a multidisciplinary team of researchers in South Africa (Richter & Morrell, 2006) reported systematic exploration of the centrality of fatherhood in the lives of men and the experience of children with their fathers. Baba: Men and Fatherhood in South Africa (Richter & Morrell) is a valuable contribution to emerging national, continental, and global debates about understanding and supporting men’s relationships with children in their families. It is a 24-chapter book on a range of theoretical, ideological, historical, contextual, policy, programmatic, and futuristic issues. This groundbreaking book that should be emulated in other African countries, albeit from a context-sensitive perspective, has assembled innovative research and analysis, both experimental and interpretive, on aspects of social life, gender equity, families, children, and men in South Africa. This included research on the benefits to children in terms of social and psychological development, benefits for men’s adjustment and reduced risk behavior, benefits for women and families in terms of decreased interpersonal violence and improved economic and social security, as well as generational benefits for families and children as modeled effects of good male parenting filter down to reduced social and economic costs of fatherless children and childless men. The authors illustrated the character of men’s roles within South Africa’s societies and the serious challenges that are faced if the value to men, women, and children of the positive involvement, investment, and love that fathers have to give is to be fully realized. To extrapolate and adapt some South African concerns for fatherhood in Africa: How many men and teenage boys on the African continent are fathers, and what ratio of children and families is without fathers (Posel & Devey, 2006)? Who actually is a father? What does it mean to be a father? Do different

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people understand fatherhood in different ways? Is it important for fathers to do more for children in cultures that assume that mothers take the primary parenting role? Which new fathers and new fatherhood styles are emerging in Africa? The answers to these questions are simple: We do not know much. Nevertheless, one line of research in South Africa, for example, reveals that, compared with other African countries, the proportion of children living without a father or having absent fathers in South Africa was high and increasing (Posel & Devey). Such evidence obliges raising awareness in fathers for greater commitment to their children and families (www.africanfathers.org, 2008). In a hybrid Africa where several images of fatherhood from a triple inheritance have converged in the same individuals and communities, the growing number of young or single fathers and mothers need additional support to develop the vital skills to share the responsibility for parenting (Nsamenang, 2000), but with what effective strategies will this be actualized? Until recently, studies and parenting improvement programs that devoted serious attention to African fathers as paired partners to mothers in the parenting of children were almost nonexistent (Flouri & Buchanan, 2004). However, a consensus is emerging among researchers, who have reviewed the father-involvement literature, that having multiple supportive caregivers is a key protective factor for child well-being, and that whatever a father does— positive or negative—affects his child (Lewis & Lamb, 2004; www.africanfathers. org, 2008). Although all African Union states are still doing less than they could to promote father involvement, there is accentuating focus of research and practice attention on paternal involvement, but much of the efforts, as hinted earlier, are without baseline data and approach the arduous task with inadequate human and material resources. Nevertheless, African fathers have been established as a critical resource for children (e.g., www.africanfathers.org, 2008; Nsamenang, 1984, 1987, 2000; Richter & Morrell, 2006). But how exactly fathers are valuable to children and their families remains mostly unmapped. It is commonsensical knowledge rather than research-based evidence that many fathers are the primary source of financial support for their children. I can speculate that African fathers also are an important resource in other ways: through the time and skills they bring into the household, through the support they provide to mothers, through the networks (friends, workmates, and extended family) attaching to them. There are, of course, nonrelational facets of father involvement that are conceptually distinct, such as direct interaction, availability, and managerial functions (Parke, 2000). The role of men in families and as fathers is being promoted in Africa in reference to gender equity, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, child care, and child welfare debates, with accounts of men that reflect a deficit model of male involvement. Some South African reports depict men and fathers as uncaring, irresponsible, profligate, and violent (e.g., Desmond & Desmond, 2006; Denis & Ntsimane, 2006). By contrast and still in South Africa, Montgomery, Hosegood, Busza, & Timaeus (2006) observed men in rural KwaZulu Natal households affected by HIV/AIDS to be positively involved with their families and households in a wide range of ways. They cared for patients and children, financially supported immediate and extended family, and

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were present at home, thereby enabling women to work or support other households. In addition, the African Fathers Initiative (www.africanfathers.org, 2008) reports emerging evidence of male-focused ‘‘on-the-ground’’ programs addressing children’s and women’s health status and well-being as revealing:     

Increased father involvement with young children in Malawi Less expenditure by fathers on themselves, and more on their families in Cameroon Improved infant and young child feeding practices in Ghana Increased maternal confidence, status, and family and community participation in Cameroon Increased men’s HIV/AIDS prevention in Uganda and Zimbabwe THE FUTURE OF FATHERHOOD WORK IS RIGHTS BASED

The ideas set out in this section are meant to move fatherhood work forward within a rights-based approach that would endeavor to connect and integrate fatherhood research on African fathers into international discourses and databases on fatherhood. This proposal for taking forward work with and on men as fathers in African families is in the main areas of conceptual orientation, policy research, reaching out to fathers, supporting fathers, and the pedagogy of fatherhood. CONCEPTUALIZING ORIENTATION My theoretic anchor for fatherhood research in African cultures is contextualism, the fact that parenting always occurs in a specific ecoculture, defined by geography, history, and the sociocultural system (Nsamenang & Lamb, 1994). Whereas the physical environment and the social field provide culturally meaningful experiences to parents, the cultural system offers parents the ideas, scripts, and practices that permit and foster the enactment of the parental role. Every culture offers ‘‘a framework for understanding the ways that parents think about their children, their families, and themselves, and the mostly implicit choices that parents make about how to rear the next generation’’ (Harkness et al., 2001, p. 12). ‘‘From one family and community to the next, decisions affecting children’s development are influenced by people’s assumptions about human nature, their opinions concerning the goals of development, and their beliefs about the factors that influence development’’ (Cole & Cole, 1996, p. 3). In this regard, Serpell (1992) claims the existence of African ideas, issues, and practices, such as holistic worldview, ‘‘celebration’’ of life-span transitions, and a gendered division of labor, to cite only three examples (Nsamenang, 1992a), that differ from those of cultures loosely referred to as Western. African parents ‘‘have already successfully practiced childrearing within the framework of an African culture for centuries’’ (Callaghan, 1998, p. 31). Today, they still draw ideas and values from ethnopsychology and ontogenetic experiences, but also from expert knowledge sources (Harkness, Super, & Keefer, 1992). These ideas and values vary across individuals and societies, depending on such background

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factors as worldview, social history, education, religion, and place of residence (Nsamenang & Lamb, 1994), thereby fostering different roles and role changes for fathers over time and across countries and regions. The structure of the economy and labor migration and urbanization are magnifying not only the different images of fathers but also increasing family disruption and the spatial separation of fathers and their children, sometimes causing prolonged father absence. The revered status and sense of self as a father in African cultures does not unfold in a monoculture but within the cultural and religious scripts of the three civilizations that have converged in Africa. To a large extent, the parental role is the formal expression of the function of the family (Bernard van Leer Foundation, 1984). Parents have the developmental task of teaching the offspring their ethnopsychology, using their ethnopedagogical strategies. In the course of doing so, a ‘‘parental identity’’ (Goodnow, 1988, p. 289) is created, at least in part, by the cultural context in which the child encounters and is primed into the parental role. While Western societies privilege adults with child care, African communities separate child care skills from the life period of parenthood and situate child care training as a familial commitment for children to learn (Nsamenang, 2008) part of a ‘‘shared management, caretaking and socially distributed support’’ of the family (Weisner, 1997, p. 23). Much of this developmental learning occurs within the peer culture in extensive child-to-child caregiving and role performance (Pence & Nsamenang, 2008). Consequently, during ontogeny, African boys and girls develop ‘‘a sense of group membership that carries with it some obligation to acquire the kinds of knowledge and practices appropriate to being a mother or father’’ (Goodnow, p. 289). In Cameroon, for instance, boys and girls learn that fathers are not the sole providers for the family because ‘‘mothers, especially those in polygamous homes, do not expect nor wish to be totally supported by husbands; they find independent ways to support themselves and their children. Cameroonian men are traditionally not held responsible for the family’s daily food provision’’—mothers are (Nsamenang, 2000, p. 1). African children also come to learn that child care is not a parental prerogative; it is a social and collective enterprise in which parents and older siblings participate. Thus, peers are significant caregivers, but theorists, policy planners, and programmers have yet to fully notice and exploit the value of the widespread African child-to-child templates as they complement parental care and education. African children thus begin to grow into the image and role of mother and father from an early age, and the peer culture is central to their gendered development and should constitute the target of transformative policies and interventions. The issues defining and surrounding research, policy, and programs on fathers and families are complex. Nested in each issue are multiple layers of the structural systems with their reproductive and religious values that frame men’s trajectories as procreative beings and the lives of mothers as their reproductive partners. In many states, patriarchal structures prevail in governance, in the corporate and financial sectors, in religious institutions, and in culturally ascribed social systems in the face of varying levels of collective challenge and subgroup differences. However, men’s family roles

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have resisted change in most societies (Nsamenang & Lamb, 1994). Fatherhood remains narrowly defined as providing, protecting, and sometimes disciplining. Nevertheless, both quantitative and qualitative reports indicate that some African men are devoting more time to domestic tasks and child care, either by choice or as a response to new demands on women’s time and energy (www.africanfathers.org, 2008). These multifaceted influences are further complicated by the different images of father’s status and the dynamics of paternal involvement within Africa’s triple cultural inheritance. It is thus important to understand how religion and culture interact with such structural systems as the economy and global imperatives to impact the relationships that fathers are likely to, and indeed, have with their children in any given community. The unwitting adoption of the ‘‘traditional, intact’’ Anglo-American model of family and image of fatherhood to benchmark international policy standards and programmatic visions mostly pathologize African forms of family life and fatherhood, about which there are only thin and disjointed databases. POLICY RESEARCH A rights-based policy development framework anchored on the African Charter on Human Rights and People’s Freedoms and inspired by the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Commission on the Status of Women (2004), in spite of their Euro-American skew, seems advisable. Some major areas of policy making include the labor market, education, health, family law, social services (Beardshaw, 2006), and equity and partnership in parenting. Shared parenting is a child’s right, and states need to do more to ensure that every child fulfills that right. Article 18 of the UN CRC (United Nations, 1999) obliges state-parties to recognize that both parents are responsible for the upbringing and development of the child and to ‘‘render appropriate assistance to parents and legal guardians in the performance of their child-rearing responsibilities.’’ A rights-based approach, however, requires overcoming three major challenges. First, policy needs to handle the core provisions of the Convention and Commission in respect and incorporation of the child’s cultural background that confers cultural identity as enshrined in the UNCRC. Second, policy and services should deal effectively with the apprehensions and tensions inherent in increasing numbers of women working outside the home, issues raised by equity debates, restructuring of labor markets, attentiveness to the impact fathers and father figures have on child development, and the number of fathers who live away from their children, for reasons in or out of their control, in the face of resistance to shifting from long-standing traditions regarding the status and image of men and women. In South Africa, for example, the pattern of father presence in the lives of children has changed since the end of apartheid (Townsend, Madhavan, & Garey, 2005). A growing continental phenomenon of human capital flight adds to an old migrant labor system to literally take ‘‘men away from their families, making it impossible for fathers to be available to care for and nurture their children’’ (Lesejane, 2006, p. 178). Third, because most African countries endure limited human

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capacity, they overly rely on foreign expertise to translate international instruments and policy guidelines into their local circumstances (Nsamenang, 2007). Foreign experts, including some educated native-born African experts, have a hard time ‘‘understanding African ways of thinking and acting’’ (Creekmore, 1986, p. 39). As such, the instruments and guidelines are virtual ‘‘prescriptions,’’ as the policies and programs that follow on from these have rarely been fittingly customized to Africa’s realities, hence the rarity of germane policies and programs for the continent’s appalling state parenting research. To illustrate this point, I refer to the few African experts and policy planners who have the onerous task of figuring out what to see or hear and how to report (Tangwa, 1996) African fatherhood by making a priori decisions within Euro-Western logic systems and epistemologies. That is, they are constrained to address the Anglo-American image of fatherhood that drives the field instead of speaking about African men as fathers in terms of their current experiences in globalized African families. For example, the coresidence of partners has framed much of the research on fathers’ involvement; this precept disregards other patterns of procreative relationships, including the exigencies of father absence (Nsamenang, 1987, 2000), in African cultural settings. Fathers’ interest in children’s lives in Africa is underestimated when it is measured simply in terms of fathers’ current physical coresidence or when it does not take into account paternal involvement over the entire span of the child’s life. The significant but usually ignored reality is that in most African cultures, the child remains a ‘‘child’’ as long as parents are alive. Measures of paternal availability need to include noncoresident but socially or psychically connected fathers and should take account of children’s life course experience of connection to [or search for] their fathers (Townsend et al., 2005). The scarcity of accurate statistics or the absence of measures of the conditions of fatherhood provokes research to chart the knowledge products on which to frame research and the enhancement of fatherhood in Africa. An appropriate starting point is universal birth registration, which is a requirement of the UN CRC. That is, we need to develop tactics to get Africa’s male partners to ensure the biological and legal identity of every child by registering their names on the birth certificates of their children. ‘‘If a child is not registered at birth and has no birth record, he or she will not have a birth certificate with that all-important proof of their name and their relationship with their parents and the state’’ (Woodhead, 2008, p. 2). The next research action could be to systematically review the historical, legal, and social aspects of reproductive life and fatherhood in Africa and to gauge their goodness of fit into international policy instruments and trends in research, practice, and pedagogy, as the foreknowledge for context-sensitive interventions and reorientation. It is vital for such a research agenda to acknowledge and understand the intricacies of the male images that Africa’s triple inheritance exudes and the patterns of men’s roles and involvement within each heritage. What, for instance, do current family crises (Weisner et al., 1997), in terms of economic, religious, political, and demographic changes, portend for parenting, privacy, love, gender division of labor, and so on (Coontz, 1992),

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and how do the heritages compare along these and other dimensions of men’s roles and family life? The third level of policy-relevant research could estimate the proportion of fathers in each African community and country: Which men support which fertility profile, and which men are social or nonbiological fathers, under what conditions? If the proportion of children living in father-absent homes or homes with violent fathers is increasing, what is responsible for this trend and what is its scale? Apprehending the cultural, religious, and social forces that prompt men of various backgrounds to feel or enact varying levels of commitment to their children and families represents a crucial step in efforts to address paternal involvement (Marsiglio, 1996). There is need to document the various types of cultural or religious institutions and social processes where boys and men are found and within which fatherhood occurs, with particular focus on the process by which a man becomes a father and the dynamics of father involvement, all of which vary by context and culture. Therefore, we must generate research-based insights into the processes by which various paternal ‘‘feeling norms’’ and values within cultures and religions emerge, are sustained, and in some cases are weakened or fragmented. Then, of course, we must professionally handle the datasets so obtained to ensure effective dissemination and application to raise awareness about the importance of boys and men’s engagement and African fathering, develop context-relevant policies, design effective programs and monitor their sustainable implementation. All this could illumine contextually apt policy initiatives and mobilize to increase fathers’ involvement in the lives of their children and families and could reduce gender inequalities and promote the health and the well-being of men, women, and children (www.menengage.org, 2008). Of course, it could also foster a community of advocates, scholars, and practitioners devoted to a more committed fatherhood in Africa (www.africanfathers.org, 2008). WHAT DO WE KNOW

ABOUT

HOW

TO

REACH FATHERS?

Identity is a legal concept within the UN CRC. It is every child’s entitlement from birth. Regrettably, in 2000 an estimated 50 million babies worldwide— more than two-fifths of those born—were unregistered at birth (UNICEF, 2002). Africa’s ratio of unregistered births is uncharted, and I suspect it is alarming, given the escalation of nonmarital reproduction, particularly teenage parenthood. African societies tend not to see teenage fathers; they focus mainly on single young mothers, yet there is a paucity of information about the needs and challenges of teenage fathers. In South Africa, as in much of Africa, the personal details of a child’s unmarried father tend not to be collected. Such practices contribute not only to and exacerbate the ‘‘invisibility’’ of fathers (www.africanfathers.org, 2008), but also to the unwitting instigation of children’s academic underachievement and psychopathology from unknown or disputed paternity (Nsamenang, 1984, 1987; Nsamenang & Laosebikan, 1981).

Supporting the Role of Men and Fathers in Parenting 405

Coordinated global efforts to reach fathers are remarkable for their timidity. One important step was the International Fatherhood Summit (IFS) that was hosted by Fathers Direct at Christ Church, Oxford, in the United Kingdom during March 2003 (Bernard van Leer Foundation, 2004). It brought together specialists working on fatherhood issues in 18 countries, including three from African countries of Cameroon, Egypt, and South Africa. That Summit concluded that, despite an increasing worldwide focus on men in families and a strong research base confirming positive outcomes for most children of father involvement, politicians and policymakers have been slow to recognize the effects of a wide range of public institutions and policy on fathering. In many countries, and from many different perspectives, ad hoc attempts are currently being made to develop policy approaches to reach out and encourage fathers’ greater participation and investment in the care, health, and education of their children. More work is needed to scale up these efforts as well as to further develop and evaluate these initiatives at regional and national levels, and to increase the impact of multiple public policy measures on men as fathers. How all this would respect the cultural background of fathers and their children in the light of the UN CRC is still quite vague. One strategy is to transform gender relations in the next generations, which could be by emasculating family roles in the present generation through transformative research and interventions that aim to eliminate or at least reduce a gender-based division of labor, especially in household work and child care. The best way for families and public services to ‘‘hook’’ men long term into active involvement as fathers is to effectively engage them before, during, and soon after the birth of their child. One pragmatic strategy is to initiate changes to the way Africa’s prenatal and maternity services deal with men as fathers. Therefore, it is essential for future work to target the institutional settings and workplaces of fathers and the educational institutions and peer cultures of young citizens as well as child care services, as in pre- and postal clinics and reproductive services for teenagers. SUPPORTING THE ROLE OF MEN AND FATHERS IN PARENTING The author’s entree into fatherhood research was an experimental effort to improve the quality of fathering adolescent students in a sample of Cameroonian fathers in Bamenda (Nsamenang, 1984). Unfortunately, I have not had the means to move forward this father-improvement model, which fits into the emerging global efforts, particularly those of the African Fathers Initiative (www.africanfathers.org, 2008) and MenEngage (www.menengage.org, 2008) to engage men and boys in effective ways to reduce gender inequalities and promote health and the well-being of women, men, and children. A multidisciplinary team of international authors of an edited volume (Richter & Morrell, 2006) presented several facets of findings indicative of the major contribution men can make to the health of South African society by caring for children and producing a new generation of South Africans for whom men will be significant by their positive presence rather than by their absence or violence.

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Although the Bernard van Leer Foundation [BvLF] acknowledged its ‘‘programmatic ‘blindness’ to fathers’’ in parenting work (Lemieux, 2004, p. 5), it has recently initiated projects that explicitly seek to increase the involvement of fathers in child care and domestic responsibilities, with the objective of impacting gender equity, child development, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, and so on. The BvLF supports the African Fathers Initiative, which ‘‘is being taken forward by a group representing eight countries thus far’’ with the mission ‘‘to improve the well being of children by increasing the proportion of children growing up with involved, responsible, and committed fathers’’ (www.africanfathers.org, 2008). Another global initiative with a fledging start in Africa is MenEngage that aims to increase the number of men and boys reached by interventions that promote and engage them in gender equality and prevention of violence to children and women (www.menengage.org, 2008). How these initiatives will scale up to cover the continent is still unclear. For example, the African Fathers Initiative is based in Harare, Zimbabwe, but how will it ‘‘be hosted and managed in a diffused structure in several different centres,’’ including knowledge management and cyber dialogue to benefit all countries (www.africanfathers. org, 2008)? PEDAGOGY

FOR

NEW PATTERNS

OF

FATHERHOOD

The participation of boys, men, and fathers in domestic chores, child care responsibilities, and gender equality is necessary to advance the development of a new fatherhood. This would require transformative research and education. It is important to note, however, that many of the skills and much of the knowledge required to engage successfully with boys, men, and fathers in such a project is unique to this emerging field of new fatherhood and are neither part of the knowledge bases of existing disciplines nor part of current training curricula for researchers or service providers and practitioners in health, education, social work, outreach services, and so on. I am advocating a framework for transformative education that would produce researchers, policy planners, and practitioners who would promote the building of a field in which males and fathers are the hub of discourse and the focus of research and practice for the ‘‘new fatherhood.’’ Without undermining Africa’s enormous diversity, the details of the framework are left to context-tailored research and practice in each targeted community and country. The profiles across countries and communities would surely vary, reflecting the cultural and philosophical differences about the definition of ‘‘responsible fatherhood.’’ The new fatherhood is best understood within a multidisciplinary perspective. In other words, receptivity and intermeshing of provocative insights with own interests and state-of-the-arts disciplinary trends can lead to innovative theories and creative methodologies and productive breakthroughs. Inability to follow up and synthesize emerging trends and issues into own research would impede a researcher’s full understanding of how, for example, biological sex and gender, with all their interrelated physiological, cultural, religious, and social dimensions, affect the way fathers think about and treat their children (Marsiglio, 1996).

References 407

CONCLUSION Africa suffocates in a crisis of social change. It is entangled in a triple-strand heritage that fans out schisms about the roles of men and the images of the father. Hewlett (1996) claims that ‘‘fathers can and do contribute to their children in several poorly understood ways’’ (p. 3). Indeed, the signs for the poor understanding are quite visible; they include labor market restructuring, equity rights issues, and a plethora of forces working against men and fathers being central figures in their families. Nevertheless, we must endeavor to understand the efforts of African men to be fathers within the ‘‘internal working models’’ of their cultures and religious creeds, often against extraordinary odds that are sometimes promoted by knowledgeable experts and professionals. It is essential to establish the social and personal meanings Africans attach to the paternal status and conduct, and to understand the social and cultural processes from which these meanings emerge and are perpetuated. The circumstances of paternal nonparticipation are a critical factor that is often ignored (Braver & Griffin, 1996). Therefore, African fathers should not be made to feel guilty if their investment and involvement does not conform to the image of father involvement depicted in mainstream Western literature. How do hybrid gender issues shape the processes, at the personal and structural levels, by which men become and play the role of fathers? Efforts to explore and understand how ‘‘separated’’ or divorced parents negotiate coparenting and parallel parenting strategies are quite relevant in this concern. A multidisciplinary approach would ease and enrich such understanding. The argument in this chapter is neither isolationist nor nostalgic for Africa’s distorted traditions of care. It instead represents a fervent effort to niche local understandings and practices of fatherhood into the wish to understand new forms of men’s roles and fatherhood. The need is for the relentless international narrative that has long denigrated African ideas and practices to create space for respectful dissemination of and dialogue with Africa’s voices, with the objective of reversing Africa’s marginality in fatherhood research. An important facet of this strategy is to permit Africa’s ethnopsychology and ethnopedagogy to enrich not only the discipline’s databases but also to extend the pedagogy of fatherhood work. This is plausible in the light of Engle and Breaux’s (1998, p. 1) alert that in the next decade, recent immigrants to the United States, for example, ‘‘will have different views of the father role and behavior of fathers than the majority culture.’’ Yet the field persists with outdated paradigms in the face of global waves of immigrants into almost every country. REFERENCES Abbot, S. (1976). Full-time farmers and weekend wives: An analysis of altering conjugal roles. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 38(1), 165–174. Achanyi-Fontem, J. (2008). First-time father initiation for mother support: Men’s involvement for breastfeeding protection and promotion. Retrieved February, 18, 2009, from http://cameroonlink.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-time-father-initiation-for-mother .html

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Philadelphia Hotel, Philadelphia, PA. Retrieved from www.allacademic.com/ meta/p21047_index.html on November 19, 2008. Turrittin, J. (1988). Men, women and market trade in rural Mali, West Africa. Canadian Journal of African Studies, 22(3), 583–604. Uka, N. (1966). Growing up in Nigerian culture. Ibadan, Nigeria: Ibadan University Press. UNICEF (2002). Role of men in the lives of children: A study of how improving knowledge about men in families helps strengthen programming for children and women. New York: Author. United Nations. (1999). Convention of the rights of the child. Retrieved from www.un. org/documents/ga/res/44/a44r025.htm on January 8, 2009. Weinger, S. (2006). Cameroonian fathers’ views about “infertile” women. International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations, 6(1), 91–100. Weisner, T. S. (1976). The structure of sociability: Urban migration and urban–rural ties in Kenya. Urban Anthropology, 5(2), 199–223. Weisner, T. S. (1987) Socialization for parenthood in sibling caretaking societies (pp. 237–270). In J. B. Lancaster, J. Altman, A. S. Rossi, & L. R. Sherrod (Eds.), Parenting across the lifespan: Biosocial dimensions. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Weisner, T. S. (1997). Support for children and the African family crisis. In T. S. Weisner, C. Bradley, & C. P. Kilbride (Eds.), African families and the crisis of social change (pp. 20–44). Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Weisner, T. S., Bradley, C., & Kilbride, C. P. (Eds.) (1997). African families and the crisis of social change. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Whiting, B. B. (1980). Culture and social change: A model for the development of social behavior. Ethos, 8, 95–116. Whiting, B. B. & Edwards, W. N. (1988). Children of different worlds: The formation of social behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Whiting, J. W. M. (1977). A model for psychocultural research. In P. H. Leiderman, S. K. Tulkin, & A. Rosenfeld (Eds.), Culture and infancy: Variations in the human experience (pp. 29–48). New York: Academic Press. Woodhead, M. (2008). Legal identity is conferred by birth registration. In L. Brooker & M. Woodhead (Eds.), Early childhood in focus 3: Developing positive identities: Diversity and young children. Milton Keynes, UK: Open University. www.africanfathers.org (2008). The African Fathers Initiative: An idea whose time has come: Concept Note. Site visited on November 18, 2008. www.menengage.org (2007). Engaging men and boys in changing gender-based inequity in health: Evidence from programme interventions. Retrieved on November 18, 2008. www.readingislam.com (2002). Absent Fathers 2002: Question and answer: Further to your answer on original innocence, what if a child is born outside marriage and the identity of the father is known but the father has abandoned the mother and the child? Site visited on November 18, 2008. Yana, S. (1998). Sexuality and procreation among the Bamileke and Beti. In B. KuateDefo (Ed.), Sexuality and reproductive health during adolescence in Africa (pp. 91–107). Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. Zimba, R. F. (2002). Indigenous conceptions of childhood development and social realities in southern Africa. In H. Keller, Y. P. Poortinga, & A. Scholmerish (Eds.), Between cultures and biology: Perspectives on ontogenetic development (pp. 89–115). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER 14

Fathers’ Roles in Hunter-Gatherer and Other Small-Scale Cultures BARRY S. HEWLETT and SHANE J. MACFARLAN

T

and evaluates recent research on the roles of fathers in child development in hunting-gathering (also known as foragers), simple farming, and pastoral (i.e., heavy reliance on cattle, camels, goats, etc.) communities around the world. In the past, these societies were referred to as preindustrial, preliterate, or traditional societies, but these terms were somewhat derogatory or implied the people were in some way or another less intelligent or complex than peoples in modern, literate, and industrial societies. These cultures are characterized by their relatively low population density and minimal amounts of social and economic stratification. Anthropologists have conducted most of the research in these communities, but some developmental psychologists have also contributed to the literature (e.g., Harkness & Super, 1992; Morelli & Tronick, 1992; Nsamenang, 1992). In this chapter we review three types of studies conducted on fathers in hunting-gathering and other small-scale cultures: (a) evolutionary studies from human behavior ecology, (b) large (i.e., more than 50 cultures) crosscultural studies of father involvement, and (c) detailed ethnographic case studies of fathers. Evolutionary studies are considered first because they examine some of the biological or reproductive bases of father involvement. Evolutionary and ethnographic case studies are similar in that they are usually long-term field-based studies of one or a few cultures. Ethnographers are more eclectic in their theory and methods, using qualitative and quantitative methods, whereas human behavioral ecologists use evolutionary theory and rely almost exclusively on systematic behavioral observations (i.e., they are interested in what fathers do rather than what they say). This chapter also emphasizes two general theoretical orientations: adaptationist and cultural. Adaptationist studies assume that fathers’ roles are functional in that they are adapting to particular social, economic, reproductive, or demographic conditions or contexts. By contrast, researchers who HIS CHAPTER SUMMARIZES

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utilize a cultural orientation assume that symbols, such as language, schema, ideology, or culture cores (i.e., configuration of beliefs and practices that are maintained by conservative mechanisms of cultural transmission) dramatically influence fathers’ roles. Most researchers who utilize this theoretical orientation study the parental or cultural ideologies regarding fathers. Only a few researchers have emphasized the culture core and cultural transmission approach. This later approach assumes that the distribution of cultural beliefs and practices (in this case, those regarding fathers’ roles) are influenced by demic diffusion—people taking their beliefs and practices with them when they move or expand to a new area. For instance, English and French peoples expanded during the period of colonialism and took their beliefs and practices regarding fathers with them even though they moved to dramatically different natural and social environments. Their beliefs and practices were maintained through conservative cultural transmission. From this perspective, fathers’ roles may or may not be adaptive. This is a simple theoretical dichotomy and probably no researcher feels that fathers’ roles are influenced by only one suite of factors and that fathers’ roles are influenced by both approaches. The fact is, however, that researchers usually have a limited time to conduct their research so tend to emphasize one or the other theoretical orientation. ISSUES, CONCEPTS, AND TERMS Why should we care about studies of fathers’ roles in these cultures? We cannot understand fathers’ roles in every ethnic group, so why not concentrate on large cultures, such as the Chinese or Danes, with millions of members rather than on cultures with 1,000 or 2,000 members? First, most studies of fathers described in this volume were conducted in cultures with complex levels of hierarchy, inequality, and capitalism (i.e., fathers living in global economic cash economies). Some studies are crosscultural, but the fathers in these groups are similar to middle-class AngloAmerican families in that socioeconomic inequality and the material accumulation of wealth characterize and permeate their daily lives. Differences certainly exist between stratified cultures (e.g., some, such as China and Japan, are much more sociocentric than others) but they share inequality in daily life. Second, and along the same lines, most class-stratified societies are governed by strong nation-states. This means fathers in most of the studies in this volume live in situations where their roles as protectors and educators of their children are diminished because the state provides a police or military force as well as some level of formal education. Consequently, research on fathers in stratified cultures focuses on their economic and caregiving roles. This emphasis on fathers as caregivers and providers also exists in studies of hunter-gatherers, in part, because research questions emerge from studies of fathers in urban–industrial cultures and researchers working with hunter-gatherers are influenced by concerns in their own culture. The cultures described in this chapter live in nation-states and may be affected by laws in their respective countries, but, in general, they receive

Issues, Concepts, and Terms 415

little protection or formal education from the nation-state. This does not mean that studies of contemporary stratified cultures are not relevant to understanding fathers’ roles, but that there are limitations and important contexts to keep in mind, especially when universal or general features of fathers’ roles are proposed. Third, theoretically and conceptually, it seems that if we want to understand the nature of fathers’ roles, we should consider fathers’ roles in contexts that characterized most of human history. Global capitalism has been around for about 200 years, class stratification (chiefdoms and states) about 5,000 years, simple farming and pastoralism about 10,000 years, and huntinggathering at least hundreds of thousands of years (at least 90% of human history). An understanding of fathers’ roles in hunting and gathering societies seems especially important for understanding the nature of fathers’ roles, and consequently, most of the studies reviewed in this chapter focus on foragers. Finally, males in class-stratified cultures usually do not learn about child caregiving until they have their own children. They acquire their knowledge from specialists (e.g., pediatricians, school counselors), how-to books, friends (because they seldom live near family), or imagined others, such as images of men on TV they want to emulate. By contrast, men in the studies described in this chapter were frequently around, if not caring for, children while they were growing up (i.e., men’s parenting knowledge is based on regular observations or experiences with children). Before the three types of studies and two theoretical orientations are examined, the nature of culture is discussed because it is used often in this chapter and volume. Minimally, culture is defined as shared knowledge and practices that are transmitted nonbiologically generation to generation. It is symbolic, historic, integrated, and dramatically influences how we perceive and feel about the world around us. Regular interactions with others with similar schemas and styles of interaction (called internal working models by Bowlby, 1969) contribute to the emotional basis of culture. The emotional basis of culture often leads us to feel that our own ways are natural, universal, and usually better than others. In regards to understanding fathers’ roles, it means we are likely to have ethnocentric views of what is a good or bad father, or have strong feelings about the kinds of father research that should be conducted. Most middle-class parents, developmental psychologists, and policy agencies in contemporary urban industrial cultures feel very strongly that regular and frequent father caregiving is important for healthy child development. National programs give the impression that regular direct care by fathers is natural and ‘‘good for all.’’ Several positive benefits for active fathers in contemporary middle-class U.S. families may exist (i.e., families are more isolated from other family, so fathers assistance may be important for several reasons), but cross-cultural studies indicate dramatic variability in the importance of direct father care. In some cultures, like the Aka foragers of central Africa, father care is pervasive and sensitive, while in most African farming communities, fathers provide almost no direct care to infants and young children. Children in both groups grow up to viable, competent, and self-assured individuals.

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EVOLUTIONARY STUDIES OF FATHERS Evolutionary studies evaluate how a father’s and/or a child’s reproductive fitness in particular ecological and cultural contexts influences his or her interactions. For instance, one hypothesis, discussed later, is that if a man knows he is the biological father of a child, he is more likely to invest time and energy in his children than if he is not the biological father. It is not in his reproductive interests to invest in nonbiologically related children. Evolutionary research is briefly reviewed because researchers have conducted studies with hunter-gatherers (e.g., Aka, Bofi, Hadza, Ache, Martu Aborigines, Tsimane) and a few studies with simple farmers. Evolutionary studies are an example of adaptationist approaches to explaining fathers’ roles. Three insightful findings have emerged in the recent literature: Male involvement in humans and other primates evolved in part because male care decreased female reproductive costs and increased the number of offspring (i.e., closer birth spacing because males assisted with care), father involvement may be mating effort rather than parenting effort, and direct care by fathers is likely to be strategic in that they invest under certain social and ecological contexts (e.g., mother absent or other adult allomaternal caregivers are present) or when specific types of care can impact the child’s future reproductive success. Evolutionary anthropologists are interested in understanding the origin of paternal investment in humans. Paternal investment is relatively rare in both mammals and primates, occurring in about 10% of species (Kleiman & Malcolm, 1981). For some time, it was thought that male investment increased infant and child survival, which is the case among !Kung and Ache huntergatherers (father absence triples the probability of child death among the Ache), but father investment does not increase child survival among the Hadza and several other populations. Sear and Mace (2008) conducted a study of 22 populations from a variety of subsistence systems and found that father absence did not impact child survival in the vast majority of cultures. Grandmothers and others had a greater impact than fathers in several cultures. If fathers do not increase child survival, why did paternal care evolve? Paternity certainty probably played some role in the evolution of male parental care, but research with nonhuman primates with male parental investment, such as cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus), marmosets (Callithrix kuhlii), siamangs (Symphalangus syndactylus), and owl monkeys (Aotus trivirgatus), indicate male transportation of infants increased female foraging efficiency, weight gain, and rapid return to estrus cycling, while males who transported offspring often lost substantial weight (Gettler, in press; Lappan, 2008; Sanchez, Pelaez, Gil-Burmann and Kaumanns, 1999; Tardif, 1994). In most cases, males carry more frequently if they are his offspring. Comparable energetic studies in hunter-gatherers are limited, but fathers regularly transport infants and young children among the Aka (Hewlett, 1991), who travel 5 to 15 kilometers per day, and several other hunter-gatherer groups (Marlowe, 2000). Grandmothers and older siblings are often not capable of carrying infants and young children for long distances. Another consistent finding in evolutionary studies of men during the past 10 years of research is that in comparison to mothers, a good part of father’s

Evolutionary Studies of Fathers 417

time and energy in direct care or providing may be mating effort (i.e., efforts to maintain current spouse or attract other mates) rather than parenting effort (i.e., provisioning and caring for children). It was long thought that fathers were important providers and caregivers to their own biological children and that paternity certainly was a key factor for understanding father involvement (Lancaster, Altmann, Rossi, & Sherrod, 1987). Fathers would not be acting in their best reproductive interests if they cared for or provided food for children who were not their own. Biological fathers were hypothesized to be important providers, protectors, and caregivers. Evolutionists started to question this hypothesis when nonhuman primate studies indicated that males in species with low paternity certainty (e.g., multimale species where most adult males have sex with females in estrus) were more likely to provide direct care to infants than were males in species where paternity certainty was much higher (dominant male with harem, such as gorillas) (Smuts & Gubernick 1992; Van Schaik & Paul, 1996); as discussed earlier, child survival was not linked to having a father in several cultures, and males in huntinggathering communities were found to give most of the game they captured to other families rather than their own (Hawkes, O’Connell, and Blurton–Jones, 2001). The evolutionary idea is that fathers are interested in showing-off or signaling their abilities to their spouse or potential future mates. Fathers may also invest highly in stepchildren, but only as long as they are with the mothers (Kaplan, Lancaster, Bock, & Johnson, 1995). The emphasis on mating rather than parenting effort is consistent with developmental psychology and sociological studies that demonstrate that fathers extrinsically value parenting, whereas mothers intrinsically value parenting (LaRossa & LaRossa, 1982), and fathers are more likely to engage in direct caregiving in public places (e.g., playgrounds and grocery stores) (Mackey & Day, 1979) rather than in the privacy of their home. But this does not mean that paternity certainty does not influence father–child relations. Marlowe (1999) indicated that Hadza fathers provided more direct care to genetically related children than stepchildren, but that fathers provided even less care to biological children when their mating opportunities increase, such as when the number of reproductive women in camp increases. While some components of father’s roles may be mating effort, recent studies indicate fathers’ involvement is strategic parenting effort. Winking, Gurven, Kaplan, and Stieglitz (2009) tested mating effort vs. parenting effort predictions among the Tsimane of Bolivia and found that fathers’ care was consistent with parenting effort because fathers biased the delivery of their child care to when it had a greater impact on child well-being and the efficient functioning of the family, such as when mothers were absent or occupied with other chores, or no older daughters existed to assist with care. If father involvement were mating effort (i.e., signaling to maintain spouse), they should provide care when mothers could observe their care, which was not the case, and the care should be more active (e.g., playing, grooming) rather than passive (e.g., holding). Tsimane mothers held children more than fathers, but there were no differences in the proportion of time fathers and mothers dedicated to active care (grooming, playing, comforting). Fathers were more likely than mothers to devote a greater proportion of their active time with

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children to playing and soothing the child while mothers were more likely to spend their time grooming the child. Research by Meehan (2005) and Fouts (2008) also indicate that father involvement is strategic among Aka and Bofi hunter-gatherers. In both groups, fathers provide significantly less direct care when they live in matrilocal rather than patrilocal camps or when a maternal postmenopausal woman lives in the camp (Fouts). Maternal grandmothers do not always live matrilocally, as they may follow their daughter to live with the family of the husband. In both contexts, mothers have other genetic kin to assist with care. In patrilocal contexts and when the wife’s mother does not live in camp, fathers’ direct care increases, and fathers are more likely to hold and be proximal to their young children. The strategic investment of fathers is also described in research by Scelza (in press) among Martu Aborigine adolescents. She suggests that mothers’ child care is often easily replaceable by grandmothers and other women, whereas paternal investment that increases the social competitiveness of offspring is often unsubstitutable, such as when children inherit resources controlled by males (e.g., land or cattle). She found that Martu adolescent males with fathers present were initiated earlier than adolescent males without fathers present. Martu male initiations are complex, lengthy, and costly, and an earlier age of initiation was linked to future reproductive success—an increased likelihood of having a child and of having multiple children. The Martu research is one of the few studies with hunter-gatherers to demonstrate the importance of fathers in adolescence and later in life. Finally, evolutionary researchers are interested in understanding stepfathers, but only a few systematic studies have been conducted. Evolutionary anthropologists have pointed out that stepfathering is common in huntergatherers and other small-scale cultures due to high adult mortality and divorce rates and that fathers generally invest more in biologically related than nonbiologically related children. For instance, stepparenting is common among the Yanomamo and Aka cultures as only 53% and 58%, respectively, of children between the ages of 10 and 15 live with both biological parents (Chagnon, 1982; Hewlett, 1991). The few studies that have compared stepand genetic fathers indicate that fathers are more involved with genetic children. Marlowe (1999) found that Hadza stepfathers never played with stepchildren and were more likely to be near, nurture, and communicate with biological children. Flinn (1988) found that fathers in Trinidad spent less time with stepchildren, and Anderson, Kaplan, Lam, and Lancaster (1999) found that Xhosa genetic fathers spent more time and resources (e.g., school supplies) on their children than did stepfathers. SUMMARY Human behavioral ecological studies of hunter-gatherers and other smallscale cultures suggest that men and women have different reproductive interests, and what may appear to be father involvement in part functions to attract new mates or keep an existing one, male care evolved in part to reduce female reproductive costs and increase fertility, and fathers are more

Cross-Cultural Studies of Father Involvement 419

likely to invest in direct care when the care impacts the child’s future reproductive success (strategic parental investment). Human behavioral ecology is one example of an adaptationist approach to father involvement. CROSS-CULTURAL STUDIES OF FATHER INVOLVEMENT Several cross-cultural studies have been conducted to try and identify factors that influence the level of father involvement. Many researchers utilize precoded father involvement data on hundreds of cultures. Anthropologists who write general ethnographies, which are detailed descriptions of one culture, often describe a few things about fathers’ roles. Anthropologists, such as Barry and Paxson (1971), have reviewed hundreds of these ethnographies and qualitatively coded the level of father involvement and a variety of other aspects of infant and child development. Coded ethnographic samples include the Ethnographic Atlas (EA; over 1,000 cultures), the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF; over 300 cultures) and the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS; 186 cultures). Most studies of fathers use the SCCS. The majority of cultures in these samples are hunter-gatherers, simple farmers, and pastoralists. An advantage of the cross-cultural studies is that father involvement in many cultures can be systematically compared and analyzed. Comparing father involvement in only two or three cultures can be problematic because of the potential bias in the selection of cultures. One problem with these larger studies is that the coding of father involvement is often based on a few descriptive sentences about fathers in a particular culture. The coding also masks all of the variability that often exists within a culture. Given these limitations, the research provides insights into the roles of fathers in childbirth, factors associated with high father involvement and the impact of father’s responsiveness to his children on adult aggression. Cross-cultural studies have examined fathers’ roles in childbirth. In the United States, fathers are expected to have an active role in so-called ‘‘natural’’ childbirth. This active role is far from natural and universal, as crosscultural studies indicate that fathers are not allowed to attend the birth of their child in 60% of the world’s cultures, are allowed to attend in 20%, and are allowed to attend and have some minimal role (e.g., cutting the cord) in the birth in another 20% of cultures. In no culture do fathers monitor or direct the birthing processes (Hewlett & Hannon, 1989; Lozoff & Brittenham, 1979). While fathers may not be active participants in childbirth, a recent, more detailed cross-cultural study (Huber & Breedlove, 2007) indicates that fathers provide some form of investment (help with cooking, screen off birth area, dispose of afterbirth) during prenatal, delivery, or postnatal periods in 92% of societies for which they had information. More active participation may be important in middle-class U.S. families, where fathers are seldom around the child after the birth, but in most small-scale cultures, fathers see their children during the day and their smaller direct and indirect involvement in childbirth illustrates their connection and commitment to the newborn. Cross-cultural childbirth studies have also examined couvade, a term used to refer to a variety of a father’s experiences and cultural practices that take

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place in late pregnancy, at the birth, and postpartum. In the classic case, the father lies down when his wife starts to deliver the child; the father exhibits pains and other symptoms associated with childbirth. Another and more common form of couvade is when the expectant father observes food taboos in late pregnancy and goes into seclusion during and several days after the birth (Munroe, Munroe, & Whiting, 1973). An SCCS study indicates that 44% of cultures practice couvade (Paige & Paige, 1981). Several functional explanations have been proposed (Broude, 1976; Mason & Elwood, 1995; Munroe et al., 1973; Paige & Paige, 1981). It is more likely to occur in matrilocal societies (Paige and Paige 1981) where paternity certainty is suggested to be lower and couvade is hypothesized to be a way to assign paternity. While couvade is probably influenced by adapationist forces, cultural forces are also significant as it occurs in more than 75% of South American cultures and less than 5% of African, Circum-Mediterranean, and East Eurasian cultures. Cross-cultural studies have identified factors associated with high father involvement: lack of material accumulation, such as land, cattle, or money (Goody, 1973; Hewlett, 1988; Marlowe, 2000); females and males contribute equally to the family diet (Katz & Konner, 1981); regular cooperation and participation of husband and wife in economic, domestic, and leisure activities (Hewlett, 1992); low population density (Alcorta, 1982); infrequent warfare (Katz & Konner); cultures with matrilocal postmarital residence (Hewlett, 1988); and infrequent polygyny (Katz & Konner). Since culture is integrative, it is not surprising that general patterns emerge from these studies. Hunter-gatherer cultures tend to have higher father involvement than farmers or pastoralists because:       

They have lower population densities. Females often contribute a substantial percentage of the calories to the family diet. Husbands and wives are more likely to engage in a variety of activities together (subsistence, sleep and eat together). Polygyny rates are low. Matrilocality is common because residence patterns are flexible. Warfare is less frequent. They do not accumulate land, cattle, or other material resources.

All of these factors are more likely to occur in hunting and gathering societies rather than among farmers and pastoralists. Hunter-gatherers are mobile, often moving 5 to 20 times a year. They can accumulate only so much material wealth because they must carry it with them. Hunter-gatherers also tend to practice prestige avoidance, that is, doing anything not to draw attention to themselves. They have a variety of other cultural mechanisms, such as rough joking and demand sharing, that prevent accumulation, inequality, and drawing attention to oneself (Hewlett, 1991). Hunter-gatherers also share food and child care more extensively than farmers or pastoralists, as they often give away 50 to 80% of the foods they collect during the day. Population densities are lower in part because they rely on wild food. Warfare is less common because there are fewer material resources to defend.

Cross-Cultural Studies of Father Involvement 421

Farmers and pastoralists, however, generally do whatever they can to accumulate more wealth (e.g., land or cattle). Generally, it is the males who accumulate the wealth, and this limits female access to resources necessary for survival and reproduction. The accumulated resources, such as crops or cattle, also need to be defended, so lineages and clan structures develop to defend resources. Both of these factors leads to greater male control ideologies and higher frequencies of patrilocal residence and polygynous marriages even though women may contribute the majority of the calories to the diet. This is especially true in simple farming communities. Many women may be interested in marrying the same man because he controls many resources important to her and her children’s survival. By comparison to hunter-gatherers, population densities are somewhat higher, warfare is more common, and husband and wife engage in fewer activities together. Marlowe (2000) conducted an SCCS cross-cultural study of paternal investment and confirmed many of the findings described here. Table 14.1 summarizes his results. The study provides actual cross-cultural coding scores and tests of significance, but Table 14.1 lists only results. His study is consistent with the previous cross-cultural studies of fathers, but it is more detailed than were previous studies. For instance, he demonstrates that fathers’ direct care is lowest in pastoral and agricultural cultures rather than in horticultural (simple farming) cultures. The table also summarizes fathers’ provisioning roles in these cultures and suggests why men in pastoral societies are less likely to provide direct care. Men in pastoral societies contribute the most to family subsistence and control access to important foods and wealth (i.e., cattle) for survival. Stimulated by research results in the United States, some anthropologists have utilized the SCCS of preindustrial cultures to test the hypothesis that father presence leads to fewer aggressive behaviors (violence, homicide) in adulthood. Several SCCS studies have rejected this hypothesis and indicated that socialization for aggression explains aggression rather than father presence (Broude, 1990; Ember & Ember, 1994). Fathers’ warmth may matter more than father presence. Veneziano’s recent SCCS study (2003) examined both father proximity and father warmth (affectionate love and acceptance that Table 14.1 Modes of Production/Subsistence and Father’s Role

Residence

Father’s Direct Care

Father’s Contributions to Family Diet

Marriage System

Multilocal

High

Moderate/high

Monogamy

Low to Patri- or moderate matrilocal

Moderate

Low

Polygyny

Pastoralists

High

Patrilocal

Low

Very high

Polygyny

Agriculturalists

Very High

Patrilocal

Low

HIgh

Polygyny

Industrial States

Very High

Neolocal

Moderate

Moderate

Monogamy

Mode of Production

Wealth Variation

Hunter-Gatherers Horticulturalists

1

1

None

Horticulture involves simple hoe farming, while agriculture refers to intensive irrigation or plow farming. Modified from Marlowe 2000:49.

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fathers have toward children) and found that only lack of fathers’ warmth significantly predicted interpersonal aggression. Interestingly, he found that lack of paternal warmth had a stronger relationship on interpersonal aggression than did mothers’ warmth and affection. Coltrane (1992) also utilized the SCCS to evaluate outcomes of father proximity measures and found that close father–child relationships were related to increased gender equality—women’s deference toward men, an ideology of female inferiority and men’s display of manliness were less likely in cultures with close father–child relationships. Overall, the status of women increases when father involvement increases (Coltrane, 1988). The studies mentioned thus far emphasize functional or adaptationist explanations (e.g., related to culture’s mode of production) for father involvement. Most SCCS research tests functional hypotheses, but it is also important to point out that father involvement is also influenced by a culture’s demic diffusion and the nature of cultural transmission and acquisition. Cultures connected by history are more likely to have similar levels of father involvement. For instance, Table 14.2 summarizes the average father involvement scores from various regions of the world. Regional grouping is based on Burton, Moore, Whiting, and Romney’s (1996) analysis. Father involvement is lowest in African cultures, while it is the highest in Southeast Asia and Pacific Island cultures. Cultures are generally within a particular region because they share a particular history and demic diffusion (i.e., a particular culture expanded and differentiated to new cultures within the region, such as the expansion of Bantu-speaking people in Africa). Cultures that share an expansionist history (diaspora) often share a culture core—a set of values, schemas, behaviors—that are conservatively transmitted generation to generation. Recent studies have shown that many aspects of kinship and family life are more related to demic diffusion than to cultural diffusion (i.e., Table 14.2 Father Involvement with Infants in Various Regions of the World

Region of the World

Number of Cultures Evaluated

Mean Score

Proportion of 4–5 Scores in the Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

22

2.40

0.09

Middle Old World

12

2.87

0.33

North Eurasia and Circumpolar

12

3.17

0.25

Southeast Asia and Pacific Islands

22

3.60

0.55

Australia, New Guinea, Melanesia

12

3.42

0.50

Northwest Coast

7

3.29

0.43

Northern and Western North America

7

2.71

0.00

16

3.05

0.44

9

3.22

0.33

Eastern Americas (includes North and South America) Mesoamerica, Central America, and Andes 1

The mean score is the average from Barry and Paxson’s coding (1971) where a 1–3 score means the father is never, seldom, or occasionally proximal to the infant, and a 4–5 score means the father is in regular or frequent proximity.

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acquiring cultural belief or practice from neighbors) or natural ecology (Hewlett, de Silverti, & Gugliemino, 2002). The implication is that fathers’ roles are part of a culture core in a particular region. One has to be cautious with the data in Table 14.2 because the cultures placed within a region may have divergent histories. For instance, African cultures have the lowest average father involvement, but African hunter-gatherer groups, such as the !Kung and Aka, have very separate histories from that of the Bantu groups and are very involved fathers. The average score in Table 14.2 includes hunter-gatherers and if omitted, the average involvement score in Africa and other regions with hunter-gatherers would decline. The previous discussion of father involvement in various regions of the world points out that culture history, demic diffusion in particular, is an important factor for understanding cultural beliefs and practices regarding fathers’ interactions with children. Culture cores are often maintained by conservative mechanisms of cultural transmission and acquisition. That is, these aspects of culture are transmitted early within the family and immediate community. Before mass media, such as radio, TV, and the Internet, were available, most beliefs and practices regarding child care were transmitted and acquired within the family. This form of transmission leads to highly conserved elements of culture. As a group of people migrates and expands, many elements of culture are conserved even though their natural and social environment may have changed. However, once the mass media is in place, cultures can change quite quickly. SUMMARY An analysis of cross-cultural studies on fathers indicates: (1) fathers seldom participate in childbirth, but demonstrate their interest and commitment to the newborn in a variety of ways; (2) couvade is common and another indicator of father’s connection to the newborn; (3) the level of father involvement is influenced primarily by two general forces: (a) a web of factors associated with mode of production/subsistence (Hewlett, 1991; Katz & Konner, 1981; Marlowe, 2000); and (b) common culture ancestry and diaspora (i.e., via demic diffusion and conservative cultural transmission); and (4) father warmth and involvement influences adult aggression and male-female relationships. Factors 2, 3a, and 4 suggest fathers’ role is adaptive to particular social, economic, reproductive, and demographic settings, whereas factor 3b suggests that fathers’ roles with children have more to do with the history/diaspora and transmission of a particular culture and that fathers’ roles may or may not be adaptive. ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDIES OF FATHERS Fathers are seldom the focus of ethnographic studies, but in some cases ethnographers have emphasized the study of fathers in order to investigate particular hypotheses. Few detailed ethnographic studies of fathers exist, but in comparison to the cross-cultural studies, they are better able to evaluate the complex web of relationships related to fathers’ roles. They

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can also be limiting (e.g., focus on father involvement and neglect fathers’ roles as protector or provider) because they evaluate a limited number of hypotheses. Ethnographic studies examined include my own study of Aka hunter-gatherer fathers of central Africa (Hewlett, 1991), Beckerman and Valentine’s study of farming–fishing fathers among the Bari and other cultures of South America (2002), and Harkness and Super’s study of agropastoral Kipsigis fathers of East Africa (1992). The Aka are known for the high level of father involvement, Kipsigis for their lack of father involvement, and the Bari and other South American cultures for their beliefs and practices regarding multiple fathers. INTIMATE FATHERS Hewlett’s work (1991) with infants (3 to 18 months) among Aka foragers of central Africa focused on evaluating Lamb’s (1981) hypothesis regarding the role of rough-and-tumble play in an infant’s attachment to father. The prevailing hypothesis was, and often still is (but see several exceptions in this volume), that infants become attached to their fathers, in part, due to their vigorous play and interactions. Infants become attached to mothers via their regular and sensitive care, whereas fathers, who are around less frequently, develop attachment with the infant through vigorous rough-and-tumble play. Studies in urban industrial societies in many parts of the world indicated that vigorous play was a distinctive feature of fathers’ versus mothers’ style of interaction with infants (see Chapter 4 for further details). Unlike fathers in urban–industrial cultures, Aka fathers were frequently with their infants (i.e., holding or within an arm’s reach of their infants 47% of the day), and they rarely engaged in vigorous play with their infants. Fathers engaged in physical play only once in 264 hours of systematic naturalistic father and infant focal observations. Fathers were also more likely to show affection (i.e., kiss, hug) to an infant while holding than were mothers. Hewlett suggested that Aka fathers were not vigorous because they intimately knew their infants through their extensive care. Because Aka fathers knew their infants so well, they did not have to use vigorous play to initiate communication/interaction with their infants. They could initiate communication and show their love in other ways. Infants often initiate communication, and Aka fathers knew how to read and understand their infants’ verbal and nonverbal (e.g., via touch) communication. Fathers (or mothers) who are not around their infants are less likely to be able to read and understand infant communication and therefore more likely to initiate communication, often with the use of physical stimulation and play. Aka fathers are often around their infants because men, women, and children participate together in net hunting. Women are active and important to net hunting (Noss & Hewlett, 2001) and husband–wife communication and cooperation is key to hunting success. Net hunting, in part, contributed to regular husband–wife cooperation and father’s intimate knowledge of their infants. While Aka are generally very involved fathers, there is remarkable intracultural variability. Some Aka fathers held their infants 2% of the time, while

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others held their infants about 20% of daylight hours. Also, not all ‘‘pygmies’’ or hunter-gatherers of the African rainforest have highly involved fathers. Efe hunter-gatherer fathers of the Democratic Republic of the Congo held their infants 2.6% of the time in the camp setting, compared to 22.0% of the time among the Aka fathers (Winn, 1989, personal communication). Bailey (1991) found that Efe men actively engaged in child care only 0.7% (about 5 minutes per day) of daylight hours and indicated that ‘‘strong father–child attachments among the Efe were uncommon.’’ Efe fathers were also not the secondary or even tertiary caregivers of their infants; several other females (older siblings, grandmother, mother’s sister) provided more care than fathers. Efe are different from Aka in several ways: Efe do not cooperatively net hunt (men hunt with bows and arrows or small traps), Efe spend less time in the forest, and very high infertility rates exist, so there are many other adult women without children available to help with child care. DISTANT FATHERS Harkness and Super (1992) conducted a comparative study of East African Kipsigis and U.S. Anglo middle-upper class fathers and their infants and young children (0 to 4 years). Kipsigis fathers were somewhat more likely to be present with their infants during the day than were U.S. fathers (35% vs. 24%), but Kipsigis fathers never engaged in direct caregiving during the first 4 years of the child’s life, while U.S. fathers provided 13 to 17% of the child’s direct care. Kipsigis fathers never fed, dressed, bathed, or carried the infant outside the house. Kipsigis believe that the infant can be damaged by the strength of the father’s gaze and the father’s masculinity can be compromised by the dirtiness of the infant. When fathers were present with their infants, Kipsigis and U.S. fathers’ activities were quite different. When present, U.S. fathers were actively involved with their children 24 to 46% of the time (e.g., bed and bath routines, story-telling, playing, etc.), while Kipsigis fathers were more likely to be watching the child or talking with others. Harkness and Super also described parental ideologies in the two cultures and suggested that the different ideologies motivated and explained the observed differences in Kipsigis and U.S. father–child interactions. Kipsigis fathers viewed their roles as primarily economic—to provide school fees and cover expenses when their children were sick. Fathers also felt that they were responsible for disciplining their children and making sure their children were obedient, especially regarding when to conduct chores, deferent, and respectful of others, especially those older than they. American fathers, however, emphasized the importance of developing a close emotional relationship with their children as well as stimulating their cognitive development. They felt that bedtime and playtime were good times to develop this emotional relationship and also provide educational stimulation. MULTIPLE FATHERS The foregoing research and descriptions of intimate and distant fathers assumed that each infant had one father. Research methods, be they

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behavioral observations of infants with fathers or informal interviews with fathers, assume that each child has one father. Most Euro-Americans, including researchers, assume that each child has a single, generally biological, father. In order to further illustrate the diverse ways in which fatherhood can be culturally constructed, the next section briefly describes cultures where it is common for a child to have more than one father. Beckerman and Valentine (2002) describe multiple fatherhood in foraging and farming communities in several lowland South American cultures. Beckerman and his colleagues conducted research with South American groups where women had sexual relations with one or more men other than their husband and each of these men became a social father and contributed to the child in a variety of ways (e.g., feeding, holding, training). A common belief is that it takes regular amounts of sperm for a fetus to grow, and that it is not unusual that more than one man may contribute to the growth of the fetus. Beckerman calls this partible paternity. Hill and Hurtado (1996, pp. 249–250) describe partible paternity among the Ache of Paraguay. A man (or men) who was frequently having intercourse with a woman at the time when ‘‘her blood ceased to be found’’ is considered to be the real father of the child. . . . These primary fathers are most likely to be the ones who take on a serious parenting role. . . . Secondary fathers are also generally acknowledged and can play an important role in the subsequent care of a child. . . . Secondary fathers include all those men who had sexual intercourse with a woman during the year prior to giving birth (including during pregnancy) and the man who is married to a woman when her child is born.

Beckerman and Valentine (2002) reanalyzed Hill and Hurtado’s (1996) Ache data on multiple fathers and found that 70% of children with only one father survived to age 10, while 85% of children with primary and secondary fathers survived to age 10. Kinship terms also reflected the belief in secondary fathers as the Matis use the term ebutamute for fathers, which translates to ‘‘he with whom I procreate’’ (Erickson, 2002). Beckerman and Valentine also conducted detailed reproductive interviews with the Bari, a culture they had worked with for several years, and found that having a secondary father did not assist with child survival after birth, but it did increase the probability that a woman with an identified secondary father before childbirth was more likely to produce a child and that child was more likely to survive to age 15. Secondary fathers among the Bari provided meat, fish, and other food items to the pregnant woman, and this in turn increased child survival. Beckerman utilizes multiple fathers’ data to question/reject evolutionary paternity certainty theory, as discussed earlier in the evolutionary section. Paternity certainty is low in these cultures, but several fathers invest in the same child. Hrdy (1999) pointed out that females may use males’ concern over paternity certainty to increase support for her and her child from several men. If a few men are led to believe that they are potentially the fathers of the child, they are likely to make some investment in the child. The South American cultures with the highest frequencies of multiple fatherhood are matrilocal, with weak male-control ideologies. In other words, where patriarchy is weak

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multiple fatherhood is more common. Where patriarchy is strong it is more difficult for women to have or acknowledge sexual relations with someone other than the husband. PASTORAL FATHERS Ethnographers have noted high levels of father–child care in several pastoral groups; however, few researchers have systematically examined the quality or quantity of father–child interaction in these cultures. In a rare case where specific parenting behaviors in a traditionally pastoral population was examined, Navajo fathers were reported to be intimately involved in child care (Abraham, Christopherson, & Kuehl, 1984). Navajo children evaluated parental behaviors through the Cornell Parent Behavior Inventory (Devereux, Bronfenbrenner, & Rodgers, 1969), which examined parental behavior along four dimensions: supportive, demanding, controlling, and punishment styles. Navajo children rated Navajo parents as: (1) having greater similarity in parenting styles; (2) more protective (a subscale of controlling); and (3) more likely to deprive children of privileges than their Anglo-American child counterparts. Navajo fathers were rated significantly higher on affective punishment, but lower on physical punishment than Navajo mothers by both boys and girls. Navajo fathers’ affective punishment styles (fathers were found to use guilt or shame to correct a child’s behavior) was explained by the sentiment of ‘‘other-directedness’’ in Navajo culture, that is, the extent to which behavior is controlled by the opinions of others. Other-directedness is an important cultural quality, and paternal behaviors such as shame and guilt may be used as techniques for instilling and perpetuating this quality, since they expose the individual to the disapproval of others (Kluckholn & Leighton, 1962). Interestingly, Navajo daughters reported greater nurturance (a subscale of supportiveness) from fathers and experienced significantly more instrumental companionship from fathers than did Navajo boys. Additionally, both Navajo mothers and fathers placed significantly greater achievement demands on Navajo girls than on boys. That parents from a matrilineal society would place greater achievement demands on daughters rather than sons is not unpredictable, especially if matriliny represents a form of daughter-biased parental investment (Holden, Sear, & Mace, 2003). An unusual feature of the Navajo case study is that it represents such a small segment of all pastoral societies: those that are matrilineal and involve high levels of father–child care. Of the approximately 242 pastoral or agro-pastoral societies, only 19 are matrilineal (Aberle, 1961). SUMMARY The four ethnographic examples described in this section provide more examples of the two general theoretical orientations. The South American multiple fathers and the Kipsigis distant fathers illustrate ‘‘cultural’’ explanations for father–child relations. Beliefs and practices in multiple fatherhood exist in Lowland South America, but seldom, if ever, in other parts of the world. This suggests demic diffusion of this belief and practice in Lowland

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South America. It may have been adaptive when it was initiated in a particular group, but it demically diffused and may or may not be adaptive. Harkness and Super (1992) emphasized cultural ideology to explain why Kipsigis fathers are distant. Their distant fathering style is also common to several sub-Saharan cultures described in the cross-cultural section of this chapter and consistent with an emphasis on culture rather than adaptation. Certainly, local and individual variations and adaptations exist within these cultures, but the nature of father–child interactions in these groups are affected by culture history and transmission. By contrast, the research on the Aka and Navaho provides examples of adaptationist explanation for father–child relations. Aka fathers are frequently around their infants, in part, because of net hunting, which in turn contributes to higher (by comparison to foragers when men go out and hunt and women go gathering) levels of husband–wife reciprocity in a wide range of activities, including childcare. Aka fathers are more intimate with their infants than other hunter-gatherer groups because of particular adaptations to local conditions (i.e., active women’s role in net hunting, close husband–wife relations). Navaho fathers are involved in the care of sons and daughters in part due to their matrilineal system (i.e., less wealth accumulation in matrilineal cultures). CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION This chapter described cross-cultural variability in father’s role. Aka fathers held or were within an arm’s reach of their infants about half of the day while Kipsigis fathers generally did not provide direct care to children until the fourth or fifth year of the child’s life. Part of this variability was explained by factors associated with mode of production (accumulation of wealth, women’s role in subsistence, frequency of warfare, husband–wife relations) or cultural ancestry and diaspora (demic diffusion and conservative mechanisms of cultural transmission and acquisition). Hunter-gatherer fathers were more likely to be involved with children in comparison to fathers in any other mode of production. In terms of cultural diaspora and demic diffusion, fathers with African, in particular, Bantu cultural ancestry were the least likely to have involved fathers, while cultures with Southeast Asian and Pacific Island ancestry were most likely to have involved fathers. Although data were presented to support these generalizations, data were also presented that demonstrated enormous variability between huntergatherers groups (e.g., Efe fathers were not very involved) and variability within cultures (e.g., Aka father holding ranged from 2% to 20% of daylight hours). Regional, local, individual, and contexts and histories influenced this diversity. In terms of styles of father–child interactions, fathers’ physical rough-andtumble play, characteristic of many urban industrial cultures, was infrequent among Aka fathers, suggesting that vigorous play was not necessary, biological, or the universal way by which infants became attached to fathers. Aka infant attachment to fathers seems to occur through regular and sensitive caregiving.

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Finally, human behavioral ecological studies suggested that father involvement may be strategic and at least some aspects of father involvement were mating effort rather than parenting effort. Partible paternity, active stepfathers, and men’s extensive giving of food items to nonbiological children in hunter-gatherer cultures, indicated that fathers (and men in general) may enhance their reproductive fitness by providing food, care, defense and other forms of investment to children who were not biologically related to them. Men may invest in children in these contexts to attract new mates or keep an existing mate. OBSERVATIONS AND FUTURE STUDIES There are several limitations to existing studies of fathers in hunter-gatherer and other small-scale cultures. None of the studies systematically evaluated how these different levels of involvement affect the child’s social, emotional, cognitive or moral development. Obviously, systematic research in these cultures is desperately needed. Hewlett’s research and observations of children in a diversity of African cultures as well as statements from huntergatherer ethnographers from around the world, suggest that most children in foraging, farming and pastoral cultures are socially, emotionally, cognitively and morally competent regardless of whether fathers are intimate or distant. For instance, the first author has lived with intimate Aka foragers fathers and distant Ngandu farmer fathers for 35 years, and children in both groups appear to be more self-assured, secure, and competent than children of comparable ages in the United States. Why do so many child development studies in the United States and elsewhere indicate that father presence and involvement are so important to a child’s development? Research in contemporary stratified market economy cultures has focused on fathers, in part, because the family and social–economic contexts are so dramatically different from the cultures that characterized most of human history. Parents in capitalistic systems move away from extended family in search of higher education and higher paying jobs, but in so doing they isolate themselves from extended family and close friends. Mothers and fathers want to move up the economic ladder and tend to have fewer children, in part, because they no longer live with extended family, where they can obtain regular, economically reasonable quality care. Less time is also spent around children because men’s and women’s workplaces do not permit children. Hunter-gatherer children, however, grow up with a wide range of caregivers (e.g., grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles, siblings, clan members, etc.) who know the child well. Aka fathers are very involved in direct care, but so are many other caregivers, since infants and young children are held most of the day. Western parents moving away from the extended family also leads to another relatively unusual cross-cultural pattern—husband and wife rely heavily on each other for social–emotional support. Aka couples spend a lot of time together, but both men and women tend to spend most of their time talking to members of the same gender; their social–emotional support comes from many others. Father involvement in contemporary urban–industrial cultures may be especially important to healthy social,

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emotional, cognitive, and moral development of children, but this may be due to a relatively unusual (by cross-cultural standards) family context—isolation from extended family and lifelong friends. These relatively unique features of contemporary urban–industrial cultures help to explain why factors often associated with low father involvement in cross-cultural studies (e.g., high material accumulation and high population density) in small-scale cultures do not apply. The United States, Canada, Australia, and many European nations have experienced increases in father–child care from the 1960s to present (Bianchi, 2000; Gauthier, Smeedeng, & Furstenberg, 2004; Gray & Anderson, n.d.). The isolation of the family and the increasing importance of husband–wife relations in these settings contribute to the increases in father involvement. The cross-cultural studies do indicate that father’s role will increase when females provide more resources to the family and husband– wife relationships are close, both of which have increased in urban–industrial cultures in the past 30 years. Another feature of contemporary urban–industrial cultures is that parents can be very involved and sensitive caregivers and develop their child’s sense of trust with self and others, but once the child moves into formal schooling and starts a living in the cultural system, he or she must deal with inequality on a daily basis (see Chapter 4 for further discussion). Students are ranked from higher to lower, and must learn to respond to social– economic inequality, such as being deferent to those who have higher rank or more resources. Those who succeed in the system tend to feel better than others and expect more from others. Those who have difficulty may feel unsure about themselves and others. One learns to be deferent toward those who have more resources or success. By comparison, hunter-gatherer children move into a system where ranking is actively discouraged and trust of self and others continues throughout childhood. Farmers and pastoralists rank by age and gender, but it is within a familiar context throughout childhood. Context also influences how fathers acquire their parenting skills and helps to explain, in part, why Aka father caregiving lacks the vigorous play found in urban–industrial cultures. As mentioned earlier, most urban–industrial fathers learn to parent from specialists and trial and error. By comparison, a characteristic feature of hunter-gatherers is that their population density is low, but their living density is high. A group of 25 hunter-gatherers often live within a 400- to 800-square-foot area. This mean everyone sees how to care for children and someone is quickly informed if they hold, clean, or feed a child in an inappropriate way. This leads to consistency of care from a large range of individuals, including fathers. The limited data presented in this chapter suggest that father involvement must be viewed in context and that high father involvement is not natural or universal or even important in some contexts. Policy makers, in particular, need to consider, context, diversity and flexibility in fathers’ roles. Finally, this discussion makes generalizations about fathers in huntergatherers and other cultures often to make points about the nature of father’s role in urban–industrial cultures. A problem with this is that it can make seem

References 431

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Ember, C., & Ember, M. (1994). War, socialization, and interpersonal violence. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 38(4), 620–646. Erickson, P. (2002). Several fathers in one’s cap: Polyandrous conception among the Panoan Matis (Amazon, Brazil). In S. Berkerman and P. Valentine (Eds.), Culture of Multiple Fathers: The Theory and Practice of Partible Paternity in Lowland South America (pp. 123–136). Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Flinn, M. V. (1988). Step and genetic parent/offspring relationships in a Caribbean village. Ethology and Sociobiology, 9, 335–369. Fouts, H. N. (2008). Father involvement with young children among the Aka and Bofi foragers. Cross-Cultural Research, 42(3), 290–312. Gauthier, A. H., Smeedeng, T. M., & Furstenberg, F. F., Jr. (2004). Are parents investing less time in children? Trends in selected industrialized countries. Population and Development Review, 30, 647–671. Gettler, L. T. (in press). Direct male care and Hominin evolution: Why male-child interaction is more than a nice social idea. American Anthropologist. Goody, J. (1973). Brideweath and dowry in African and Eurasia. In J. R. Goody & S. J. Tambiah (Eds.), Bridewealth and dowry. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Gray, P., & Anderson, K.G. (2010). Fatherhood: The Evolution of Human Paternal Care. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Harkness, S., & Super, C. M. (1992) The cultural foundations of fathers’ roles: Evidence from Kenya and the United States. In B. S. Hewlett (Ed.), Father–child relations: Cultural and biosocial perspectives (pp. 191–212). New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Hawkes, K., O’Connell, J. F., & Blurton-Jones (2001). Hunting and nuclear families. Current Anthropology 42, 681–710. Hewlett, B. S. (1988) Dad and cad strategies: Father’s role in human evolution. Paper presented at Evolution and Human Behavior Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Hewlett, B. S. (1991). Intimate fathers. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Hewlett, B. S. (1992). Husband–wife reciprocity and the father–infant relationship among Aka pygmies. In B.S. Hewlett (Ed.), Father–child relations: Cultural and biosocial perspectives (pp. 153–176). New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Hewlett, B. S., & Hannon, N. (1989) Myths about ‘‘natural’’ childbirth. Paper delivered at annual meeting of the Society for Cross-Cultural Research. New Haven, CT. Hewlett, B.S., de Silvertri, A. & Gugliemino, C.R. (2002) Semes and genes in Africa. Current Anthropology 43, 313–321. Hill, K., & Hurtado, M. (1996) Ache life history: The ecology and demography of a foraging people. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Holden, C. J., Sear, R., & Mace, R. (2003). Matriliny as daughter-biased investment. Evolution and Human Behavior, 24, 99–112. Hrdy, S. B. (1999). Mother nature: Maternal instincts and how they shape the human species. New York: Ballantine Books. Huber, B. R., & Breedlove, W. L. 2007. Evolutionary theory, kinship, and childbirth in cross-cultural perspective. Cross-Cultural Research, 41, 196–219. Kaplan, H. S., Lancaster, J. B., Bock, J. A., & Johnson, S. E. (1995). Does observed fertility maximize fitness among New Mexican men? A test of an optimality model and a new theory of parental investment in the embodied capital of off-spring. Human Nature, 6, 325–360. Katz, M. M., & Konner, M. L. (1981). The role of father: An anthropological perspective. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of father in child development (2nd ed., pp. 155–181). New York: Wiley. Kluckholn, C., & Leighton, D. (1962). The Navajo. Garden City, NY: Doubleday

References 433 Kleiman, D.G., & Malcolm, J.R. (1981). The evolution of male parental investment in mammals. In D.J. Gubernick and P.H. Klopfer (Eds.) Parental Care in Mammals. New York: Plenum. Lamb, M. E. (Ed.). (1981). The role of the father in child development (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley. Lancaster, J.B., Altman, J, Rossi, A.S., & Sherrod, L.R. (1987). Parenting Across the Lifespan. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine Lappan, S. (2008). Male care of infants in a siamang (Symphalangus syndactylus) population including socially monogamous and polyandrous groups. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 62(8), 1307–1317. LaRossa, R., & LaRossa, M. M. (1982). Transition to parenthood: How infants change families. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Lozoff, B., & Brittenham, G. (1979). Infant care: Cache or carry. Journal of Pediatrics, 95, 478–483. Mackey, W. C., & Day, R. (1979). Some indicators of fathering behaviors in the United States: A cross-cultural examination of adult male–child interaction. Journal of Marriage and Family, 41, 287–299. Marlowe, F. (1999). Showoffs or providers? The parenting effort of Hadza men. Evolution and Human Behavior, 20, 391–404. Marlowe, F. (2000). Paternal investment and the human mating system. Behavioural Processes, 51, 45–61. Mason, C. & Elwood, R. 1995. Is there a physiological basis for the couvades and onset of paternal care? International Journal of Nursing Studies 32: 137–148. Meehan, C. L. (2005). The effects of residential locality on parental and alloparental investment among the Aka Foragers of the Central African Republic. Human Nature, 16(1), 58–80. Munroe, R. L., Munroe, R. H., & Whiting, J. W. M. (1973). The couvades: A psychological analysis. Ethos, 1, 30–94. Morelli, G. A., & Tronick, E. Z. (1992). Male care among Efe foragers and Lese farmers. In B. S. Hewlett (Ed.), Father–child relations: Cultural and biosocial perspectives (pp. 231–262). New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Nsamenang, B. A. (1992) Perceptions of parenting among the Nso of Cameroon. In B. S. Hewlett (Ed.), Father–child relations: Cultural and biosocial perspectives (pp. 321– 344). New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Noss, A. & Hewlett, B.S. (2001). The contexts of female hunting in central Africa. American Anthropologist 103, 1024–1040. Paige, K. E., & Paige, J. M. (1981). The politics of reproductive ritual. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sanchez, S., Pelaez, F., Gil-Burmann, A., and Kaumanns, W. (1999). Costs of infantcarrying in the cotton-top tamarin (Saguinus oedipus). American Journal of Primatology, 48(2), 99–111. Scelza, B. A. (in press). Father’s presence speeds the social and reproductive careers of sons. Current Anthropology. Sear, R. & Mace, R. 2008. Who keeps children alive? A review of the effect of kin on child survival. Evolution and Human Behavior 29, 1–18. Smuts, B. B., & Gubernick, D. J. (1992) Male–infant relationships in nonhuman primates: Paternal investment or mating effort? In B. S. Hewlett (Ed.), Father– child relations: Cultural and biosocial perspectives (pp. 1–30). New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Tardif, S. D. (1994). Relative energetic cost of infant care in small-bodied neotropical primates and its relation to infant-care patterns. American Journal of Primatology, 34(2), 133–143.

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Van Schaik, C. P., & Paul, A. (1996). Male care in primates: Does it ever reflect paternity? Evolutionary Anthropology, 5, 152–156. Veneziano, R. A. (2003). The importance of paternal warmth. Cross-Cultural Research, 37, 265–281. Winking, J., Gurven, M., Kaplan, H., & Stieglitz, J. (2009). The goals of direct paternal care among a South Amerinidian population. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 139, 295–304.

CHAPTER 15

Fatherhood in the Context of Immigration RONI STRIER and DORIT ROER-STRIER

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HE STUDY OF immigrant fathers is of special interest for several reasons. First, their numbers are growing rapidly. Globalization processes have increased the magnitude of this population that cannot be ignored. Second, immigration is a crucial transition for fathers and represents a serious challenge to their families’ well-being (Chuang & Moreno, 2008). Third, fatherhood is a complex, dynamic, multifaceted construction that is highly affected by the social and cultural context. Therefore, the study of the impact of immigration on fathers and fathering practices might help the general comprehension of fatherhood as a socially and culturally negotiated construction (Roopnarine, 2002). Despite its critical relevance, the study of immigrant fathers is still very incipient. Whereas the current core of research on immigrant families focuses primarily on mothers and children, the study of fatherhood in the context of immigration was neglected. In this chapter we highlight the need for relevant studies to provide the ground for developing integrative theories, competent practices and services, and responsive policies. The chapter is organized around three sections. It starts by introducing the debate between opposing theoretical approaches: the ‘‘deficit perspective’’ and the ‘‘generative/resilience’’ perspective, approaches utilized so far in the study of immigrant fathers. The second section of the chapter, ‘‘Immigrant Fathers: Effects of Immigration,’’ summarizes the body of knowledge gained through the study of immigrant fathers and families around main research questions: Who are the immigrant fathers? How does immigration affect immigrant fathers’ identities? How does immigration affect fathers’ roles and practices? How does immigration affect father–child relations, child outcomes, and child socialization? The third section of the chapter, ‘‘Immigrant Fathers: Methodological Challenges,’’ outlines various scholars’ critiques and suggestions related to

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methodological issues in immigrant fathers’ studies. In this framework, we discuss challenges of sampling and recruitment; research design and analysis; a call for discovering more fathering constructs and dynamics; and the need for longitudinal, comparative, multilevel, and multidisciplinary studies. The chapter concludes with practical implications and conclusions. IMMIGRANT FATHERS: A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Studies on immigrant fathers reflect two opposing theoretical approaches: the deficit perspective and the generative/resilience perspective. The deficit perspective focuses on the negative effects of immigration on fathers. This approach stresses the notion that immigration challenges the stability and continuity of fathers’ roles, identities, and well-being. This theoretical approach perceives immigration predominantly as a source of stress and a risk factor for families and children (Bourgois, 1998; Dettlaff & Rycraft, 2006; Perez Foster, 2001; Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 2001). Immigration is associated with various degrees of psychological distress. Empirical evidence shows that immigration is related to depression, anxiety, and somatic symptoms (e.g., Berry, 1992). The classical immigration literature links risk factors with ‘‘culture shock.’’ The multisourced stressors that the acculturation process in the host country imposes on families are associated with psychological and cultural crisis, deterioration of health, social difficulties, and emotional and physical burnout (Lerner, Kertes, & Zilber, 2005). Immigrants must cope with the practical challenges of everyday life (e.g., Searle & Ward, 1990), while learning the norms and values of the new culture (e.g., Kurman & Ronen-Eilon, 2004). Hernandez and McGoldrick (1999) claim that immigration initiates a process of extended change and adaptation in all of parents’ life domains. These changes include adjusting to a new home, social environment, language, culture, place of work, and profession. Often, economic, social, and familial support systems are also undermined. Previously supportive social constructs that have the potential to help immigrants cope with the new challenges they face, such as family structure and relationships, may also undergo tremendous changes. Under such circumstances, fathers’ physical and psychological health, selfimage, ability to withstand stress, and anxiety levels may all be challenged. Although many immigrant fathers are unemployed for some time—and are ostensibly more available to their children—the role change, lack of experience in certain parental functions, and crisis brought about by cultural change often impair their paternal functioning. Sluzki (1992) states that children’s rapid integration and wives’ early incorporation into the host labor force may represent a threat to father; status and family stability. The decline in selfesteem due to unemployment, poverty, and loss of social status has been linked to higher rates of depression and acute feelings of grief, loss, guilt, isolation and marginalization, increased alcohol intake, and a rise in punishing and neglectful behavior toward children (Robertson, 1992; Shimoni, Este, & Clark, 2003). Robertson (1992), and others have documented the trauma induced by war and enforced refugee status with the incumbent feelings of uprootedness, loss, grief, and depression. The deficit perspective also views immigration as

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a source of risk for family cohesion, family functioning, and family relations (Berry, 2005; Kim, Gonzales, Stroh, & Wang, 2006; Shor, 1999). According to this view, immigration undermines the father’s capacity to perform fathering roles (Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 2001). This approach relies also on studies that show that immigrant fathers face serious economic, cultural, and gender challenges as a result of their immigration experiences (Behnke, Taylor, & Parra-Cardona, 2008; Pessar, 2003). Suarez-Orozco, Todorova, and Louie (2002) state that immigrant parents’ grief may be manifested in sadness, guilt, and anxiety over the separation. Fathers tend to expect their children to be grateful for their sacrifices, but instead often find that their children are ambivalent about the migratory process (Sciarra, 1999). Fathers often report difficulties in reasserting control over their children (Arnold, 1991). At the individual level, attachment difficulties have been noted because children may withdraw from the parents with whom they are reunited (Wilkes, 1992). The second theoretical approach, the generative/resilience perspective, portrays immigration as positively related to family cohesion and outcomes for children (Boyd, 2002; Cohen & Haberfeld, 2003; Treas & Mazumda, 2004). In contrast to the deficit perspective of immigration, some studies show no significant differences between the mental health of immigrant children and their counterparts (Zhou & Bankston, 1996) and predict that racial and ethnic gaps in immigrant children’s educational achievement and attainment will narrow over time by every measure available to social scientists (Kao & Thompson, 2003). In Lee, Jung, Su, Tran, and Brahrassa’s (in press) study, Hmong-American adolescents who reported greater family conflict were found less likely to engage at risk behaviors and were more likely to have completed their first year of college. This set of findings runs counter to the prevailing deficit theory that links family conflict with negative outcomes for children. Lee et al. argue for attention to gender difference. They state that for men, family conflict may be a sign of greater concern and investment of parents in their sons’ academic lives. This parental pressure for HmongAmerican men to succeed academically may deter them from engaging in certain delinquent behaviors and encourage them to persist in college. Paradoxically, then, family conflict may serve to some extent as a protective factor for Hmong-American men. According to the generative/resilience perspective, families are capable of furnishing lasting and significant amounts of emotional and practical support for their members. Extended family living arrangements among different ethnic groups represent a resource-generating strategy for caring for young children and older adults (Blank & Torrecilha, 1998). In some contexts, immigrant families seem to have stronger family ties and even higher income than their nonimmigrant counterparts (Basavarajappa & Halli, 1997). Acculturation studies also emphasize the way some immigrants successfully fuse the old and new to create a new kind of family life. Instead of the pessimistic prophecy of family disintegration, studies reflect the myriad ways in which new immigrant family patterns are shaped and strengthened by cultural meanings and social practices brought from their home countries, as well as by social, economic, and cultural forces in the host country (Foner, 1997).

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Drawing on the generative/resilience perspective, studies have shown that immigration might provide fathers with better social and economic conditions to perform their roles. Strier and Roer-Strier (2005), in a comparative study of former Soviet Union and Ethiopian immigrant fathers in Israel, found that in both groups ‘‘immigration was perceived as an opportunity to give new meanings to traditional roles and to re-interpret previous definitions of fatherhood’’ (pp. 130). In a comparative study of immigrant fathers from 10 different cultural backgrounds in Canada and Israel, Roer-Strier, Strier, Este, Shimoni, and Clark (2005) found that fathers, regardless of their cultural background, stressed the new opportunities and resources the new countries offered them and their children and were optimistic about their families’ possibilities and future. Immigrant fathers who escaped from countries with political dictatorship regimes stressed the positive experience of living safely in democracy, and others found in immigration the ‘‘opportunity to re-invent themselves as fathers and men’’ (Roer-Strier et al., 2005, pp. 323). Perreira, Chapman, and Stein (2006) suggest that two of the recurring themes in interviews with Latino immigrant fathers in the United States are related to overcoming new challenges and finding new strengths. In their study, immigrant fathers discussed the challenges experienced and strengths gained as a result of overcoming fears of the unknown; navigating unfamiliar work, school, and neighborhood environments; encountering and confronting racism; and losing family connections. Research on parenting and child development in immigrant families has been stunted by a comparative paradigm that sees children of immigrants as biologically or culturally deficient and contrasts their development with local-born children. Only few researchers have examined parenting practices and development in immigrant families taking a relativistic or culture-based approach. Kwak (2003) and Vazsonyi, Trejos-Castillo, and Huang (2006) have argued for the need to conduct cross-cultural comparative studies that could enhance our understanding of family interactions and youth outcomes in immigrants and whether immigration affects family processes, as well as associated child adjustment. Research on immigrant families has also been criticized for lacking an integrative perspective and failing to examine the roles that contextual, racial, and cultural factors play in the formation of parenting strategies and child development (Garcia Coll & Szalacha, 2004; Harwood, Leyendecker, Carlson, Asencio & Miller, 2002). Garcia Coll et al. (1996) accepted the challenge to develop an integrative model for the study of fatherhood in immigration. Their model integrates ecological systems (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1986) with social stratification theory in an attempt to describe the processes by which macrosocial factors influence parenting and developmental processes in children of immigrant families. According to this model, social, family, and child factors mutually influence one another and the child’s developmental competencies, emphasizing the significance of racism, prejudice, discrimination, oppression, and segregation for the development of children and families (Este & Tachble, in press; Perreira et al., 2006).

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IMMIGRANT FATHERS: EFFECTS OF IMMIGRATION The importance of the family in immigration processes is vital (Rumbaut, 1997; Zhou, 2003). Immigration is a family venture (Foner, 1997; Portes & Rumbaut, 2001; Suarez-Orozco, Lansford, Deater-Deckard, & Bornstein, 2009). Families tend to cluster together in ethnic communities that remain family centered (Parrillo, 1991). However, not all families immigrate as units, and others do so in a ‘‘stepwise’’ fashion (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1992). Historically, the pattern was for the man to migrate first, establish himself while sending remittances home, and then send for his wife and children as soon as it was financially possible. Before 1993, 50 to 55% of the total global immigrant population were men, but since 1993, the proportion of women who often immigrate to care for the elderly and for other people’s children has increased and is consistently over half (Zhou, 2003; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1992). In cases where mothers initiate immigration, they may leave their children in the care of the fathers and extended family, such as grandparents or aunts. In many other cases, both parents migrate, leaving the children in the care of the extended family. Despite the great variety of immigration patterns, the family remains the main unit of analysis in most immigration studies. The reason for this centrality lies in the fact that the family still provides the security and emotional reliance to sustain immigrant endeavors in a new and potentially antagonistic culture. The following section summarizes the body of knowledge gained in the study of immigrant fathers and families around four main questions: Who are the immigrant fathers? How does immigration affect immigrant fathers’ identities? How does immigration affect fathers’ roles and practices? How does immigration affect father–child relations, child outcomes, and child socialization? WHO ARE

THE IMMIGRANT

FATHERS?

The magnitude of contemporary immigration is changing the social ecology of the entire world (Kandel & Massey, 2002; UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2006). The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs estimates that in 2005, 3% of the world’s population—about 191 million people—lived in a country other than the one in which they were born, with 33% having moved from a developing to a developed country, 33% moving between developing nations, and another 33% having moved from a developed country to another developed nation. The immigrant fathers’ population is a highly heterogeneous group and reflects the multiplicity of the immigration experience. Traditionally, immigrant fathers were defined as those fathers who live with their dependent children (biological or stepchildren), who themselves were born outside the host country, and/or who live with a foreign-born wife (Hernandez & Brandon, 2004). Today, there is a growing understanding that the immigrant fathers’ population is highly diverse. Immigrant fathers’ population may include fathers who immigrate in the frame of family reunification, which refers to processes of bringing in immediate family members (children,

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spouses, and parents and others when permitted) by the primary immigrant. An additional category of immigrant fathers is fathers who immigrated as part of a process of family immigration, marriage immigration, or family formation (Kofman, 2004). Pleck (2008) stresses the need to consider a more integrative definition of the immigrant father and suggests going beyond the traditional definitions. He proposes to expand the limits of this definition to include fathers whose children were born inside the host country and those with some of each. He also recommends expanding the definition to include immigrant fathers with adult children. In addition, a definition of immigrant fathers that reflects the variety within the father population should incorporate immigrant fathers who plan to bring minor children to live with them, divorced or separated fathers whose minor children are residing elsewhere, and fathers born and living abroad, whose children reside in another country. This definition should be broad enough to include foreign-born fathers who may or may not be the biological fathers of the minor children in their households. Likewise, it should take into account foreign-born fathers with minor resident children, who may or may not have a resident coparent, to whom they may be married or not. To the category of native-born fathers married to foreign-born resident females, Pleck also recommends adding those native-born fathers who reside with children of a foreign-born resident female partner who is not their wife. Finally, Pleck believes that those studying immigrant fathers should be explicit about whether their samples include subgroups such as teen fathers, incarcerated or formerly incarcerated fathers, gay fathers, fathers of children with special needs and fathers with special needs themselves, and primary caregiving fathers. HOW DOES IMMIGRATION AFFECT FATHERS’ IDENTITIES? Fatherhood as a complex, dynamic, multifaceted phenomenon is highly affected by cultural, social, and economic changes (Lamb & Tamis-LeMonda, 2004; LaRossa, 1997; Roopnarine, 2004). Research suggests that parenting of immigrants becomes organized around identity, a theme extensively discussed in the literature (Leonard, 1997; Pettys & Balgopal, 1998; Srinivasan, 2001). For example, the ways in which fathers attribute meanings to their cultural identity (such as the meaning of being South Asian in the United States) seem to affect parental life choices, parental expectations, and caretaking behavior, as well as influencing their children’s career choice, sexual behavior, dating, and marriage (Deepak, 2005). In the eyes of the immigrant father, immigration may be viewed as a ‘‘cultural identity project.’’ Research on immigrant fathers shows that the impact of immigration of fathers’ cultural identities is not uniform and depends on multiple background characteristics and context variables. One of the main background characteristics to be taken into consideration for understanding the impact of immigration on fathers’ identity is related to the type of family to which the fathers belong. For instance, one factor to consider is whether the men came married, or got married in the host country to a native woman from the same ethnic origin or from a different ethnic background. Charsley (2005) found that the frustrations experienced by immigrant Pakistani men to the United

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Kingdom, who married British-born Pakistani women, may help to explain instances where such marriages have ended in the husband’s violence, desertion, or taking a second wife. The impact of immigration on fathers’ identities may also vary according to the length of immigration. Acculturation, language proficiency, and integration into the labor market are key factors in understanding immigrant fathers’ experiences, and all of these factors are incremental along time. Therefore, the effects of immigration should be understood within a temporal perspective. However, most of the immigrant fathers’ research focuses on ‘‘new’’ immigrants and less on ‘‘old’’ immigrants. In addition, due to the lack of longitudinal studies, we know little about the evolution and changes of fathers’ cultural identities over a period of time. Among the various contextual variables, societal attitudes are also of great importance to the understanding of the impact of immigration on fathers’ cultural identities. In some societies, immigration is an integral part of the fathers’ country of origin history. In these societies, immigration is part of the common cultural scripts and traditional life trajectories of several generations of fathers. In these migrant societies, fathers and families in general are more prepared and better predisposed to face the changes associated with immigration, whereas immigrant fathers from nontraditional migrant countries are faced with the need to invent their cultural identities and develop new coping styles. Immigrant fathers from nontraditional migration countries or fathers coming from societies with a negative attitude toward immigration might be more prone to social isolation and to experiencing the immigration process with a sense of separation and cultural dislocation than fathers coming from societies with long migration traditions. Generally, immigration processes confront immigrant fathers with the challenge of building a new identity that integrates their old and new being (e.g., Berry, 1992; Kurman, Eshel, & Zehavi, 2005; Phinney, 1990; Phinney, Horenczyk, Liebkind, & Vedder, 2001). The greater the cultural similarity and closeness between the origin and host country, the less fathers are confronted with the need to renegotiate their father identities and to change fathering practices. Taylor and Behnke (2005) utilize a symbolic interactionist framework and ecological theory to illustrate the cultural nature of fatherhood constructions, the impact of immigration on patterns of change and continuity in paternal behaviors and values, and the importance of intergenerational influences in the formation of fatherhood perceptions. The authors suggested focusing on the complex cultural nature of fatherhood. While both mothers and fathers transmit values of cultural competences and identity (Costigan & Dokis, 2006; Killian & Hegtvedt, 2003), fathers were found to contribute differently to the formation of children’s cultural identity than mothers (Killian & Hegtvedt). In addition, the emotional climate of the family and the coherence of parental values were found to form the context of the transmission of identity (Knafo & Schwartz, 2001; Schonpflug, 2001). As noted earlier in the theoretical section, one of the main critics of immigrant father research is the dichotomist way in which fathers are studied. Osella and Osella (2000), who have documented the experiences of immigrant men in Kerala, South India, warn us against binary, unidimensional, and essentialist

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analysis for interpreting the impact of immigration on the identity of immigrants and suggest an appreciation of hybridity, dislocation, and multiplicity. The incorporation of a theoretical approach that identifies immigrant fathers’ multiple cultural identities and challenges essentialist assumptions of immigrant families may help to counter dominant discourses and oppressive practices directed against immigrant fathers and their families. It is important to note that the negotiation of cultural identity may be carried out in the context of unfavorable power relations. Ethnic and racial minorities may be forced to negotiate the legitimacy of their cultural identities against a background of cultural discrimination. Concomitantly with changes in their cultural identity, immigration also generates notorious changes in immigrant fathers’ gender identities. In the same fashion as immigration is viewed as a ‘‘cultural identity project,’’ immigration may also be understood as a ‘‘gender identity project.’’ Gender shapes fathering roles and influences the status of adult immigrants in their countries of origin. In general, fathers desire to preserve these roles after migration. Studies showed evidence to the preservation of traditional roles following migration. For example, both Chinese-mainland and ChineseCanadian fathers were found to preserve former fathering practices in child care domain (Chuang & Su, in press; Qin, in press). Similar findings were reported for Mexican fathers by Updegraff (in press), Chuang and Su (in press); Cabrera, Shannon, Mitchell, and West (in press), and Tamis-LeMonda, Kahana Kalman, Yoshikawa, and Smith (in press). Tamis-LeMonda et al. (in press) observed that this distinction between maternal and paternal roles was established very early in the children’s lives, with the quality of the relationship between the fathers and mothers molding dynamics even before the children were born. Parenting practices of immigrant fathers are affected by several contextual factors. One of these factors is racism. Shek (2006) describes the ways in which racism erodes notions of masculinity of men from cultural minorities. Khalil (2007) shows how different political, religious, and ethnic discourses in Algeria inform alternative conceptions of colonized masculinities. EspanaMaram (2006), in a historical research, traces the role of popular culture in the lives of Filipino laborers as they worked out their ethnic and gender identities and created a new masculine working-class culture in Los Angeles’s Little Manila. Espana-Maram finds that Filipinos challenged the political marginalization that originated in U.S. imperialism in the Philippines and racist legislation on the mainland by flaunting heterosexual virility and contesting white supremacy in sporting arenas and taxi dance halls. HOW DOES IMMIGRATION AFFECT FATHERS’ ROLES

AND

PRACTICES?

Immigration may have a strong impact on paternal roles and practices. Strier and Roer-Strier (2005) found that Ethiopian fathers’ traditional child care roles were challenged by gender and cultural expectations in Israel. Ethiopian immigrant fathers reported that they felt confronted by the gender equality views and by new expectations to be more involved in child care and help children with their homework. Both Ethiopian and Russian fathers who were

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interviewed in this study reported that they wanted to preserve the roles and status they had in their home culture, but in the face of gender and cultural dominant views in Israel, they felt forced to change some of their traditional roles and became more engaged in direct child care following immigration to Israel. A central variable that was found in many studies to be crucial to immigrant fathers’ perceptions of their paternal role as well as to their family’s adjustment is paternal employment. This is especially evident in fathers who immigrated from traditional societies to Western countries where higher costs of living often force fathers to accept employment of considerably lower status, take jobs that are less well paid and work long hours, perhaps at multiple manual jobs (Lamb & Bougher, in press). Higher rates of unemployment and low earnings are more common among recent immigrants who are visible minorities, suggesting that racial discrimination may be compounding the difficulties new immigrants may experience (Omidvar & Richmond, 2003; Palameta, 2004). Immigration often means downward mobility for fathers and families when fathers’ previous labor experiences and accreditations are not recognized. Parke et al. (2004) found that immigrant fathers may experience high levels of economic hardship. According to the studies reviewed by Lamb and Bougher, these factors undermine the fathers’ self-perception as main breadwinners and heads of families, while simultaneously changing their wives’ and children’s perceptions of their status and success. The resultant shifts in family structure and dynamics, along with the associated stresses, can profoundly affect all the participants’ adjustment and threaten the masculine identity of the fathers. In addition, it is claimed that mothers and children are better able to engage with host cultures and thus often become familiar with them much more rapidly than the men. This can further hinder the men’s status, making them feel alienated and disrespected by society at large as well as by their own families (Lamb & Bougher, in press). Coltrane, Parke, and Adams (2004) illustrate how immigrant fathers who experience economic hardship show similar patterns of adjustment problems as their European-American counterparts, namely, increases in depression and marital problems, higher levels of harsh parenting, and, in turn, higher levels of internalizing and externalizing among their children. Another contextual variable that affects fathering practices refers to the host country’s attitudes toward immigration. A positive attitude to immigration may be expressed in pro-immigration policies, comprehensive services for immigrant families and tolerance for cultural differences. The existence of systemic support for immigrant families may help fathers and families to buffer the traumatic potential effects of immigration. In contrast, hostile attitudes toward immigration, which might be expressed in anti-immigration policies, lack of services and lack of rights for immigrants, discrimination, racism, and the existence of cultural stereotypes of immigrant families, may hinder immigrant fathers’ capacity to cope with the immigration experience. This antagonistic milieu for immigrant families represents an important variable that may negatively affect the likelihood of fathers to adapt to the

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new society and to perform positive and creative paternal roles. Este and Tachble (in press) studied Sudanese fathers in Canada. According to their findings, fathers were found to be very committed to their children, providing for them and ensuring that they take advantage of educational opportunities. However, expressions of racism in the labor market hindered their chances of attaining well-paid jobs and had a detrimental impact on the central role of breadwinners and providers. The fathers perceived racism as a source of stress and concern. G€ ung€ or and Bornstein (in press) have showed that Turkish immigrant males in Belgium face greater hostility and racism than immigrant females. HOW DOES IMMIGRATION AFFECT FATHER–CHILD RELATIONS, CHILD OUTCOMES, AND CHILD SOCIALIZATION? The growing body of literature suggests that the quality of the father–child relationship is of central importance to understanding how fathers influence child well-being and child outcomes (Palkovitz, 1997; Parke, 2000; Pleck, 1997). However, these studies have been limited in focus, exclusively examining local-born samples drawn primarily from white middle-class populations (Marsiglio, Amato, Day, & Lamb, 2000). Therefore, little is known about the association between immigrant fathers’ parenting, father–child relations, and child outcomes (Bronte-Tinkew, Moore, Capps, & Zaff, 2006). Studies suggest that relations between immigrant parents and their children are especially vulnerable to the risks of immigration (Brandon, 2002; Gratton, Gutmann, & Skop, 2007; Szapocznik & Kurtines, 1993). Immigrant fathers often discover that their children dress and behave according to the norms of the host society. When norms and codes differ dramatically, fathers’ relations with children can become stormy and may have a negative impact on the quality of father–child relations. Recent studies point to the complexity of studying the association between immigrant fathers and child outcomes. Crouter, Davis, Updegraff, Delgado, and Fortner (2006) call attention to the importance of including contextual variables, such as father’s workplace, and dynamic constructs such as level of acculturation, in outcome studies. They found that Mexican-American fathers’ wages and reports of racism in the workplace were related to family members’ (wives’ and children’s) psychological adjustment. Similarly, Sabatier (2008) calls for utilizing an ecological model in the study of paternal influence on children outcomes following immigration. She found in France that immigrant fathers and mothers contributed differently to ethnic and national identity in adolescents. Conflict with parents in general and fathers in particular affects children’s long-term adjustment. Interestingly, evidence showed differences for the effects related to gender of both parent and adolescent and ethnicity. Updegraff (in press) reported that father–adolescent conflict affected risk taking by Mexican immigrant females more than males in one study, whereas in another study involving adolescents of Mexican origin, Dumka, Gonzales, Bonds, and Millsap (in press) found that parental harshness was associated with classroom misbehavior by adolescent boys of Mexican origin, while maternal harshness was associated with problematic

Immigrant Fathers: Effects of Immigration 445

peer relationships, yet better school performance, by girls (Dumka et al.). Lee et al. (in press) reported that family conflict in Hmong immigrants to the United States were related to depression, anxiety, and somatic symptoms, as well as drug use and first-year college dropout. These authors looked for gender differences and found that for Hmong-American adolescents, conflicts with fathers had different effects on children than conflicts with mothers, and that the child’s gender and personality traits were also related to their adjustment outcomes. Although we examined studies that aim to assess the impact of immigration on fatherhood and child outcomes, critics state that much more work has to be done before we can develop a greater understanding based on empirical studies of how immigration affects family functioning and whether this, in turn, may or may not differentially have an impact on child development and adjustment (Phinney et al., 2001). Among the topics most studied in the area of the effects of immigration on children is the area of socialization. Scholars focus on the patterns of adaptation in parents’ socialization following immigration and on the misunderstandings and conflicts that arise from clashes between family and host culture’s socialization. Sabatier (2008) states that parents who decided to immigrate to improve their life and that of their children face possible conflicts between the need for cultural and self-continuity (the ontological dimension) and the need to adapt to the new environmental practical demands (the pragmatic dimension). Socialization goals embody the expectations that families hold for the future of their children. These goals are adapted to the conditions of particular contexts (Keller, 2007). In many studies that concerned immigrants’ socialization goals, differences within the socialization strategies used by fathers and mothers for daughters and sons were perceived (e.g., Navara & Lollis, in press; G€ ung€ or & Bornstein, in press). Shimoni et al. (2003) identified four typical socialization strategies of immigrant fathers. Drawing on Roer-Strier (1996) studies on patterns of immigrant parenting styles of socialization, Shimoni et al. metaphorically described four patterns. The kangaroo metaphor represents the ‘‘unicultural’’ style, which promotes conservation by fathers who see themselves as their children’s chief socializing agents and preserve the goals for socialization from their culture of origin. The cuckoo bird metaphor represents the ‘‘culturally disoriented’’ style, in which fathers tend to disqualify themselves as effective socializing agents after immigration and entrust their children to the formal and informal socializing agents of the host culture. The chameleon metaphor stands for the ‘‘bicultural’’ style, in which the father encourages the child to live peacefully with both cultures. An additional type of fathering style in immigration was recently defined, the ‘‘butterfly’’ type (Roer-Strier & Kurman, in press), which calls for quick assimilation of the child accompanied by a quick change in the parent’s socialization goals. These strategies can be different for fathers and mothers in the same family, and can change over time and in reaction to different social and cultural circumstances. Immigrant children are further socialized by more socialization systems in the host country, such as formal education, peers, and mass media. For immigrant fathers, questions as to the right ways for families to function and raise

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children become vital, especially in cases when the host culture values are in conflict with those of the immigrant family. This situation applies not only to first-generation immigrants, but also to following generations, since values— like parenting beliefs and socialization goals—need much more time to change than other cultural elements such as food, clothing, and language (Arends-Toth & Van de Vijver, 2006). Within an immigrant family, the acculturation orientations of each family member interact with the orientations of other members, and may influence the adaptation of the family as a whole (Sabatier, 2008; Sabatier & Berry, 2007; Szapocznik & Kurtines, 1993; Vatz Laaroussi, 2001). In situations where the cultural norms of home and school differ, the immigrant child often faces different, sometimes conflicting messages. Lee et al. (in press) argue that parents often selectively acculturate or assimilate in certain life domains. By contrast, children are more likely to acculturate across most life domains, as they are influenced not only by family but also by peers, school, media, and the larger society as a whole. Portes and Rumbaut (2001) labeled this acculturation discrepancy between parents and children as dissonant acculturation and suggested that it is a major risk factor and a source of problem behaviors because it relates to the breakdown of parent–child communication and to the lack of important familial resources and support. Other scholars suggested as well that family conflicts resulting from dissonant acculturation had long-term detrimental effects on family functioning (Weisner et al., 2001), on the success of the child’s integration into the education system, and on the development of immigrant children’s selfidentity (Liebkind, Jasinskaja-Lahti, & Solheim, 2004; L opez, 2001; Orr, Mana & Mana, 2003). In this section we aimed at summarizing the body of knowledge gained in the study of immigrant fathers and families around four main topics: (a) definition of the immigrant fathers’ population; (b) the impact of immigration on immigrant fathers’ identities; (c) immigration and fathers’ roles and practices; and (d) the impact of immigration on father–child relations, child outcomes, and child socialization. In reviewing the literature, both qualitative and quantitative studies were reported. In the next section we call attention to the special challenges found in immigrant fathers’ studies and suggest some ways to tackle them.

IMMIGRANT FATHERS: METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES Conducting research on immigrant fathers presents numerous challenges. Parke, Vega, Cookston, Perez, and Coltrane (2008) suggest moving beyond a single snapshot of the immigrant father. This will enable presentation of the multiple faces of this population and exploration of future possible directions for research, including a multidisciplinary focus, the endorsement of multilevel models of analysis, and innovations in sampling and design. Sampling and Recruitment. According to Pleck, a central issue is defining exactly who immigrant fathers are (see discussion in previous section) and

Immigrant Fathers: Methodological Challenges 447

how to recruit them. Recruitment of fathers for research purposes is usually conducted through mothers, opening for sampling biases. Immigrant fathers may be less accessible, available, or willing to take part in research. In some cases, it was found that undocumented immigrant fathers were hesitant to cooperate due to their legal status. Some of Pleck’s (2008) concerns regarding sampling are shared by Parke et al. They state the necessity of going beyond traditional random sampling procedures because such methods are unlikely to yield representative samples of immigrant families and to incorporate methods that promote recruitment, curb attrition, and facilitate participation among marginalized groups, such as participant action research methods and respondent-driven sampling methods. Research Design and Analysis. Pleck (2008) raises other methodological questions, such as who reports the data about immigrant fathering—fathers, mothers, or both? Is the sample representative, and how can one control for reporting biases (e.g., fathers who tend to magnify their involvement)? A multi-informant approach may reduce reporting bias, but entails selection bias that hinders generalization. Another critical design choice is whether to collect data about fathers only, or about both fathers and mothers. This question is especially important when child outcomes are investigated and the influence of both parents on the child may be interrelated. However, the comparative model may be costly, and mothers’ behavior, attitudes, and values may implicitly be considered a benchmark against which fathers will compare, implying a ‘‘deficit model’’ of fathering. Similar concern for the deficit model arises in studies of immigrant-only vs. immigrant/nonimmigrant designs. Another question is whether to focus on one immigrant group in more depth or investigate several groups or subgroups in order to make comparisons across groups, acculturation level, socioeconomic status (SES), or site. Nationally representative or other large-scale national databases offer opportunities for immigrant father analysis. In these databases, data come from large samples and are easily available, and findings from different analyses can be compared. However, these databases have neither large subsamples of specific national origin groups nor the breadth and depth of measures necessary for many research purposes. Confounds may result from the interrelationships among immigrant status, race/ethnicity, and SES. These confounds may arise also in smaller scale purposive samples, especially of a single immigrant group who are relatively homogeneous in race/ ethnicity and SES. Pleck (2008) states that a qualitative paradigm will be conducive to revealing new fathering constructs and dynamics arising uniquely out of the experience of immigrant fathers. Strier and Roer-Strier (2005) stress the importance of qualitative research with immigrant fathers, arguing that in much of the literature on immigration, the effects of immigration and suggestions for designing interventions are driven by psychological measures of well-being, rather than based on fathers’ self-reports and recommendations. By giving voice to fathers, qualitative methodology facilitates documenting immigrant fathers’ expectations, views and perceptions, experiences, and coping

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strategies, as well as their recommendations for interventions. It also helps us to assess the challenges and barriers fathers perceive. The dynamic interplay between researchers and participants is one of the defining features of qualitative inquiry. Padget (1998) states that although the preceding interplay can be influenced by many attributes, the most tangible are the fit (or lack of) in gender, race/ethnicity, age, and social class. In studying immigrant fathers, we found that a relationship of mutual respect need not be based on sameness, and in most cases, the ultimate success of a qualitative study of immigrant fathers depends more on the skills of the researchers and their capacity for empathy than on their demographic attributes. However, interviewing fathers in their native language was found to be crucial, especially for newly arrived immigrants. Working in research groups in which some researchers were part of the host culture and others came from the immigrant groups studied, was found to be productive in stages of planning the study, adapting research tools for the different groups, conducting the study, analyzing the results, and writing the reports and recommendations. Blind spots exist in both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, which may be remedied by mixed-method designs. Research on immigrant fathers rarely utilizes methodological designs that combine qualitative and quantitative measures, though such a design has obvious advantages. Support for the multimethod approach has come from both quantitative and qualitative researchers (e.g., Creswell, 1994; Greenfield, 1997; Keller, 2007; Kinn & Curzio, 2005; Patton, 2001; Roer-Strier & Kurman, in press; Van de Vijver & Leung, 1997). The crucial factor in justifying a mixed-methodology research design is that both approaches have shortcomings that might be remedied by combining the methods. Qualitative research can shed light on the experience of individual immigrant fathers and uncover themes and variables that were not covered by the quantitative measures. Zabar Ben-Yehoshua (2001) regards qualitative research as a holistic way of understanding a phenomenon by looking at interactions and multiple meanings, for example, the description of experience as lived by immigrant fathers experiencing role changes of their wives and children, the discovery of diverse ways of coping with these experiences, and the unfolding of meanings. Nevertheless, qualitative inquiry may be limited in its ability to make generalizations and to estimate the prevalence of phenomena in the relevant population. Adding a quantitative component to a research design can help overcome this limitation. Quantitative methods are appropriate when the researcher wishes to know how often or to what degree a phenomenon is present (Tripp-Reimer, 1985). A weakness of quantitative methods results from a certain distance from the people being investigated. Hence, statistical results sometimes provide only a vague answer regarding the subjective experience of the investigated issues. Attempts to describe such experiences are not always successful and rely too heavily on the subjective understanding and imagination of researchers, who themselves are susceptible to biases (Roer-Strier & Kurman). Given the preceding characteristics of each method, blending qualitative and quantitative research methods can create a final product that can highlight the significant contributions of both. Padgett (1998) argues that

Immigrant Fathers: Methodological Challenges 449

mixed-method designs are especially suitable for studying social problems that require a quantitative assessment of needs and outcomes, as well as a qualitative understanding of the experiences and lives of the research participants. Fathering Constructs and Dynamics. Pleck (2008) challenges the applicability of existing constructs in fathering research to immigrant fathers. He calls for developing new fathering constructs based on immigrant fathers’ experience and assessing the relevance of fathering dynamics studied in existing fathering research. Future research should explore processes related to kinship networks, religion, and coparenting in immigrant fathers, and discover additional dynamics. Each of these challenges provides new directions and opportunities for immigrant father research. Longitudinal, Comparative, Multilevel, and Multidisciplinary Studies. Greenfield (1994) calls for more longitudinal studies of immigration in both country of origin and country of destination. As stated earlier in this chapter, many fatherhood constructs such as the cultural perception of fatherhood, fathering practices, level of adaptation, and economic and social integration evolve over time. A description at a certain point might not capture the development of immigrant fatherhood over time. The examination of cultural contexts both in the country of origin and the host culture may help in analyzing and deconstructing the meaning of the changing parental discourse. Lamb and Bougher (in press) summarize these notions by opting for longitudinal comparative studies in which similar groups of migrants from different countries will be followed over time as they adapt to different receiving countries. Parke et al. (2008) describe an elaborate multilevel–multidiciplinary ecological framework for the study of immigrant fathers. Strier and Roer-Strier (2005) state the need for the study of macro-level contextual variables such as the attitudes of the host culture, policies related to immigrant fathers and to fathering. Comparing immigrant fathers’ perceptions in countries with different immigration policies can benefit our understanding of fathers’ views and insights in light of macro systems of the ecological contexts. Greenfield (1994) advocates a science of multiple perspectives, a new scientific paradigm in which the perspectives of researchers and participants are specified and studied providing ‘‘insider’’ and ‘‘outsider’’ views, each remedying the other’s blind spots. In our view, comparing views of immigrant fathers and professionals in the host culture may aid in addressing stereotypes and biases held by both sides and are a prerequisite for planning any intervention program or research project for immigrant fathers. In our view, research on immigrant fathers should be committed to social change. In countries where immigrant fathers and families are affected by processes of social exclusion, research should adopt an anti-oppressive research methodology (for a further description, see Strier, 2007). The commitment of researchers who study immigrant fathers to taking a clear stand in the spirit of social change is especially crucial in studies that discover oppression, discrimination, and violation of human rights.

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IMMIGRANT FATHERS: PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS While the association between immigrant fathers’ inputs and outcomes for children is yet to be confirmed, many intervention programs with fathers are based on the deficit perspective, assuming that immigrant fatherhood is hindered by immigration and that fathers have to be reeducated as fathers in the host country. Intervention programs are usually planned and executed by members of the host countries with little or no involvement of the fathers and without taking their preferences and needs into account (Clark, Shimoni, & Este, 2000). Studies discovered that employment and language acquisition were regarded by fathers as main barriers for fathering practices and performance (Este & Tachble, in press; Khoo, Hugo, & McDonald, 2008). Also, when fathers were asked to express preferences for interventions, there were differences between fathers in different cultural groups. For example, Ethiopian fathers in Israel preferred interventions located in educational settings, while fathers from the former Soviet Union opted for intervention programs based in medical settings. Similarly, undocumented Latin immigrants in Jerusalem, as well as Korean immigrant fathers in the United States, opted for intervention programs provided by the churches and by other faith-based services (Strier & Roer-Strier, 2005; Roer-Strier & Olshtain-Mann, 1999). Miller and Maiter (2008) examine recent studies that challenge popular stereotypes of fathers from a variety of ethnicities, opting for a more fluid and contextual definition of fatherhood in different cultures. They suggest that a more expanded notion of diversity will allow practitioners to provide services that move beyond stereotypical notions of immigrant fathers from diverse cultures to more complex and nuanced understandings.

CONCLUSIONS Immigrant fathers are one of the most challenging and promising areas of fatherhood studies. However, from a theoretical point of view, any future scholarship of immigrant fathers should be confronted with the need to reassess the theoretical standpoints that inform the study of immigrant fathers. Traditionally, the study of immigration was inspired by the deficit perspective, according to which immigration was regarded mainly as a risk factor for fathers and families, but current views utilize the generative/ resilience perspective, calling attention to the opportunities entailed in immigration and the need to further focus on fathers’ strengths and resilience factors. Future scholarship will look for ways to transcend the binary constructions of deficit versus generative/resilience perspectives and to adopt integrative approaches to the study of immigrant fathers. In light of globalization, the population of immigrant fathers is growing fast. The studies reviewed in this chapter suggest that this population is highly diverse and reflects the multifaceted nature and plurality of the immigration experience. Accordingly, immigrant fathers should be understood and investigated in the context of their families, support systems, communities, and cultures. Practitioners, services providers, policy makers, and scholars in the area of father and family should acknowledge the

Conclusions 451

diversity of this population, map the different groups of immigrant fathers, and identify both the background characteristics and context variables involved. Immigration really matters in fathering issues. The studies reviewed in this chapter show that immigration processes change immigrant fathers’ cultural and gender identities, affect fathers’ roles and practices, influence child outcomes, and shape socialization patterns. However, the extent and nature of these changes and influences are highly conditioned by several contextual and background factors. Studies point out several contextual factors that affect the experience of immigrant fathers like type of immigration, origincountry societal attitudes toward immigration, host-country societal attitude and policies toward immigration, paternal employment, racism, and discrimination toward immigrants. Additionally, studies indicate background factors that may play a significant role in the construction of the fatherhood in the context of immigration like family type, SES, education, and socialization parenting styles. The length of time after immigration was also found to crucially effect adjustment and child outcome variables. From a methodological point of view, the study of immigrant fathers requires innovative research methodologies. We point out the need for more longitudinal studies to reflect changes in fatherhood practices and identities over their course of life in the host culture. In addition, we propose to develop mixed methodologies to integrate fathers’ perspectives (assessed via qualitative methods) with quantitative data and comparison groups, taking into account control groups in the countries of origin and host cultures. From a practical perspective, given the fact that immigration is the trademark of postmodern society, host developed countries could not avoid their responsibility for providing support to immigrant fathers via culturally sensitive interventions and responsive policies to increase the positive opportunities and decrease the risks for immigrant fathers and families. Scholars may play a positive role in affecting interventions and policies in this direction. For example, researchers could promote more culturally sensitive interventions and responsive policies by comparing immigrant fathers’ views with those of the helping professions and policy makers in the host country, to create a better ‘‘understanding of the misunderstanding’’ embedded in their encounters. We further suggest that interventions should be aware of cultural differences and should be planned in places, times, and modalities that reflect these diversities. As discussed in this chapter, fathers differ in their styles of child socialization and cultural adaptation following migration. They also differ in their preferred mode for seeking help. Therefore, in countries where intervention with immigrant fathers exists, it is often focused on improving parental skills, meaning teaching fathers how to be better fathers and usually according to Western norms and views. This patronizing approach disregards the following facts: (a) fathers already have skills as fathers, but their capacities may be hindered by contextual barriers and obstacles; (b) in order to help fathers to implement successfully what they see as ‘‘good fathering,’’ basic conditions, such as honorable employment and language skills are to be fulfilled; and (c) racism, discrimination, and exclusion hinder fatherhood and need to be addressed.

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We conclude that the plight of these immigrant fathers and families who live in contexts of exclusionary practices and policies necessitates an approach that surpasses the need for cultural tolerance (Ighodaro, 2006). Manna (in Mansbach-Kleinfeld & Roer-Strier, 2004) states that: There is no way a minority group can move from exclusion to equality by means of multiculturalism . . . when what is needed is a change in the laws in order to achieve equal legal rights, in the execution and follow up of the policies in order to ensure that allocated resources do reach the minorities and in the education of the public at large regarding the legitimacy of minority demands. (p. 38)

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References 455 Kurman, J., & Ronen-Eilon, C. (2004). Lack of knowledge of a culture’s social axioms and adaptation difficulties among immigrants. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 35, 192–208. Kwak, K. (2003). Adolescents and their parents: A review of intergenerational family relations for immigrant and non-immigrant families. Human Development, 46, 115–136. Lamb, M. E., & Bougher, L. D (in press). How does migration affect fathers’ roles in their families? Reflections on some recent research. Sex Roles. Lamb, M. E., & Tamis-LeMonda, C. S. (2004). The role of the father: An introduction. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (4th ed., pp. 1–31). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. LaRossa, R. (1997). The modernization of fatherhood: A social and political history. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lee, R. M., Jung, K. R., Su, J. C., Tran, A. G. T., & Brahrassa, N. (in press). The family life and adjustment of Hmong-American sons and daughters. Sex Roles. Leonard, K. (1997). The South Asian Americans. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Lerner, Y., Kertes, J., & Zilber, N. (2005). Immigrants from the former Soviet Union, 5 years post-immigration to Israel: Adaptation and risk factors for psychological distress. Psychological Medicine, 35, 1805–1814. Liebkind, K., Jasinskaja-Lahti, I., & Solheim, E. (2004). Cultural identity, perceived discrimination and parental support as determinants of immigrants’ school adjustment: Vietnamese youth in Finland. Journal of Adolescent Research, 19, 635–656. L opez, G. (2001). The value of hard work: Lessons on parent involvement from an (im)migrant household. Harvard Educational Review, 71, 416–437. Mansbach-Kleinfeld, I., & Roer-Strier, D. (2004). Early childhood interventions in culturally diverse societies: Three metaphors in the making. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 12, 29–42. Marsiglio, W., Amato, P., Day, R. D., & Lamb, M. E. (2000). Scholarship on fatherhood in the 1990s and beyond. Journal of Marriage and Family, 62, 1173–1191. Miller, W., & Maiter, S. (2008). Fatherhood and ethnicity: Moving beyond cultural competence. Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Diversity in Social Work, 17(3), 279–300. Navara, G. S., & Lollis, S. (in press). How the adolescent children of African-Jamaican immigrants living in Canada perceive and negotiate their roles within a matrifocal family. Sex Roles. Omidvar, R., & Richmond, T. (2003). Immigrant settlement and social inclusion in Canada. Working paper series. Perspectives on social inclusion. Toronto: Laidlaw Foundation. Orr, E., Mana, A., & Mana, Y. (2003). Immigrant identity of Israeli adolescents from Ethiopia and the former USSR: Culture-specific principles of organization. European Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 71–92. Osella, F., & Osella, C. (2000). Migration, money and masculinity in Kerala. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 6, 117–133. Padgett, D. (1998). Qualitative methods in social work research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Palameta, B. (2004). Low-income among immigrants and visible minorities. Perspectives on Labour and Income, 5, 12–17. Palkovitz, R. (1997). Reconstructing ‘‘involvement’’: Expanding conceptualizations of men’s caring in contemporary families. In A. Hawkins & D. Dollahite (Eds.), Generative fathering: Beyond deficit perspectives (pp. 200–216). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Parke, R. D. (2000). Father involvement: A developmental psychological perspective. Marriage and Family Review, 29, 43–58.

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CHAPTER 16

Including Fathers in Clinical Interventions for Children and Adolescents VICKY PHARES, ARIZ ROJAS, IDIA B. THURSTON, and JESSICA C. HANKINSON

T

chapters, the focus has largely been on fathers and children who are relatively well functioning and who live in their respective communities with little help from mental health professionals. This chapter, however, focuses on fathers and children who need help for mental health problems and problems in living. In order to acquaint readers with fathers’ and children’s functioning in the clinical realm, we first review the connections between fathers’ and children’s psychopathology, then provide an overview of fathers’ involvement in mental health treatment, which is followed by a discussion of the barriers that keep many fathers from becoming involved in mental health treatment, and an overview of what predicts fathers’ involvement in treatment. The chapter concludes with specific suggestions for increasing fathers’ involvement in child, adolescent, and family-oriented clinical interventions. HROUGHOUT THE PREVIOUS

CONNECTIONS BETWEEN FATHERS’ AND CHILDREN’S PSYCHOPATHOLOGY Historically, the connections between fathers’ and children’s psychopathology have been explored with three research designs: Recruit a sample of disturbed fathers and study their offspring, recruit a sample of disturbed youth and study their fathers, and recruit a sample of families from the community and study the patterns of connections between fathers’ and children’s maladaptive functioning (Phares & Compas, 1992). Although historically and currently there is overwhelmingly more research on maternal than paternal psychopathology (Phares, 1992; Phares, Fields, Kamboukos, & Lopez, 2005), certain patterns do emerge when exploring the connections between children’s and fathers’ psychological functioning across all three 459

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research designs. Both maternal and paternal psychopathology appear to put youth at risk for maladaptive behavior (Connell & Goodman, 2002), and fathers of disturbed youth often differ from fathers of well-functioning youth (Kane & Garber, 2004). Thus, the overarching patterns show connections between fathers’ and children’s functioning, but the strength of these associations differs somewhat, depending on the type of psychopathology being explored. Research has shown that parents’ own psychological symptoms are related to higher ratings of behavior problems in their own children, and parents with more psychological symptoms tend to have children with greater psychopathology (Connell & Goodman, 2002; Kane & Garber, 2004; Pardini, 2008). Parent gender has played a role in the connection with children’s and adolescents’ internalizing behaviors (e.g., depression, anxiety) and externalizing behaviors (e.g., oppositional problems, conduct problems). Stronger associations were found initially for maternal psychopathology versus paternal psychopathology and children’s internalizing problems (Connell & Goodman); however, more recent work has shown that both maternal and paternal factors are related to children’s internalizing problems (Goodman & Brand, 2008). Specifically, maternal and paternal depression symptoms were associated with fewer enrichment activities, such as singing and reading, with their infants (Paulson, Dauber, & Leiferman, 2006) and were predictive of internalizing problems in young children (Gross, Shaw, Moilanen, Dishion, & Wilson, 2008). In addition, maternal and paternal depression have been shown to be connected to internalizing problems in adolescents (Kane & Garber, 2004). Paternal alcoholism is associated with depression in youth (Edwards, Eiden, & Leonard, 2006; Keller, Cummings, Davies, & Mitchell, 2008), and paternal antisocial behaviors are related to childhood depression (Kopp & Beauchaine, 2007). Similar connections can be seen with anxiety disorders. For example, fathers’ and mothers’ ratings of their own psychopathology were related to higher levels of anxiety in children and adolescents (Moreno, Silverman, Saavedra, & Phares, 2008). Relatedly, anxiety sensitivity (which is associated with panic disorder) in fathers but not mothers was associated with anxiety sensitivity and psychopathology in offspring (East, Berman, & Stoppelbein, 2007). Paternal and maternal psychopathology is also related to anorexia nervosa in adolescent girls (Ravi, Forsberg, Fitzpatrick, & Lock, 2009). Thus, a wide variety of types of psychopathology in fathers (including depression, anxiety, alcoholism, and antisocial behaviors) are associated with increased risk for internalizing problems in youth. With regard to children’s externalizing behavior, both maternal and paternal psychopathology appear to have comparable connections to children’s maladaptive behavior (Connell & Goodman, 2002; Goodman & Brand, 2008). Fathers’ externalizing problems, such as alcohol abuse and antisocial characteristics, have been investigated extensively and are consistently found to put youth at risk for externalizing problems. For example, a great deal of studies have shown a connection between paternal alcohol abuse and externalizing problems such as substance abuse and conduct problems in children and adolescents, especially in boys (Eiden, Colder, Edwards, & Leonard,

Connections between Fathers’ and Children’s Psychopathology 461

2009; Goodman & Brand; Hussong et al., 2007; Keller et al., 2008; Volk et al., 2007). Similarly, many studies have shown a connection between paternal antisocial characteristics and conduct problems in children and adolescents, especially in boys (Blaze, Iacono, & McGue, 2008; Goodman & Brand; Jaffee, Moffitt, Caspi, & Taylor, 2003; Kopp & Beauchaine, 2007). It is interesting to note that children were at greater risk for conduct problems when their antisocial father was involved in their lives as opposed to being absent from their lives (Blaze et al.; Jaffee et al.). Paternal depression is associated with children’s externalizing problems as well. For example, fathers who experienced depression prenatally and postnatally had children who showed greater conduct problems at the ages of 3½ and 7 years old (Ramchandani, O’Connor, Evans, Heron, Murray, & Stein, 2008). These associations were evident even after controlling for maternal psychopathology (Ramchandani et al.). In adopted adolescents, paternal depression was associated with higher rates of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (Tully, Iacono, & McGue, 2008). Thus, a great many disorders in fathers, including alcohol abuse, antisocial behavior, and depression, are associated with increased risk for externalizing problems in youth. There appear to be many reasons for these associations, including genetic predisposition, innate dysfunctional neuroregulatory mechanisms, parental maladaptive cognitions, behavior, and affect, maladaptive parenting practices, and stressors in the environment (Goodman & Brand, 2008). A full description of these mechanisms is beyond the scope of this chapter, but there are a few examples that highlight the interconnectedness of fathers’ and children’s psychopathology. Certain disorders, especially alcohol dependence and bipolar disorder, are thought to be highly heritable (Goodman & Brand, 2008). None of the disorders discussed in this section are known to be solely due to genetic predetermination, but genetics do play a role in putting youth at risk for the development of certain psychopathologies. Parenting behavior within the context of parental psychopathology also puts children at risk for the development of psychopathology—even in highly heritable disorders. For example, fathers’ alcohol dependence was associated with lower levels of paternal warmth and sensitivity, which was in turn related to lower self-regulation and lower competence in the child (Eiden et al., 2009). Similarly, paternal bipolar disorder was associated with less paternal emotional warmth, less paternal protection, and greater paternal rejection, all of which were related to psychopathology in offspring (Reichart et al., 2007). Note also that assortative mating is a common process by which individuals pair up with others who have comparable levels of psychological functioning, so youth are often at double risk for psychopathology due to both maternal and paternal psychopathology (Goodman & Brand, 2008). Thus, there are likely multiple mechanisms that put children at risk when they are exposed to parental psychopathology. Note also that there are some indications that when mothers’ and fathers’ psychological symptoms decrease due to their own treatment, their children’s behavior improves. Specifically, in a review of 10 studies, Gunlicks and Weissman (2008) found that parents’ treatment for depression was associated with decreased emotional/behavioral problems and decreased psychopathology

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in their children. Thus, children’s well-being can be improved by improvements in parental well-being. Overall, children’s and adolescent’s internalizing and externalizing psychopathology can be associated with different types of paternal and maternal psychopathology and can influence overall familial functioning. The next question is whether or not fathers are involved in the help-seeking process for their children’s mental health problems. FATHERS’ INVOLVEMENT IN CLINICAL INTERVENTIONS FATHERS’ PATTERNS

OF INVOLVEMENT IN

TREATMENT

Whether they have children or not, it has been well established that men are less likely than women to utilize mental health services and remain involved in treatment (Cusack, Deane, Wilson, & Ciarrochi, 2004). This pattern of underutilization of mental health services by men is consistent across race, ethnicity, age, and parental status (Addis & Mahalik, 2003). Interestingly, it is also consistent across other help-seeking venues like seeking medical treatment from a physician (Mansfield, Addis, & Mahalik, 2003). Not surprisingly, fathers are significantly less involved in clinical interventions for their children, adolescents, and families than are mothers. The first issue to consider is whether fathers are involved in the lives of their children who are referred for services. As seen in previous chapters, fathers are less present in children’s lives than are mothers and this pattern is even more evident in clinical samples. Through reviews of clinical research (Phares & Lum, 1996) and studies of actual families utilizing clinical services (Phares & Lum, 1997), it is clear that children receiving psychological services are significantly less likely to live in a family with both their mother and father than are children in nonclinical samples. The majority of referred children, however, still have contact with their fathers. A review of clinical research that included over 10,000 participants showed that 57.8% of referred children live with both of their biological parents, in contrast to 63.6% of nonreferred youth (Phares & Lum, 1996). In addition, one study found that 44.8% of clinically referred children who do not live with both biological parents had at least some contact with their father (Phares & Lum, 1997). Thus, there is evidence that fathers are present in the lives of children referred for psychological services. The next question has to do with whether or not fathers are involved in clinical interventions when their offspring are in treatment. Although the clinician’s therapeutic orientation can impact on whether parents (as opposed to children only) are included in treatment, the majority of treatments have at least some parental involvement even as a collateral report of functioning (Phares, Fields, & Binitie, 2006). The other factor that influences involvement of parents in youth-related treatment is the type of referral problem. The majority of evidence-based interventions for externalizing problems, such as behavioral parent training, include parents as active participants, whereas the majority of evidence-based interventions for internalizing problems do not involve parents actively (Brown et al., 2008). Overall, though, most clinicians attempt to have some type of contact with parents of child or adolescent clients, even if the contact is limited.

Fathers’ Involvement in Clinical Interventions 463

The question of paternal involvement in therapy has been explored in a number of ways, including surveys of clinicians and studies of clinics. Through both types of studies, it is clear that fathers are significantly less likely to be involved in child-oriented therapy than are mothers. Over 25 years ago, Budd and O’Brien (1982) reviewed published studies of behavioral parent training and found that fathers were included in only 39% of the studies. More recently, Tiano and McNeil (2005) found that fathers were not included in the overwhelming majority of research on behavioral parent training for children with externalizing disorders. Fabiano (2007) found the same pattern in a review of behavioral parent training to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Thus, like most other areas of research on children’s functioning (Phares et al., 2005), fathers are not included in the overwhelming majority of research on child- and family-related therapy. Like the patterns found in the research literature, fathers are also rarely included in actual clinical practice when compared with mothers. Surveys of clinicians about their actual practices show a range of 1:2 (Duhig, Phares, & Birkeland, 2002) to 1:3 (Lazar, Sagi, & Fraser, 1991) ratio of fathers’ versus mothers’ inclusion in therapy. These patterns occur in families with a variety of family constellations, including dual-parent families, single-mother families, and families with both younger and older children (Duhig et al.). It is unclear, however, whether the lack of paternal involvement is related to therapists’ not inviting fathers to participate or fathers’ choosing not to participate (Duhig et al.). One survey of therapists found that when therapists asked parents to become involved in treatment, only 56% of fathers agreed, whereas 85% of mothers agreed to be involved in treatment (Rojas, Fields, Binitie, Curley, & Phares, 2006). This survey suggests that even when therapists reach out to fathers to be included in treatment, fathers are more reticent than mothers about becoming involved in their child’s treatment. Overall, there is clear evidence that fathers are included in child- and family-related treatment to a much lesser extent than are mothers. The next logical issue to explore is whether fathers’ involvement has any impact on the outcome of treatment. EFFECTS

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When fathers are involved in the psychological treatment of their children, meaningful patterns emerge. As explained earlier, there are contextual factors whereby fathers influence children’s behavior. Father–child interactions, social modeling, paternal psychopathology, stress, and family instability are cited as common factors associated with conduct problems in youth (Tiano & McNeil, 2005), but they also provide a target for intervention. As a result, a large majority of the literature has focused on paternal involvement in parent training for children who have behavioral disorders and associated difficulties. Webster-Stratton (1985) was among the first to emphasize the importance of fathers’ contributions in behavioral parent training. In that study, families were divided into father-involved or father-absent groups, where the father-involved group included fathers who participated in the caretaking of their child and attended parent training sessions. Findings from

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this initial study suggested that the children of fathers involved in treatment were more likely to show positive behavioral changes at posttreatment and at 1 year follow-up when compared with children in father-absent families (Webster-Stratton). Webster-Stratton’s study provided the impetus for other researchers to investigate paternal involvement in the treatment of children’s behavioral problems. Bagner and Eyberg (2003) further elaborated on Webster-Stratton’s work by investigating the effects of paternal involvement in parent–child interaction therapy (PCIT) with absent-father, uninvolved-father, and involved-father families. Fathers were considered ‘‘involved’’ if they resided in the home and attended one or more treatment sessions, whereas, ‘‘uninvolved’’ fathers resided in the home, but did not participate in therapy. The inclusion of ‘‘uninvolved’’ and ‘‘absent’’ father groups served to control for family socioeconomic level and the presence of coparenting, which were noted limitations of Webster-Stratton’s (1985) work. Results from the Bagner and Eyberg study found that the attendance rate of fathers was unrelated to child treatment outcome at posttreatment. Likewise, uninvolved-, involved-, and absent-father families did not differ significantly on outcome measures at posttreatment, and mothers from absent-father families reported greater improvement when compared to mothers’ ratings from involved-father families. However, at 4-month follow-up, mothers in the involved-father group reported maintenance of treatment gains, whereas mothers in the absentfather group reported a decline in treatment gains (Bagner & Eyberg, 2003). Therefore, there is evidence to suggest that paternal involvement in therapy contributes to the maintenance of positive outcomes where gains may take time to unfold. The growing popularity of parent training programs has lead to targeting fathers for treatment. Rationales for targeting fathers include the fact that fathers with limited parenting skills are less likely to encourage treatment and are more likely to have children who do not respond well to treatment, especially children with disruptive disorders like attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (Chronis, Chacko, Fabiano, Wymbs, & Pelham, 2004). Like mothers, fathers experience distress and emotional reactivity when managing the behavior of children with disruptive disorders (Fabiano, 2007), and do not necessarily possess the requisite skills to address such concerns. Additionally, fathers who are of minority status and lower socioeconomic status are at risk for additional stressors. Preliminary evidence from a sample of Hispanic and African-American fathers with children in Head Start programs suggested that minority fathers welcomed the opportunity to participate in parenting programs, but showed a high rate of attrition (Helfenbaum-Kun & Ortiz, 2007). Although the conclusions are somewhat tentative, this study suggests that fathers who participated in the parenting intervention had children who demonstrated larger improvements in behavior than fathers in a control group (Helfenbaum-Kun & Ortiz). It is possible that parent training programs are best suited when both fathers and mothers are encouraged to participate so that both parents can coordinate on their coparenting behaviors. Overall, findings from this study suggest that fathers and children alike benefit from father-directed parent training (Helfenbaum-Kun & Ortiz).

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Meta-analytic investigations have also attempted to address whether paternal involvement in behavioral parent training is associated with positive outcomes for children. Additionally, there is a question as to whether mothers and fathers benefit equally from parent training. To address these issues, Lundahl, Tollefson, Risser, and Lovejoy (2008) conducted a systematic metaanalysis to provide an objective evaluation of fathers’ potential value in parent training. Studies were considered eligible for inclusion in the analysis if the study targeted children with disruptive disorders, included a treatment group and a treatment or wait-list control with at least five participants in each condition, did not include children with a developmental or cognitive delay, utilized formal training interventions, included fathers specifically, and reported means and standard deviations for the calculation of effect sizes. Finally, studies needed to be published in peer-reviewed journals for inclusion in the meta-analysis. A total of 26 studies met criteria for inclusion with a total of 1,075 participants across treatment groups and 965 participants in comparison groups. Findings from the meta-analysis indicated that at posttreatment, groups that included fathers showed stronger effects on child behavior and parenting behaviors, but not for perceptions of parenting when compared to groups without father inclusion. However, at long-term followup, father inclusion was not necessarily predictive of better child outcomes. Although fathers were found to have a direct impact on child outcomes, parent training was not found to have equal benefits for mothers and fathers. Findings suggested that mothers benefited to a greater extent than did fathers. At posttreatment, fathers had made less improvement in their parenting behavior and perceptions of child rearing, and were less optimistic about future improvements in child behavior than were mothers. Considering the fact that parent training programs were developed and validated with primarily mothers, it may be that programs require adjustments to address the needs of fathers (Lundahl et al.). Despite the growing research base on paternal involvement in parent training for children with externalizing problems, there is very little research investigating the role of fathers in the treatment of children who exhibit internalizing difficulties (B€ ogels & Phares, 2008). Barmish and Kendall (2005) argued that parents may serve as valuable adjuncts to cognitive– behavioral treatment (CBT) for anxious youth; however, there is insufficient data to make such conclusions. Most studies fail to delineate who attends treatments sessions (i.e., mother only, father only, or both parents), making it difficult to determine the relative influence of maternal versus paternal involvement in therapy. Manassis and colleagues (2002) conducted a 12week CBT program with anxious youth and their parents. All mothers and 73% of fathers attended a concurrent group parent training that focused on understanding and managing childhood anxiety and how to address anxiety-provoking situations. Results from the study suggested that CBT was effective in treating anxiety, but there was no analysis of how parent involvement enhanced treatment. Additionally, there was no inclusion of paternal reports of behavior pre- and posttreatment. The authors concluded that parent involvement teaches parents desensitization and exposure procedures that can be carried out between sessions. Other researchers have also

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argued that fathers’ functioning might impact CBT interventions with anxious youth. For example, Liber and colleagues (2008) found that higher levels of fathers’ depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and rejection of the child were related to poorer treatment outcomes. Thus, there is preliminary evidence to suggest that parents, including fathers, have the ability to shape the course of treatment for children with internalizing disorders such as anxiety disorders. Although there is research to suggest fathers’ positive influences on treatment in the short- and long-term, the specific benefits or mechanisms have yet to be defined. Tiano and McNeil (2003) criticized the research on behavioral parenting training because of the failure to compare maternal versus paternal data, lack of follow-up data for fathers, focus on Caucasian mothers, small sample sizes, absence of paternal participation rates, and the inclusion of predominantly male children. Additionally, many previous studies have neglected to include father–child observations or to evaluate father-only groups. Researchers are encouraged to welcome fathers into the therapeutic process, and to analyze paternal attendance and paternal participation. Researchers should also utilize multimodal assessments of fathers during treatment (e.g., direct observation, self-reports, structured activities). Overall, there is accruing evidence to suggest that fathers have a positive influence on child behavior when they are included in the mental health treatment of their children. Most of the literature has focused on parent training programs designed to decrease disruptive child behavior, but there is some research to suggest that fathers can also aid in the treatment of child internalizing disorders. Not only does father involvement result in positive outcomes immediately following treatment, but a united coparenting framework is associated with maintenance of treatment gains and improved parent–child interactions. Parent training programs may wish to adopt sessions dedicated to developing coparenting behaviors. When mothers and fathers are instructed on emotional self-management, conflict management, problem solving, communication, and support strategies that focus on coparenting, there is greater marital satisfaction, less maternal distress, better parent–child interactions, and evidence of improved emotional regulation in offspring (Feinberg & Kan, 2008). BARRIERS TO INVOLVING FATHERS IN CLINICAL INTERVENTIONS As illustrated in the previous sections of this chapter, including fathers in treatment is beneficial to the success of child and family treatment and to the maintenance of treatment benefits over time. Fathers often recognize and indicate that it is important for them to attend their children’s therapy appointments (Walters, Tasker, & Bichard, 2001), but many do not attend the therapy sessions. The inclusion of fathers in treatment is not an easy task, as there are several barriers that fathers, families, and mental health providers need to overcome to be successful in recruiting, engaging, and maintaining fathers’ participation in treatment.

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TREATMENT BARRIERS FROM

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There are several barriers that influence men in their decisions to seek mental health services for themselves. Specifically, research has consistently shown that men are less likely than women to recognize feelings of distress and label the distress as an emotional problem (Addis & Mahalik, 2003). Recognizing certain patterns of behaviors and feelings as problematic is usually the necessary first step in the help-seeking process (Cauce et al., 2002). Thus, men’s reduced likelihood of recognizing problems is a significant barrier to the utilization of mental health services for themselves. Additionally, Addis and Mahalik argued that men are often influenced by masculine gender role socialization, which is contrary to help-seeking behaviors. Specifically, help seeking typically involves recognition of problems, admitting that one needs help from others, and relying on others to help solve the problem. These ideals are in direct conflict with the masculine gender role, which relies on independence, lack of emotional expression, control, and self-reliance (Addis & Mahalik). Thus, another barrier to treatment involvement is the masculine gender role, which discourages the reliance on others for help. Finally, men typically have a more active coping style than women, one that usually involves actively working to solve their problems rather than talking about the problems passively (Bekker, Hogue, & Liddle, 2001). Thus, the misconception that therapy involves only talking about one’s problems rather than actively engaging in activities to improve the problems may serve as a barrier to men’s treatment participation. During the process of developing a scale to assess men’s barriers to help seeking in the medical and psychological arenas, Mansfield, Addis, and Courtenay (2005) found that men’s concerns could be captured reliably and validly with five different factors: need for control and self-reliance (such as wanting to be in charge of one’s own life), minimizing problems and resignation (such as assuming that the problem will go away in due time), concrete barriers and distrust of caregivers (such as worrying that a therapist would want something in return for helping with a problem), privacy (such as feeling that the problem is embarrassing), and emotional control (such as not wanting to talk about one’s feelings). These concepts are consistent with the different barriers that men often experience when considering treatment for their own psychological problems. There are additional barriers unique to fathers’ participation in treatment for their children’s and family’s problems. First of all, in general, fathers typically spend significantly less time with their children than do mothers (Hofferth, Stueve, Pleck, Bianchi, & Sayer, 2002). Furthermore, due to gender roles, social expectations of parental roles, and cultural norms, fathers may not be as actively involved in their children’s lives as mothers (Mahalik & Morrison, 2006; Silverstein, 2002). In one study, treatment participation was impacted by fathers’ belief that their children were emotionally closer to their mothers and participation in therapy was not relevant to the father (Walters et al., 2001). Fathers’ level of involvement in their children’s lives can be perceived as a barrier to treatment participation because fathers may believe that their opinions are redundant, not valued, or seen as less important than

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mothers’ opinions because they spend much less time with their children. However, as Bouchard, Lee, Asgary, and Pelletier (2007) found, fathers who reported higher rates of partner confidence in their own parenting abilities were more likely to be confident and motivated to participate in parenting, which in turn was related to their greater involvement in their children’s lives. Thus, partners’ lack of confidence in fathers’ parenting may serve as a barrier to treatment participation, given that fathers who feel less involved in their children’s lives may be less likely to believe that they can impact treatment in a positive manner. A father’s perspective about the utility of treatment plays an important role in his engagement in therapy. Specifically, fathers’ lack of understanding of the benefits of therapy is a major barrier to therapeutic engagement (Bekker et al., 2001). Without a father’s ‘‘buy in’’ to the therapeutic process and its benefits to his children and family, he will be hard pressed to attend sessions regularly and may unintentionally sabotage treatment (Carr, 1998). Relatedly, fathers who were involved in their own court-mandated treatment were less likely to allow their children to participate in treatment than fathers who sought treatment for themselves voluntarily (Fals-Stewart, Fincham, & Kelley, 2004). Thus, fathers’ expectations about therapy can influence fathers’ involvement in therapy. Employment and work obligations are often cited as barriers to attending therapy (Carr, 1998). Hofferth (2003) found that the more hours fathers worked outside of the home, the less time they spent with their children. Thus, not only does work constrain the amount of time fathers can spare to attend therapy sessions; work also decreases the amount of time they have to spend with their children, and it is highly likely that most fathers do not want to spend the little time they have with their children in a therapy session. With regard to problem recognition, research has shown that fathers often have different perspectives than mothers on the nature of problem behaviors in their children. For example, fathers sometimes believe that their children’s behavior problems are due to the child’s lack of motivation to accomplish tasks or feel that the child’s behavior problems are developmentally appropriate or recall that the child’s behaviors are similar to their own behaviors when they were growing up (Singh, 2003). Similarly, Schock, Gavazzi, Fristad, and Goldberg-Arnold (2002) found that fathers had greater difficulty than mothers in accepting that their child had a mental health problem and thus were less likely to participate in therapy. Furthermore, as Singh noted, fathers are often resistant to accept medical explanations for their children’s problematic behaviors, as this may contradict their own explanations, thus decreasing their authority in their households. Therefore, due to their beliefs in the nature of problem behaviors, fathers may not perceive the need for treatment. In a study examining fathers’ involvement in treatment, Walters and colleagues (2001) found that fathers’ concerns about participating in their child’s treatment included worries about how the therapist would treat them. Specifically, they were concerned about their masculinity being attacked, and many fathers felt that clinics were controlled by women and thus they were concerned about the possibility of bias against men in therapy. Interestingly,

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Walters and colleagues found that the most predictive factor in fathers’ therapy attendance was their relationship history with their own fathers. Specifically, those fathers who described growing up in an environment where their own fathers were less involved in raising the children reported feeling that they had less of an impact on treatment decisions, and thus were less likely to be involved in therapy with their own children. Another important barrier to treatment participation by fathers is the impact of their own psychological functioning. In a study of substanceabusing parents, Fals-Stewart and colleagues (2004) found that fathers were less likely than mothers to allow their custodial children to participate in therapy when the parent reported higher rates of substance use or more psychiatric distress. Perceived family distress also impacted paternal willingness to participate in treatment. Those fathers who perceived more family distress and dysfunction were less likely to allow their children to participate in treatment (Fals-Stewart et al.). Additionally, fathers are often reluctant to divulge their own personal information in treatment due to issues of privacy, resistance to discussing feelings, and concern about being blamed for problems (Walters et al., 2001). Thus, there are a great many father-related barriers to involvement in children’s therapy. TREATMENT BARRIERS FROM

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There are several therapist factors that influence fathers’ participation in treatment. Engaging fathers into treatment often requires additional work for the family members and therapist. Research has shown that fathers are more difficult to recruit into treatment and less likely to participate in therapy when asked (Duhig et al., 2002). Therapists’ attitudes about the feasibility and necessity of involving fathers in child and family treatment usually serves as the impetus for pursuing and actively recruiting fathers to participate in therapy. However, some therapists believe that inviting fathers to participate in treatment is a waste of their time because fathers will not be receptive to the efforts and will decline the invitation to participate (Hecker, 1991). Other therapists view fathers as uncooperative and difficult to reach, therefore they easily excuse fathers from attending therapy sessions due to conflicting work schedules or work demands, or because fathers are not usually the primary caretaker of children (Walters et al., 2001). Just like fathers, therapists are also influenced by societal gender roles and may be persuaded easily to accept fathers’ reasons for nonparticipation in treatment and may believe that fathers cannot be engaged in therapy due to the roles they hold in their families (Mason & Mason, 1990). Therapists’ beliefs in traditional gender roles where women are the primary caretakers of the children may render therapists less likely to encourage and pursue fathers’ involvement in treatment. Even when fathers come to treatment, therapists’ beliefs in gender role stereotypes may contribute to fathers’ dropping out of treatment early as therapists may turn to mothers more often for information about the child’s functioning. This process could serve to alienate fathers and seems to imply that fathers are not as important to the therapeutic process as mothers (Prentice & Carranza, 2002).

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In addition to avoiding the frustration and effort required to recruit fathers into treatment, therapists may also want to avoid steering the focus of therapy away from child issues to matters of interparental conflict (Vetere, 2004). When both parents are included in treatment, matters of parental conflict and even marital conflict may surface, and some therapists are not comfortable dealing with these issues. It is also possible that therapists do not feel well equipped or properly trained to handle these types of problems when the problems arise in therapy. Therapists who come from training models that do not emphasize the inclusion of both parents in treatment tend not to include both parents in treatment and may be less inclined to invite fathers into treatment (Duhig et al., 2002). Furthermore, therapists who did not learn family therapy techniques and strategies to engage family members, especially fathers, into treatment may be inclined to avoid those situations altogether (Bekker et al., 2001). Practitioners’ gap in knowledge of the added benefits of including both parents in therapy and the long-term benefits of father involvement in treatment is another barrier. Thus, therapists’ training and comfort in implementing certain therapy techniques are potential barriers to fathers’ participation in treatment. Note that it is important for therapists to pursue fathers’ involvement at the outset of therapy; otherwise, the therapist may unintentionally set the standard that it is acceptable for fathers not to attend sessions. Additionally, marginalizing fathers’ participation, such as communicating only with mothers to set up therapy appointments and focusing intake interviews and assessments solely on mothers’ opinions, will serve to discourage fathers’ participation in therapy (Fabiano, 2007). There are treatment modality factors that also serve as barriers to engaging and maintaining fathers’ participation in treatment. Specifically, the nature of treatments currently available may not be favorable toward the inclusion of both parents in therapy. In his review of behavior parent training (BPT) programs, Fabiano (2007) found that most BPT classes tend to focus on roles (such as caregiver roles) that are typically held by mothers, and this focus often leaves fathers out of the discussions. Although there are no roles that are unique to fathers only, therapists need to ensure that session content is relevant to both mothers and fathers. When therapists focus solely on issues of most relevance to mothers, this process may serve as a barrier to fathers’ participation in therapy, since fathers may feel that issues of importance to them are not being addressed. Another barrier to involving fathers relates to the type of assessment tools utilized. It is ideal for therapists to emphasize the importance of fathers’ opinions and to provide measures that allow for comparison of mothers’ and fathers’ responses (Bekker et al., 2001). Although this process may be more tedious, therapists can use assessment tools to highlight the importance of fathers in the therapy process. In addition, the modality through which information is disseminated to parents is another potential barrier to father participation. Specifically, classroom or group format of instruction may be less appealing to fathers and may contribute to their lack of participation in comparison to more interactive, one-on-one sessions (Fabiano, 2007). Furthermore, Fabiano argued that fathers may respond differently based on how

Predictors of Fathers’ Involvement in Clinical Interventions 471

the treatment is framed. Thus, if treatment is described as being needed because of a limitation in skills, fathers may be less willing to participate, given that men are generally not inclined to admit to deficits in themselves (Addis & Mahalik, 2003). There are additional structural barriers that impact not just fathers but most employed parents, such as lack of flexibility in appointment scheduling (days and times), distance of treatment location from work or home, and ease of accessibility to services (Fabiano, 2007; Power, Eiraldi, Clarke, Mazzuca, & Krain, 2005). The lack of research on fathers (Phares et al., 2005) can also be viewed as a barrier to father involvement in treatment, given that research may inform therapists on strategies to involve fathers in treatment. In summary, there are numerous barriers to involving fathers in treatment, including factors perceived by fathers, families, and therapists. In order to succeed in recruiting, engaging, and maintaining fathers’ participation in treatment, these barriers need to be explored and addressed with each family seeking treatment. Additionally, changes may need to occur in therapist training and structure of mental health programs to better accommodate paternal involvement in treatment. Strategies to address these barriers are discussed later in this chapter. PREDICTORS OF FATHERS’ INVOLVEMENT IN CLINICAL INTERVENTIONS Although there is accumulating evidence to suggest that fathers can enhance the efficacy of the mental health treatment of their children, the reasons why fathers do or do not participate in therapy vary considerably. The following sections will briefly address the various predictors of father involvement in treatment, which tend to be focused on either paternal or therapist characteristics. PREDICTORS OF FATHERS’ TREATMENT INVOLVEMENT BASED ON PATERNAL CHARACTERISTICS An understanding of paternal characteristics is paramount in elucidating why fathers do or do not become involved in the mental health treatment of their children. According to Walters and colleagues (2001), fathers who endorse egalitarian parenting beliefs by sharing the parental load with mothers are more likely to become involved in therapy sessions. Similarly, when fathers are satisfied in their marital relationship, they are more likely to attend treatment. However, there are also instances where characteristics of the father may serve as a contraindication to involvement in therapy. For example, although maltreating fathers would benefit greatly from parent training, their overcontrolling behaviors make them poor candidates for family therapy (Scott & Crooks, 2004). In such cases, private individual sessions to address paternal problematic behavior should be considered. Perhaps most interesting is the relationship between father involvement in treatment and paternal history and attachment to their own father. Fathers who reported a high-quality relationship with their own father during

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childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, are more likely to attend child treatment sessions than fathers with a poor relationship with their own father (Walters et al., 2001). Likewise, when fathers perceive their own fathers to be ‘‘good’’ natured, they are likely to have higher involvement in their child’s treatment. However, when previous attachment was threatened by some type of separation (e.g., the father’s childhood experience with parental divorce, death of parent, boarding school), fathers are less likely to attend sessions (Walters, 1997; Walters et al., 2001). Fathers’ own attitudes toward mental health services not only present a problem for encouraging mental health treatment for their child (Logan & King, 2001), but also influence fathers’ willingness to become involved in treatment. Fathers may experience barriers related to difficulties with problem recognition, language barriers, and social stigma in treatment. Considering the heterogeneity of the U.S. population, it is important to recognize that negative attitudes toward mental health treatment are more pronounced in minority populations. In general, Hispanic individuals identify language, legal, and cultural concerns as barriers to participation in treatment, and many disagree with health providers as to the primary topic areas for intervention (Martinez & Carter-Pokras, 2006). Fathers with language barriers may find it difficult to connect with and establish an alliance with a therapist and may prefer therapists who are bilingual and of the same nationality (Kouyoumdjian, Zamboagna, & Hansen, 2003). Fathers may also experience concerns regarding confidentiality of sessions, denial of paternal contributions to problematic behavior, and not feeling validated by the system (e.g., being rushed, given little eye contact; Ayalon & Alvidrez, 2007). Fathers may also disapprove of the treatment modality utilized by clinicians and may decline to participate in treatment. Although treatment acceptability has yet to be evaluated directly with respect to paternal participation in therapy, it is plausible that such preferences in treatment can aid fathers’ interest in becoming involved in treatment. Miller and Kelley (1992) found that parents generally favored positive reinforcement over punishment-based discipline and medication, but fathers rated spanking as more acceptable than did mothers. Similar findings were reported by Phares, Ehrbar, and Lum (1996), who found that fathers were more accepting of behavioral control (e.g., greater discipline) than mothers. Additionally, fathers were less likely to favor family-based therapy than mothers. Borrego, Ibanez, Spendlove, and Pemberton (2007) found that Mexican-American fathers preferred spanking to manage disruptive behavior, although fathers who were more acculturated had increased acceptance for token economies. This is not to suggest that fathers are quick to utilize aversive punishment techniques with their own children. Although fathers may prefer spanking overall, fathers tend to possess a similar level of knowledge regarding behavioral principles as mothers, and to rate the acceptability of spanking as low, but many fathers fail to apply such techniques during parent–child interactions (Tiano, 2008). Thus, it appears that fathers could benefit greatly from participation in parent training, but may require individual instruction and coaching before positive parenting techniques are applied in treatment and generalized to the home environment.

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Finally, it is important to note that fathers who are nonresidential either by separation, divorce, or termination of a relationship may require additional support on how to address children’s difficulties (Lee & Hunsley, 2006). Many times, these fathers are not invited by custodial mothers to attend treatment, and fathers may feel as if their contributions to treatment are minimal or unnecessary. In such instances, mediation agreements may be helpful in order to teach parents how to coparent on various medical and psychological issues (Lee & Hunsley). Nonresidential fathers who have low interparental conflict and regular contact with their children are more likely to see decreases in behavioral problems due to child treatment (Amato & Sobolewski, 2004). Thus, when fathers have amicable relationships with their spouses or ex-partners, report a positive attachment history with their own fathers, favor mental health services, and are open to parenting interventions, they may be more likely to become active participants in treatment. PREDICTORS OF FATHERS’ TREATMENT INVOLVEMENT BASED THERAPISTS’ CHARACTERISTICS AND TRAINING

ON

Although it is clear that mothers are invited to participate in children’s therapy to a greater extent than are fathers (Lazar et al., 1991), research has identified specific therapist characteristics that are predictive of paternal involvement in treatment. Therapist gender has emerged as a predictive factor in fathers’ participation in therapy. Therapists who are male are more likely to involve fathers in the treatment setting (Lazar et al.), although more current research has found that male and female therapists involve mothers and fathers in treatment to a similar degree (Duhig et al., 2002). Still, reasons for a potential gender discrepancy may lie in the fact that males are more willing to discuss male- or father-specific concerns than are female therapists (Lazar et al.). Silverstein and Phares (1996) found that male graduate students were more likely than female graduate students to include fathers in their research, suggesting that males may be more aware of concerns and difficulties experienced by fathers, and this mindfulness may carry over into the therapeutic process and alliance. Therapists’ perceptions of parental contributions to treatment sessions are important to consider given that cognitions influence behavior. For instance, when therapists believe parental caretaking behaviors should be egalitarian in nature and believe that both mothers and fathers contribute to the development and socialization of children, they are more likely to encourage father involvement in therapy (Lazar et al.). In contrast, when clinicians endorse traditional social norms such that manhood is incompatible with nurturing, they are less likely to encourage father participation in therapy (Walters, 1997). Therapists’ training background and current work environment also influence their commitment to systemic considerations and parental inclusion in treatment. When clinicians have participated in family-related courses, they are more likely to involve family members as opposed to mothers only in intervention sessions (Lazar et al., 1991). Furthermore, Duhig and colleagues (2002) found that the number of family therapy courses in graduate training,

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the number of family-related journal articles and books read in the past year, and the number of family-related continuing education seminars attended by clinicians were associated with both maternal and paternal involvement in treatment. Therefore, the adoption of a family systems orientation is associated with therapists’ inclusion of fathers in therapy (Duhig et al.). Likewise, when therapists work in an environment or agency that is involved in the provision of child welfare services and in an environment that is generally supportive of family involvement in treatment, fathers are more likely to participate in treatment (Lazar et al.). There are also settings where parental involvement is neither convenient nor the focus of treatment. Therapy delivered in the school setting is focused frequently on child-related concerns (e.g., anger management, anxiety, depression, on-task behavior, social skills) during school hours when parents are usually working, and treatment appointments often vary in scheduling from week to week; thus, there is less opportunity for parental involvement (Phares et al., 2006). Regarding clinicians’ years of clinical work experience, there have been equivocal findings. Whereas some studies suggest that therapists with greater job tenure are less likely to involve fathers in treatment (Lazar et al., 1991), more current research suggests that greater time in overall clinical practice and higher number of years providing services to children and adolescents are associated with more paternal involvement in therapy (Duhig et al., 2002). As clinical training programs begin to endorse evidence-based practices, therapist attention to paternal involvement in child and adolescent therapy is likely to increase. Given that some fathers are the primary or sole breadwinners of the family, therapist flexibility in appointment availability is vital. Clinicians in private practice are more likely to include fathers in treatment, perhaps due to schedule flexibility and greater control over treatment sessions (Duhig et al., 2002). Additionally, therapists who are able to provide evening, weekend, or flexible working hours are more likely to engage fathers into treatment (Lazar et al., 1991). For example, Bagner and Eyberg (2003) found that when therapists encouraged father attendance and scheduled treatment sessions during times convenient for all family members, a high rate (78%) of fathers participated in treatment. Carr (1998) further commented that fathers are more willing to participate in therapy when they are personally invited via telephone calls, when additional sessions are offered and tailored to address their needs, and when therapists utilize a directive and structured style in session. In summary, there are many clinician variables that influence whether or not fathers become involved in the treatment of their child. Therapists of male gender may be more mindful of paternal contributions to children’s development and may be more willing to address concerns specific to fatherhood, but it could also be that fathers are more likely to agree to an appointment with a male therapist in contrast to a female therapist. In addition, therapists who believe in the value of the coparenting relationship and division of child caretaking responsibilities are more encouraging of father involvement. These findings are all relevant to ways that we can try to enhance our engagement of fathers into therapy.

Ways to Increase Fathers’ Involvement in Clinical Interventions 475

WAYS TO INCREASE FATHERS’ INVOLVEMENT IN CLINICAL INTERVENTIONS Given all that we know about barriers to fathers’ involvement in clinical interventions, there are logical steps that can be taken to try to address these barriers. Efforts can be targeted at fathers themselves or at the professional community. INCREASING FATHERS’ TREATMENT INVOLVEMENT TARGETING FATHERS, MOTHERS, AND FAMILIES

BY

Most referral calls are made by mothers (Phares et al., 2006), so a good first step in engaging fathers into treatment would be to ask the mother about having the father or father figure attend the session. Fabiano (2007) argues that paternal involvement should be established as a clear expectation at the point of first contact with the family. If the mother is reluctant to include the father in treatment, then the therapist may want to meet with the mother alone and learn more about her reluctance. There are certainly times when father participation is contraindicated, for example in cases of child maltreatment or domestic violence or antisocial characteristics (Phares et al., 2006), but in the majority of cases, therapists can work with mothers to engage fathers in treatment. Similarly, assuming that there are no contraindications to including the father in treatment, therapists can talk to fathers directly to engage them into the therapeutic process (Hecker, 1991). If the father is reluctant, the therapist can ask if he would be willing to meet for the first session without the child in order to address the reluctance. Given that fathers in family therapy often appreciate individual sessions to deal with their own concerns (Carr, 1998; Walters et al., 2001), an initial individual session might help to engage the father into treatment. If the father is not willing to attend even the first session alone with the therapist, then the therapist should try to intervene with the father via the telephone. For example, Hecker (1991) suggested that therapists explain to fathers that it is common for fathers to not want to be involved in therapy, thereby ‘‘normalizing’’ the father’s reluctance. With that type of connection, the therapist and father may be able to work cooperatively to address the father’s reluctance. In an article titled ‘‘Too Busy?,’’ Walters et al. (2001) argued that fathers should be challenged directly when they claim that they are ‘‘too busy’’ to get involved in their child’s therapy. The therapist might question the father directly regarding his commitment to his child given that he will not make time to help his child improve through therapy (Walters et al., 2001). In a less challenging and perhaps more supportive manner, many therapists have found that it is easier to engage fathers into treatment once they explain the important role that fathers play in their children’s lives (Szapocznik, Perez-Vidal, Brickman, & Foote, 1988). With this strategy, therapists can also give a rationale for why they want the father at the treatment sessions in the first place. There might also be a way to contact fathers through public service announcements. This tactic has been tried with the prevention of child abuse,

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where famous athletes have spoken out against harming children physically and verbally, and these public service announcements are often broadcast during sporting events (Rochlen & Hoyer, 2005). Although to our knowledge this strategy has not yet been investigated with fathers’ involvement in psychological interventions, there are a number of promising lines of work that are relevant. First, in 2003, the National Institute of Mental Health launched a public awareness campaign called ‘‘Real Men. Real Depression’’ (RMRD) to try to reduce stigma for men who were experiencing depression and to try to help them access therapy (Kersting, 2005; Rochlen, Whilde, & Hoyer, 2005). Public service announcements were aired nationally in over 100 television stations and nearly 900 radio stations, and print ads were posted in a number of venues, including airports. Although there has not been a huge amount of outcome data so far, there is evidence that the RMRD campaign reached the target audience accurately. Specifically, men who endorsed more traditional gender roles and who were more resistant to treatment found the RMRD campaign materials more satisfying and appealing than other materials that were not geared toward men (Rochlen, McKelley, & Pituch, 2006). There are other similar types of programs to try to destigmatize help seeking in men, but no programs have been evaluated sufficiently to date (Rochlen & Hoyer). Overall, these types of public service campaigns may provide a promising venue through which to help fathers understand the benefits of therapy for their family and for their children. The second interesting angle in destigmatizing therapy for men and thus fathers comes from some unlikely sources—masculine male celebrities. For example, in 2004, a documentary about the heavy metal band, Metallica, was released in which the band members talked positively about being involved in group therapy (Klosterman, 2004). One band member, Kirk Hammett, was quoted as saying, ‘‘Doing something for your mental health through therapy is just as good as going to the gym for your physical health’’ (p. 71; Sherman, 2004). More recently, former Tampa Bay Buccaneer’s running back and threetime Pro Bowler, Warrick Dunn, shared the story of how individual therapy helped him deal with his mother’s murder and his own feelings of isolation, sadness, and anger (Dunn & Yaeger, 2008). After discussing many details of the therapy that lasted over two years, Dunn wrote ‘‘ . . . All I could think of was that if counseling had helped me deal with so much, I had to encourage other people in the same way to be open to the idea. I had to let other men know that it’s not a sign of weakness to want to work through your issues in this way’’ (p. 229; Dunn & Yaeger, 2008). Overall, these professional and personal attempts to destigmatize therapy for men and thus for fathers should help to get more fathers involved in childand family-related therapy. Professionals also have a role to play both at the level of training and at the level of trying to engage fathers into treatment. INCREASING FATHERS’ TREATMENT INVOLVEMENT BY TRAINING PROGRAMS, CLINICAL SETTINGS, AND THERAPISTS Before therapists even begin to see clients, they are trained on a variety of clinically informed and evidence-based practices. Most programs provide

Ways to Increase Fathers’ Involvement in Clinical Interventions 477

training in both the theoretical and practical knowledge base related to conducting therapy. From a theoretical perspective, greater training opportunities in family systems and family process are associated with greater involvement of fathers in child-related therapy (Duhig et al., 2002; Lazar et al., 1991). Because paternal involvement in behavioral parent training is associated with better child outcomes (Bagner & Eyberg, 2003; Chronis et al., 2004; Lundahl et al., 2008), greater emphasis on inclusion of fathers in treatment is consistent with programs that are focused on evidence-based practices. Note that some authors have argued that gender issues should also be integrated directly into therapy training (Lee & McBain, 2006). Because there might be different issues for a father with a female therapist as opposed to a father with a male therapist (Perlick & Manning, 2007), training programs should consider integrating topics of parent gender into their child-oriented and family-oriented therapy training. From the practical side of training, there has been limited research into the process of engaging fathers into treatment, but there is some literature on engaging men (many of whom are fathers) into treatment for their own mental health concerns. Greer (2005) provided a number of practical skills for clinicians in the first session with a male client, including to avoid pressuring the client to discuss feelings too early in the therapeutic process, to consider discussing the client’s possible perception that going to therapy is a sign of failure, and to try to set an egalitarian tone in the first session by answering the client’s questions openly and honestly. Note, however, that many men are hesitant about therapists. For example, according to a national poll called ‘‘Therapy in America,’’ 22% of men responded that they do not trust therapists, whereas only 11% of women reported the same concern (Sherman, 2004). Thus, therapists may find themselves in an uphill battle when trying to engage men and particularly fathers into therapy. One intriguing idea to help engage men and fathers into treatment is to frame the treatment as coaching (McKelley & Rochlen, 2007). If fathers are resistant to the therapeutic process at the outset, the therapist can frame the work in terms of the coaching process, which may be more acceptable to some fathers because being coached is more consistent with a traditional male gender role (McKelley & Rochlen). Given that therapy is often seen as more consistent with the feminine gender role (Addis & Mahalik, 2003), it would be ideal if clinic directors could make sure that the clinical setting appeared to be welcoming to both mothers and fathers. Consider a waiting room that has magazines on parenting (with mostly mothers on the cover), celebrity fashions (with mostly women on the cover), and a popular press magazine like Oprah. Conversely, consider those same magazines in the waiting room but in addition, there are also magazines like Sports Illustrated and Men’s Health. It would make sense that fathers may feel more welcome in the latter rather than the former waiting room. Similarly, waiting rooms and therapy offices should be decorated in such a way that they seem neither too feminine nor too masculine (Phares et al., 2006). Fabiano (2007) also argued that the therapeutic process can include topics that might be of great interest to fathers. For example, behavioral parent

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training often uses examples from classroom settings and social settings, but it could also be modified to include examples from recreational and sportsrelated venues. Thus, the same skills can be taught, but with a different content to express the primary concepts, thereby becoming more acceptable to fathers as well as mothers who enjoy sports and recreational activities (Fabiano). Therapists should also be conscious of family diversity. As reported throughout this volume, family constellations are quite diverse currently, so therapists may need to use the term father figure when inviting a male parenting adult into treatment initially. Given that many children are raised by a single mother with other father figures in their lives (such as a grandfather, uncle, or caretaking nonrelative male; Silverstein, 2002), therapists are encouraged to think broadly about whom to invite into therapy. Similarly, therapists should consider that fathers’ involvement in therapy is on a continuum rather than an all or none process (Phares et al., 2006). Fathers might be involved in the assessment and therapeutic process in a number of ways, from only having minimal phone contact with the therapist to attending every single session that the mother and child attend. Thus, even if a father does not become engaged in treatment at the outset, the therapist may want to try to engage him into treatment at other points of therapy along the way. Finally, therapists are encouraged to keep learning throughout their professional lives. Because therapists’ additional continuing education on families is associated with increased involvement of fathers in their caseloads, therapists are encouraged to continue seeking out opportunities to learn about fathers and their child clients (Duhig et al., 2002). With that in mind, there are a number of resources for clinicians in order to help engage men and specifically fathers into treatment (Carr, 1998; Good & Brooks, 2005; Mahalik, Good, & Englar-Carlson, 2003; Mahalik & Morrison, 2006; McBride & Lutz, 2004; Perlick & Manning, 2007). SUMMARY Given the connections between paternal psychopathology and children’s and adolescents’ functioning as well as the evidence that fathers’ own treatment can improve functioning in their offspring, it makes sense to want fathers to be involved in psychological interventions for children. Like most areas of parent–child relationships, however, mothers have much more involvement with their children in the process of clinical interventions than do fathers. There are compelling reasons, however, to help increase fathers’ involvement in clinical interventions with their children, adolescents, and families. Fathers’ involvement in therapy is associated with better child outcomes and better functioning within the family. Therapists are encouraged to use their clinical skills to try to engage fathers into treatment for the benefit of the fathers themselves as well as their children and families. There are a number of studies and clinically informed projects that are needed in this area. Researchers need to be more cognizant of including fathers in research on treatment outcome studies and to exploring differential effectiveness of maternal versus paternal involvement in treatment. Better research methodology is also needed in this area. For example, none of

References 479

the studies cited in this chapter regarding paternal inclusion in behavioral parent training utilized random assignment, so issues of causality cannot be addressed. In addition, more research is needed on fathers’ involvement in CBT interventions for internalizing disorders such as anxiety and depression. In all of these types of studies, more attention should be paid to quantifying paternal involvement in treatment (e.g., assessing fathers’ attendance for therapy appointments, measuring fathers’ active participation within the sessions, assessing fathers’ therapeutic alliance with the therapist, etc.). In addition, more work is needed to delineate how parents’ own treatment can influence improvements in children’s mental health functioning. Researchers and therapists can also try to make therapy more fatherfriendly in order to more easily engage fathers into treatment. Some efforts have been made toward this goal (e.g., framing therapy as coaching and by offering individual sessions to address fathers’ personal concerns), but more work is needed in this area. Researchers and therapists can also try to find ways to destigmatize therapy in the general public and with fathers in particular. Perhaps more educational efforts, such as highlighting the active processes of therapy, could help therapy seem more appealing to fathers. Therapists and clinic directors may also want to pay attention to making the therapy setting more gender neutral in order to make fathers feel more welcome in the clinic. Within the realm of training, graduate programs should include more extensive training on family systems and should provide additional continuing education efforts on family functioning in order to alert therapists to the importance of fathers’ involvement in therapy. In addition, more research and clinical work is needed internationally on these issues. Although a number of the studies reviewed in this chapter took place outside of the United States in countries that included Canada (Bouchard et al., 2007), the United Kingdom (Jaffee et al., 2003; Ramchandani et al., 2008), and the Netherlands (Liber et al., 2008; Reichart et al., 2007), more work is needed to identify whether there are different patterns of paternal involvement in treatment throughout the world. Finally, there is a need for clinicians and researchers to work collaboratively on these issues. Like in the treatment outcome literature, there is a wealth of information that is known to researchers that has not been communicated effectively to practicing clinicians and vice versa (Weisz & Addis, 2006). More connections between the research knowledge about the benefits of fathers’ involvement in therapy and the actual practice of child and family therapy is in the best interests of researchers, clinicians, children, and families. REFERENCES Addis, M. E., & Mahalik, J. R. (2003). Men, masculinity, and the contexts of help seeking. American Psychologist, 58, 5–14. Amato, P. R., & Sobolewski, J. M. (2004). The effects of divorce on fathers and children: Nonresidential fathers and step-fathers. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (4th ed, pp. 341–367). Hoboken NJ: Wiley.

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CHAPTER 17

Fathers of Children with Developmental Disabilities ELAINE E. MACDONALD and RICHARD P. HASTINGS

INTRODUCTION Fathers of children with developmental disabilities1 have a long history of being perceived in the psychological literature as the ‘‘peripheral parent’’ (Herbert & Carpenter, 1994), or even the ‘‘invisible parent’’ (Ballard, Bray, Shelton, & Clarkson, 1997). More recently, it has also become apparent that fathers themselves often feel overlooked by both researchers and practitioners—as if they are ‘‘just a shadow’’ (West, 2000). The outcome of a long history of lack of inclusion is that relatively little is known about fathers’ experiences, needs, and involvement in raising a child with developmental disability. The convergence of several developments has served to shift the focus onto fathers of children with developmental disabilities. Within the field of developmental psychology, the exclusive centrality of the mother in infant attachment (Bowlby, 1951) was significantly challenged by subsequent research findings indicating that most babies develop several attachments (Rutter, 1972) and indeed may have their main attachment to their father (Schaffer & Emerson, 1964). Second, changing demographic trends have set a context for increased opportunities for fathers’ attachment and involvement with their children (Kramer & Thompson, 2002). Increased labor force participation of women, and loosening expectations that mothers will automatically assume primary responsibility for child care responsibilities, has meant fathers are even more involved in nurturing and caring roles. Migration and increasing geographic mobility of adults and couples has meant that extended family members are often living some distance away, and, with fewer family supports available, fathers are more frequently engaged in caregiving roles for their children. 1. In this chaper, the broad label of developmental disabilities refers to conditions including some degree of intellectual disability and also to autism, which has a severe developmental disability with strong associations with intellectual disability. This usage reflects the terminology adopted by the American Association for Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.

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A further societal shift, particularly relevant to fathers of children with developmental disabilities, has been the deinstitutionalization of people with developmental disabilities since the 1980s. The typical living arrangement for children and young adults with developmental disabilities is now within the family (Braddock et al., 2001). The increasing population of children with developmental disabilities living at home, combined with fathers’ increased involvement in child care, has meant that fathers are likely to be more directly involved, and affected by, raising their child with developmental disability. Theoretical developments have also raised the profile of fathers of children with developmental disabilities, especially the application of family systems theory to families of children with developmental disabilities (Seligman & Darling, 2007). Using a systems framework, the family is perceived as a ‘‘whole’’ constituted by the sum of its parts, each part being interrelated, and affected by a reciprocal pattern of influence between parts (Minuchin, 2004). The family is seen as a complex and interactive social system in which all members’ needs and experiences affect the others (Friend & Cook, 2002). Thus, within a family of a child with a developmental disability, the birth and care of the child is understood to affect every member, including the father. This perspective has emphasized the need to incorporate fathers into clinical interventions, research studies, and support programs. Despite these developments, psychological research has typically focused on maternal and sibling functioning within families of children with developmental disabilities (Cuskelly & Gunn, 2006; Emerson, 2003). Where fathers have been included in research, it has been primarily to function as a contrast group to their female counterparts (Kramer, 2002). Although the relative absence of fathers seems unwarranted, it must be acknowledged that the conduct of father-related research may be impeded in several ways. First, on a methodological level, research design is typically framed by a concept of maternal caregiving, or what is called the maternal template (Marsiglio et al., 2000). Second, much progress is still needed to clarify and reach a consensus on how ‘‘fathers’’ and the fathering role are defined in research. Third, and on a practical level, fathers are often perceived as ‘‘hard to reach’’ by researchers (McConkey, 1994) due to their lack of availability to participate in research typically scheduled during working hours or after busy days at work. Finally, the limited psychometric quality of instruments and questionnaires that are tailored to fathers of children with developmental disabilities continues to present a drawback in conducting research with fathers (Roggman et al., 2002). The focus of this chapter is on research findings, theoretical developments, and clinical interventions relating to fathers of children with developmental disabilities. In the first section, we focus on research primarily concerned with fathers of children with intellectual disabilities. We provide a context by first considering historical perspectives, before turning our attention to the main focus of this section, which is recent research from 2000 to 2009. In the second main section, we similarly consider recent research findings relating to fathers of children with autism spectrum disorders. Given the increasing focus on individual genetic syndromes

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associated with intellectual disability, we briefly consider the emerging research literature relating to fathers of children with such conditions. The latter part of the chapter discusses implications of material covered in our review for clinical practice and future research. We bring the chapter to a close by drawing conclusions.

FATHERS OF CHILDREN WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES A significant theme in research prior to the year 2000 was fathers’ response to the diagnosis of their child with intellectual disability. Although it has been recognized for some time that individual responses to becoming a parent vary, for many adults, having a child broadens their sense of responsibility and brings profound changes to their lives, relationships, and identities (Palkovitz, 2002). Becoming an involved father by taking responsibility for raising a child and, thus, contributing to the next generation is an important developmental life stage for men (Bradford & Hawkins, 2006). However, if the child is also diagnosed with intellectual disability, the father will encounter additional dimensions in this stage of fatherhood, including unexpected experiences, feelings, relationships, and services. Research prior to the year 2000 was groundbreaking, first, in confirming that fathers had emotional responses to their child’s diagnosis, and second, in describing the nature and extent of those responses. Much of the literature was qualitative and ethnographic in nature. Generally, it was undertaken in a ‘‘discovery’’ mode and aimed to extend the knowledge of what it meant to be a father of a child with intellectual disability (Lewis & O’Brien, 1987). Hornby’s (1992) influential analysis of the written accounts of eight fathers of children with intellectual disabilities has made a significant and lasting contribution to understanding fathers’ experiences at what is often a critical time in the lives of parents of children with intellectual disabilities. The fathers’ accounts illustrate the intensity of reaction to the initial diagnosis, the existential conflicts that may arise, the co-occurrence of both positive and negative emotions, and the personal growth that may take place through the process of fathers adapting to their new life circumstances. Several subsequent studies build on Hornby’s (1992) early examination of fathers’ experiences around the time of diagnosis. A common theme running through the literature on response to diagnosis is fathers’ concern about their ability to meet their child’s needs, and their families’ need for practical and emotional support (Meyer, 1995; Pelchat et al., 1999). Fathers also describe a sudden loss of expectations in relation to their role as father with the distance between the idealized and actual fatherhood experience being difficult to accept (Murray et al., 1991). There are reports of much-valued life goals being disrupted and disoriented (Meyer) and worry about capacity to meet the child’s long-term needs (Bray et al., 1995). Importantly, while family members may look to the father for support at this time, the father’s own needs often go unrecognized or are seen as a lesser priority than those of the child and mother.

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A second major historical theme during the pre-2000 era was focused on the psychological adaptation of fathers of children with intellectual disabilities to their fathering role. Generally, this theme was explored using either of two research designs or approaches. The first approach was based on the assumption that the child’s impact on the family was predominantly negative, and hence the research questions clustered around issues of parental depression and stress (e.g., Sloper et al., 1991). The second, less prevalent approach explored parents’ psychological adaptation by framing research questions that acknowledged the potential rewards and positive gains relating to raising a child with intellectual disability (Abbott & Meredith, 1986; Grant, Ramcharan, McGrath, Nolan & Keady, 1998). There is general consensus in the pre-2000 literature that adapting to the fathering role almost invariably brings new challenges that have the potential to effect positive and negative outcomes on psychological well-being. Some of these challenges are similar to those experienced by most fathers (e.g., balancing work and family responsibilities). Other challenges are different in nature and/or intensity. Fathers may suddenly find themselves liaising with complex service systems, learning specialized techniques involved in caring for a child who has an associated medical condition, learning how to cope with the variety of stresses experienced both as an individual and as part of a parenting couple. Despite the challenges, Houser and Seligman (1991) found that, when compared to fathers of typically developing children, fathers of children with intellectual disabilities do not differ with respect to levels of child-related stress. However, the findings did indicate that there were certain coping strategies that differentiated the two groups of fathers, with fathers of children with intellectual disabilities using distancing, escape– avoidance, and positive reappraisal more often than fathers of typically developing children. In common with fathers of typically developing children, the adaptation of fathers of children with intellectual disabilities is partly influenced by the characteristics of their children. Although there is considerable variation in the conclusions drawn from earlier research, a number of general patterns in research findings are evident. Fathers’ adaptation to girls with intellectual disabilities seems better than fathers’ adaptation to boys with intellectual disabilities (Frey et al., 1989). Fathers of older children with intellectual disabilities experience lower stress levels (Cummings, 1976). When children with intellectual disabilities have more atypical language, affect, and behavior, their fathers display more negative attitudes and less involvement in child care (Bristol, Gallagher, & Schopler, 1988). Trute (1995) explored key situational stressors (child characteristics, coping styles, and social support) associated with depressive symptomatology in 73 mothers and 73 fathers raising young children with intellectual disabilities. Separate outcome data were reported for fathers. A key predictor of fathers’ depression was gender of the child, with higher levels of paternal depression relating to male children. Results also indicated an inverse relationship between the child’s level of intellectual disability and the father’s level of depression (i.e., fathers reported higher levels of depression when their child had milder levels of disability). Overall, the results indicate that higher levels

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of depression in fathers were associated with male children with less severe intellectual disabilities. It has been suggested that parents may be particularly anxious about future occupational achievement and long-term social status facing their child with milder levels of intellectual disability (Seligman & Darling, 2007). The bulk of research on psychological adaptation in the pre-2000 era recruited parents of younger children or young adults with intellectual disabilities. However, there is a ‘‘hidden population’’ of families caring for adult children with intellectual disabilities that remain unknown to health and social services, often until a crisis occurs (Horne, 1989). The literature suggests that older fathers of adult children with intellectual disabilities often present with a complex set of individual and joint needs. Essex, Seltzer and Krauss (1999) investigated patterns of coping among older mothers and fathers involved in a caregiving role for 40 years on average. Results indicated that fathers experienced increasing depressive symptoms over time when their adult child was older and had more significant limitations in adaptive skills (self-help skills). Higher use of emotion-focused coping was also associated with increased depressive symptomatology in fathers. Increased levels of pessimism were evident over the study period when the father had poorer physical health. A third feature of research historically is a focus on fathers’ involvement in child care. For some time it has been clear that couples raising typically developing children in which the father assumes a significant share of child care are more satisfied with the arrangement and are more satisfied in the couple relationship (Deutsch, Lozy & Saxon, 1993) than couples with more differentiated roles regarding child care. Within the field of intellectual disability, fathers’ participation in child care appears to influence both parents’ appraisal of the burden of care, whereby higher involvement by the father increases positive family coping and relationship adjustment for both members of the parenting couple (Trute, 1990; Willoughby & Glidden, 1995). ‘‘Disharmony’’ between perceived and desired support from one’s partner has been found to predict poorer parental adaptation (Bristol et al., 1988). Literature prior to the year 2000 highlighted that gender role differentiation tends to be even more accentuated among parents of children with intellectual disabilities (Breslau, Salkever, & Staruch, 1982). For many couples, the presence of a young child with intellectual disability in the home polarizes parental roles, with the result that one partner is drawn to providing special care for the child while the other is drawn to the role of financial provider for the family (Schilling, Schinke, & Kirkham, 1985). This finding was thought to be consistent with the observation that fathers of children with intellectual disabilities were less involved in child care or housework than are fathers of children without intellectual disabilities. It was suggested that this is a lifelong pattern, with mothers of adults with disabilities continuing as primary caregivers even after their partner had retired from the workforce (Heller et al., 1997; Hirst, 1985). However, it was importantly noted that these findings did not always carry over to families of children with severe intellectual disability, possibly because the efforts of both parents were

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required to carry out the higher level of child care tasks (Rousey, Best, & Blacher, 1992). In a review of the research on the roles and child care involvement of fathers of children with intellectual disabilities, Lillie (1993) suggested that fathers of children with intellectual disabilities expressed more interest in the needs of their children than is customarily thought. Several factors were highlighted that mitigated against father involvement. Fathers were observed to be uncomfortable with female-dominated service systems. Role differentiation between parents did not foster direct contact between child and father. The daytime hours during which programs or meetings concerning the child traditionally take place did not accommodate fathers’ working lives. Where the mother actively supported the involvement of her partner in child care, such support appeared to motivate the partner’s involvement (Crouter et al., 1987). In their discussion of fathers in early intervention and family support programs, Davis and May (1991) pointed out that fathers of children with intellectual disabilities had little preparation for their parenting roles and that they were frequently considered as an afterthought by professionals. Young and Roopnarine (1994) compared the child care involvement, relationship satisfaction, and coping styles of 23 mothers and 23 fathers of preschool children with intellectual disabilities, and 24 mothers and 24 fathers of typically developing children. No significant differences were found between the two groups of fathers in terms of the degree in which they were involved in child care tasks, child socialization, child-rearing decisions, and activities with the child. However, the findings need cautious interpretation, as the sample comprised two-parent families whose members were highly educated and economically secure. The literature reports that families with better economic resources and educational attainment are able to obtain better education and social support for their children with intellectual disabilities and are also able to obtain better caregiving services (Ahmeduzzaman & Roopnarine, 1992). RESEARCH

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Several of the same historical research themes also appear in recent research on fathers of children with intellectual disabilities. Research since the year 2000 has extended lines of empirical inquiry into fathers’ psychological wellbeing, with the majority of studies focusing on parenting stress and depression (Oelofsen & Richardson, 2006; Olsson & Hwang, 2008; Saloviita, Italinna, & Leinonen, 2003; Stoneman, 2007; Trute & Hierbert-Murphy, 2005). In general, parents of children with intellectual disabilities are found to experience higher levels of parenting stress than those in families raising typically developing children (Hauser-Cram, Warfield, Shonkoff, & Kraus, 2001; Smith, Oliver, & Innocenti, 2001). Oelofsen and Richardson (2006) studied 59 mothers and 59 fathers of preschool children with intellectual disabilities, and 45 mothers and 45 fathers of typically developing children. Fathers of children with intellectual disabilities reported higher levels of parenting stress than other fathers, with 67% of fathers’ scores falling within the clinical range. It is suggested that the higher levels of parenting stress

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correspond to the additional demands that parents experience, such as having to come to terms with their child’s disability, explain to other people, investigate and secure supports, and undertake specialized care for their child (if needed). Researchers have also sought to delineate factors which can explain gender specific experiences of parenting stress. Trute and Hierbert-Murphy (2005) studied family adjustment and parenting stress among 106 mothers and 70 fathers of children less than 12 years of age with intellectual disabilities. Although mothers reported a higher overall level of parenting stress than fathers, a finding unique to fathers was that their parenting stress over time was associated with their parenting morale (e.g., enthusiasm or confidence regarding a specific parenting function or task). Focusing on children in a similar age range (1 to 10 years old), Saloviita et al. (2003) compared 116 mothers and 120 fathers of children with intellectual disabilities on measures of parental stress. For both fathers and mothers, the single most important predictor of parental stress was the negative definition of the situation. For mothers, the negative definition was associated with challenging behavior presented by the child, whereas for fathers it was associated with the extent to which they felt their child achieved social acceptance from neighbors and acquaintances. Although raising a child with intellectual disabilities brings positive experiences and changes (Blacher & Baker, 2007; Scorgie & Sobsey, 2000), there is also substantial evidence illustrating that parental depression is more commonly reported by mothers and fathers in families of children with intellectual disabilities (Olsson & Hwang, 2001; Singer, 2006). Olsson and Hwang (2008) studied 62 mothers and 49 fathers of children less than five years old with intellectual disabilities, and 178 mothers and 141 fathers of typically developing children. A cross-sectional group difference emerged indicating that fathers of children with intellectual disabilities reported more depressive symptoms than fathers of typically developing children. For some time researchers have questioned whether the lower levels of depression reported by fathers than mothers might be a function of fathers benefiting from continued involvement in paid work and other roles after the birth of the child with intellectual disability (Bristol et al., 1988; Heller et al., 1997; Olsson & Hwang, 2003). The literature within the field of childhood intellectual disability suggests that, while the expectations of mothers are typically focused on the internal dynamics of their family, fathers are more likely to focus their expectations on the wider world, primarily through their work (Pelchat, Lefebvre, & Perreault, 2003). Olsson and Hwang (2006) compared parents of children with intellectual disabilities and a control group of parents of typically developing children on measures of involvement in paid work and child care. The study tested whether differences in well-being between mothers and fathers of children with intellectual disabilities could be explained by differences in involvement on these measures. Results confirmed a significant effect for gender of the parent and presence of a child with intellectual disability on involvement in paid work and parental well-being, with parents of children with intellectual disability being less involved in paid work and having lower levels of well-being.

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Two further recent studies have focused on the role of paid work in families of children with intellectual disabilities. Warfield (2005) studied family and work predictors of parenting role stress among 51 mothers and 51 fathers of 5-year-old children with intellectual disabilities. Mothers and fathers were similar in age and years of education. Fathers reported working, on average, 18 hours more per week than mothers. In addition, the vast majority of fathers (94.1%) worked full time or more, while less than one-quarter (23.5%) of the mothers worked full time. In a second study, Einam and Cuskelly (2002) examined data relating to paid employment among 25 mothers and 12 fathers of young adults with multiple disabilities, and a comparison group of 25 mothers and 19 fathers of typically developing children. With regard to fathers of children with intellectual disabilities, a bimodal distribution emerged in working hours, with some fathers working many more hours than normal and some working considerably fewer. It was suggested that while some fathers of children with intellectual disabilities reduce their involvement in work outside the home, other fathers work very long hours as a direct response to their feelings of responsibility for meeting the needs of the family. A third theme in recent father research has been an interest in the impact of socioeconomic circumstances in understanding father adjustment. Research indicates that the presence of a child with intellectual disabilities in the family does not in itself predict poorer parental well-being (Emerson et al., 2006). Rather, the presence of a child with intellectual disabilities is but one of several risk and protective factors that influence the parent, and the effect the child will have depends on the larger individual context. Olsson and Hwang (2008) studied the contribution of socioeconomic variables, in addition to psychological factors, to the well-being of parents raising children with and without intellectual disabilities. Data were gathered from 62 mothers and 49 fathers of children with intellectual disabilities, and a control group of 183 mothers and 141 fathers. Results indicated that hardship, rather than income, was related to well-being. Hardship was defined as the number of items a family would like to have but could not afford. Higher levels of hardship were reported by fathers of children with intellectual disabilities (32.7%) than other fathers (19.8%). Clearly, not all fathers experience significant distress as a result of raising a child with intellectual disability, and researchers have considered individual differences to explain some of this variation. In particular, paternal coping has received research attention. Glidden et al. (2006) define coping as ‘‘as a distinctive behavioural style or as a fine-tuned accommodation to an event requiring both behavioural and emotional responses and regulation’’ (p. 956). Parents of children with intellectual disabilities report using a diversity of coping strategies in their roles, including managing meaning (thinking differently about the meaning of stressful events or challenges), managing stress (e.g., engaging in sports, talking it out with a trusted confidante), and problem solving (Grant & Whittell, 2000). Research evidence indicates that although the use of some strategies is shared equally across genders, other strategies are more gender specific (Essex et al., 1999; Gavidia-Payne & Stoneman, 1997; MacDonald, Fitzsimons, & Walsh, 2007).

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Research findings in the general population indicate that parenting couples’ use of problem-focused coping is associated with positive perceptions of the quality of the parenting relationship (Bouchard et al., 1998). Extending the research focus to parents of children with intellectual disabilities, Stoneman and Gavidia-Payne (2006) gathered data from 67 mothers and 67 fathers of children with intellectual disabilities aged from 13 to 72 months. The study tested the prediction that parents’ use of problem-focused coping strategies would be related to positive perceptions of the parenting relationship, over and above the variance contributed by the parents’ daily hassles. The prediction was upheld for fathers, but not for mothers. It has been suggested that fathers of children with intellectual disabilities tend to focus on solving problems outside of the family system, whereas mothers tend to be more focused on the everyday care of the child, and thus may experience a higher level of daily hassles (Frey et al. 1989). Additionally, it may be that solving problems in the public domain carries a higher reward in terms of satisfaction and self-confidence, which may, in turn, have a positive effect on fathers’ adjustment both as an individual and as part of a parenting relationship. Since the development of ‘‘third wave’’ behavior therapies that emphasize acceptance and mindfulness processes, researchers have begun to explore whether these psychological processes might be used by parents of children with intellectual disabilities to help them cope with the demands of raising these children. As a result of acceptance and mindfulness interventions for parents generally and parents of children with intellectual disabilities specifically, improvements have been documented in child behavior, parenting satisfaction, and reducing parental stress (Blackledge & Hayes, 2006; Coyne & Wilson, 2004; Dumas, 2005; Murrell et al., 2004; Singh et al., 2006, 2007;). It is widely observed that parents tend to avoid interaction with their children when their children are presenting with problem behaviors (Hastings, 2002a, 2002b). The usefulness of mindfulness-based approaches in coping with these situations is based on the hypothesis that the use of mindfulness-based approaches increases a parent’s ability to stay in the present moment, thus increasing their capacity to accept and observe their own aversive feelings, rather than avoid these feelings and their child. MacDonald and Hastings (in press) designed a study to test this hypothesis and gathered data from 105 fathers of children with intellectual disabilities aged from 6 to 18 years old. Results indicated that fathers who reported being more mindful as a parent also reported higher levels of interaction with their child in child-related parenting tasks and child socialization. The data suggest that the use of mindfulness as a coping mechanism in the parenting role (present-centered attention, staying with aversive emotions rather than seeking to escape them) may be an important predictor of parenting in families of children with intellectual disabilities. Although research published since 2000 continues to refine our understanding of psychological difficulties in fathers, an expanding interest is evident in fathers’ reports of ‘‘positive gain’’ or the idea that a child with intellectual disability may contribute positively to a family. Increasingly, research questions are generated to investigate the presence of positive perceptions or ‘‘gains’’

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associated with being the parent of a child with a intellectual disability (e.g., Blacher & Baker, 2002). However, most studies of positive perceptions have not recruited fathers in their samples, or reported separately on father data (although see the following section on fathers of children with autism for the results of Hastings et al., 2005b). A final theme in recent research is represented by an interest in how fathers function as part of a partnership responsible for raising children with intellectual disabilities. Consistent with the view of the family as a system, father involvement is significantly influenced by the network of family relationships within which it is embedded (Seligman & Darling, 2007). A high level of father involvement is generally observed to be ‘‘grounded’’ in a harmonious couple relationship (Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004; Flouri, 2005). Further, the quality of the father–child relationship has been found to be more vulnerable to the negative effects of discord within the parenting couple than is the mother–child relationship (Cummings et al., 2004). Research on the couple relationship is regarded as critical because of its central role in establishing the family emotional climate and because it is an area of functioning that is amenable to intervention (e.g., Baucom et al., 1998). Thus, while it is important to understand how fathers cope as individuals, it is essential to investigate how they function as part of a parenting couple relationship (Simmerman et al., 2001). Bristol et al. (1988) coined the term harmonic responsiveness to describe couple relationships that function effectively where there is a good match between support proffered and received between partners who are ‘‘in tune’’ or ‘‘out of tune’’ with each other. Whereas the capacity of a parenting couple to support each other has been found to be an important factor in adaptation for both parents, research findings have for some time suggested that fathers typically obtain or rely more on the support of their partner than do mothers (Bristol et al., 1988; Grant & Whittell, 2000). Kersh et al. (2006) studied the contribution of relationship quality to psychological well-being among 67 mothers and 67 fathers of children with intellectual disabilities. Results indicated that fathers who reported higher levels of relationship quality also reported lower levels of depressive symptoms and parenting stress. In a study previously described (Saloviita et al., 2003), it was found that, for fathers, parental stress was associated with the extent to which they felt their child achieved social acceptance. The study also assessed fathers’ satisfaction with the parenting relationship by measuring expressive and instrumental support obtained from the partner, as well as emotional, social, sexual, and recreational intimacy. Consistent with previous research, results indicated that fathers relied more than mothers on support from their partner. FATHERS OF CHILDREN WITH AUTISM Historically, there has been considerable interest in the mothers rather than the fathers of children with autism. When Kanner (1943) first described autism, he included in his report the observation that the parents of these children displayed unusual personality traits and lacked emotional warmth.

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Given the dominance of psychodynamic theories at the time, the hypothesis emerged that autism was a consequence of a disturbed mother–child relationship and especially a cold, rejecting attitude of the ‘‘refrigerator’’ parent (Bettelheim, 1967). Such theories were subsequently strongly critiqued and found to lack an empirical basis (Cantwell, Baker, & Rutter, 1979; Cox et al., 1975). Early interest in fathers of children with autism also emerged as a result of another of Kanner’s (1943) observations about autism—that it seemed to be an upper-class phenomenon, especially as indexed by the father’s social standing. Again, this is an observation that has not survived empirical testing, and it is clear that autism occurs across all social classes. For example, Tsai, Stewart, Faust, and Shook (1982) reviewed the cases of referrals to an autism diagnostic service in Iowa and assessed fathers’ social status. Not only did they find no evidence of a difference between paternal social status in the referred group when compared with the Iowa population, but paternal social status was not associated with earlier versus later referral to the service or distance traveled to the service. Thus, paternal social status was also not associated with access to an autism service. A broader interest in fathers of children with autism did not emerge in the research literature until the early 1990s, and most relevant literature has been published in the current decade. The broader interest in fathers of children with autism began with a seminal study by Rodrigue, Morgan, and Geffken (1992). Rodrigue and colleagues recruited three groups of fathers (20 in each group) of children with autism, with Down syndrome, and also a typically developing comparison group. A broad range of measures was included to establish the putative impact of autism or Down syndrome on fathers and on father–child relationships. Relatively few group differences emerged. First, fathers of children with autism or with Down syndrome reported more negative effects on their family than fathers of typically developing children. Second, fathers of children with autism reported the use of more avoidant (wishful thinking) coping strategies than fathers in the other two groups. Third, an interaction with child gender also emerged such that fathers of girls with autism reported lower levels of social support available to them than every other subgroup in the study. Thus, relatively few differences emerged between fathers of children with autism and fathers of other children in terms of their experiences of parenting. Following on from the Rodrigue et al. (1992) research, there have been a number of studies focused on the experiences of, and outcomes for, fathers of children with autism. These research studies have focused on a broad range of questions, including comparison of various psychological and psychiatric difficulties between fathers of children with autism and fathers of typically developing children or population data; differences in the experiences of mothers and fathers of children with autism; the existence of a broad autism phenotype in fathers; correlates of paternal well-being; qualitative research designs; and fathers as participants in intervention for their child with autism. In the remainder of this section, we summarize research relating to fathers of children with autism published between 2000 and early 2009 that has addressed these various research topics.

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PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING An assumption underlying much family research in the fields of developmental disabilities is that raising a child with significant disabilities is stressful and challenging and thus is likely to have a negative impact on family members, including parents. In recent studies where parents in general or fathers specifically of children with autism have been compared with parents/fathers of typically developing children, results in general support this underlying assumption, although as in the Rodrigue et al. (1992) research, group differences were not always found and are sometimes small in number and in size. Herring et al. (2006) studied 79 mothers and 72 fathers of preschool children with pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) and 38 mothers and 34 fathers of typically developing children. At the first data collection point, there were no differences between fathers of children with PDD and other fathers in terms of general psychological distress, their perceptions of family functioning, and stress. At a 6-month follow-up, a cross-sectional group difference did emerge in that fathers of children with PDD reported more stress than other fathers. Focusing on children across a broader age range (2 to 12 years), Brobst, Clopton, and Hendrick (2009) compared mothers and fathers of 25 children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) (7 autism, 9 Asperger syndrome, and 9 PDD not otherwise specified [PDD-NOS]) with parents of 20 children without developmental disorders. Both mothers and fathers of children with ASD reported more stress than other parents, less satisfaction in their relationship with their partner/spouse, and less availability of social support. Researchers have also studied variables other than psychological wellbeing when comparing fathers of children with autism to other fathers. Meltzer (2008) studied the sleep quality of 12 fathers of children with ASD compared to 10 fathers of typically developing children. Subjective sleep quality was poorer for fathers of children with ASD, and they also had earlier wake times and overall shorter sleep time. Szatmari et al. (2008) compared fathers of children with autism and fathers of children with Prader-Willi syndrome on a measure of alexithymia. Alexithymia represents difficulties in identifying emotions experienced and a difficulty in describing those emotions to others. Szatmari et al. found no evidence of statistically significant differences between the two groups, and also no differences between the sample of fathers of children with autism and population data on the Toronto Alexithymia Scales used in the research. Mixed findings are again a feature of larger population-based studies or research involving comparison with general population statistics. Yamada et al. (2007) gathered data on the general psychological distress of 122 fathers of children with PDD attending a clinic at a Japanese hospital. These fathers’ psychological distress did not differ from normative Japanese population data. However, Daniels et al. (2008) used Swedish health records to link children with ASD with their parents’ psychiatric health records. Each child with diagnosed ASD was matched with a random sample of 25 typically developing children from the same birth hospital. Fathers of children with

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ASD were more likely to have a psychiatric record for psychotic disorder, but there were no differences for other psychiatric difficulties. There was no evidence of an association between the timing of the fathers’ psychiatric difficulties and the diagnosis of their child with ASD, although it does not appear that data were compared before and after the birth of the child. Daniels et al. argue that these data support the argument that a genetic vulnerability in parents may be associated with their psychiatric difficulties and childhood ASD. However, given the lack of pre–post birth comparison in the data, it is difficult to rule out a causal model whereby having a child with ASD places parents at increased risk for psychological difficulties. THE BROAD AUTISM PHENOTYPE

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For some time, it has been clear that the complex genetic nature of autism also seems to be reflected in autistic-like features in the relatives of individuals diagnosed with ASDs. Family members may display milder forms of the characteristic features of autism, but not to an extent that meets diagnostic criteria for ASDs (e.g., Fombonne, Bolton, Prior, Jordan, & Rutter, 1997; Hughes, Plumet, & Leboyer, 1999; Piven & Palmer, 1997). The methods for studying this question rely on questionnaire measures (e.g., the Autism Quotient [AQ]: Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Skinner, Martin, & Clubley, 2001) and also experimental tests of cognitive skills and deficits commonly observed in individuals with autism. Scheeren and Stauder (2008) compared 13 fathers of 6- to 16-year-old children with ASD to fathers of typically developing children. Fathers of children with ASD did have higher AQ scores, and there were marginally significant results to suggest that these fathers were likely to exhibit gaze direction patterns typical of individuals with autism. Thus, fathers may have milder forms of the characteristics of autism, and this needs to be considered especially in research concerned with fathers’ psychological functioning. FATHER–MOTHER DIFFERENCES In addition to comparisons between fathers of children with autism and other fathers, researchers have been interested in whether fathers and mothers report different outcomes in families of children with autism, where these families are composed of a mother, a father, and at least one child. When the recent published research literature on families with this composition is examined, results indicate without exception either that mothers and fathers do not report differences or that mothers report more negative outcomes and negative impact than do fathers. We could find no research studies in which fathers reported more difficulties putatively associated with their child with autism when compared with mothers. Typically, mothers of children with autism report more child-related and parenting stress and lower psychological well-being than do fathers. These differences are apparent when children are still young—in the preschool years—or recently diagnosed (Davis & Carter, 2008; Hastings et al., 2005b; Herring et al., 2006), and also when children are older or in samples with a

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wide spread of child ages (Hastings, 2003; Tehee, Honan, & Hevey, 2009). In research on mothers and fathers of preschool and school-age children with autism, Hastings et al. (2005a) found that fathers reported using more avoidant coping strategies and less problem-focused coping than did mothers. Fathers have also been found to report fewer positive contributions made by their child for them and their family (Hastings et al., 2005b), and also less involvement in the care of their child (Tehee et al., 2009). Despite a general pattern of father–mother differences, some researchers have found no such evidence, especially for psychological distress (Brobst et al., 2009; Honey, Hastings, & McConachie, 2005), but also in other domains such as sleep quality (Meltzer, 2008) and reports of daily stress and coping (Pottie & Ingram, 2008). A further dimension of father–mother difference has involved testing whether father and mother psychological well-being is associated with similar or with different variables. In general, as with the majority of father–mother comparison studies, researchers find some similar correlates of paternal well-being but also find that different variables may be associated with father and mother well-being. As with the research literature on mothers of children with autism (Hastings, 2002b), fathers’ psychological distress is associated with the extent of challenging behaviors exhibited by their child with autism and especially by externalizing behaviors (Brobst et al., 2009; Davis & Carter, 2008). In some studies, other measures of paternal well-being, including fathers’ reports of the quality of their relationship with the child (Brobst et al.), have been found to be associated with the child’s challenging behaviors. Other child variables have also been shown to correlate with paternal well-being, such as the severity of the child’s autism symptoms and their lack of adaptive skills (Honey et al., 2005). Most research studies addressing the relationship between child variables and paternal well-being are cross-sectional in design. A small number of studies have addressed longitudinal relationships that are also able to address matters of causality. Although Lecavalier, Leone, and Wiltz (2006) included a small number of fathers in their 12-month longitudinal study of parents of children with ASDs, the sample was too small to present separate analyses for fathers. Nevertheless, the findings are important in that parent stress entered into a bidirectional relationship over time with the child’s challenging behaviors. Herring et al. (2006) did present separate analyses of father and maternal stress over 12 months in families of young children with PDD who had recently been diagnosed. These authors found that although maternal stress was predicted over time by the child’s initial level of challenging behavior, paternal stress did not show this relationship. Thus, data on the causal role of child variables, such as the child’s challenging behavior, on paternal psychological well-being are inconclusive at best. The putative differences in the prediction of paternal vs. maternal stress from characteristics of the child with autism are also reflected in systemsfocused studies where more than simply the child–parent dyadic relationship is explored. Hastings (2003) found in a cross-sectional study that both the child’s challenging behavior and paternal mental health were associated with stress in mothers of school-age children with autism. In contrast, father stress

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was predicted by mothers’ mental health but not by the challenging behavior of the child with autism. This finding was also replicated in a larger sample of mothers and fathers of preschool children with autism (Hastings et al., 2005b). In the Herring et al. (2006) longitudinal study of recently diagnosed children with PDD, these findings were not replicated across the 12-month longitudinal follow-up. Although, as discussed above, the initial level of the child’s challenging behavior predicted mother stress, father mental health did not additionally contribute to this prediction. Father stress was not predicted by child or partner mental health variables over time. It is clearly important to extend the analysis of fathers to consider the impact of the broader family system, but studies published to date are small in number, and cross-sectional findings are yet to be replicated using longitudinal designs. Most of the focus in exploring correlates and predictors of the psychological well-being of fathers of children with autism has been on child variables. However, a small number of studies have also addressed coping strategies as predictors of paternal psychological distress. Hastings et al. (2005a) found that fathers’ use of avoidant coping strategies to deal with the stresses of raising a child with autism was associated with their reports of anxiety, depression, and stress. The same pattern of relationships was also found for mothers. A more methodologically sophisticated study was reported by Pottie and Ingram (2008). These authors asked 60 mothers and 33 fathers of children clinically diagnosed with autism, and between 4 and 12 years of age, to complete a daily diary in which the most stressful event related to their child was recorded. The parents then also rated the extent to which they used each of 11 different coping strategies to deal with the identified event during the day. The dependent measure was a scale assessing daily positive and negative mood. Using multilevel modeling, Pottie and Ingram found daily coping efforts were indeed predictive of daily positive and negative mood. However, as with the Hastings et al. (2005a) study, there were no clear gender effects—the relationship between coping and daily mood was not moderated by parent gender. QUALITATIVE RESEARCH The vast majority of research concerning fathers of children with autism has adopted a quantitative methodological approach. We found only two research studies using qualitative methods, published since 2000 and including data on fathers of children with autism. Gray (2002, 2003) reported two analyses of interviews with the same sample of 32 mothers and 21 fathers of children between the ages of 5 and 26 years of age with high-functioning autism or Asperger syndrome. In the first analysis, Gray (2002) focused on both felt (i.e., perceived by the parent) or enacted (i.e., overt) stigma experienced by these parents. Overall, 75% of parents had experienced felt stigma (e.g., thinking others were being critical of their parenting or others were not accepting of them or made them feel embarrassed—especially in social settings and when out shopping), but fathers were much less likely to report these experiences than mothers. A majority of the mothers also experienced enacted stigma (e.g., people not inviting the family to their homes for social

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occasions, overt staring by others, and even some overtly rude comments), but only a minority of fathers reported these experiences. Gray suggested that these possible gender differences might have emerged because mothers’ perceptions of their roles meant that they felt personally more responsible for their child and his or her behavior. In the second publication, Gray (2003) provided a more in-depth analysis of potential gender differences in relation to coping with the stresses of raising a child with autism. As in the quantitative research reviewed earlier, several gender differences emerged. Fathers did recognize that their child’s autism had significant implications for their family, but claimed that it rarely impacted on them personally because they had an outside role at work. Rather than affecting them directly, these fathers suggested that they were primarily affected via the stress experienced by their female partners (cf. Hastings, 2003; Hastings et al., 2005b). When their partners were under considerable stress, fathers then saw themselves as a source of support. In contrast, and in agreement with fathers, mothers reported that their child with autism had a significant negative stressful impact on them. In relation to coping, mothers in Gray’s (2003) research cited more different coping strategies than did fathers and were more likely to report relying on support from family and friends (including their partners). Although some frequently used coping strategies were reported by both mothers and fathers, less frequently used strategies revealed divergence. In particular, fathers coped with their child by keeping them busy at home and by escaping to or staying longer at work, whereas mothers would engage in therapeutic activities with their child and keep siblings in the family separated from the child with autism to avoid clashes. When asked about emotional coping, fathers were more likely than mothers to report suppressing their feelings, and mothers were more likely than fathers to vent rather than suppress their feelings and to seek emotional support from friends and other family members. At some levels, these qualitative analyses concur with the results from quantitative research (e.g., mothers more stressed and other mother–father differences). However, they also reveal some additional processes not reflected in or studied within quantitative research. In particular, both felt and enacted stigma was reported by the majority of mothers and fathers, and the putative impact of such experiences on parents’ well-being has not been explored in quantitative research. The qualitative research also confirms the importance of understanding the family system and its effects on each member’s outcomes. Specifically, there was identification of the processes by which fathers may experience less stress (e.g., being away at work, mothers having more child care responsibility) and also why they may be affected less directly by their child’s difficulties and more indirectly via their partner’s well-being. FATHERS

OF

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AND INTERVENTION

A further intriguing pattern in the recent research literature on fathers of children with autism is the lack of research attention to topics that relate to

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intervention: fathers’ roles in intervention for their child, the impact of intervention on fathers, and intervention directly with fathers to improve some aspect of parenting. Seung, Ashwell, Elder, and Valcante (2006) focused explicitly on training fathers and mothers of children with autism to interact and communicate more effectively with their child. The intervention focused on teaching two skills: expectant waiting (prompt the child, then wait 3 seconds and present facial expressions that indicate the availability of positive social interaction), and imitating with animation (within 5 seconds of the child’s behavior, the parent imitates the child’s behavior in an animated fashion). Video observations were rated at baseline, during the intervention, and in the maintenance period for the ratio of parent to child utterances, parent verbal imitation, child single-word utterances, the number of different words used by the child, and the frequency of the child’s verbal response to parent questions. Parent and child communication was reported to improve during the intervention and to be maintained. There were no gender differences, indicating that the intervention was similarly successful for fathers and for mothers. Within the field of autism, early intervention, especially using intensive behavioral methods, is gathering a strong evidence base (Eldevik et al., 2009). However, outcome studies have rarely been designed to explore the putative impact of such intensive interventions on the family. Remington et al. (2007) reported on stress, anxiety, depression, and positive perceptions of the child for 16 fathers whose preschool child with autism received 2 years of intensive behavioral intervention and 15 comparison fathers. Of the four comparisons, only one was found to be statistically significant—fathers in the intervention group reported more symptoms of depression over time, although this may well have been due mainly to a lower reporting of depression in these fathers at baseline. The research team also carried out postintervention interviews with 32 mothers and 21 fathers of children who had received intensive behavioral intervention and asked these parents about their experiences of running the programs (Grindle, Kovshoff, Hastings, & Remington, 2009). All of the parents reported that there were some stresses during the time of the intervention, mainly relating to the practicalities of the intervention and the lack of support from education agencies. However, 75% of mothers and 90% of fathers reported that intensive behavioral intervention was a good choice for their child (because of the direct benefits achieved) and their family (because although there were stresses, these were outweighed by the benefits for the child with autism and other positive benefits on family relationships). No clear mother–father differences emerged from the interviews apart from more mothers than fathers reporting that additional support in the home, and time to carry out other tasks while the child was working on intervention targets with therapists, were positive benefits of the intervention. The final recent intervention-focused study compared parent management training for 45 mothers and 44 fathers of children with Asperger syndrome delivered either as a workshop or in individual sessions with the parents (Sofronoff & Farbotko, 2002). A control group was also included. The focus on parent outcomes was on parenting self-efficacy. There were no differences between the intervention approaches, but self-efficacy did improve over time

Fathers of Children with Other Specific Genetic Syndromes 503

in the intervention groups. This improvement was moderated by parent gender such that mothers’ self-efficacy increased quite substantially over the course of the intervention, but fathers’ self-efficacy was more stable. Further research is needed to examine whether fathers and mothers of children with autism can both benefit from parent training interventions, and whether different interventions are required for fathers and mothers. FATHERS OF CHILDREN WITH OTHER SPECIFIC GENETIC SYNDROMES ASSOCIATED WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY In recent decades, increasing numbers of genetic syndromes associated with intellectual disability in children and adults have been identified and described in terms of both their physical and their behavioral phenotypes (Dykens, 1995). Given that these syndromes are often distinguished from each other by patterns of problem behavior found more frequently in one disorder compared to others, Hodapp (1997) suggested that there may be related indirect effects observable on parental well-being. Thus, a number of studies have compared parent outcomes in one genetic intellectual disability syndrome versus others or focused on parent experiences in a single genetic syndrome, although very few have reported data on fathers. In the previous section on fathers of children with autism, we summarized the findings of Szatmari et al. (2008) who found no differences in paternal alexithymia between fathers of children with autism and fathers of children with Prader-Willi syndrome. In a further group comparison study, Ricci and Hodapp (2003) assessed 30 fathers of children with Down syndrome and 20 fathers of children with other developmental disabilities. Fathers of children with Down syndrome reported less child-related parenting stress but similar parent-related stress, and there was no difference in terms of the groups’ reports of involvement with their child. The child’s challenging behavior correlated with fathers’ stress in both the Down syndrome and other developmental disability groups. Ricci and Hodapp’s (2003) finding relating to potential reduced stress in fathers of children with Down syndrome relates to a phenomenon that has been coined the ‘‘Down syndrome advantage’’ (Hodapp et al., 2001). Stoneman (2007) explored in more detail the finding that parents of children with Down syndrome report significantly greater well-being than parents of children with other intellectual disabilities. Fifty mothers and 50 fathers of children with Down syndrome aged from 2 to 6 years were compared with parents of 32 children with mixed etiologies for their intellectual disabilities. As expected, fathers of children with Down syndrome reported lower levels of depression than other fathers. However, the Down syndrome advantage disappeared when the contribution of family income was statistically controlled. Although the occurrence of Down syndrome does not appear to be directly influenced by the socioeconomic status of the family, infants with Down syndrome are more likely to be born to older parents who have had more opportunity to acquire financial resources and build social networks. Thus, it is likely that fathers of children with Down syndrome are more buffered than other fathers from depression, which is often associated in the

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broader psychological literature with poverty and less effective social networks (Kotchick & Forehand, 2002). Two further recent studies have focused on single genetic syndromes. Again studying Down syndrome, de Falco, Esposito, Venuti, and Bornstein (2008), observed 19 fathers of preschool children in two 10-minute play sessions in which the child played alone and with the father. Exploratory play did not differ between the two situations, but symbolic play increased when the father played with the child. The researchers also coded for emotional availability in the dyads, ‘‘focusing on the two partners’ accessibility to each other and their ability to read and respond appropriately to one another’s communications’’ (p. 494). Dyads involving higher levels of emotional availability also showed more symbolic and less exploratory play in both the child and the father than in low-emotional-availability dyads. Thus, fathers have an important role in encouraging symbolic play in their children with Down syndrome that may have positive developmental effects. Presumably, there could also be advantage in interventions with fathers that might improve emotional availability. The final genetic syndrome study published since 2000 and including father data was research on 40 families of children 4 to 18 years of age with Fragile X syndrome. No differences were found between fathers and mothers on a range of outcome measures: psychological well-being, family stress, dyadic adjustment, and social support. As in several other studies of fathers, their psychological well-being was correlated with reports of the child’s externalizing challenging behavior, but also with the level of the child’s adaptive skills. Overall, these studies of specific etiologies of intellectual disability reveal very few different research findings than studies of fathers of children with intellectual disabilities more generally and also research on fathers of children with autism. Perhaps the main exception, given its research focus rather than perhaps the specificity to Down syndrome per se, is the de Falco et al. (2008) research that demonstrates the importance of fathers’ involvement in the play of their young child with disability and also suggests an intervention target for future research to further improve fathers’ play. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS The evidence discussed in this chapter suggests that fathers of children with developmental disabilities often experience intense emotions upon the birth and diagnosis of their child, and that these emotions often go unrecognized or are perceived as being secondary to those of the child and mother (West, 2000). These findings have clear implications for clinical practice. A model of early intervention for families developed by Pelchat and Lefebre (2004) is designed to be implemented throughout the first 6 months of life of a child with developmental disability. Several factors make the program particularly suitable for meeting the needs of fathers. First, it is designed to support each parent as an individual, as part of a couple, and as a parent (as well as addressing the needs of the immediate family unit, the extended family, and the nonfamily subsystem). Second, the program is implemented from the

Clinical Implications 505

point of initial disclosure of the child’s diagnosis. Third, the intervention recognizes the importance of each parent, acknowledging his or her emotional response to the birth and subsequent diagnosis of the child. This stage is regarded as a necessary antecedent to the parent’s adaptation to new life circumstances as a parent of a child with a developmental disability. Finally, there is emphasis on each individual in the family developing their own skills and resources with the support of the practitioner. Taken together, research on the parenting couple relationship in families of children with developmental disabilities suggests that mothers typically seek outside help from external sources, whereas fathers are more likely to look toward the couple relationship and rely more on the support of their partner (Bristol et al., 1988; Saloviita et al., 2003). Thus, it is likely that clinicians will best meet the needs of fathers by working toward strengthening the parental dyad and keeping the lines of communication between the parents open (Crowley & Taylor, 1994). Individual and/or couple counseling can help parents gain insight into sources of conflict and stress, and develop new more effective ways of interacting and communicating (Seligman & Darling, 2007). In particular, the potential has been highlighted of systemic therapy to support families of children with developmental disabilities to successfully negotiate life-cycle transitions, respond to stressful life events, and avoid becoming stuck in negative patterns of interaction (Rhodes, 2003). As noted earlier in this chapter, fathers report discomfort with ‘‘femaledominated’’ services. Some fathers have also expressed a wish to be supported by people who have direct experience of being a father of a child with a developmental disability. Clinicians have an important role to play in facilitating fathers to have contact with other men with whom they can discuss their concerns and show emotion, should they wish to (Quinn, 1999). A wellestablished workshop format for conducting groups for fathers has been designed by Vadasy et al. (1986) to provide information and social support. Fathers meet twice monthly for 2 hours. They bring their child with them to sessions organized by two male facilitators, one a professional and one a father of a child with a developmental disability. The meetings include activities in which fathers and children participate together, for example, songs, dances, and games. Time is set aside for fathers to meet without their children so that they can discuss their concerns. Guests are invited to speak on topics selected by the fathers. The format allows fathers to acquire information, experience social support from other fathers, discuss feelings and practical concerns, and develop a strong attachment to their child. In this chapter we presented consistent research findings that the presence of problem behaviors is a significant predictor of increased stress in fathers of children with developmental disabilities (Kersh et al., 2006; Ricci & Hodapp, 2003; Saloviita et al., 2003). Behavioral training programs hold particular promise as a means of equipping fathers with skills and knowledge to intervene positively with their children’s problem behaviors and adaptive behavior deficits. Russell and Matson (1998) studied fathers’ involvement in parent training aimed at supporting children to overcome social and behavioral difficulties. They evaluated fathers’ behaviors using multiple baseline procedures across parenting behaviors. Parent training resulted in positive

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changes across a range of target child behaviors (e.g., drinking from a cup and eating with a fork). A clear methodological strength in this study was the observational nature of data whereby fathers were directly observed while interacting with their child. Given the presence of psychological difficulties (parenting stress and depression) among many fathers of children with developmental disabilities, there is a clear need for clinical interventions to play a preventative role or to facilitate earlier resolution of depressive symptoms and other psychological distress. Singer et al. (2007) conducted a meta-analysis of studies reporting on parent interventions to assess their efficacy in reducing depressive symptoms and stress. Three of the 17 studies included in the meta-analysis reported on data regarding outcomes for fathers (Pelchat et al., 1999; Schultz et al., 1993). Results indicated intervention efficacy in the form of reductions in fathers’ distress, and these effects were comparable to those reported in other interventions for parents of typically developing children. Studies included in the meta-analysis were differentiated on the basis of the model employed in intervention, for example, cognitive–behavioral training, behavioral parent training, and a combination of these models along with other support services. Singer et al. (2007) concluded that evidence to support the use of cognitive–behavioral methods to reduce fathers’ emotional distress was ‘‘promising,’’ but more research is urgently required. In addition to traditional cognitive–behavioral therapies as interventions to support fathers of children with developmental disabilities, there is increasing empirical evidence for the efficacy of newer (‘‘third wave’’) psychological therapies. As discussed earlier, recent data suggest that fathers of children with developmental disabilities who are more mindful parents also spend more time interacting with their child in child-related parenting tasks and child socialization (MacDonald & Hastings, in press). This raises the potential for mindfulness-based parenting interventions to have a positive effect on father–child relationships, which in turn may improve outcomes for children, especially in relation to reducing challenging behaviors presented by the child. Recent research using mindfulness-based parenting interventions with mothers of children with developmental disabilities demonstrated positive results in reductions of observed problem behaviors (Singh et al., 2006, 2007). Acceptance and commitment training (ACT; Hayes et al., 2006) also merits further investigation as a potentially effective psychological intervention for fathers of children with developmental disabilities. Interventions based on ACT target the processes of psychological acceptance and avoidance partly through the use of mindfulness techniques. These psychological processes are thought to be important in the well-being and adaptation of parents of children with developmental disabilities. When mothers of children with developmental disabilities were studied, those who reported higher levels of psychological distress also reported higher usage of avoidance as a coping style, and lower levels of acceptance (Lloyd & Hastings, 2008). Furthermore, in an uncontrolled study, Blackledge and Hayes (2006) found initial evidence that ACT may help parents of children with developmental disabilities manage their psychological distress.

Research Implications 507

RESEARCH IMPLICATIONS Hatton and Emerson (2003) report that the vast majority of studies published on aspects of families of children with developmental disabilities are cross-sectional studies using correlational analyses. They point out that these methodologies impose limitations on the causal inferences that can be drawn about complex family systems. Longitudinal studies hold particular potential as a means of measuring psychological adaptation among fathers over time, and to indicate points during fathers’ lives where clinical interventions may be particularly beneficial. A useful example of a longitudinal qualitative study carried out by Gray (2002) was discussed in the section of this chapter focusing on fathers of children with autism. However, longitudinal studies of fathers of children with developmental disabilities are rare. Herring et al. (2006) reported data on fathers of children with PDD over 12 months, although the nature of and results from their longitudinal analysis are not very clear. A small number of studies reporting data on fathers of children with intellectual disabilities over time have also focused only on young children through early childhood (Baker, Blacher, & Olsson, 2005). Thus, in general, more longitudinal research on father adjustment is needed, and specifically, there is a major gap in longitudinal research involving fathers of adolescents and adults with developmental disabilities. Until recently, there was a trend toward negative research questions (Helff & Glidden, 1998) and assumptions of stress and burden (Chan & Sigafoos, 2000) in the field of families of children with developmental disabilities. However, recent meta-analyses and longitudinal studies show that these negative impacts are neither as common nor as severe as once thought (Glidden et al., 2006; Seltzer et al., 2001; Singer, 2006). Reflecting a fundamental shift, Blacher and Baker (2007) emphasize the importance of investigating the positive and negative impact of a child with a developmental disability as a means of gaining a more balanced view of families. In their review paper, Hastings and Taunt (2002) highlight the possible function that positive perceptions can play in supporting families to adapt to their child with developmental disability. Earlier in this chapter, we reported that the single most important predictor of parental stress was the negative definition of the situation (Saloviita et al., 2003). Clearly, there is a role for incorporating positive perceptions (as compensatory factors and protective factors) in parent education or intervention programs, particularly where there is a focus on cognitions about parenting (Blacher & Baker, 2007). Similarly, it would be beneficial for mediator factors that may have positive effects on psychological adaptation to a child with a developmental disability (e.g., selfefficacy, acceptance) to be the focus of empirical investigation. The study of the role of positive perceptions is hindered, however, by a lack of theoretical models and conceptual clarity as to what is meant by positive impact or related terms. To date, a limited range of concepts have been examined, for example, family hardiness, life satisfaction, and perceived competence (Hastings & Taunt, 2002). In particular, research findings relating to positive perceptions among fathers are conspicuously lacking. In sum,

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there is a need for further theoretical development aimed at addressing terminological and conceptual shortcomings related to the concept of positive perceptions and, in particular, how they function in the psychological wellbeing of fathers of children with developmental disabilities. Since the definition of family has changed significantly over time in accordance with societal shifts, it is important that research design reflects the heterogeneity that now exists among families. For some time the prevalent practice of choosing samples on the basis of convenience has been noted (Ramey et al., 1989) where little or no attention has been directed to sampling issues or to the representativeness of the families studied in relation to the population to which they are intended to generalize. Within the field of family research, a model is needed that is inclusive of the widening diversity of parenting couples, for example, those who are married or in legal partnerships, in committed long-term relationships, cohabiting, or separated. The concept of ‘‘coparenting’’ which has gained attention in the literature relating to fathers of typically developing children, would appear to offer potential in this regard. The model is defined as existing ‘‘when at least two individuals are expected by mutual agreement or societal norms to have conjoint responsibility for a particular child’s wellbeing’’ (Van Egeren & Hawkins, 2004, p. 166) and thus maps onto a wide diversity of parenting formations. Based on this definition, the coparenting model is capable of focusing primarily on parenting attributes and experiences of each member of the couple, and can include parents regardless of the parent’s biological relationship with the child, gender, or sexual orientation. The model may have particular utility in the context of research among families of children with developmental disabilities, as it can incorporate the idea of grandparents (as coparents), who are often more involved with their grandchildren with developmental disabilities than are grandparents of typically developing children (Heller, 2000). CONCLUSION Traditionally, research findings and implicit assumptions reflected in the lack of research attention portrayed fathers of children with developmental disabilities as peripheral figures, disengaged from the family. Contemporary understanding has shifted, and although fathers of children with developmental disabilities continue to be underrepresented in the literature compared to other family members, significantly more is known about their experiences and needs. Future research is needed focusing explicitly on samples of fathers to extend knowledge of their psychological well-being and child involvement. As discussed in this chapter, the experience and role of fathers of children with developmental disabilities has shifted in tandem with societal changes. To reflect recent changes in family composition, it would be beneficial for researchers to investigate the psychological adaptation and involvement of newly emerging groups of fathers, for example, nonresident fathers who have linked access to their child, and fathers who are raising their children alone.

References 509

REFERENCES Abbott, D.A. & Meredith, W.H. (1986). Strengths of parents with retarded children. Family Relations, 35, 371–375. Ahmeduzzaman, M. & Roopnarine, J.L. (1992) Sociodemographic factors, functioning style, social support, and fathers’ involvement with preschoolers in AfricanAmerican intact families. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 54, 699–707. Baker, B. L., Blacher, J. & Olsson, M. B. (2005). Preschool children with and without developmental delay: behavior problems, parents’ optimism and well-being. Journal of intellectual Disability Research, 49, 575–590. Ballard, K., Bray, A., Shelton, E. J. & Clarkson, J. (1997) Children with disabilities and the education system: the experiences of fifteen fathers. International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 44, 229–241. Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Skinner, R., Martin, J., & Clubley, E. (2001). The Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ): Evidence from Asperger syndrome/high functioning autism, males and females, scientists and mathematicians. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 33, 5–17. Baucom, D. H., Shoham, V., Mueser, K. T., Daiuto, A. D., & Stickle, T. R. (1998). Empirically supported couple and family interventions for marital distress and adult mental health problems. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 66, 53–88. Bettelheim, B. (1967). The empty fortress: Infantile autism and the birth of the self. New York: The Free Press. Blacher, J., & Baker, B. L. (2002) The best of AAMR. Families and mental retardation: A collection of notable AAMR journal articles across the 20th century. Washington, DC: American Association on Mental Retardation. Blacher, J. & Baker, B.L. (2007) Positive impact of intellectual disability on families. American Journal on Mental Retardation 5, 330–48. Blackledge, J. T. & Hayes S. C. (2006) Using acceptance and commitment training in the support of parents of children diagnosed with autism. Child and Family Behaviour Therapy, 28, 1–18. Bouchard, G., Sabourin, S., Lussier, Y., Wright, I., & Richer, C. (1998). Predictive validity of coping strategies on marital satisfaction: Cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence. Journal of Family Psychology, 12, 112–131. Bowlby, J. (1951) Maternal care and mental health. New York: Schocken. Braddock, D, Emerson, E., Felce, D. & Stancliffe, R. J. (2001). Living with circumstances of children and adults with mental retardation or developmental disabilities in the United States, Canada, England, and Wales. Mental Retardation and Developmental Disability Research Reviews, 7, 115–121. Bradford, K. & Hawkins, A.J. (2006). Learning competent fathering: a longitudinal analysis of marital intimacy and fathering. Fathering, 4, 215–234. Bray, A., Skelton, E.J., Ballard, K. and Clarkson, J. (1995). Fathers of children with disabilities: some experiences and reflections New Zealand. Journal of Disability Studies, 1, 164–176. Breslau, N., Salkever, D., & Staruch, K.S. (1982). Women’s labour force activity and responsibilities for disabled dependants: a study of families with disabled children. Journal of Health and Social Behaviour, 23, 169–183. Bristol, M. M., Gallagher, J. J. & Schopler, E. (1988) Mothers and fathers of young developmentally disabled and nondisabled boys: Adaptation and spousal support. Developmental Psychology, 24, 441–441. Brobst, J. B., Clopton, J. R., & Hendrick, S. S. (2009). Parenting children with Autism Spectrum Conditions: The couple’s relationship. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 24, 38–49.

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Cantwell, D. P., Baker, L. & Rutter, M. (1979). Families of autistic and dysphasic children: Family life and interaction patterns. Archives of General Psychiatry, 36, 682–687. Chan, J. B. & Sigafoos, J. (2000). A review of child and family characteristics related to the use of respite care in developmental disability services. Child and Youth Care Forum, 29, 27–37. Cox, A., Rutter, M., Newman, S. & Bartek, L. (1975). A comparative study of infantile autism and specific developmental receptive language disorder: II. Parental characteristics. British Journal of Psychiatry, 126, 146–159. Coyne, L. W. & Wilson, K. G. (2004). Cognitve fusion in impaired parenting: An RFT analysis. International Journal of Psychology and Psychological Therapy, 4, 469–486. Crouter, A.Perry-Jenkins, M., Huston, T. & McHale, S. (1987) Processes underlying father involvement in dual-earner and single-earner families. Developmental Psychology 23, 431–440. Crowley, S.L., & Taylor, M. (1994). Mothers’ and fathers’ perception of family functioning in families having children with disabilities. Early Education and Development, 5, 213–225. Cummings, S., (1976). The impact of the child’s deficiency no the father: A Study of fathers of mentally retarded and chronically ill children. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 46, 246–255. Cummings, E.M., Goeke-Morey, M. & Raymond, J. (2004) Fathers in family context: effects of marital quality and marital conflict. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Cuskelly, M., & Gunn, P. (2006) Adjustment of children who have a sibling with Down syndrome: perspectives of mothers, fathers and children. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 50, 917–925. Daniels, J. L., Forssen, U., Hultman, C. M., Cnattingius, S., Savitz, D. A., Feychting, M., & Sparen, P. (2008). Parental psychiatric disorders associated with autism spectrum disorders in the offspring. Pediatrics, 121, 1357–1362. Davis, N. O., & Carter, A. S. (2008). Parenting stress in mothers and fathers of toddlers with autism spectrum disorders: Associations with child characteristics. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 38, 1278–1291. Davis, P.B. & May, J.E. (1991) Involving Fathers in Early Intervention and Family Support Programs: Issues and Strategies. Children’s Health Care 20, 87–92. de Falco, S., Esposito, G., Venuti, P. & Bornstein, M.H. (2008). Fathers’ play with their Down Syndrome children. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 52, 490– 502. Deutsch, F., Lussier, J., & Servis, L. (1993). Husbands at home: Predictors of paternal participation child care and housework. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 1154–1166. Dumas, J.E. (2005). Mindfulness-based parent training: Strategies to lessen the grip of automaticity in families with disruptive children. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 34, 779–791. Dykens, E. M. (1995). Measuring behavioral phenotypes: Provocations from the ‘‘new genetics’’. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 99, 522–532. Einam, M. & Cuskelly, M. (2002). Paid employment of mothers and fathers of an adult child with multiple disabilities. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 46, 158– 167. Eldevik, S., Hastings, R. P., Hughes, J. C., Jahr, E., Eikeseth, S., & Cross, S. (2009). Meta-analysis of Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention for children with autism. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 38, 439–450.

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Olsson, M.B. & Hwang, C.P. (2006) Well-being, involvement in paid work and division of child-care in parents of children with intellectual disabilities in Sweden. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 50, 963–969. Olsson, M.B. & Hwang, C.P. (2008). Socioeconomic and psychological variables as risk and protective factors for parental well-being in families of children with intellectual disabilities, 52, 1102–1113. Palkovitz, R. (2002). Involved fathering and men’s adult development: Provisional balances. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Pelchat, D. & Lefebvre, H. (2004). A holistic intervention progamme for families with a child with a disability. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 42, 124–131. Pelchat, D., Lefebvre, H. & Perreault, M. (2003). Differences and similarities between mothers’ and fathers’ experiences of parenting a child with a disability. Journal of child health care, 7, 231–247. Pelchat, D., Ricard, N., Bouchard, J.M., Perreault, Suacier, J.F., Berthiaume, M., Bisson, J. (1999). Adaptation of parents in relation to their 6-month-old infant’s type of disability. Child: Care, Health and Development, 25, 377–397. Piven, J., & Palmer, P. (1997). Cognitive deficits in parents from multiple-incidence autism families. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38, 1011–1022. Pleck, J. H., & Masciadrelli, B. P. (2004). Paternal involvement: Levels, origins, and consequences. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (4th ed., pp. 222–271). New York: Wiley. Pottie, C. G., & Ingram, K. M. (2008). Daily stress, coping and well-being in parents of children with autism: A multilevel modelling approach. Journal of Family Psychology, 22, 855–864. Quinn, P. (1999) Supporting and encouraging father involvement in families of children who have a disability. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal 16, 439–454. Ramey, S.L., Krauss, M.W. & Simeonsson, R.J. (1989) Research on families: Current assessment and future opportunities. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 94, ii–vi. Remington, B., Hastings, R. P., Kovshoff, H., degli Espinosa, F., Jahr, E., Brown, T., Alsford, P., Lemaic, M., & Ward, N. J. (2007). Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention: Outcomes for children with Autism and their parents after two years. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 112, 418–438. Rhodes, P. (2003). Behavioral and family systems interventions in developmental disability: towards a contemporary and integrative approach. Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disability, 28, 51–64. Ricci, L.A. & Hodapp, R.M. (2003) Fathers of children with Down syndrome versus other types of intellectual disability: perceptions, stress and involvement. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research 47, 273–284. Rodrigue, J. R., Morgan, S. B., & Geffken, G. R. (1992). Psychosocial adaptation of fathers of children with autism, Down syndrome, and normal development. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 22, 249–263. Roggman, L.A., Boyce, L.K., Cook, G.A. & Cook, J. (2002) Getting dads involved: Predictors of father involvement in Early Head Start and with their children. Infant Mental Health Journal 23, 62–78. Rousey, A. M., Wild, M. & Blacher, J. (2002). Stability of measures of the home environment for families of children with severe disabilities. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 23, 17–35. Russell, D. & Matson, J. (1998) Fathers as intervention agents for their children with developmental disabilities. Child and Family Behaviour Therapy 20, 29–49. Rutter, M. (1972) Maternal Deprivation Reassessed. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

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Stoneman, Z. (2007). Examining the down syndrome advantage: mothers and fathers of young children with disabilities. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 51, 1006–1017. Stoneman, Z. & Gavidia-Payne, S. (2006). Marital adjustment in families of young children with disabilities: associations with daily hassles and problem-focused coping. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 111, 1–14. Szatmari, P., Georgiades, S., Duku, E., Zwaigenbaum, L., Goldberg, J., & Bennett, T. (2008). Alexithymia in parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 38, 1859–1865. Tehee, E., Honan, R., & Hevey, D. (2009). Factors contributing to stress in parents of individuals with Autistic Spectrum Disorders. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 22, 34–42. Trute, B. (1990). Child and parent predictors of family adjustment in households containing young developmentally disabled children. Family Relations, 39, 292– 297. Trute, B. (1995) Gender differences in the psychological adjustment of parents of young, developmentally disabled children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 36, 1225–1242. Trute, B. & Hiebert-Murphy, D. (2005). Predicting family adjustment and parenting stress in childhood disability services using brief assessment tools. Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disability, 30, 217–225. Tsai, L., Stewart, M. A., Faust, M., & Shook, S. (1982). Social class distribution of fathers of children enrolled in the Iowa Autism Program. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 12, 211–221. Vadasy, P., Fweell, R., Greenberg, M., Dermond, N. & Meyer, D. (1986). Follow-up evaluation of the effects of involvement in the father’s programme. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 6, 16–31. Van Egeren, L.A. & Hawkins, D.P. (2004). Coming to terms with coparenting: Implications of definition and measurement. Journal of Adult Development, 11, 165–178. Warfield, M.E. (2005). Family and work predictors of parenting role stress among two- earner families of children with disabilities. Infant and Child Development, 14, 155–176. West, S. (2000) Just a Shadow? A Review of Support for the Fathers of Children with Disabilities. Birmingham: Handsel Trust. Willoughby, J.C. & Glidden, L.M. (1995). Fathers haelping out: shared child care and marital satisfaction of parents of children with disabilities. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 99, 399–406. Yamada, A., Suzuki, M., Kato, M., Suzuki, M., Tanaka, S., Shindo, T., Taketani, K., Akechi, T., & Furukawa, T. H. (2007). Emotional distress and its correlates among parents of children with pervasive developmental disorders. Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 61, 651–657. Young, D.M. & Roopnarine, J.L. (1994) Fathers’ childcare involvement with children with and without disabilities. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education 14, 488–502.

CHAPTER 18

Father Involvement and Public Policies NATASHA J. CABRERA

INTRODUCTION The beginning of the 21st century was marked by several demographic trends, the most noteworthy being the increase in divorce and nonmarital childbearing rates (Eggebeen, 2002; Ventura & Bachrach, 2000). Since the mid1970s, the ratio of divorces to marriages in the United States has been approximately one to two (Sutton & Munson, 2004). Over one-third (35.7%) of all of births in the United States are to unmarried couples, many of whom are cohabiting at the time of their child’s birth. This rate is even higher (70%) for African-Americans (Martin, Ryan, & Brooks-Gunn, 2007). Moreover, children born in these unions are not likely to reside consistently with their biological fathers. Recent estimates suggest that compared to married fathers, almost half of unmarried fathers will become nonresident by their child’s third birthday and that this is disproportionately the case in low-income families (Coley, 2001; Osborne & McLanahan, 2007). These dramatic demographic changes in family structure have consequently changed the roles of fathers and mothers in families as well as their expectations and responsibilities toward their children. It has also had a significant impact on how public policies realign themselves to encourage fathers to take responsibility for their children, increase child support, and decrease the incidence of nonmarital births. Although research has been used in some ways to guide and shape public policy and inform the public debate on the status of the family, the intersection between research and public policy has not always being reciprocal or timely. Nevertheless, over the past decade, we have seen some evidence of a more mutual interaction that has brought research to bear on the design of public policies for families (e.g., the Healthy Marriage Initiative), and which, in turn, has generated further research on fathers in the context of the family. In this chapter, I focus primarily on policies directly to fathers in the United States, and, as a matter of contrast, include a brief description of the most salient issues related to policies and fathers in Canada. Specifically, the 517

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chapter is organized into five parts: (a) the current policy and social context of fathers in the United States; (b) the changing role of fathers and policies to support their involvement in Canada; (c) effects of public policies on father involvement; and (d) programs and new initiatives on father involvement. CURRENT POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONTEXT OF FATHERS IN THE UNITED STATES In this section, I describe the social and public policy events related to fathers and families that occurred between the mid-1990s and today. The mid-1990s represents an important turning point in research and policy on fathers because the administration of President Clinton (1992–2000) spurned by the alarm of a ‘‘fatherless America’’ established the Fatherhood Research Initiative, which resulted in an unprecedented surge in research and policy interest in fatherhood (Cabrera, Brooks-Gunn, Moore, West, & Boller, 2002). This period of time is also pivotal because we had a change in administration (President G. W. Bush, 2000–2008), which brought accompanying change in public policy toward families, and to some extent a change in the type of research that was generated as a result. The period of time from 1990s to today is marked by a public and policy concern on child poverty, changing family demographics, a cultural shift in our view of fathers, and the healthy marriage initiative. CHILD POVERTY Approximately 2.8 million or 20% of children in the United States are poor. This is the second-highest rate of child poverty among developed countries (Mexico has the highest) (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2006). Since 2000, the poverty rate has slightly increased. In 2006, 17% of all children ages 0 to 17 lived in poverty, an increase of 1% since 2000 (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2002; U.S. Bureau of the Census). In 2007, more young children—about 20% of children under 6 years of age—lived in poverty than older children—16 percent of children 6 to 17 years. There are also race and ethnic differences in the rate of poverty. In 2006, 10% of White, non-Hispanic children lived in poverty, compared with 33% of African-American children and 27% of Hispanic children (www.childstats. go/americanschildren/eco.asp#11). In the current economic recession, these rates are expected to increase. One of the most consistent correlates of childhood poverty is the absence of a resident father. It is estimated that approximately 60% of U.S. children will grow up in a single-parent home, in most cases with their mother (Caldwell et al., 2004). In 2006, the poverty rate for single-parent families was five times higher (42%) than in two-parent families (8%), and the rate of single-parent families has doubled in the past 15 years (www.childstats.go/americanschildren/eco.asp#11). Child poverty is a major social and policy concern especially because it is linked to father absence. Children growing up in poverty are more likely to live in communities characterized by high levels of unemployment and crime; single-parent households; poor-quality housing,

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schooling, and health care; and lack of resources than other children (Bradley & Corwyn, 2002; Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 1997; Huston, 1994). The public policy response to reduce child poverty is to increase father involvement and decrease nonmarital fertility. CHANGING FAMILY DEMOGRAPHICS The increase in nonmarital childbearing of recent times has greatly shaped social policy intervention toward fathers and children for several reasons. First, unmarried parents are more likely to be disadvantaged than married parents, which has an effect on children’s well-being. Second, nonmarital childbearing reproduces class and racial disparities because it is linked with couple instability and multipartnered fertility (McLanahan, 2000). Third, women in multipartner relationships tend to exhibit increased maternal health problems, reduced paternal investments, and increased negative maternal parenting, which are in turn associated with poor children’s outcomes (Carlson & Furstenberg, 2006; McLanahan). In households where mothers and fathers have children with other partners, parental involvement and emotional and financial responsibility for children is not clearly defined and thus, their relevance to children’s developmental outcomes is unclear. Nonmarital childbearing poses another challenge for current policy because many couples in these unions remain in a romantic or friendly relationship. Most means-tested programs available to families today were designed for children who had ‘‘lost’’ their father due to divorce, death, or abandonment and consequently had parents who were no longer romantically involved (Cabrera et al., 2002). Today, nonresident couples, especially ethnic minority fathers, continue to have a romantic relationship with their ex-partner and, thus, are not totally absent from their children’s lives (Cabrera, Ryan, Mitchell, Shannon, & Tamis-LeMonda, 2008; Osborne & McLanahan, 2007). Evidence shows that nonresident low-income fathers who were romantically involved with their child’s mother were more likely to be involved with their children (Cabrera et al., 2004). Others estimate that approximately four-fifths of unmarried couples are in a romantic relationship at the time of their child’s birth (Osborne & McLanahan). These data suggest that public policies that assume that fathers are absent or ‘‘lost’’ and do not consider the relationship status of nonresident families may have unintended consequences, which may deter and even jeopardize some fathers from being involved in their children’s lives. For example, child support policies do not include child visitation, which can minimize the contact fathers can have with their children. CULTURAL SHIFT

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Demographic changes in rates of cohabitation, marriage, divorce, remarriage, and nonmartial childbearing underlie a cultural shift, which has resulted in new ways that men and women define their parental roles. This shift has, in turn, resulted in different patterns of parenting (Cabrera & Peters, 1999; Eggebeen, 2002; LaRossa, 1997; Marsiglio, Day, & Lamb, 2000; Palkovitz,

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1997; Pleck, 1997). Over the last 2 decades, national campaigns, the popular media, researchers, policy makers, practitioners, educators, and leaders of social and religious organizations popularized a new image of emotionally involved nurturant fatherhood (LaRossa, 1997; Wilkie, 1993). As a result, fathers have moved from relative obscurity that made them the ‘‘forgotten contributors’’ to children’s lives (Lamb, 1997) into a central position to understand and promote child well-being (Tamis-LeMonda & Cabrera, 2002). New types of fathers—in stepparent, recombined, and cohabiting families—are being acknowledged and considered for public policy and program interventions. Many men express the desire to be the father they wish they had (Pruett, 1987); one study showed that one-third of the men surveyed defined the ideal father as unlike, rather than like, their own fathers (Hofferth, 1999). In this social context, the cultural view of fathers as mainly providers has been replaced by one that includes not only an instrumental role, but also nurturance and emotional support for their children (Lamb, 2000; Marsiglio et al., 2000). Fathers today want to ‘‘be there’’ for their children and experience personal satisfaction and fulfillment from their role as fathers (Palkovitz, 1997). THE HEALTHY MARRIAGE INITIATIVE The Healthy Marriage Initiative has been the most salient policy for families since President Bush took office in 2000 (Administration for Children and Families, Healthy Marriage Initiative, 2006). It has had an impact in how fathers are currently conceptualized in policies and programs and has stimulated research on the effects of healthy marriage on children’s development, including efforts to define it, explore its correlates, and examine its impact on families and children. Prior to the launching of the Healthy Marriage Initiative, the federal government’s focus was on promoting and understanding father involvement, under an initiative called the Fatherhood Research Initiative (Cabrera & Peters, 1999; Cabrera et al., 2002). This initiative was the result of the Clinton administration’s request that federal agencies review their programs and policies with the purposes of strengthening the role of fathers in families and highlighting the contributions that fathers can make to their children’s well-being. In its report, the Fatherhood Research Initiative recommended that federal agencies improve data on the nature and outcomes of father involvement; attend to both marital and nonmarital relationships from the perspectives of women and men; conduct longitudinal studies that follow the process of fertility and family formation across the life course; improve data on the motivations, attitudes, and intentions underlying childbearing among men and women in all types of relationships; and further investigate the meaning of fatherhood, the motivational bases of fatherhood, and the impact that father involvement has on child development across cultural and ethnic groups (Cabrera & Peters, 1999; Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 1998). This report highlighted the ‘‘missing men’’ problem in national datasets and the paucity of information we had on fathers about what they do and how they contribute to their children’s development, as well as the factors that enhance or hinder positive father involvement. It thus created a national momentum for

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reconceptualizing fatherhood and incorporating it into policies, improving federal data on fathers, and designing policies and programs to recognize the emotional, psychological, and economic contributions that fathers can make to the development of their children. The efforts of the Fatherhood Research Initiative resulted in the inclusion of fathers into several major national studies—Early Head Start (EHS), Fragile Families, and Early Child Longitudinal Survey–Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), and welfare studies (e.g., Children, Families, and Welfare Reform); the Los Angeles Study of Families and Communities; and New Hope (Cabrera & Peters, 1999). These datasets provide rich nationally representative and longitudinal data from fathers, mothers, and children of diverse ethnic, racial, and economic background; include measures of father involvement that tap into fathers’ multiple roles (i.e., provider, disciplinarian, nurturing, moral guide, caregiver) (Cabrera et al., 2002; Palkovitz, 1997, 2002), and are based on a construct of father involvement that includes engagement, accessibility, and responsibility (e.g., Lamb, Pleck, Charnov, & Levine, 1985). These datasets also include variables that allow to test hypotheses derived from other models (Palkovitz, 1997) and social science theories (e.g., capital theory, Bronfenbrenners’s ecological theory, and family system theory). Consequently, they have become most important for social scientists interested in understanding the nature, frequency, and the determinants and consequences of father involvement as well as its effects on children’s development, especially young children in low-income families. These datasets represent a monumental improvement on the type of data available to researchers today. It is now possible to ask basic questions about fathers, especially low-income fathers, the group most targeted by public policies: Are low-income men involved in their children’s lives? How are they engaged? What are the antecedents and consequences of the effects of father involvement on children’s development over time, especially among nonresident fathers; what are the multiple pathways of influence, including direct and indirect effects (e.g., through mothering and couple relationship); what are the moderation effects of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), father employment, and attitudes about fathering on children’s outcomes; and what are the bidirectional influences between father involvement and children’s outcomes (Cabrera & Peters, 1999; Lamb, 2004). A year after the establishment of the Fatherhood Research Initiative, Congress and President Clinton ‘‘ended welfare as we know it’’ by enacting the 1996 federal welfare legislation, Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). PRWORA created a block grant called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), replacing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), to provide funds to allow states to run welfare programs of their own design, within broad federal guidelines. The new welfare law obliged mothers to enter the workforce by imposing work requirements on those who receive cash assistance for more than 2 years, and by placing a 5-year lifetime limit on eligibility for assistance. The goals of TANF are to end welfare dependency by encouraging work and marriage, and established four interrelated goals: (a) to enable children to stay with their families, (b) to encourage work and marriage, (c) to prevent and

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reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies, and (d) to encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families. It also includes the following activities: education in high schools on the value of marriage, relationship skills, and budgeting; premarital education and marriage skills training for engaged couples and for couples or persons interested in marriage; marriage enhancement and marriage skills training programs for married couples; divorce reductions programs that teach relationships skills; and programs to reduce the disincentives to marriage (P.L. 104–193 [H.R. 3734] Title 1, Section 101, August 22, 1996). The act includes bonuses for ‘‘high-performing’’ states in meeting the act’s overall objectives. The Welfare Reform Act, then, set the stage for the focus on marriage as a way to promote family stability and selfsufficiency. Coupled with the welfare policy legacy of the Clinton administration, a strong social conservative agenda, and alarming rates of nonmarital childbearing, the Bush administration shifted focus away from promoting father involvement per se, which had been the staple of the Clinton administration, to promoting ‘‘healthy marriages’’ among unwed parents (Dion, 2005). Prior to the Healthy Marriage Initiative, there were few public policies to help lowincome families stay together (Sorensen, Mincy, & Halpern, 2000). In efforts to provide a regulatable definition of the term, the Administration for Children and Family Services (ACF) states that: ‘‘[T]here are at least two characteristics that all healthy marriages have in common. First, they are mutually enriching, and second, both spouses have a deep respect for each other. It is a mutually satisfying relationship that is beneficial to the husband, wife and children (if present). It is a relationship that is committed to ongoing growth, the use of effective communication skills and the use of successful conflict management skills.’’ —www.acf.hhs.gov/healthymarriage/about/mission.html#background

Consequently, the foci of this initiative are to improve couples relationship skills and encourage marriage, which is believed to increase marital stability and reduce divorce and nonmarital births. The Healthy Marriages Initiative was first announced in 2002 and called for adding 1.5 billion to TANF funding for research on marriage, marriage education, and technical assistance to faith-based and community-based marriage programs (Pear & Kirkpatrick, 2004). Congress scaled back funding to $150 million a year for 5 years for marriage and fatherhood programs, with no more than $50 million a year for fatherhood initiatives (Roberts, 2006). Between 2002 and 2005, ACF spent 26.8 million on marriage research and evaluation and awarded $6.1 million (170 grants) for marriage services to state agencies, universities, and community- and faith-based organizations through several federal agencies and (www.acf.hhs.gov/healthymarriage/about/mission.html). Additionally, Compassion Capital Fund, created in 2002, has spent almost $200 million to build the capacity of the faith- and community groups that provide services to at-risk-youth assistance for homeless, and marriage education programs (Jackson, 2006).

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Congress reauthorized PRWORA under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, and allocated $150 million a year to marriage and fatherhood programs (www. hhs.gov/news/press/2002pres/welfare.html). Thus, marriage promotion policy was cast as a central solution to welfare dependency and single-parent families (Struening, 2007). While the Bush administration’s marriage promotion policy was catapulted into the public sphere by a cadre of political social conservatives on both sides of the aisle, who advocated the use of government to foster traditional family values (Cossman, 2005), it also received broad support from the marriage movement (Struening). The marriage movement consisted of scholars, social service professionals and faith groups, and think tanks (Struening). At the core of this movement, marriage promoters supported social policies that increase the rate of marriage because they believe that nonmarital birth and divorce result in a host of social ills, including poverty, unemployment, and crime (Fagan, 2001; Gallagher, 2004). In addition to public advocacy for traditional family values and marriage, social science research also played a critical role in crafting the rhetoric of the marriage policy and marriage movement (Wilcox, 2002). The emphasis of welfare reform on promoting marriage to increase the incidence of twoparent families is partly based on research that has shown marriage to have beneficial effects on child well-being even after controlling for family income and other confounding variables (Amato, 2005; McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994; Parke, 2003). For example, research has found that in contrast to children who group up with two parents, children raised by one parent are twice as likely to drop out of high school and be teen parents, and are one-and-a-half times as likely to be unemployed and out of school in their teens and twenties (McLanahan & Sandefur). Other studies have found that children raised by single parents are more likely to exhibit emotional and physical difficulties than those raised by two parents (Amato, 2005). One path by which positive benefits may occur in two-parent families is through father involvement. Fathers who do not reside with their children are less likely to be involved in their lives. Marriage then can facilitate fathers’ ability to interact with their children as well as provide economic support. Research has also shown that hostile couple relationships can lead to ‘‘unhealthy’’ marriages and eventually separation and divorce (Cummings, Goeke-Morey, & Raymond, 2004). Thus, another focus of the Healthy Marriage Initiative is on improving parents’ relationship quality, which research has demonstrated is linked to improved parenting skills. There is a large body of research showing that couple conflict is strongly linked to poor parenting (Cabrera, Shannon, & La Taillade, in press; Carlson & McLanahan, 2006; Goeke-Morey & Cummings). Some have argued that this is especially true for men because their parenting behaviors are closely linked to their relationship with their partner (Cowan & Cowan, 1992). A review of the literature on couples relationship education (CRE) shows that there is enough evidence of the efficacy of CRE with diverse populations (Halford, Markman, & Stanley, 2008). Thus, programs aimed at reducing couple conflict and improving communication skills can help keep parents together, which can in turn improve parents’ relationships with their children.

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Despite this body of research, some researchers have questioned the validity and applicability of the research on marriage; specifically, they have raised concerns about the extent and size of effects and the selectivity of the sample. For example, it has been argued that most children who grow up with one parent do not show harmful effects and that these negative effects may be selective (Cherlin, 2003, Parke, 2003). Moreover, there is some evidence suggesting that among low-income parents, one ‘‘good’’ parent may be good enough in terms of being linked to children’s cognitive outcomes (Martin, et al., 2008). In studies where effects have been found, SES seems to account for half of the negative effects on children’s outcomes. For example, once income was taken into account, the high school dropout rate for children in single-parent families was found to be only 3 percentage points higher than the rate for children living in two-parent families (McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994). Findings also suggest that the effects of single-parent families on children’s cognitive ability and mental health are quite small (Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 1997). Other researchers have attributed the positive effects of marriage on children’s development to unobserved parents’ characteristics, a selective effect. That is, people who marry are different in important ways (e.g., more education, better jobs) from those who do not, and it is these characteristics that are related to children’s outcomes. A qualitative study of unwed parents found that married parents are more educated and have better jobs than those who cohabit; in addition, married parents are motivated to work, pool resources, and receive more financial help from their own families than those who are not married (Acs & Nelson, 2002). However, not all married couples remain married. Thus, these selective marriage effects might be applicable only to those parents who remain married and not to those who divorce. This might imply that there is selectivity within marriage; couples who stay married longer are different from those who are married for a shorter period of time. It is also unclear whether instability due to divorce has similar effects on children’s well-being as instability due to cohabiting. These issues raise question about the general policy of encouraging marriage for everyone. Other studies have suggested that it is not marriage per se, but the quality of the residential relationship, regardless of marital status, that is important for children’s development. In a longitudinal study of low-income families, unwed fathers who were prenatally involved during the pregnancy were more likely to be involved with their partners and children at age 3 because they had transitioned into a more committed relationship (Cabrera, Fagan, & Farrie, 2008). In this case, marriage provided no advantage. This suggests that among low-income couples, who may lack steady employment and have low educational attainment, promoting marriage might not produce the desired benefits (Cherlin, 2003; Coontz & Folbre, 2002). Although low-income men are less likely to marry than their counterparts (Edin & Reed, 2005), they are involved in romantic relationships with their child’s partner, which gives them access to their children and allows them to provide for and be engaged in their lives. What may be most important for low-income parents is helping them build and maintain conflict-free couple and coparenting relationships. Additional reasons for why low-income mothers choose not to marry their children’s fathers include crime participation, substance abuse, infidelity, and

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domestic violence (Edin & Kefalas, 2005). Men who have been in prison, have abused drugs, and have been violent with their partners may not possess the social and regulatory skills to communicate, resolve conflict, and parent or maintain a job. Programs targeted to this group of men might first need to focus on these other personal difficulties before they can be encouraged to marry. Researchers who support marriage point to the fact that services can be developed that are effective for low-income couples and address the needs of these parents. For example, Ooms (2002) makes the case that a program called Marriage-Plus, which combines marriage-related services with job training, relationship skills, education, and substance abuse and mental health services can be effective. There is also another fundamental objection to policies that promote marriage. Some researchers have argued that evaluation of government-sponsored marriage services should not be based solely on the association between marriage and child well-being, but also on protecting liberty interests intrinsic to marriage and other intimate relationships (Struening, 2007). At the core of the criticisms of the Healthy Marriage promotion policies is the view that a one-size-fits-all policy is bound to lead to successes and failures. This sentiment has been argued in regards to other policies (e.g., welfare reform), and the view is that in general the effects of public policies on targeted behavior may be characterized as ‘‘good, bad, and ugly’’ (Furstenberg, 1998). While the Healthy Marriage Initiative might be helpful to some unmarried couples, it may not be for all. Promoting marriage when a couple is no longer romantically involved may undermine that couple’s desire for both parents to remain involved in their children’s lives (Cabrera et al., 2004; Carlson & Furstenberg, 2006). Such couples might benefit from interventions that help them mend and improve their coparenting relationship rather than their marital relationship. Also, multipartner fertility is increasing among unwed couples, which means that one or both partners may have responsibility for nonresidential children as well as residential children, to whom they may or may not be biologically related (Carlson & Furstenberg). These multipartner households experience added hardship to already stressed families because few resources (time and money) are spread too thin across various households. In these families, issues of allocation of resources, responsibility for children, and disparities related to differential access to parents’ human capital may jeopardize children’s welfare (Burton, 2007). For example, evidence shows that children in stepfamilies who have more resources do not do any better than children in single-parent families who have fewer resources (McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994). In summary, the policy and social context in which fathers parent today has changed dramatically over the past few decades. Issues of poverty, nonmarital fertility, cohabitation, and nonresidential parenting pose a challenge for both fathers who try to do the best for their children and for policies that try to promote child welfare. The Healthy Marriage Initiative created a policy context that may be untenable for some families and may be inconsistent with how families are organized and do not offer the help these families need to provide a healthy and stimulating environment for their children. The question is under what conditions and for whom is marriage good?

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Evaluative research is still ongoing at the time of this writing. Thus, the answer to this question may come at a time when the policy toward healthy marriage may no longer be endorsed by the new administration of President Obama. At this point, it is unclear whether public policies toward fathers, specifically the Healthy Marriage Initiative, will continue or change under President Obama’s administration. THE CANADIAN LANDSCAPE: CHANGING ROLE OF FATHERS AND POLICIES TO SUPPORT THEIR INVOLVEMENT As is the case in the United States and other Western democracies, Canada has also experienced a surge of interest in fatherhood and policies related to promoting fathers’ involvement in their children’s lives. Although there are Canadian policies in place that can, theoretically, increase father involvement, there are also socially constructed barriers that reveal deep-seated assumptions about fathers and their roles in families, which may marginalize the most vulnerable men from their families, for better or worse. In this section, I focus on a select set of Canadian policies designed to increase father involvement. I first provide a very brief description of the men who may be outside the reach of these policies with the intent of providing background within which to consider the effectiveness of these policies. LOW-INCOME FATHERS

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Almost 15% of children in Canada live with families who earn below 50% of the median national income (Innocenti Report Card, 2005). As is the case in the United States, raising children in poverty places undue demands on both mothers and fathers. Unlike the United States, however, Canadians have access to universal child care, health care, and education. Thus, comparatively, a stronger safety net may prevent child poverty rates in Canada from reaching those of the United States. Nevertheless, low-income fathers, especially recent immigrants, Aboriginal, and young fathers with less than high school education, face challenges and barriers in securing adequate and sustainable employment, which in the current economic crisis, can become even more unattainable. Employment allows men to fulfill what is most expected of them—to provide for their children. A group of fathers that is particularly vulnerable is low-income men who do not live with their children. According to Canadian census data, 20% of nonresident fathers and 8% of fathers in two-parent households are considered to be poor (Galarneau, 2005). The rate of poverty, however, among nonresident father maybe inaccurate because ‘‘nonresident fathers’’ is not a designated category in the Canadian Census. Data on these men are collected under the category ‘‘other economic families,’’ which includes men living with their parents or a sibling, or men who are ‘‘unattached’’ (Ashbourne & Lero, 2008). Even in cases when nonresident fathers share joint custody, men paying child support are not considered fathers for the purposes of Statistics Canada because children are designated to only one primary residence. Thus, Canadian wage-earning and family income statistics make these men

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‘‘invisible,’’ which makes it difficult to understand who they are and how they are affected by social policies (Ashbourne & Lero, 2008). Moreover, provincial social assistance programs do not consider nonresident fathers as having dependents, thus their social benefits are the same as those available to single men (Ashbourne & Lero, 2008). Social assistance benefit programs available to low-income families in Canada are based on the number and ages of children in the family unit. For example, in New Brunswick (an economically depressed province) a single parent with one child making approximately $14,000 a year is eligible for almost $4,000 annually from provincial welfare and federal and provincial tax benefits. In Ontario (the economic engine of the country), the same person making approximately $14,000 a year would be eligible for almost $7,000 in benefits (National Council of Welfare, 2005). Nonresident fathers are viewed no different from unattached males; the social benefits they receive are not enough to pay child support or allow their children to stay with them, which essentially undermine their ability to stay involved in their lives. Conceptualizations of father involvement that assume that men play multiple roles in their families—provider, teacher, moral guide, nurturing—are generally more applicable to middle-class fathers. Conceptualizations of father involvement for low-income fathers are almost exclusively based on their ability to provide economically for their families. If employment is positively related to father involvement (Christiansen & Palkovitz, 2001), then lowincome fathers might be least involved with their children and may withdraw from them. Research has also shown that economic hardship can increase men’s hostility toward their partners and children (Elder, Conger, Foster, & Ardelt, 1992), leading to negative outcomes for children and families. None of the policies reviewed in this chapter address the employment needs and challenges of low-income men in Canada. In fact, child support enforcement policies might be punitive for low-income and tenuously employed fathers. Men with unstable or seasonable employment may experience difficulty maintaining child support payments and consequently having access to their children. In contrast to some European countries, Canada does not provide child support maintenance when fathers are unable to pay court-ordered support. Even when low-income men are employed, their wage earnings may not be sufficient to provide for their family. Unlike in the United States, Canadian provinces, not the federal government, set their own minimum wage standards (Statistics Canada, 2005). Minimum wage in Canada ranges from $5.90/hr in Alberta to $8.00/hr in British Columbia (Statistics Canada). According to Statistics Canada, of all employees in Canada in 2004, almost 5% worked at or below the minimum wage. While there are no policies targeting the employment needs of low-income men, Saunders (2005) has argued that the Canadian government can undertake several initiatives to improve income of the working poor, provide access to benefits, and enhance their educational skills. Among other recommendations, Saunders suggests increasing the minimum wage over time, providing targeted income supplements such as the Earned Income Credit in the United States, increasing the amount of the National Child Benefit (NCB), offering universal access to benefits for

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drug and dental costs, offering affordable child care services and housing, and providing opportunities for low-income workers to gain more skills to increase their marketability in the labor force. This set of changes could yield high benefits for working poor families, especially men, and go further in supporting them to support their children than any other existent policy. CHILD WELFARE

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The interest in father involvement from a child welfare perspective has been on his role as financial provider. For social, economic, and legal issues, poor Canadian women are often reluctant to pursue fathers for financial support for several reasons (Strega et al., 2008). Women on public assistance who receive informal support from their children’s fathers often do not report it because they are afraid that it may disqualify them from receiving other social or housing services (Callahan, Rutman, Strega, & Dominelli, 2005; Curran, 2003). Women may also choose not to identify the biological father of their children to the government because they receive more informal support from their partners than from government-regulated programs; do not want to have contact with abusive men; are aware of their partners’ economic struggles; and, among Native American women, are motivated to maintain the Indian status of their child to be eligible for entitlements (Mann, 2005). However, qualitative findings suggest that fathers, especially young and poor, who want to be financially supportive of mothers and children often lack the human capital and institutional support to do so (Tyrer, Chase, Warwick & Angleton, 2005). These findings suggest that fathers are marginalized by policies that either ignore the risk they pose or the asset they may be to their families. In addition to father’s child support, poor children in Canada receive direct benefits from the government. The NCB, a joint project of the federal, provincial, and territorial governments, is a Canada Child Tax Benefit (CCTB) paid on a sliding scale to approximately 89% of Canadian families with children (Ashbourne & Lero, 2008). In contrast, the National Child Benefit Supplement and the Child Disability Benefit is paid exclusively to low-income families with children. The benefits are paid to the parent with whom the children typically reside. When parents have joint custody, this benefit is paid to each parent, mother or father, in alternate periods (National Council of Welfare, 2004). This benefit, however, is not extended to nonresident fathers. Thus, although Canada does not have a marriage policy per se, most policies directed at parents are punitive or do not recognize the parental rights of nonmarried fathers. CHILD WELFARE

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In Canada, as in the United States, child welfare disproportionately targets poor single mothers. The poverty rate for single mothers in Canada is four times that of the general population (O’Connor, Orloff, & Shaver, 1999). Poor single mothers are at risk for a host of outcomes, including negative parenting, which can jeopardize the well-being of their children. Although most

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children who come to the attention of child welfare agencies have fathers and live with two parents (Strega et al., 2008), fathers are generally not the focus of the child welfare agency efforts to investigate child abuse or neglect. Since policies in general are less focused on fathers, fathers who may be present in situations of abuse and neglect are rarely the focus of intervention (Scourfield, 2003). Child protection agencies typically focus on the mothers’ failure to provide for her children or her inability to remove an abusive father from the home (Dominelli, Strega, Callahan, & Rutman, 2005). This is also the case in the United States, where no man has ever been prosecuted for ‘‘failure to protect’’ his children from an abusive mother (Fugate, 2001). PARENTAL LEAVE The most striking trend in western Europe since 1998 has been an emphasis on fatherhood and consequently on policies that promote their involvement either by introducing or enhancing paternity leave or encouraging fathers to take parental leave (Deven & Moss, 2002). These policies are generally applicable to wage-earning employed men. Fathers’ use of paternal leave has been the focus of policies directed at fathers in western Europe (Deven & Moss, 2002). With the exception of Canada, leave policy in non-European English-speaking countries lags behind Europe. In comparison, the United States has the least developed leave policies (Deven & Moss). The effectiveness of parental leave is best framed within a total ‘‘policy package’’ perspective that includes a combination of employment and child care aimed at coping with competing demands of employment and family life on parents’ time and commitment (Deven & Moss). Policies aimed at enhancing paternity leave for men are important because they view men not just as ‘‘labor coaches’’ but as parents with their own set of needs during the pregnancy period (Draper, 2002). However, social institutions (e.g., hospitals, midwife centers) and professionals often do not acknowledge men’s unique experience through the pregnancy process as well as cultural expectations of being a father that may not be quite personally defined for the expectant father (Ashbourne, 2008). Additionally, health care professionals may not be able to acknowledge that fathers, too, undergo emotional changes that must be coordinated with mother’s to ensure a healthy partnership. Some Canadian hospitals postpartum wards provide care to the entire family, including the father, by providing opportunities for fathers to learn parent skills and develop attachment to their infants (Holtslander, 2005). This approach may necessitate redesigning the nursing profession, as well, as these professionals must be trained to nurse the entire family, not just the mother. Incorporating men into the pregnancy process then requires acknowledging their unique experience, which may be different from mothers, and including them in programs and policies even before they become fathers. In one Canadian municipality, a fact sheet is available for male workers and prospective parents regarding working conditions (e.g., hazardous material, secondhand smoking) that may affect the procreation process as well as the expectant mother. It is also focused on workplace practices (e.g., flextime) that

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allow expectant fathers to be more engaged during pregnancy (Regional Municipality of Niagara, 2004). Although parenting leave policies have the intended purpose of encouraging early father involvement, these policies fall short of what is needed at the programmatic level to support men in their parenting roles. Educational and health care programs that address men’s unique experiences, as well as the joint needs of the couple, are needed to enhance and inform the choices that fathers and mothers make about their role as parents. In summary, Canadian policies targeting fathers seem to support father involvement (i.e., child support, parental leave) among men who are in married relationships or have been married. Nonresident fathers seem to have been left outside of these policies, and their role—either positive or negative—is not encouraged or discouraged. In contrast, U.S. policies, until recently, have tried to directly deal with the increased rate of cohabiting unions and consequently nonresidency by promoting marriage for all families. EFFECTS OF PUBLIC POLICIES ON FATHER INVOLVEMENT Historically, public policies have tended to constrain the positive development of fathering behaviors, especially in nontraditional families, because they were constructed through the lens of the traditional nuclear family. In the traditional nuclear family of yesteryear, fathers’ role was mainly instrumental and mothers’ was mainly nurturing (Lamb, 2000; Pleck, 1997). Today’s families are different in composition and structure, with mothers and fathers having fewer prescribed roles due to increased maternal employment and increased public awareness of the importance of fathers in their children’s lives. Given this new context, the Department of Health and Human Services’ policies on fathers are now shaped by five principles: 1. All fathers can be important contributors to the well-being of their children. 2. Parents are partners in raising their children, even when they do not live in the same household. 3. The role fathers play in families is diverse and related to cultural and community norms. 4. Men should receive the education and support necessary to prepare them for the responsibility of parenthood. 5. Government can encourage and promote father involvement through its programs and through its workforce policies. Nevertheless, public policies are still primarily focused on fathers’ provision of child support as the most important and regulated form of father involvement and responsibilities. The most enforced policies, child support and paternity establishment, are not consistently linked to increased father involvement. In this section, I briefly review public policies—paternity establishment, welfare reform policies, child support, and work policies— that have been designed to increase father involvement and I discuss,

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whenever the data are available, whether policies have had an effect on father involvement. Paternity establishment was first introduced by Congress in 1984. Paternity actions are court suits filed to have a man biologically declared the father of a child. Given the number of children born out of wedlock, paternity actions ensured children’s rights to public benefits, including survivors’ insurance, education, health care, and worker’s compensation (Roberts, 2006). Paternity policies traditionally operated under the assumption that nonmarital fathers would try to avoid their paternal responsibilities; thus, coercive measures such as genetic testing and default proceedings (e.g., failure to show up at a paternity hearing is presumptive grounds for paternity in many states) were assumed to be necessary (Cabrera & Peters, 1999). It was expected that increased paternity establishment would increase child support payments and fathers’ involvement with their children. Most paternity action suits are initiated by welfare officials, who are legally required to seek reimbursements from the father to offset TANF payments to their children (Curran, 2003). However, some have found that paternity establishment is more effective when it is voluntary (Sonenstein, Holcomb, & Seefeldt, 1994). An important issue related to establishing paternity is when it happens. Because unmarried mothers frequently continue their relationship with the father during pregnancy and through the first few years after the child’s birth, early paternity establishment has been actively promoted by policy makers (Price & Williams, 1990). In-hospital paternity establishment was established as a federal requirement in 1993 and was included in the 1996 welfare reform legislation. It required all states to have voluntary paternity acknowledgment programs in birthing hospitals (Roberts, 2006). There is a dearth of research on whether legal paternity establishment results in increased father involvement. Prior to TANF, unmarried women who expected to receive welfare benefits did not encourage their child’s father to establish paternity because part or much of the child support was taken by the state to offset the costs of welfare (Curran, 2003). With the enactment of welfare reform, paternity establishment was mandated for all welfare recipients. Analyses of a national sample of nonmarital births conducted post-TANF found that paternity establishment rates are quite high (69%) and that 6 out of 7 paternities are established in the hospital (Mincy, Garfinkel, & Nepomnyaschy, 2005). This study also found that establishing paternity was significantly and positively linked to formal and informal child support payments and father–child visitation (Mincy et al.). There are no other studies supporting this finding. It is also unclear whether paternity establishment and father–child visitation is linked to child outcomes. WELFARE POLICIES The 1996 welfare reform law emphasizes two areas of intervention for fathers: Discourage nonmarital fertility and increase nonresidential father support and involvement with children. There is strong evidence that recent welfare reforms have reduced public assistance participation and increased family earnings. Increased earnings

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increase the probability the men and women will stay together and that men will pay child support payments (Schoeni & Blank, 2000). Evidence about the effect of AFDC benefits on family structure is mixed (see Moffit, 1992, 2000). Schoeni and Blank found some support that welfare reform policies had an impact on family structure. However, there is no indication that since 1996, the rate of nonmarital fertility has decreased. The lack of effect on family structure might be because welfare reform did not include a set of guidelines, supports, sanctions, or incentives to help states achieve their goals of promoting and maintaining healthy two-parent families (Mangum, 2000). Moreover, welfare reform addresses only mothers’ self-sufficiency needs; it does not focus directly on fathers. The focus of welfare reform on finding employment for single mothers may leave men unemployed and hence ‘‘undesirable’’ as marriage partners. In response to the lack of focus on men in welfare policies, policy makers are now considering ways to improve the lot of these men. Thousands of programs have sprung up across the country that target men specifically and provide job training and parenting advice (e.g., National Center on Families and Fathers, Association of Practitioners, and the Baltimore Men’s Start). Activism at the community level and a desire to bring men back into their families has motivated policy makers to include men in social policies. In the U.S. Congress, Representative E. Clay Shaw, Jr. (who was a key author of the 1996 welfare law) introduced a ‘‘Fathers Count’’ bill. This bill was passed in 1999 to fund groups, including religious organizations, to give poor fathers job training and parenting advice and encourage them to marry. The purpose of this legislation is to make grants available to public and private entities for projects designed to: (1) promote marriage through counseling, mentoring, disseminating information about the advantages of marriage, enhancing relationship skills, teaching how to control aggressive behavior, and other methods; (2) promote successful parenting through counseling, mentoring, disseminating information about good parenting practices including family planning, training parents in money management, encouraging child support payments, encouraging regular visitation between fathers and their children, and other methods; and (3) help fathers and their families avoid or leave cash welfare provided by the program and improve their economic status by providing work first services, job search, job training, subsidized employment, career-advancing education, job retention, job enhancement, and other methods. The goals of this bill were folded into the Responsible Fatherhood program. There are no data available on these programs. CHILD SUPPORT Child support legislation focuses on promoting nonresident fathers’ economic responsibility for their children and reduce welfare costs to the state (Laakso, 2000). The Office of Child Support Enforcement has focused on enacting and strengthening legislation to improve states’ capacity for identifying, locating, and collecting child support from nonresident fathers, with a strong emphasis as part of PRWORA on unwed fathers, who represent the largest proportion of the child support enforcement caseload (U.S.

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Department of Health and Human Services, 2002). In this policy context, child support income is considered a central source of income (Curran, 2003), and families must abdicate any child support owed to the state (Miller, Farrell, Cancian, & Meyer, 2005). Successful child support collection is a key area of the 1996 federal welfare reform legislation. The law requires custodial parents who apply for public assistance to cooperate in establishing paternity (for nonmarital children) and pursuing child support. Individual states have developed their own strategies for collecting child support. For example, in 1997, Virginia launched the Virginia’s Kids First Campaign, which in 1997 netted $25 million from noncustodial parents who owed back support (Sisk, 1998). By April 2000, Virginia’s Kids First Campaign had collected $96.1 million from 38,624 obligors, who began paying in response to Kids First enforcement activities (www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cse/pubs/2000/best_prac tices/va_kids_first_campaign.html). Methods of collection included letters to delinquent fathers; driver’s license suspensions; arrests; use of boots to disable their cars; and notices to suspend driver’s, hunting, and fishing licenses. Prior to TANF, evaluations of child support policies suggested that they may have unintended consequences and might discourage family formation and paternity establishment, and impede father involvement. Welfare policies reduced the incentive to pay child support through the formal child support system because welfare payments were reduced by one dollar for each dollar of child support that is collected (Furstenberg, Sherwood, & Sullivan, 1992). Consequently, men and women often decided not to declare paternity, so that any payments the father makes go directly to the child and mother (Achatz & MacAllum, 1994; Anderson, 1993; Doherty, Kouneski, & Erickson, 1998; Wattenberg, 1993). Another issue is that child support payments are not tied to child visitation. Nonpayment of child support has been found to be directly linked to denial of visitation by custodial mothers (Veum, 1993). Some fathers argue that child support payments would increase if they are allowed to visit with their children (Veum). There is additional research that supports the complementary nature of child support payments and visitation (Seltzer, 1991). Paying child support, visiting, and participating in child-rearing decisions go hand and hand; fathers who engage in one of these parental activities are more likely to participate in the other two activities (Seltzer). Equally, mothers may be less likely to foster relationships between fathers and children when the fathers are not making sufficient economic contributions (King et al., 2004). Therefore, the directionality of this relation is unclear. Post TANF, unmarried women seeking welfare must provide their child’s father’s name. The effects that child support has on father engagement may depend on whether they are voluntary or mandated. Qualitative studies suggest that although welfare recipients believed that the father of their child had had the obligation to provide for them, they also believed that it was better for them to do so voluntarily (Edin & Kefalas, 2005). One study found a reciprocal association between child support payment and father contact

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(i.e., how often father saw child in a period of 30 days) (Nepomnyaschy, 2007). Formal child support payments had a significant effect when children were 1 year old on father contact, but no effect of contact at year 1 on payments when children were 3 years old. However, a strong and positive reciprocal relationship was found between the amount of informal support and the likelihood and frequency of contact. These findings suggest that policies that promote visitation and father contact should encourage informal child support, which may be beneficial for the child. This finding is consistent with studies that have found that in-kind support is positively and significantly related to nonresidential father involvement (Cabrera, Ryan, Shannon, Mitchell, & Tamis-LeMonda, 2008) and with the view that unmarried mothers view in-kind support (e.g., share expenses, buying toys, clothing) as a genuine demonstration of father involvement (Edin & Kefalas, 2005). A limitation of this research is that it focuses on frequency of contact, rather than on quality, which is found to be related to children’s outcomes. Earlier studies of the impact of child support payments on children’s outcomes are mixed. While many studies have found that income from child support is more beneficial to children than other sources of income (e.g., Knox & Bane, 1994; McLanahan, Seltzer, Hanson, & Thomas, 1994), additional studies reported select or limited effects. For example, Peters and Mullis (1997) found positive effects of child support income on cognitive test scores measured during adolescence, but not on later outcome measures such as educational attainment, earning, and labor market experience. Knox (1996) found significant child support effects for achievement test scores, but not for measures of the home environment. Argys and Peters (1996) argued that the differential effects of child support dollars on children’s outcomes may depend on the relationship between the mother and father. Parents who get along are more likely to be able agree about how the money should be spent and to make expenditures on children in a cooperative and efficient way. Moreover, evidence suggests that the effects of child support on cognitive development persist even after accounting for unobserved characteristics of fathers and families (Argys, Peters, BrooksGunn, & Smith, 1998). Voluntary child support, rather than no support or court-ordered support, affected cognitive outcomes, perhaps because it does not negatively affect family processes (Argys et al., 1998). The most relevant finding from a policy perspective is the impact of policies on family processes that have important consequences for child well-being. Some have suggested that child support payment and child outcomes are linked through the frequency of contact and quality of child–father relationships (Simons et al., 1994). Specifically, those fathers who have good relationships with their children are more likely to have contact and pay child support (Pryor & Rodgers, 2001). Child support contributions may have an indirect effect on parenting through its influence on family processes such as parent–child and mother–father relationships, which in turn affect children’s well-being. For example, payment of child support is an indicator of a fathers’ success in the ‘‘economic provider role’’; this success may then enable nonresidential fathers to become involved with their

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children in other beneficial ways. Similarly, mothers who are ‘‘gatekeepers’’ may allow the father access to the children only if child support is paid. However, the positive relationship between child support and father involvement may simply reflect selection: Fathers who care more about their children and want to maintain involvement are also more likely to want to pay child support. McLanahan et al. (1994) argue that child support payments influence the degree of conflict between the two parents either positively or negatively. Conflict is likely to decrease when fathers fulfill their financial obligation. However, if child support increases the involvement of the father in the child’s life, this may also increase opportunities for conflict between the parents. PARENTAL CUSTODY The Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act of 1970 established a gender-neutral ‘‘best interests’’ standard when custody was awarded to parents. However, many have argued that custody laws discriminated against fathers (Braver & O’Connell, 1998). Similarly, father rights’ advocates argued that court decisions continued to favor maternal custody, and fathers pushed for joint custody legislation (Fineman & Opie, 1987). Even when parents appeared equal in a court of law, the ‘‘best interests’’ of the child meant giving custody to the mother (Hall, Pulver, & Cooley, 1996). Custody arrangements can affect levels of father involvement because most custody orders do not specify what ‘‘reasonable visitation’’ between nonresident parent and the child entails (Kelly, 1994). The custodial parent, typically the mother, has considerable control to define visitation times on her terms (Levin & Mills, 2003). Men do not always support their children because they lack control over the allocation of resources within the resident parent’s household (Weiss & Willis, 1985). Awarding joint custody would then lead to increased financial support for children and higher paternal involvement. As custody laws begin to become gender neutral, there has been an increased prevalence of shared custody over the past 2 decades, although, ‘‘best interests’’ is vague and difficult to apply uniformly (Baskerville, 2004; Cancian & Meyer, 1998). Joint legal custody has been found to be beneficial for children and parents (Braver & O’Connell, 1998). Seltzer (1998) found that joint legal custody also helped increased father involvement. Joint custody requires parents to coparent and try to overcome their differences for the sake of the child. Braver and O’Connell propose mediation between mothers and fathers, as well as giving absent fathers more rights. Joint custody could be less likely to be awarded when the father has fewer resources. For example, noncustodial fathers of children on welfare are often unemployed, have few resources, are young, in poor health and have a history with the criminal justice system, which makes them less likely to get custody (The Future of Children, 2004). These men then are ‘‘dead broke,’’ not ‘‘deadbeat’’ (Miller et al., 2005). In contrast to low-income mothers, very few low-income fathers receive public assistance and job-related services, which further constrains their ability to pay child support and be involved in their children’s lives (Sorensen & Lerman, 1998).

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WORKPLACE POLICIES The 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) and the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) were designed to protect parents in the workplace. Under the PDA, it is illegal for employers to fire, refuse to hire, or deny any woman a promotion because she is pregnant. Although the PDA does not guarantee job protection, it guarantees that a pregnant employee will be treated in the same way as any other employee with a medical condition (Meyres & Gornick, 2001). In contrast, the FMLA allows parents, both mothers and fathers, to take up to 6 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a newborn or adopted child or another family member who is sick (Jutta, 1997). This federal law restricted these benefits to those working in establishments with 50 or more employees, employed for a full year, and working at least 1,250 hours during the year prior to taking the leave. Before the passage of FMLA, 11 states had similar family leave policies (Klerman & Liebowitz, 1997). Paid parental leave in the United States is fairly rare. In 1993, only 3% of medium and large establishments and 1% of small establishments offered parental leave (Blau, Ferber, & Winkler, 1998). Even when benefits are available, fathers are much less likely to take parental leave, or they take leave for much shorter durations than do mothers. In the United States, it has been estimated that fathers take about 5 days of leave when their child is born. Although 91% of fathers took at least some leave (Hyde, Essex, & Horton, 1993), it is interesting to note that when fathers took time off from work, they were much more likely to use paid vacation or sick leave than parental leave, which is most often unpaid. Because of the importance of the breadwinner role, fathers are less likely to take a leave if it is unpaid. This phenomenon is also reported in countries with much more generous family leave policies than the United States Haas (1991) reports that in 1974, the first year that paid paternal leave was available, only 3% of fathers took a leave; by 1989, 44% of fathers in Sweden took parental leave. Even in Sweden, however, fathers take much less leave than do mothers (53 vs. 225 days, on average; Haas). The availability of paternal leave in the United States—both paid and unpaid—is a recent phenomenon. It is difficult to determine whether family leave policies have an impact on father involvement. The research on the effects of the Family Leave Act on father involvement is mixed at best. A study of 100 parents conducted in the United States found that fathers who took time off from work following the birth or adoption of a child was not linked to more father involvement (child care tasks) (Seward & Fletcher, 2000). They found that almost half of the fathers reported taking leave (average level of about 12 days). Twenty-three percent of fathers changed to a flexible work schedule in addition to, or instead of, taking leave, while 17 percent reduced their work hours. The fathers who took leave from their blue-collar jobs spent an average of more than 42 hours with their children each week, more than 1.5 hours more than the average time fathers who did not take leave spent time with their children. However, most child care tasks were done by their partners. It is possible that there was no effect on father involvement found because leaves were so short. Moreover, fathers took

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leave only if they could get paid by using vacation time or personal/sick days. It is possible that these men in blue-collar jobs may have more traditional views of gender distinctions and so did not share child care responsibilities equally with their spouses or partners. Maternal employment was a strong predictor of father involvement. The effects of public policies on father involvement can be characterized as being intended and unintended. Considering the mechanism by which these policies work might lead researchers to also examine indirect effects (Coltrane, 2008). For example, policies might moderate the impact of individual or couple characteristics on desired outcomes (Coltrane, 1998). Moreover, most studies evaluating the effect of public policies on families have done so one policy at a time. Some researchers argue that to understand the full effect of policies on families, we need to consider the ways in which they interact because families make decisions in a context influenced by a set of policies available to them (Coltrane, 2008; Gornick & Meyers, 2003). PUBLIC EDUCATION AND INTERVENTION PROGRAMS In this section, I examine programs aimed at increasing father involvement. The bulk of these programs are aimed at increasing parenting skills; programs designed to increase positive paternal involvement in noneconomic ways (e.g., spend time engaged in activities with child) are few. In addition to federal goals for father involvement in policies and programs, the states have also set forward a set of efforts that have increased public awareness of the importance of fathers’ involvement in the lives of their children by convening statewide summits and conferences and sponsoring statewide media campaigns to promote positive father involvement. These efforts have focused on all fathers, including fathers in two-parent families, teen fathers, noncustodial fathers (both divorced and never married), single fathers, and teen fathers. The National Governors Association has published a list of the best programs to promote responsible fathering across states. The initiatives profiled by the states fall into six categories: services for low-income, noncustodial fathers; parenting skills training; public awareness campaigns; state fatherhood commissions; comprehensive funding streams; and premature fatherhood prevention (Knitzer, Brenner, & Gadsden, 1997). Welfare reform was the impetus for many of these state-level initiatives. Although the states and the federal government are paying attention to the problem of fatherless families, there is no consensus about the values that provide the foundation for strategies; nor is there research-based evidence about what approaches work best for which groups of fathers. Moreover, there is concern that program evaluations rarely accompany initiatives. Nevertheless, there is enormous opportunity for innovation and leadership by the states in promoting responsible fatherhood programs. Government and philanthropic support have created a network of programs across the country that seeks to raise the income of low-income men and strengthen their ties to their children. Nearly all states given substantial federal welfareto-work grants this year have pledged to include fathers in their programs. As

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a result of this focus, thousands of programs have emerged across the United States at the state and county levels that seek to help fathers, often unmarried and adolescent males, become better fathers (e.g., Responsive Fathers Program at the Philadelphia Children’s Network, as discussed by Louv, 1994). Generally, these programs focus on employment, training, and parental involvement. Similarly, federal funding programs targeted increasing low-income noncustodial father involvement as well as father’s opportunities for employment, higher earnings, and ability to pay child support (Johnson, Levine, & Doolittle, 1999). Earlier demonstration programs such as the Parents’ Fair Share (PFS) program were designed to improve fathers’ labor market outcomes and strengthening fathers’ parenting skills (Johnson, et al.). Evaluation of the PFS program showed modest effect on employment rates and enhancing child support payments, no gains in employment or earnings, and no effect on increasing visitation rates of fathers (Knox & Redcross, 2000). An important finding, however, identified the distinction between those fathers who could and those who could not pay support. Payments were 19% higher from men who could pay (Doolittle & Lynn, 1998). These findings underscored the difficulty in making low-income men ‘‘marriageable’’ by increasing their earning potential. It also highlighted the fact that existing social policies for men—child support and welfare programs—do not meet their needs (Johnson et al.). An explanation for these modest findings was that the PFS intervention took place too late in men’s lives, when they were already disengaged from their families. As more recent studies have shown, engaging men in the parenting and partnering process early on (i.e., during pregnancy) seems to have more long-term effects on their later involvement (Cabrera, Fagan, & Farrie, 2008; Shannon, Cabrera, Tamis-LeMonda, & Lamb, 2009). The focus of responsible fatherhood programs shifted in 2002 when President G. W. Bush unveiled a $320 million package of initiatives aimed at promoting ‘‘responsible fatherhood,’’ which led to the funding of several programs to increase father involvement (Curran, 2003). The welfare legislation in 2006 provided $50 million annually for 5 years for fatherhood programs, entitled Promoting Responsible Fatherhood (PRF) initiatives. The purpose of PRF is to promote responsible fatherhood by funding programs that support healthy marriage activities, decrease nonmarital fertility, increase marriage, promote responsible parenting, and foster economic stability. Most states have recently undertaken strategic initiatives to address this issue and promote responsible fatherhood. The HHS Administration for Children and Family Services (ACF), which administers the program, commissioned a report to help them conceptualize and design and promote responsible fatherhood programs (Doherty, Kouneski, Farrell, & Erickson, 1998). According to Doherty and colleagues, the goals of PRF’s programs are to enable fathers to improve their relationships with their partners and children and overcome barriers that prevent them from being effective and nurturing parents. However, a central aspect of the program is that it encourages fatherhood in the context of marriage (Doherty et al.). Acknowledging the disconnect among research, theory, and programs, Doherty and colleagues define responsible fatherhood to include

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establishing paternity, being present in the child’s life (even if divorced or unmarried), sharing economic support, and being personally involved in the child’s life in collaboration with the mother. Responsible fatherhood is framed within a systemic, contextual framework that highlights multiple interacting factors (i.e., father, mother, child, coparenting, and contextual) that influence father–child relationship. This family system approach is essentially framed as Belsky’s (1984) process model of parenting. Fathering programs under PRF are designed involve a wide range of interventions, reflecting the multiple domains of responsible fathering; the varied residential and marital circumstances of fathers; and the array of personal, relational, and ecological factors that influence men as fathers (Doherty et al., 1998). In particular, fathering programs should involve mothers where feasible and, especially for unmarried fathers, families of origin; promote collaborative coparenting inside and outside marriage; emphasize critical transitions such as birth of the child and parents’ divorce; deal with employment, economic issues, and community systems; provide opportunities for fathers to learn from other fathers; and promote the viability of caring, committed, and collaborative marriages (http://fatherhood.hhs. gov/Research/index.html). ACF has funded a number of research and evaluation projects. Healthy Marriage Initiatives includes the following: building strong families, supporting healthy marriages, community healthy marriage initiative, the national healthy marriage resource center, promoting responsible fatherhood, and healthy marriage demonstration projects. The National Center for Marriage Research, established in 2007 by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, aims to improve our understanding of how marriage and family structure affect the health and well-being of families, adults, children, and communities, and to inform policy development and programmatic responses. One of these funded projects is Building Strong Families (BSF), which is designed to develop and evaluate a model for healthy marriage services for interested low-income expectant or new unwed parents. ACF has also funded a Special Improvement Project (SIP) grant to educate low-resource unwed parents about marriage, which have resulted in two reports that can serve as guides for conducting healthy marriage projects (www.buildingstrongfamilies.info). The first of the two BSF briefs, titled ‘‘Strengthening Relationships and Supporting Healthy Marriage Among Unwed Parents,’’ is a study of how programs to strengthen relationships in unmarried parent families can be developed, implemented, and evaluated. The study culminated in a ‘‘conceptual framework’’ that identifies factors to consider, including circumstances and needs of unwed-parent families, program planning and curricula, implementation and service delivery, and outcomes. The other report, ‘‘What We Know About Unmarried Parents: Implications for Building Strong Families Programs,’’ summarizes information from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study about the characteristics and relationships of unwed parents. The findings can help agencies and groups interested in designing BSF programs similar to the BSF model to better understand their

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target population (www.buildingstrongfamilies.info). The evaluation of these programs has not been completed; thus, information on whether these programs have worked will be available in the next couple of years. By then, the Healthy Marriage Initiative may no longer be relevant to federal policies toward fathers. Another set of programs that have an indirect effect on decreasing nomarital fertility is family planning. In efforts to prevent unwanted pregnancies among unmarried women, especially teens, the federal government has funded family planning, teen programs, and male involvement programs (The Future of Children, 2002). Current teen programs aimed at both girls and boys strive to delay adolescent pregnancies by promoting abstinence and promoting safe sex among sexually active couples through sex education and contraceptive availability (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2002). Teen programs may also focus specifically on parenting skills and ensuring that fathers have access to their children (The Future of Children) as well as improving opportunities for young, unwed fathers to support their children financially and emotionally (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). Although there are little evaluative data, there is some evidence that programs that discourage nonmarital births have mixed results (The Future of Children). There are also nuances even when there are successes. For example, a number of pregnancy prevention programs have been successful among teens but not among young female adults (Manlove et al., 2004). The evidence for the effectiveness of programs that encourage father involvement is also mixed. There seems to be a consensus that programs that are more successful are those that are specifically targeted to fathers and begin very early in the child’s life, before birth. Indeed, there is evidence that prenatal involvement has long-term effects on father involvement at 3 years (Cabrera et al., 2008). More recently, public education efforts that promote sexual responsibility and responsible fatherhood have focused on teen fathering. These programs are believed to have beneficial effects on children because they focus on training and parenting skills, and involve fathers in programs such as Early Head Start and school activities. This programmatic focus on teen fathers is relatively new. Until a decade ago, most national programs that served lowincome families and young children either overlooked or blamed teen boys for the pregnancy and worked exclusively with mothers (Kiselica, 1995). In almost every case, teen mothers were studied without regard for their partners (Elster & Lamb, l986). Although few teen fatherhood programs have been evaluated to date, there have been some efforts to identify ‘‘model’’ and ‘‘promising’’ teen fatherhood programs (Bronte-Tinkew, Burkhauser, & Metz, 2008). One of the criteria of best models includes providing teen fathers with a constellation of services, including parenting information, employment, education, and counseling. There are little evaluative data on the effect of any of these programs on families. But researchers have argued that programs can be effective if they take away the built-in disincentive to provide support (e.g., substituting child support dollars for welfare dollars), allow fathers to be involved with their children, and identify fathers through paternity establishment.

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EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION PROGRAMS Over the past decade, federal programmatic initiatives for fathers in early childhood education programs have steadily increased (Fagan & Palm, 2004). The most salient of these programs has been Head Start (HS) and Early Head Start (EHS) (Raikes, Summers, & Roggman, 2005), which are required by current federal regulations to organize programmatic activities specifically for fathers that go beyond the ones offered to mothers. Consequently, ACF, the office that administers HS programs, has made available funds to HS grantees to help them develop fatherhood initiatives. Although federal funding opportunities are important to mount successful educational programs, the success of these programs may also depend on whether other barriers and challenges can be overcome. Fathers’ attitudes and interest in participation, as well as mothers’ and teachers’ attitudes about parent involvement, have been found to be important predictors. Mothers’ and teachers’ attitudes about parent involvement have also been found to either encourage or discourage fathers from participating (McBride & Rane, 2001). Other predictors of father participation in early childhood programs include fathers’ nurturing behaviors with young children, mothers’ participation, and child gender, favoring son (Fagan, 1999) and program maturity (Raikes et al., 2005). There is a dearth of research on the influence of early childhood programs to increase father involvement. In general, the few studies suggest that fathers have positive attitudes about getting involved in early childhood programs (Fagan, 2007; Fagan & Palm, 2004). However, one study of 59 lowincome HS families in urban, suburban, and rural settings found that while fathers were perceived by mothers to be involved with their children at home, they were not very involved in the HS program (Fagan, Newash, & Schloesser, 2000). Father participation may be at low levels when there is little programmatic effort to reach out to fathers (Gary, Beatty, & Weaver, 1987; McBride & Lin, 1996) and higher when formal father programs are implemented (Fagan, 1999). For example, Fagan found that fathers’ level of participation in early childhood education programs was not very high. Whether father involvement in early childhood programs has any effect on fathering children’s outcomes is difficult to determine because of the relatively little research attention that it has received. Fagan and Iglesias (1999) found that fathers in an intervention group (classroom volunteering, attendance at organized fun activities, and monthly support group) were more supportive of their children’s learning at home if they were moderately involved in the program. Also, children of highly involved fathers had greater gains in math readiness than the comparison group. Similarly, Roggman, Boyce, Cook, Christiansen, and Jones, (2004) showed that fathers with children enrolled in EHS used more complex social play interactions with their 24-month olds than did fathers in control group (Roggman et al.). There is also some evidence that involvement in programs may lead to positive parenting (Fagan & Stevenson, 2002). In summary, programs designed to increase father involvement in their children’s lives have dramatically increased over the past decade. Some of

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these programs focus on parenting skills and relationship skills, and, more recently, most of them have been framed in the context of marriage. Despite some attention paid to research that supports these initiatives, there continues to be a disconnect among research, theory, and practice. There are no evaluative data yet; thus, it is unknown whether these works are effective. CONCLUSION More than ever, there is growing appreciation for the diversity of fathers, their roles, and their influences on children across familial, subcultural, and cultural contexts. There is no single definition of a successful father, or of an optimal ‘‘father’s role.’’ Rather, fathers’ expectations about what they should do, what they actually do, and their effects on children must be viewed in the broader familial context. This is not an easy task. Research to date has shed light into how positive father involvement can have beneficial effects on children and families. But it has also highlighted some limitations that have led in turn to some important policy initiatives. These policies face the challenge of addressing the needs of mothers and fathers who parent their children in a vastly different context from the one used to design public policies: increased normarital fertility, increased rates of divorce, and increased cohabitation. In this context, we need to formulate a new narrative for families that can best inform how policies place themselves to support rather than hinder their efforts. However, in order for policy makers to build programs and design policies that are beneficial for families—regardless of how these families are structured—they must have access to relevant and useful data. The Fatherhood Initiative, the Healthy Marriage Initiative, and other partnerships between private and public organizations are creating an integrated knowledge base that is beginning to address policy concerns. This is paving the way for better policies and programs that will in turn stimulate further research. Although research on fathers has been under way since the 1960s, the latest surge of interest in fathers and their role in the well-being of their children has created an urgent impetus to revise social and cultural conceptions of fatherhood. This cultural shift will have important consequences for policies and research that examine how parents—both mothers and fathers—can best contribute to the development of their children. We left the 20th century with fathers out of obscurity, and have begun the 21st century with important insights about how policies and programs can best integrate both parents to maximize benefits for children. REFERENCES Achatz, M., & MacAllum, C. A. (1994). The young unwed fathers demonstration project: A status report. Philadelphia: Public/Private Ventures. Acs, G., & Nelson, S. (2002). What do ‘‘I do’s’’ do? Potential benefits of marriage for cohabiting couples with children. Assessing the new federalism policy brief B-48, Washington, DC: Urban Institute.

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McBride, B. A., & Lin, H. F. (1996). Parental involvement in early childhood programs: Training staff to work with men. In J. Fagan & A. J. Hawkins (Eds.), Clinical and educational interventions with fathers (pp. 171–190). Binghamton, NY: Haworth. McBride, B. A., & Rane, T. R. (2001). Father/ale involvement in early childhood programs: Training staff to work with men. In J. Fagan, & A. J. Hawkins (Eds.), Clinical and educational interventions with fathers (pp. 171–190). Binghamton, NY: Haworth. McLanahan, S. (2000). Fragile Families and the Reproduction of Poverty Princeton University Working papers series. http://www.fragilefamilies.princeton.edu/. McLanahan, S. (2002). The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study: Baseline National Report. Center for Research on Child Wellbeing, Princeton University. McLanahan, S. (2005). Fragile families and the marriage agenda. In L. KowaleskiJones & N. Wolfinger (Eds.), Fragile families and the marriage agenda. New York: Springer. McLanahan, S. S., & Sandefur, G. (1994). Growing up with a single parent: What hurts, what helps. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McLanahan, S. S., Seltzer, J. A., Hanson, T. L., & Thomas, E. (1994). Child support enforcement and child well-being: Greater security or greater conflicts. In I. Garfinkel, S. S. McLanahan, & P. K. Robins (Eds.), Child support and child wellbeing (pp. 239–254). Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press. Meyers, M. K., & Gornick, J. C. (2001). The European model. The American Prospect Online, Nov. 1, 2004. Miller, C., Farrell, M., Cancian, M., & Meyer, D. (2005). The interaction of child support and TANF: Evidence from samples of current and former welfare recipients. Report to the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Mincy, R., Garfinkel, I. & Nepomnyaschy, L. (2005). In-hospital paternity establishment and father involvement in fragile families. Journal of Marriage and Family, 67, 611–626. Moffit, R. (1992). Incentive effects of the U.S. welfare system: A review. Journal of Economic Literature, 30, 1–61. National Council of Welfare. (2005). Welfare incomes 2004. Vol.123. Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada. Retrieved November 2009, from http:// www.ncwcnbes.net/htmdocument/reportWelfareIncomes2004/WI2004EngREVISED.pdf. Nepomnyaschy, L. (2007). Child support and father contact: Testing reciprocal pathways. Demography, 44(1), 93–112. O’Connor, Julia, S., Ann S. Orloff, and Sheila Shaver. (1999). States, markets, families: Gender, liberalism and social Policy in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ooms, T. (2002). Marriage-plus. American Prospect 13, 24–29. Osborne, C., & McLanahan, S. (2007). Partnership instability and child wellbeing. Journal of Marriage and Family, 69, 1065–1083. Palkovitz, R. (1997). Reconstructing involvement: Expanding conceptualizations of men’s caring in contemporary families. In A. J. Hawkins & D. C. Dollahite (Eds.), Generative fathering: Beyond deficit perspectives (pp. 200–216). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Palkovitz, R. (2002). Involved fathering and men’s adult development provisional balances. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

References 549 Parke, M. (2003). Are married parents really better for children? Couples and Marriage Policy Brief No. 3. Washington, DC: Center or Law and Policy. Peters, H. E., & Mullis, N. (1997). The role of family income and sources of income in adolescent achievement. In G. J. Duncan & J. Brooks-Gunn (Eds.), Consequences of growing up poor (pp. 340–382). New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Pleck, E. H. (1997). Paternal involvement: Levels, sources, and consequences. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development. (3rd ed., pp. 66–103). New York: Wiley. Price, D. A., & Williams, V. S. (1990). Nebraska Paternity Project, final report. Denver, CO: Policy Studies. Pruett, K. (1987). The nurturing father. New York: Warner Books. Pryor, J., & Rodgers, B. (2001). Children in changing families: Life after parental separation. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Raikes, H., Summers, J. A., & Roggman, L. A. (2005). Father involvement in EHS programs. Fathering: A Journal of Theory, Research, and Practice About Men as Fathers, 3, 29–58. Regional Municipality of Niagara, 2004. Extracted on Nov 22, 2009, from http:// www.regional.niagara.on.ca/government/council/agendas-minutes/2004/default.aspx. Roberts, P. (2006). Update on the marriage and fatherhood provisions of the 2006 federal budget and the 2007 budget proposal. Washington: Center for Law and Social Policy. Roggman, L.A., Boyce, L.K., Cook, G.A., Christiansen, K., & Jones, D. (2004). Playing with daddy: Social toy play, Early Head Start, and developmental outcomes. Fathering, 2, 83–108. Sarkadi, A., Kristiansson, R., Oberklaid, F., & Brember, S. (2008). Acta Paediatrica, 97, 153–158. Saunders, R. (2005). Lifting the boats: Policies to make work pay. Ottawa: Canadian Policy Research Networks. www.cprn.ca. Schoeni, R. F. & Blank, R. (2000). What has welfare Reform accomplished? Impacts on welfare participation, employment, income, poverty, and family structure. NBER Working Papers 7627, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. Scourfield, J. (2003). Gender and child protection. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Seltzer, J. (1991). Legal custody arrangements and children’s economic welfare. American Journal of Sociology 96(4): 895–929. Seltzer, J. A. (1998). Fathering by law: Effects of joint legal custody on nonresident fathers’ involvement with children. Demography, 35(2), 135–146. Seward, R. & Fletcher, R. (2000). Parental leave has little impact on father’s involvement. Retrieved November, 29, 2009, from http://web3.unt.edu/news/story.cfm? story=7820. Simons, R.L., Whitbeck, L.B., Beaman, J., & Conger, R.D. (1994). The impact of mothers’ parenting, involvement by nonresidential fathers, and parental conflict on the adjustment of adolescent children. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 56(2), 356–374. Sisk, P. J. (1998, July). Virginia Kids First campaign: First year nets $25 million. Child Support Report, XX(7), 1–2. Sonenstein, F. L., Holcomb, P. A., & Seefeldt, K. S. (1994). Promising approaches to improving paternity establishment rates at the local level. In I. Garfinkel, S. S. McLanahan, & P. K. Robins (Eds.), Child support and child well-being (pp. 31–59). Washington, DC: Urban Institute.

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Sorensen, E., Mincy, R., & Halpern, A. (2000). Redirecting welfare policy toward building strong families. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute. Sorensen, E., & Lerman, R. (1998). Welfare reform and low-income custodial fathers. Challenge, 41(4), 101–116. Statistics Canada. (2005). Fact sheet on minimum wage. Perspectives on Labour and Income 6(9), 18–23. Strega, S., Fleet, C., Brown, L., Dominelli, L., Callahan, M., & Walmsley, C. (2008). Connecting father absence and mother blame in child welfare policies and practices. Children and Youth Services Review, 30, 705–716. Struening, K. (2007). Do government sponsored marriage promotion policies place undue pressure on individual rights? Policy Sciences, 40, 241–259. Sutton, P. D., & Munson, M. L. (2004). Single mothers and their child-support receipt: How well is child-support enforcement doing? Journal of Human Resources, 39(1), 135–254. Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., & Cabrera, N. (Eds.) (2002). Handbook of father involvement: Multidisciplinary perspectives. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. The Future of Children (2004). Children, families, and foster care, 14(1). The Future of Children. (2002). Children and welfare reform, 12(1). Tyrer, P., Chase, E., Warwick, I., & Angleton, P. (2005). ‘Dealing with it’: Experiences of young fathers in and leaving care. The British Journal of Social Work, 35, 1107– 1121. U.S. Bureau of the Census. (2000) The Dicennial Census: 1960–2000. Washington, D.C. U.S. Bureau of the Census, (2006). 2006–2008 American Community Survey 3Year Estimates http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DatasetMainPageServlet?_ program=ACS. U.S. Bureau of the Census (2006). Current Population Survey, March Supplement, Printing ffice: Washington, D.C. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2002). Promoting responsible fatherhood. Washington, DC.U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Ventura, S. J., & Bachrach, C. A. (2000). Nonmarital childbearing in the United States 1940–1999. National Vital Statistics Reports 48(16). Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. Veum, J. R. (1993). Interrelation of child support, visitation, and hours of work. Monthly Labor Review, 115(6), 40–47. Wattenberg, E. (1993). Paternity actions and young fathers. In R. I. Lerman & T. J. Ooms (Eds.), Young unwed fathers: Changing roles and emerging policies (pp. 213–234). Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Weiss, Y., & Willis, R. J. (1985). Children as collective goods in divorce settlements. Journal of Labor Economics, 3, 268–292. Wilcox, W.B. (2002). Religion, convention, and father involvement. Journal of Marriage and Family, 64, 780–792. Wilkie, J. R. (1993). Changes in U.S. men’s attitudes toward the family provider role, 1972–1989. Gender and Society, 7, 261–279. Yeung, W. J., Sandberg, J. F., Davis-Kean, P., Hofferth, S. L. (1999). Children’s time with fathers in intact families. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, April 1998.

CHAPTER 19

Fathers, Work, and Family Policies in Europe MARGARET O’BRIEN and PETER MOSS

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decade of the 21st century, the state of contemporary fatherhood in Europe continues to be in flux. European fatherhood models remain in a process of reconstruction so that the fatherhood ideals individuals live by are complex and at times contradictory. The patriarchal fatherhood model, with its emphasis on father rights and male family power, no longer regulates formal legal jurisdictions across Europe, but remains a potent belief system for some ethnic and religious minority communities (Becher, 2008; Collier & Sheldon, 2008). Similarly, despite the rise in maternal employment, an expectation that fathers should still be economic providersin-chief remains a strong cultural force in many European countries (PfauEffinger, 2004; Plantin, 2007a). The late-20th-century agenda-setting ideal of ‘‘new father’’ as a ‘‘hands-on’’ direct carer of children competes with countervailing expectations. Across Europe, caring father images are endemic in advertising and in depictions of sporting icons. There are dedicated advice columns, newspaper articles, fatherhood organizations, web sites and Internet chat rooms supporting fathers and giving information on the transition to parenthood, child wellbeing, and managing domestic life. Today, fathers in Europe are expected to be accessible and nurturing as well as economically supportive to their children. Men are more self-conscious about juggling the different dimensions of ‘‘the good father,’’ and younger cohorts especially concerned about how they will manage conflicts between having a job and looking after the children (e.g., Brannen, Moss, & Mooney, 2004; Dermott, 2008). Over the past decade, although the topic of fathers has not been central to European family policy development, the interface of fathers and employment has risen in importance (Moss & Deven, 2006). The European Commission, with its pan-national remit, continues to be a significant voice on work–family reconciliation and gender equity challenges. After a recent consultation, it has concluded that ‘‘incentives for fathers to take parental leave, the payment of N THIS FIRST

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parental leave, paternity leave, and the possibilities for leave to care for the elderly and other dependent family members seem to be priorities’’ (European Commission [EC], 2007a, p. 14). This chapter reviews the growing body of scholarship on fathers, work, and family supportive polices in Europe. Of course, scholarship on fathers, work, and family is not new to the 21st century (e.g., Pleck, 1977). Historically, there has been great interest in public policy proposals to promote paternal involvement in the care of children, with European countries leading innovation. Investment in parental leave schemes to support the early weeks and months of childhood has become a focus of European public policy. National measures increasingly targeted at employed fathers as well as employed mothers are being introduced (Moss & Deven, 2006; O’Brien, Brandth, & Kvande, 2007). This chapter takes stock of new evidence on European fathers’ patterns of employment and leave taking across an expanding EU27 set of countries. It illuminates patterns and predictors of leave taking and working practices for men in a range of family and employment settings. It examines whether, in what ways, and how fathers are taking up new opportunities for family leave. From particular national European contexts, it examines societal, family, and workplace factors that hinder or sustain fathers’ use of leave. The extent to which father-sensitive family support has been successful in stimulating greater father involvement in the care of children or other wider family benefits is also explored. Although the evidence is still limited (Deven & Carrette, 2004), research is growing and early findings suggest that parental leave has the potential to boost fathers’ emotional investment and connection with infants, as well as supporting mothers. The chapter does not review the growing European psychological research on father–child relationships (see Chapter 4). Just as contemporary fatherhood in Europe is in flux, so Europe itself is in transition. Originally consisting of six western European nations in 1956, the European Union gradually expanded to 25 member states in 2004, mainly from central and eastern Europe, but also including the two Mediterranean island states of Malta and Cyprus and to EU27 in 2007. Of course, the European region also covers countries not in the EU, for instance, Iceland and Norway, which have developed unique policies for employed fathers. The scale and size of Europe, with its diverse set of languages and cultural traditions, should make any scholar wary of assuming a homogeneous European fatherhood model and behavior. Indeed, distinctive ‘‘fatherhood regimes’’ are emerging across European governments and civil societies, reflecting attempts to promote and regulate fatherhood obligations, fatherhood rights, and male involvement in family life (e.g., Gregory & Milner, 2008). In the first section of this chapter, the demographic context of fatherhood will be reviewed, highlighting the importance of understanding the increasingly diverse contexts in which men negotiate fatherhood over their life course. In the remaining part of the chapter, we will focus on how European parental leave policies have developed to help fathers manage their work and family life. Whereas fatherhood has rarely been a central plank of European

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family policy, it will be shown how the range of parental leave schemes, developed within Europe since the mid-1970s, reveal implicit assumptions about the role of the father in family life. EUROPEAN FATHERS IN THEIR DEMOGRAPHIC AND FAMILY CONTEXTS In this section, we examine fatherhood against the background of demographic and family change. General demographic trends are presented against a heritage of national variation that has become more transparent as the European Union has continued to enlarge. At the start of the 21st century, three major demographic trends have characterized Europe: fertility decline and aging, increased family diversity, and growing female employment (Hantrais, 2004). Fertility rates have declined significantly over the past decade, below replacement levels, in particular in eastern and southern Europe. Between 1990 and 2005 the average fertility rate in the EU declined from just under 1.6 to just less than 1.5, the fall being especially marked in most of the new member states (Eurostat, 2008). The decline, however, was not common to all EU countries, with slight fertility rises in Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Finland, and the United Kingdom. Low fertility, in combination with greater life expectancy, has resulted in negative population growth and population aging in many EU countries. Accordingly, ‘‘demographic renewal’’ has become a key impetus for several European governments. This policy concern to encourage childbearing is not always congruent with policy imperatives to promote female employment. The general decline in European fertility has occurred for a range of reasons as men and women are either deciding not to have children, are delaying the arrival of children in their lives, or are having only one child. Recently, in an attempt to gain a wider appreciation of fertility decline, demographers are giving greater scrutiny to men’s reproductive attitudes. In a comparative study of eight European countries, Puur, Olah, Tazi-Preve, and Dorbritz (2008) find that, within each country, men’s egalitarian attitudes tended to be associated with higher fertility aspirations, and they were more likely to realize these intentions by their mid-40s than men with more traditional attitudes. Inevitably, the tendency to decline or delay marriage across Europe has also influenced reproductive behavior. In general, Europeans of the 21st century are less likely to enter into a first marriage and, in 2003, did so about 2 years later than in 1990: The average age at first marriage rose from 24.8 years to 27.4 years for women and from 27.5 to 29.8 years for men (EC, 2008). Age at first child also increased for Europeans, increasing from 24.4 in 1960 to 27.5 in 2003 for European women in the EU25 (EC). By contrast, informal partnerships are gaining in popularity for Europeans. In most EU countries between 25 and 50% of all children are born outside marriage (Eurostat, 2008), leading some commentators to suggest that European family life has become ‘‘deinstitutionalized’’ and men more marginal to families (EC, 2008).

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These general trends disguise wide variations within and between European countries; for instance, teen pregnancies remain relatively high within some EU countries, notably the United Kingdom. Similarly, more traditional marital and childbearing patterns remain the dominant form for specific religious and ethnic groups. For instance, high marriage rates, marital childbearing, high fertility, and low divorce rates are typical of Muslim families within most European countries (Becher, 2008). As family units have become more diversified, European men are becoming fathers or assuming family obligations in a growing variety of living arrangements, in particular through stepfatherhood (Edwards, Back-Wiklund, Bak & Ribben, 2002). For instance, in the United Kingdom, stepfamilies make up about 10% of all families with dependent children (Smallwood & Wilson, 2007). Although most dependent children across EU27 countries still live in couple households (about 80% in 2001), the coresident father is less likely to be the biological father, although this pattern does remain the dominant one (EC, 2008). The tendency for paternal marginalization is also part of the growth of lone-mother households, which now make up 14% of European households with children. EUROPEAN FATHERS IN THEIR EMPLOYMENT CONTEXTS: TOWARD THE DUAL-EARNER MODEL Over the past decade, women’s employment has continued to rise, making the dual earner family normative across Europe. By 2005, the gender gap in employment rates between men and women was 16 percentage points for the EU27 in contrast to a 30-point European difference in 1990 (EC, 2008). These aggregates disguise varied patterns of female employment trends within Europe. Female employment rates tend to be highest in the northern European countries, such as Denmark and France; lowest from a high base in eastern Europe; and rising rapidly in western and central Europe. In general, women’s employment rates are moving in the direction of men’s rates but at varying speeds, in line with the distinctive traditions of each country (Hantrais, 2004). The Lisbon target of 2000 to achieve 60% female employment by 2010 was surpassed in most EU15 countries by 2005. However, the majority EU27 pattern, in common with most industrialized economies, is for women to work fewer hours than men, mainly due to part-time working after the arrival of children (Burchell, Fagan, O’Brien, & Smith, 2007). Twentynine percent of EU27 employed women work 30 hours or less a week, compared with 7% of employed men. The gender disparity is largely due to parental work patterns. When families have young children, the gender gap in employment rates between men and women rises to a 30-point difference: 60% of European women with children under the age of 6 are employed, compared to 90% of comparable fathers (Eurostat, 2008). Family formation and development is still associated with a drop in economic activity and working hours for women across Europe, but again to differing extents, depending on national contexts. For instance, 93% of Danish mothers with a child under 6 years are employed, in contrast to 40% of Spanish mothers.

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Very few comparative studies disaggregate working hours by age of child and parental status, although Lewis, Campbell, and Huerta’s (2008) analysis of parental working hours in 12 EU countries offers a mid-decade assessment. The selected European countries are predominately northern with the south represented by Greece, Portugal and Spain. This study shows that dualearner families, where both mothers and fathers work 35þ hours a week, make up at least 50% of households with a child 0 to 15 years of age in Denmark, Finland, Portugal, and Sweden (Lewis et al.). Recent U.K. analysis of a millennium cohort provides even more fine-tuned data, showing that by the time the infant is 9 months both parents were working full time in 14% of households, rising to 47% by the time the child is 3 years of age (Dex & Joshi, 2005). As the male-solo-earner family accounted for only 27% of households across the 12 EU countries selected in this analysis (with the highest proportion in Greece), Lewis et al. (2008) argue that that this minority status heralds the demographic decline of the traditional male-breadwinner-model family in Europe. EUROPEAN FATHERS’ EMPLOYMENT HOURS The work–family debate of the late 1990s was dominated by the headline that British fathers worked the longest hours in Europe, partly explained by British mothers’ shorter part-time hours when compared to other EU15 mothers. Male-solo-earning or dual-earner families with ‘‘short’’ part-time maternal working hours are associated with longer weekly working hours for fathers. Comparative analysis using the European Community Household Panel (ECHP)1995 data set showed that U.K. fathers worked the longest weekly hours in the EU, at 46.9 hours a week, about 15% longer than the average working week for Belgian and Danish fathers (Deven, Inglis, Moss, & Petrie, 1998). Burchell et al.’s (2007) recent profile of the expanded European community suggests that fathers from eastern Europe have taken the lead in work time. Among the EU27 countries, long weekly working hours among men is most common in Romania, Greece, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Nearly 50% of Romanian male full-time employees regularly work over 48 hours per week. Indeed, recent analysis does show that fathers in Britain are working fewer hours than was found in the mid-1990s (O’Brien, 2008), in line with the general decline in European male working hours over the decade (Demetriades & Pedersini, 2008). By 2007, British fathers’ average usual hours worked per week in their main job, including overtime and excluding travel time, was 42.6, in contrast to 46.7 in 1998. However, while they may no longer work the longest weekly hours in Europe, a significant minority—27% of all economically active British fathers—are still regularly working over 48 hours a week, and their utilization of flexible working arrangements, despite increases, remains relatively low. International analysis has shown wide variation in parental working hours, leaving little time for family commitments in some countries (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2008). Globally, Korea, the United States, and Japan make up the

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top three countries (in order) where the overwhelming majority of both male and female employees usually work 40 hours or more per week. However, most international time use analysis shows that the proportion of daily time devoted to paid work by men in industrialized societies has declined, dropping from about 410 minutes per day in the early 1960s to 330 per day by mid-2000 (Kan & Gershuny, in press). In contrast, women’s paid work time has increased. As more mothers move toward a traditional ‘‘masculinized’’ work style, for instance, continuous employment during pregnancy and short parental leaves, the growth in volume of combined parental working hours is contributing to enhanced feelings of time pressure and coordination problems for European families (Eurobarometer, 2008). Fathers who are constrained by economic considerations or custom and practice to work long weekly hours can feel disappointed in missing out on time with their children and not having space for a satisfying family or personal life. U.K. millennium cohort data showed that 57% of fathers and 59% of mothers who worked full time did not feel that they spent enough time with their 9- to 10-month-old child (Dex & Joshi, 2005). As the current model of the ‘‘good father’’ means that earning is not automatically construed as caring, this mismatch is likely to create dissatisfaction. SUMMARY The demographic decline of the sole-earner, male-breadwinner family continues across Europe. In general, European fathers’ paid work time has decreased and mothers’ paid work time has increased, but considerable variation exits. In contrast to other international cultures, Europeans have tended to prioritize time prosperity over financial wealth in the pursuit of well-being (European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 2008). However, as the economic downturn deepens, it is unclear how work intensity will develop for those fathers in employment. FATHER TIME WITH CHILDREN: EUROPEAN PATTERNS In Europe, policy focus on the amount and quality of time fathers spend with their children remains surprisingly limited. The care of children is often approached in a one-dimensional manner as a form of ‘‘unpaid work,’’ typically conflated with domestic cleaning and housework. Gender often takes priority over parental status as a central analytic category so that comparative analysis of parental time with children can be obfuscated. Most pan-European surveys tend to report on headline differences in the gender division of unpaid work, with parental involvement in its broader sense being left to individual studies using a wider range of qualitative and quantitative indicators. Nonetheless, time use studies tracking ‘‘unpaid work’’ are a vital resource for understanding the context of paternal time with children across Europe, especially those utilizing the Multinational Time Use Surveys (MTUS). This collection has harmonized time diary datasets for individuals aged 20 to 59 years for over 20 developed countries from the early 1960s and has been used

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by an increasing number of researchers to study men’s care time in Europe and beyond (e.g., Gauthier, Smeeding & Furstenberg, 2004; Gershuny & Sullivan, 2003; Hook, 2006). The general trend in Europe, as in other industrialized countries, is an increase in the absolute and relative time resident fathers spend with their children. For example, Hook (2006) demonstrates that between 1965 and 2003, there was an absolute increase of 6 hours per week in the primary time partnered fathers spend on unpaid work (covering three categories: child care, core domestic, and nonroutine domestic), from an average level of 100 minutes a day in 1965 to 150 minutes a day in 2003. Fathers’ share of unpaid work relative to mothers also increased over time, from less than 20% to more than 35%, indicating some narrowing of the parental gap but quite a way from convergence. Some scholars anticipate full gender convergence in the average domestic division of labor by 20 to 30 years (Gershuny & Sullivan, 2003), whereas others are more circumspect. The consistent trend for European resident fathers to be spending more time with their children is most strong for highly educated men, who have the highest levels of paternal time participation (Guryan, Hurst, & Kearney, 2008). It is noteworthy that behavioral economists are beginning to reevaluate the distinctiveness of time with children, as compared to time in other domestic activities, as Pailhe & Solaz (2008, p. 234) suggest: ‘‘Parental time is not an ordinary domestic task; it is doubtlessly more pleasurable, at least less troublesome and more highly valued than other tasks. It also represents an investment of human capital in a common good, the child.’’ Within Europe, cross-national variation in father involvement is pronounced, with highest participation found in the Nordic countries followed by other northern Europe countries, the Baltic states, and southern and eastern Europe (Finch, 2006; Smith & Williams, 2007). For instance, Smith and Williams found that fathers of young children (under 6 years old) in the Nordic countries were at one end of the continuum, spending significantly more time with their children than fathers of similar-aged children at the other end in southern European countries. According to their data, drawn from the 2001 ECHP, one-fifth of European fathers spend greater than 28 hours of child care per week, but this level is markedly higher in Denmark (at 47% of fathers) and lower in Portugal and Greece (at 8% and 5%, respectively). Determinants of greater father care time vary and cannot be generalized across Europe, although at a macro level increased continuous engagement of women and mothers in employment appears to act as a tipping point. Hook’s (2006) international analysis shows for each percentage increase in national levels of partnered women’s employment, fathers’ unpaid work time increases by 0.6 minutes per day and levels are highest when women work full time. As maternal employment rises, structural and cultural infrastructures, such as alterations in school hours, child care facilities, or leave arrangements, tend to emerge but evolve at differing speeds with uneven Gross Domestic Product (GDP) commitment. The European Community has promoted many of these infrastructural support systems through directives and frameworks, with varying impact. For instance, the 2000 Lisbon objective of 60% female employment by 2010 has been complemented by the 2002 Barcelona target of

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33% coverage of child care for children under 3 years old across the EU in the same time frame. By 2006, only five member states (Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, and Spain) had exceeded the Barcelona 33% goal, with five others (Portugal, United Kingdom, France, Luxembourg, and Slovenia) approaching the target (EC, 2009). Eight southern and eastern countries (Greece, Hungary, Malta, Slovakia, Lithuania, Austria, Czech Republic, and Poland) had an under 3 years child care coverage rate of 10% or less. Country-level ideological and cultural benchmarks about optimal parenting and a good quality of life also need to be put into the mix. A new tension in many contemporary societies is how employed parents manage to accommodate 24/7 infant care within a 24/7 globalized working environment. Dilemmas are negotiated against a background of cultural norms concerning the appropriate time for infant care to be shared with others outside the immediate family unit. Practices vary considerably across Europe: For instance, children tend to start attending day care nuseries when they are, on average, 18 months old in Sweden and under 9 months old in Portugal, whereas for the Netherlands more than 3 days at a creche is less normative, even at the later age of 3 years old (Bennett, 2008). Attitudes to gender equality are also important for understanding father involvement and family routines. In a 25-country comparative analysis, Braun, Epstein, Stier, and Baumgartner (2008) found that women are less tolerant of inequity in housework in countries where gender inequality is low (measured by the average gender wage ratio). They suggest that cultural and individual gender ideology sets thresholds for workload acceptance. General population working patterns are important, too, as in the case of the Netherlands, with its tradition of shorter working hours and high-quality part-time jobs for both men and women. Dutch fathers are regularly ranked in the high-father-involvement category of time use studies, which show that each additional hour of men’s employment is associated with 15 minutes less daily male unpaid domestic work (Hook, 2006). SUMMARY In most European countries, fathers are less involved in child-related activities than mothers; the difference, however, is narrowing. Time use trends demonstrate an increase in fathers’ time with children notably in the Nordic countries, although considerable variation exists within and between European countries. Our knowledge about the determinants of cross-national variation is constrained by the lack of studies that take an integrated perspective to examine the combined influence of macro- and micro-level factors. FATHERS AND PARENTAL LEAVE POLICIES— THE EUROPEAN CRUCIBLE Since the introduction of parental leave by Olaf Palme’s Swedish Social Democratic government in 1974, other European governments have followed

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suit. No longer is it the case that Sweden alone has paternity leave provision for men on becoming fathers. European governments have commenced marking the relevance of paternal care to the earliest period of children’s lives. From the mid-1990s, Europe has witnessed an acceleration of explicitly father-targeted provision, with experimentation in incentive- and penaltybased measures (e.g., Brandth & Kvande, 2002). Within Europe, the European Union has been a vital organizational body for formulating work–family reconciliation frameworks. The EU Directive on Parental Leave in 1996, setting a minimum standard of job-protected 3 months’ unpaid parental leave for all employees across Europe, was a hallmark piece of legislation. Its genesis was over a decade earlier within the European Commission’s Action Programme on Equal Opportunities, Article 1 (Cohen, 1999, p. 138). The primary intent and formulation was ‘‘to enable women and men to reconcile their occupational, family and upbringing responsibilities arising from the care of children.’’ Twenty years earlier, when Sweden initiated parental leave, child well-being was higher on its national policy agenda (Haas & Hwang, 1999). The principles of promoting child well-being, as well as enhancing gender equality through women’s economic independence and facilitating men’s involvement in family life, were enshrined in policy formulation. Current Paternity and Parental Leave for Employed Fathers in Europe. Parental leave policies have continuously evolved, and their implementation is responsive to local political and cultural agendas and more global processes such as work intensification, flexible labor markets, and emerging child wellbeing norms (Kamerman & Moss, 2009). This section describes the diverse set of father-sensitive schemes that are evolving in Europe, followed by a review of utilization patterns. Statutory leave provision for fathers at the time of a child’s birth (paternity leave), or later, in the early years of a child’s life (parental leave), are significant policies to track in this regard. A father focus is timely, as the complexity, scope, and speed of policy change since the late 1990s in this area is striking. An important new evidence base is the annually updated audit of leave policies and leave behavior prepared by national experts of the International Network on Leave Policy and Research (Deven & Moss, 2005; Moss & Fusulier, 2009; Moss & Korintus, 2008; Moss & O’Brien, 2006; Moss & Wall, 2007). This network currently covers 24 affluent countries, predominantly in Europe and in other English-speaking nations, including Australia, Canada, and the United States. It peer reviews detailed changes in maternity, paternity, parental leave, and related public policies each year. With additional data sources, it is beginning to be possible to map paternity leave and fathers’ access to parental leave provision across the EU27 and other countries in the world. PATERNITY LEAVE As summarized in Table 19.1, by 2007 a majority of European member states (19) provide a form of statutory paternity leave ranging from 2 days (Greece,

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Table 19.1 Statutory Paternity Leave EU27 Plus Iceland and Norway, 2007 Name of Country

Paternity Leave Duration

Note

Payment

Austria

No statutory paternity leave

Belgium

10 days

Bulgaria

No statutory paternity leave

Cyprus

No statutory paternity leave

Czech Republic

No statutory paternity leave

Denmark

2 weeks

100% earnings to high ceiling

Estonia

10 days

100% of average earnings1 to high ceiling

Finland

18 days

70% annual earnings to high ceiling

France

11 days

100% of earnings to high ceiling

Germany

No statutory paternity leave

3 days are compulsory

100% of earnings for 3 days, 82% for rest to high ceiling

Greece

2 days (private sector)

100% by employer

Hungary

5 days

100% of average earnings to moderate ceiling

Iceland

See Table 19.2

Ireland

No statutory paternity leave

Italy

3 months (in extremis)

Latvia

10 days

Lithuania

One month

Luxembourg

2 days

Malta

No statutory paternity leave

Netherlands

2 days

100% earnings no ceiling

Norway

2 weeks

Paid by employerusually 100%

Poland

No statutory paternity leave but can access maternity leave after 14 weeks for remaining 2 weeks

Extends to 4 weeks if more than one child.

Portugal

5 days

Compulsory

‘‘Optional leave’’ if mother dies or severely ill

80% of earnings (no ceiling) 70% of earnings to moderate ceiling

Conditional on coresidence and marriage

100% of earnings

100% of earnings

100% earnings no ceiling

Fathers and Parental Leave Policies—The European Crucible 561 Romania

5 days

Increased to 15 days if father attends infant care class

Low flat rate allowance

Slovakia

No statutory paternity leave

Slovenia

15 days

15 days from 90 ‘‘paternity right’’ days must be taken before 3 months

100% of average earnings to high ceiling

Spain

15 days

100% of average earnings to high ceiling; first 2 days paid by employers

Sweden

10 days

80% of average earnings to high ceiling

United Kingdom

10 days

Low flat rate allowance

Source: European Foundation, 2007; Moss 2009; Moss & Kortinus, 2008. In Estonia payment cut in mid-2009 due to economic crisis

1

Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) to 3 months in the case of Italy, an in extremis entitlement granted if the mother dies or is seriously ill. The mean paternity leave period across European countries is 9 days (excluding the outliers Lithuania and Italy), and it is paid at a relatively high proportion of earnings. In two countries (Belgium and Portugal), paternity leave is compulsory in that eligible employed fathers are legally obliged to be away from the workplace. Usually, paternity leave takes place within the first month of birth, although some countries allow flexibility for men to take this time slightly later; for instance, Slovenian fathers can take their paternity leave up to the infant’s third month. The extent of paternity leave provision in Europe is noteworthy, particularly when it is found in the poorer new-member eastern European states such as Romania, as there is no right to paternity leave as such under EC law. The first EU directive on support for employees around the time of childbirth, announced in 1992, concerned supporting mothers and had a health, safety, and job protection focus. A broader approach to the reconciliation of work with family life, beyond a concentration solely on maternity leave, was set in the 1996 EU directive agreement on parental leave, although lobbying for this perspective had been ongoing since the early 1980s (Fusulier, 2009). Empirical studies of paternity leave suggest that increasingly younger generations of European men are approaching this time away from employment as an important component of family togetherness and personal identity formation. A cross-national qualitative study of leave in Denmark, Iceland, Lithuania, and Malta (Callus, 2005, p. 17) indicates that, for young men, taking leave ‘‘constitutes a statement to the outside world that this family in particular, is to be understood as a forum of mutual understanding.’’ In many countries, paternity leave is becoming normative as it is typically shorter than parental leave and ‘‘not as emotionally charged’’ (Lammi-Taskula, 2007, p. 111).

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The emergence of paternity leave in new EC countries, particularly from the East, testifies to the complexity of its implementation and to the importance of existing cultural norms about fatherhood. For instance, any payment for Lithuanian paternity leave, introduced in 2006, is conditional on fathers being married (EC, 2007b). Under the Romanian legal framework, paternity leave, introduced in 2005, is extended from 5 to 15 days if fathers can show that they have completed a course on infant care. As a Romanian legal expert, TeSs iu comments: ‘‘Such simplistic conditions for granting paternal leave in practice completely fail to achieve the purpose of the law as specified in Article 1, namely to facilitate and encourage the father’s involvement in taking care of the newly-born child’’ (EC, 2007b, p. 105). The withdrawal of payment for paternity leave in 2009 in Estonia indicates the fragility of recently developed paternal entitlements in the new EC countries. FATHERS’ ACCESS

TO

PARENTAL LEAVE

Under the legal framework of the 1996 EC parental directive, parental leave is constituted as a ‘‘nontransferable’’ statutory right granted to both parents, as individuals, with the guidance that implementation should be sensitive to national conditions. In practice, over half of the EU27 countries operate parental leave as a family arrangement whereby parents decide themselves how to share the leave (‘‘a transferable right’’) or use a mixed family/ individual model. As shown in Table 19.2, 12 countries are organized mainly under individual lines, 12 under family lines, and 3 under a broadly mixed scheme, as is the case for Iceland and Norway. Many of the new member states from eastern Europe operate under the family sharing model. The length of parental leave varies a great deal from country to country, but all provide for a minimum of at least 3 months, as guaranteed in the 1996 EC directive, and in most countries it is paid at a low allowance or unpaid. Table 19.2 Fathers’ Access to Statutory Parental Leave: EU27 Plus Iceland and Norway, 2007 Name of Country

Parental Leave Entitlement and Duration

Incentive/Reserved Period for Father?

Payment Features

Austria

Family leave until child is 2 years old1

Payment extended to 2 years if father takes 3 months in 2001

Flat rate allowance until child 18 months

Belgium

Individual leave 2 3 months for each parent until child is 4 years old

Implicit3

Flat rate allowance

Bulgaria

Individual leave 6 months until child is 8 years old

None

Unpaid

Cyprus

Individual leave 24 weeks until child is 4 years old

Implicit

Unpaid

Fathers and Parental Leave Policies—The European Crucible 563 Czech Republic

Individual leave until child is 4 years old

Men’s access introduced in 2001

Flat rate allowance

Denmark

Individual/family until child is 9 years old4 32 weeks

3 weeks extra ‘‘father quota’’ (industrial workers) 2007 6 weeks earmarked ‘‘father only’’ (public sector) 2008

100% of earnings to moderate level

Estonia

Family leave until child is 3 years old

None

100% of average earnings to moderate level

Finland

Family leave 35 weeks (158 working days)

12 days ‘‘bonus’’ if men take last 2 weeks of parental leave; titled ‘‘father’s month’’ 2005

70% annual earnings to high level

France

Family leave until child is 3 years old

None

Moderate flat rate allowance

Germany

Family leave until child is 3 years old

2 months ‘‘father bonus’’ to extend 12 month paid period to 14 months only if taken by father, 2007

67% of annual earnings to ceiling for 12 months

Greece

Individual leave until child is 2 years old (public sector)/7 months (private sector)

Implicit

Unpaid

Hungary

Family leave until child is 3 years old

None

70% of average daily wage

Iceland

Individual/family 9 months: 3 months mother, 3 months shared, 3 months father

3 months ‘‘father only’’ period of parental leave, 2001

80% of monthly earnings to high level

Ireland

Individual leave until child 8 years 14 weeks

Implicit

Unpaid

Italy

Individual leave until child is 8 years old 10 months

Bonus of 1 month if father takes 3 months, extending total time to child of 11 months; from 2001

30% of earnings to low flat rate allowance

Latvia

Family leave until child is 18 months old

Access granted in 2002

70% of usual salary

Lithuania

Family leave until child is 3 years old

Father has access after 140 days

70% of usual salary

Luxembourg

Individual leave: 6 months per parent until child is 5 years old

Implicit

Low flat rate allowance

Malta

Individual leave 1 year until child is 6 years old

Implicit

Unpaid

Netherlands

Individual leave 13 number of prebirth employment hours FT 38 hrs = 494 hrs

None

Low income replacement

(continued )

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Table 19.2 Continued Name of Country

Parental Leave Entitlement and Duration

Incentive/Reserved Period for Father?

Payment Features

Norway

Individual/family 56 weeks: 9 weeks mother, 37 weeks shared, 10 weeks father

Father’s quota extended from 8 to 10 weeks July 2009

100%, of annual earnings to high ceiling for 44 weeks, or 80% for longer period

Poland

Family leave until child is 3 years old

None

Low flat rate allowance

Portugal

Individual leave 3 months until child is 6 years old

15 days of leave reserved and fully paid ‘‘Daddy days’’ if taken immediately after maternity leave

Unpaid except for Daddy days, which are paid at 100% earnings; no ceiling

Romania

Family leave until child is 2 years old

None

Unpaid

Slovakia

Family leave until child is 3 years old

Slovenia

Individual/family until child is 8 years: 37 weeks to share.

75 days reserved before child is 3 years.

100 % of average earnings to high ceiling.

Spain

Individual leave until child is 3 years

None

Unpaid

Sweden

Family/Individual 480 days: 60 mother, 60 father, remaining 360 family.

60 days ‘‘Father’s quota’’

390 days at 80% of earnings to high ceiling

United Kingdom

Individual leave 13 weeks

None

Low flat rate allowance.

Low flat rate allowance

Source: European Foundation, 2007, Moss 2009; Moss & Kortinus, 2008. Family entitlement means leave is joint to be shared between mother and father as parents wish ‘‘transferable’’. 2 Individual entitlement means leave is a personal allocation and ‘‘non-transferable’’ between the parents: e.g. in the case of Belgium three months per parent per child. 3 Fathers’ access to leave is not explicitly labeled for father but implicit in the ‘‘non-transferable’’ individual entitlement. 4 A hybrid model whereby each parent is entitled to 32 weeks but total leave period cannot exceed 32 weeks per family. 1

Since the late 1990s, strategies to enhance the visibility of fathers’ entitlements have accelerated. As shown in Table 19.2, eight EU27 countries (Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, and Sweden) have adopted father enhancement schemes, as have Norway and Iceland, and innovation has emerged under all types of leave categories (individual, family, and hybrid schemes). There has been experimentation with a range of policy instruments, based on incentive, penalty, and even compulsion. Part of the policy innovation has involved a form of rebranding, where periods of leave time within individual or family entitlements have become reserved for

Fathers and Parental Leave Policies—The European Crucible 565

fathers or are father targeted (sometimes referred to as a ‘‘father’s quota’’). Through the reconfiguration, fathers’ access to a period of parental leave, previously implicit, within an individual gender-neutral entitlement, becomes explicit. The group includes the well-established father-sensitive regimes embedded in the majority, but not all, of the Nordic countries, and the recently enhanced schemes come from countries as diverse as Germany, Portugal, Spain, and Slovenia. Within Nordic countries, one of the most innovative ‘‘father-targeted’’ leave entitlements so far developed, in terms of combined time (three months) and economic compensation (80% of prior salary), is to be found in Iceland (Einarsd ottir & Petursd ottir, 2007). In 2000, the Icelandic government introduced a total of 9 months paid postbirth leave (to be taken in the first 18 months) organized into three parts: three months for mothers (nontransferable), 3 months for fathers (nontransferable), and 3 months which could be transferred between parents as they choose. In addition, there is 13 weeks’ unpaid parental leave available each year for each parent. The radical nature of this national measure has created intense public debate, in a country known globally for its long maternal and paternal working hours (OECD, 2008). The Maternity, Paternity and Parental Leave bill was passed by the Icelandic government in 2000, following several years’ deliberation about men’s societal role and gender equality, including a government committee on the Gender Role of Men (Eydal & Gı´slason, 2008). Although different issues have promoted the development of father enhancement schemes across Europe, the existence of long parental working hours, appears to be a common driver. For instance, in Portugal a tipping point has been provided by a combination of high levels of dual-earner fulltime couple households linked to a new government gender equality political agenda (Wall, 2007). By 2004, this national context led to the introduction of an unusually strong paternity entitlement: ‘‘a compulsory’’ 5-day paternity leave and a father-targeted, fully income reimbursed 15 days (‘‘daddy weeks’’). The Portuguese paternal incentive is temporally linked to the end of maternity leave. Wall suggests that this male leave model promotes a quick return to the labour market by both parents, as it works in tandem with a relatively short highly paid maternity leave (4 months at 100% of earnings or 5 months at 80%). The new leave package has been supported further by a series of increased public investments in the care of infants and older children: For 12 months after a child’s birth, Portuguese parents are allowed a 2-hour reduction in the working day, without loss of earnings; access to subsidized public nurseries and 30 days’ paid leave a year per family to care for sick children until the child is 10 years old. The impetus to activate and/or support dual-earner parents is also evident in Spain’s recent new law on gender equality, approved in March 2007, which created enhanced provisions for both mothers and fathers. For the first time, this southern European country has introduced 15 days of paid paternity leave while also extending paid coverage for mothers in their maternity leave provision. Wall and Escobedo (2009, p. 17) argue that Portugal and Spain’s common experiences of transition to democracy after years of authoritarian governments have played a part in promoting gender egalitarianism. ‘‘Both

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right-wing dictatorships upheld male breadwinning and women’s subordinate status, even if, in both countries, women’s participation in the informal economy was always quite significant.’’ From January 2007, Germany too has radically broken with past leave policy, which supported mothers alone to stay out of the labor market for three years after the birth of a child. A new highly paid 2 months paternal bonus, ‘‘Elterngeld,’’ has been added to a shorter 12-month parental leave period. The reform concentrates high payment onto a shorter 12-month parental leave period, with an extra 2 months of high payment if fathers take 2 months of leave. Finland’s father’s month works under a similar incentive scheme (Salmi, Lami-Taskula, & Takala, 2007). To make up a month, Finnish fathers need to utilize the last two weeks of parental leave, typically taken by mothers and usually ending when the child is about 6 months old, earlier than in Germany. These new European schemes are finely nuanced with the policy ambition of meshing into historic cultural arrangements and the rhythms of countryspecific parenting practices. It is clear, within Europe at least, that the incorporation of fathers into work–family reconciliation policies is no longer the province of liberal or left of center political parties. The new approach in Germany has been spearheaded by a grand Christian and Social Democrat coalition government, extending earlier Red–Green coalition proposals. Erler and Erler (2007) argue that the proposals are a radical ‘‘paradigm-breaking’’ parental leave package, provoked by low fertility trends, with the purpose of promoting a new dual-carer/dual-earner family model in Germany. The father incentive element is but one component in an acceleration of support for dual-earning parents in Germany, a country with a traditional ‘‘late’’ school entry for children (7 years) and low maternal employment. Governmental concern about low fertility has also been an influential factor in the development of a new father-enhanced parental leave package introduced in 2001 by Slovenia, which has a 1.2 Total Period Fertility rate (Stropnik, 2007). In 2001, fathers were given an individual quota of 90 days with a highincome replacement level. The mechanism of introduction has been gradual (15 days—January 2003, 45 days—January 2004, 90 days—January 2005) with an explicit initial temporal constraint on fathers to take 15 days within the child’s first 6 months, after a 15-day paternity leave period. In most countries the extended father-care leave model has been developed as an additional support to families with young children and has not involved taking leave away from mothers. Several of the countries have developed an extremely strong father entitlement when access to paternity leave is also taken into account. FATHERS’ USE

OF

LEAVE

As a forerunner in the introduction of parental leave, Swedish fathers use of leave is very well documented (e.g., Bygren & Duvander, 2006; Haas & Hwang, 2008). But many EU27 countries do not keep administrative records of leave usage by parents, apart from Nordic countries, where records are more extensive. The key issue appears to be payment: Generally, a parental

Fathers and Parental Leave Policies—The European Crucible 567

leave without payment is not formally recorded. Most pan-European published reviews tend to rely on national and international level surveys, administrative records, when available, and international expert networks (e.g., Anxo, Fagan, Smith, Letablier, & Perraudin, 2007; Moss, 2009; O’Brien, 2009; Ray, Gornick & Schmitt, 2008; EC, 2007b; European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 2007; Plantenga & Remery, 2005; Drew, 2005). At a macro level, the evidence highlights the importance of a country’s policy framework, particularly financial incentives and father targeting, in shaping men’s propensity to take paternity and parental leave. Fathers, and some mothers, tend not to use unpaid leave and their use of leave is heightened when reimbursed at least two thirds of regular earnings. For example, in Slovenia, 0.75% of eligible fathers used unpaid parental leave in 1995 rising to 66% a decade later in 2005, after introduction of enhanced father-targeted provision (Stropnik, 2007). Similarly, Erler (2009) reports that since the introduction of the German Elterngeld, the proportion of fathers taking leave has more than tripled from 3.5% in the last quarter of 2006 to 13.7% in the second quarter of 2008. Designated father targeted or reserved schemes enhance fathers’ utilization rates. Blocks of time which are labeled ‘‘daddy days’’ or ‘‘father’s quota’’ are attractive to men and their partners. At this point in time, fathers (and their partners) may need more explicit labeling to legitimize paternal access to the care of infants and children. Even when conditions are favorable, it takes time for utilization to become the dominant pattern: In Finland, 46% of eligible fathers took paternity leave in 1993, rising to 63% in 2000 and to 70% in 2006 (Salmi et al., 2007). The proportion of leave-taking days is a further sensitive indicator of usage and only systematically available for Nordic countries. Table 19.3 shows that between 2000 and 2005 there was a rise in the proportion of leave days taken by fathers in four of the five Nordic countries, with Denmark remaining stable. By 2005, Icelandic fathers were using 33% of total leave days, and Swedish fathers 20%, far short of parental equality but a substantial increase from baseline, especially for Iceland. The general pattern is that fathers use their personal entitlements and mothers their personal entitlement plus any potential joint provision. That is, a family entitlement designation generally Table 19.3 Nordic countries: Percentage of Total Number of Benefit Days Used by Fathers in the Event of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Adoption During the Year, 2000–2005 Denmark

Finland

Iceland

Norway

Sweden

2000

5.5

4.1

3.3

7.2

13.7

2001

5.7

4.3

11.5

8.3

15.0

2002

5.5

4.8

19.6

8.6

16.6

2003

5.1

5.3

27.6

8.6

18.3

2004

5.5

5.7

31.8

9.0

19.7

2005

5.9

5.5

32.7

9.3

20.5

Source: Social Security in the Nordic Countries, 2005, 2007 (Eydal & Gı´slason, 2008).

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translates into maternal use only. Table 19.3 illustrates that men’s behavior is very receptive to public policies developed to extend their engagement with infants. In the period under scrutiny, paid leave provision was strongest in Iceland (3 months), followed by Sweden (2 months), and Norway (6 weeks) with Finland and Denmark having lower levels of provision. The Iceland 3þ3þ3 month model has significantly shifted male behavior in a relatively short period of time. By 2006, over 90% of Icelandic fathers take parental leave. Gı´slason (2007, p. 15) notes: ‘‘Probably, there have never been more Icelandic fathers active in caring for their children than there are today.’’ Kolbeinn, Eydal, and Gı´slason (2008, p. 153) describe how the normative pattern is for Icelandic men to take most of their dedicated days but typically not to utilize the shared component: ‘‘You may well be regarded as weird if you don’t use the paternity leave, but the same does not hold for using the shared entitlement.’’ Gender differences occur in the sequencing of leave taking: Generally, Icelandic fathers tend to utilize some leave days to be with their infant and partner immediately after childbirth and then resume leave after 6 months when mothers’ leave comes to an end. Icelandic mothers’ postbirth leave tends to be taken in a continuous block without return to employment breaks. Each European country reaches its own settlement according to local gender, familial, and workplace norms in an incremental manner; however, the Icelandic experience shows that radical reconfiguration is also possible. As Moss (2008, p. 82) asks, ‘‘How far can high paid leave policy be pushed? . . . Would a 4þ4þ4 scheme or a 6þ6þ6 scheme see fathers routinely take four or six months of leave . . . or does leave become just too much for many fathers to countenance?’’ The organizational factors that hinder or support paternal leave taking continue to be illuminated by Haas and Hwang (in press) with regard to the Swedish case. Tracking trends from 1993 to 2006, they find a dramatic increase in the volume of formal corporate support for fathers taking leave in large Swedish companies, but from a very low base. For instance, in 2006, 41% of companies reported a formal decision to encourage paternal leave taking in contrast to just 2% in 1993. However, by 2006, less than half of companies in their survey reported formal policies and programs and informal support from coworkers and supervisors. Where companies provided little formal and informal support, fathers took less leave. Resistance to fathers taking parental leave was most common in more male-dominated companies, typically bluecollar (Haas & Hwang, in press). Organizational culture at an informal level, for instance, through the impact of senior managers taking parental leave, too, may be important in creating a more enabling atmosphere for junior colleagues in the workplace (Bygren & Duvander, 2004). By 2006, 88% of Haas and Hwang’s (in press) top Swedish management had taken parental leave in contrast to 32% in 1993. Qualitative case studies are needed to fully understand how organizational processes operate to enhance male receptiveness to leave taking and flexible working. From the perspective of risk, there may be more security for men when leave taking is locally normative, at the workplace level, as well as nationally normative. Other studies on workplace factors, identified as facilitating men’s leave taking and flexible work, are public sector environments; female majority workplaces; where corporate and line manager

Fathers and Parental Leave Policies—The European Crucible 569

informal support is strong; and where organizations are small (5 to 24) and very large (500þ) (e.g., Smeaton & Marsh, 2006). In terms of individual and family characteristics, Swedish research shows that the higher the education level of both father and mother, the more parental leave fathers tend to take, with high earners utilizing the greater proportion of days (Haas & Hwang, 2008). This profile links to the global trend for highly educated parents, fathers and mothers, to spend more time with their children, the ‘‘education gradient,’’ despite greater opportunity costs attached to this time devotion (Guryan et al., 2008). However, education levels should not be viewed in isolation, as a Norwegian study of the father’s quota has found, mothers’ earnings were the strongest predictor of partners’ leave utilization, after controlling for parents’ education, labor market attachment, and fathers’ income (Lappegard, 2008). She suggests that moving toward equalization of maternal and paternal salaries, reducing the parental pay gap, enables more paternal engagement in leave to care for infants. IMPACT

OF

LEAVE

ON

FATHER INVOLVEMENT

Despite early innovative research (e.g., Haas, 1992), empirical inquiry into the specific personal and family experiences and impact of paternal and paternity leave is still relatively undeveloped. Most impact research on parental leave regimes has focused on maternity leave (e.g., Tanaka, 2005), demonstrating significant associations between paid, job-protected maternity leave; infant mortality and morbidity; and breast-feeding duration. However, population level impact studies of leave policies for father are beginning (e.g., Smith & Williams, 2007), as are father-focused individual studies (e.g., Chronholm, 2007; Duvander & Jans, 2008; Lammi-Taskula, 2007; Plantin, 2007a). Historically, there has been a substantial debate about the likely efficacy of various public policy proposals meant to stimulate paternal involvement in the care and well-being of children. The logic has been that giving fathers the opportunity to spend more time at home through reduced working hours or leave after childbirth should result in their being more involved in child caretaking tasks in the future. However, until recently, there has been little evidence that including fathers in work–family policy initiatives influences behavioral change or indeed child outcomes. In attempting to understand the impact of parental leave policies on child well-being, there are important methodological considerations. First, internationally, parental leave is a black box of diverse arrangements. Apparently, similar entitlements do not necessarily mean similar levels of exposure to the entitlement. Implementation can take time, so presence of an entitlement or leave is not equivalent to utilization. There is growing awareness of underutilization of parental leave, particularly for those with insecure or unstable labor-market histories prior to a child’s birth, often common for low-income and immigrant families (Duvander, 2008). Countries rarely keep implementation data; in Demark, a country that does, records show that only 55% of children born in 2002–2003 had a mother and father who both took leave (Rostgaard, 2006). Second, in attempting to understand the specific impact of

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parental leave on child outcomes, it is important to contextualize parental leave as part of a public investment in children matrix. As such, it can be difficult to disentangle the effect of parental leave policies from, for instance, total GDP devoted to child welfare. Third, there is still surprisingly little empirical research on what parents ‘‘do’’ during parental leave, even less on what fathers ‘‘do’’ (Haas & Hwang, 2008; Seward, Yeatts, Zottarelli, & Fletcher, 2006), and as such, understanding the mechanisms by which parental leave may operate to promote child well-being are still unclear. As Deven and Carrette (2004) argue, the quality of care that infant’s experience, both parental and nonparental, during the parental leave period is crucial and often overlooked in macro-level comparative studies. However, despite these complex methodological and conceptual issues, there is emerging empirical research to suggest that the national presence of male eligibility to parental leave can affect men’s household behavior at a population level (Fuwa & Cohen, 2007; Hook, 2006; Smith & Williams, 2007). Hook’s (2006) MTUS study finds that after controls, men living in countries where they are eligible to take some parental leave significantly engage in 19 minutes more unpaid work per day (2.2 hours per week) than men in countries without this provision. Of course, further longitudinal research is required to understand the direction of causality in this observed relationship. For instance, it may well be that in countries where fathers tend to be more involved in the care of children, citizens are more likely to lobby governments for paternal as well as maternal family leave policies. Other studies showing an association between paternal leave taking and greater participation in child care include Tanaka and Waldfogel’s (2007) investigation of the U.K. millennium cohort of infants. They found that taking leave and working shorter hours were related to fathers being more involved with 8- to 12-month-old infants. Using four specific types of fathers’ involvement activity (being the main caregiver, changing diapers, feeding the baby, and getting up during the night), analysis showed that fathers who took leave (any leave) after the birth were 25% more likely to change diapers and 19% more likely to feed and to get up at night when the child was age 8 to 12 months. In addition, higher working hours for fathers was associated with lower levels of father involvement. The authors conclude that policies that provide parental leave or shorter work hours could promote greater father involvement with infants, but caution against definitive causality claims. Nepomnyaschy and Waldfogel (2007), in an American study of leave, find a similar association between paternal leave taking and later higher levels of father involvement, but only for those fathers able to take 2 weeks’ leave or more. The positive relationship between longer duration of leave taking and greater participation in caring for the child was maintained after controls for a range of selectivity factors including indicators of paternal prebirth commitment (attendance at prenatal classes and the birth itself). The salience of paternal leave duration is confirmed in Haas and Hwang’s (2008) Swedish study, which found the general positive effects of leave taking on fathers’ participation in child care were strongest when fathers took 90 days or more.

Fathers and Parental Leave Policies—The European Crucible 571

An Icelandic study (Eyrdal, 2008) has been able to approximate a quasiexperimental approach in order to track the impact of the new 3-month father quota in this country. Parental employment and family care time were compared before and after the introduction of the 2000 Maternity, Paternity, and Parental Leave bill through two cross-sectional representative surveys (1997, 2003) of Icelandic parents of firstborn children. By the time of the second survey, 2 years after the adoption of the 3-month father quota, fathers had reduced their working hours during the first year of their child’s life. Fathers also returned to their higher prebirth employment rates much later than the earlier cohort: some 13 to 15 months after childbirth, in contrast to 1 to 2 months after childbirth found for fathers of infants born in 1997. Similarly, for those fathers taking leave, their care time during the day and night increased between both periods. Mothers’ working hours increased slightly between the two cohorts (mean weekly hours 36.7 in comparison to 34.8) and breast-feeding rates remained unchanged: 74% of infants born in 2003 were being breast-fed at 6 months, a similar proportion to the earlier period. Eyrdal (2008, p. 143) suggests that a fundamental change in work– family life has occurred for Icelandic parents with young children: ‘‘Iceland has in a relatively short time implemented a paid parental leave that other countries look to, pioneering the independent entitlements of fathers to parental leave and enacting legislation that promotes the involvement of both parents in caring for their children.’’ Iceland provides a unique recent national experiment on the impact of public policy initiatives on the involvement of fathers in the care of young children. In recent years, other European researchers have explored the impact of men’s parental leave on several areas beyond child care and work time. Associations have been found between leave duration and fertility gains, lower rates of male depression, low propensity to divorce, and higher father– child contact after divorce (e.g., Duvander & Jans, 2008; Ellingsaeter, 2009). However, the mechanisms by which men’s use of parental leave may promote well-being or other positive outcomes are unclear, in part because of selectivity and confounding factors. SUMMARY By 2009, the majority of European countries have a paid entitlement to paternity leave or a parental leave provision to which fathers have access. At a global level, Europe has led the way in innovative father sensitive policy experimentation in support of dual-earning families. A variety of father enhancement schemes have developed based on incentive, penalty, and even compulsion. Evidence shows that utilization is greatest when leave is reimbursed at least two-thirds of regular earnings and is ‘‘father only.’’ The emerging evidence base suggests that paternal leave taking has the potential to boost fathers’ practical and emotional investment in infant care. Further follow-ups and direct assessments of child well-being and the influence of maternal leave taking on paternal behavior are required to reveal underlying mechanisms at play.

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CONCLUSION Over the past decade, the issue of fatherhood has grown in significance in European family policy development without becoming a central preoccupation. Fatherhood has been most salient in the area of work–family reconciliation, which continues to be a key European wide public policy goal. In terms of European vision, a participative father, responsible in all aspects of a child’s life (emotional, social, educational, and economic) has been promoted, although not always in a consistent manner (Plantin, 2007b). Across Europe, investment in parental leave schemes to support the early weeks and months of childhood have become a focus of policy concern. The challenge for most European countries has been to reach a settlement on the relative contribution of public and family resources to create a sustainable framework for mothers and fathers to work and to care for their children. Innovative paternity leave, parental leave and flexible working schemes are being introduced for fathers as well as mothers, and are beginning to be evaluated. However, research is still at an early stage. More research needs to be carried out to understand maternal and paternal policies and practices in unison. In particular, the interaction of maternity and paternity leave arrangements and experiences requires further scrutiny. Similarly, more mixed methods research programs, combining qualitative and quantitative designs, are required in order to explore underlying familial and workplace processes. For instance, qualitative data so far are suggestive of family processes that operate to promote child well-being during parental leave. Parental leave entitlements have the potential to boost emotional investment and connection with infants in the home. Paid parental leave, in particular when parents are sure of employment on return to work, can create a more financially secure context for caring. Studies examining parental leave and work–family experiences at a micro level need to embed a consideration of wider socioeconomic factors, including employment security and gender equity. However, in European policy terms, there are no easy solutions by which to resolve the inherent tensions in: Promoting economic productivity, caring for very young children, and gender equality. Clearly, parents living in countries with strong statutory parental leave for fathers and mothers and early child care provision have greater choice in the creation of infant or child-sensitive care packages. These infants have the opportunity to start life in parental time–rich environments, often for the whole of the first year, as in Nordic countries. By contrast, in countries whose governments are unable or unwilling to fund such systems of support, it is likely that only the more economically secure parents will be able to take significant time out of employment to care. Tensions associated with differential access to statutory leave raise the possibility of a new global polarization for infants: the risk of being born into either a ‘‘parental-leave-rich’’ or a ‘‘parental-leave-poor’’ household and indeed country (O’Brien, 2009). Future European family and work policies for fathers and mothers require a greater integration of children’s needs, particularly those of the very young child. Parental leave and flexible work schemes are only one part of a work– family policy approach aspiring to encourage more male caring of children.

References 573

Such schemes need to operate in unison with greater gender wage equality, attention to working time regulation, and high-quality affordable public provision for the care of young children. There is a risk that a gender-neutral and choice-driven approach to flexible working will not fully support working parents and their families, particularly in times of economic insecurity and for low-income families. This chapter has shown that despite significant advances, the European community is at an early stage in developing a modern integrated family, work, and child policy. A coherent delivery on the twin-track ‘‘mother-worker/ father-carer’’ approach has been hard to achieve and more challenging still when children’s quality of life is brought into the public policy ambition. Most policy energy has been devoted to enhancing maternal employment and less on promoting paternal caring, despite political rhetoric and the significant historic policy achievements seen over the decade. Government departments across Europe have found it hard to work together in their implementation of a caring and earning family and child policy package. REFERENCES Anxo, D., Fagan, C., Smith, M., Letablier, M. T., & Perraudin, C. (2007). Parental leave in European companies. Dublin: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. Becher, H. (2008). Family practices in South Asian Muslim families. Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan. Bennett, J. (2008). Early childhood services in the OECD countries: Review of the literature and current policy in the early childhood field. Innocenti Working Paper, IWP-2008-01, www.unicef-irc.irg. Brandth, B., & Kvande, E. (2002). Reflexive fathers: Negotiating parental leave and working life. Work and Organisation, 9, 186–203. Brannen, J., Moss, P., & Mooney, A. (2004). Working and caring over the twentieth century: Change and continuity in four-generation families. London: Palgrave. Braun, M., Epstein, N., Stier, H., & Baumgartner, M. (2008). Perceived equity in the gender division of household labour. Journal of Marriage and Family. 70, 1145–1156. Burchell, B., Fagan, C., O’Brien, C., & Smith, M. (2007). Gender and working conditions in the European Union. Dublin: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. Bygren, M., & Duvander, A. Z. (2006). Parents’ workplace situation and fathers’ parental leave use. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68, 363–372. Callus, C. (2005). Fathers on parental leave: A joint report based on qualitative research with fathers on leave, employers and decision makers in Denmark, Iceland, Lithuania and Malta. Vilnius: Centre for Equality Advancement, Eugrimas. Chronholm, A. (2007). Fathers’ experiences of shared parental leave in Sweden. Recherches sociologiques et anthropologiques, 2, 9–25. Cohen, B. (1999). Gender leave in Europe: Policy implications. In P. Moss & F. Deven (Eds.), Parental leave: Progress or pitfall? Research and policy issues in Europe (NIDI CBGS Publications; 35). The Hague and Brussels: NIDI/CGBS Publications. Collier, R., & Sheldon, S. (2008). Fragmenting fatherhood: a socio-legal study Oxford: Hart Publishing. Demetriades, S., & Pedersini, R. (2008) Working time in the EU and other global economies. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working

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Conditions Report. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. Dermott, E. (2008) Intimate fatherhood: A sociological analysis. Oxford, UK: Routledge. Deven, F., & Carrette, V. (2004). A review of the impact on children of leave arrangements for parents. Cross-National Research Papers, 7, 1–21. Deven, F., Inglis, S., Moss, P., & Petrie, P. (1998). State of the art review on the reconciliation of work and family life for men and women and the quality of care services. Luxembourg: Department for Education and Employment and European Commission. Deven, F., & Moss, P. (Eds.) (2005). Leave policies and research, reviews and country notes. Brussels: Centrum Voor Bevolkings- en Gezinsstudie (CBGS). Dex, S., & Joshi, H. (2005). Children of the twenty-first century. Bristol: Policy Press. Drew, E. (2005). Parental leave in council of Europe member states. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Duvander, A. Z. (2008, November 28). Immigrants’ use of parental leave in Sweden. Paper presented to Workshop on Diversity and Leave Policies 2008, Amsterdam. Duvander, A. Z., & Jans, A. C. (2008). Consequences of father’s parental leave use: Evidence from Sweden. Stockholm Research Reports in Demography. No. 9. Available at www.suda.su.se. Edwards, R., Back-Wiklund, M., Bak, M., & Ribben, J. (2002). Step-fathering: Comparing policy and everyday experience in Britain and Sweden. Sociological Research Online, 7, 1–15. Einarsd ottir, Þ., & Petursd ottir, G. M. (2007). Iceland country note. In P. Moss & K. Wall (Eds.), International review of leave policies and related research. Employment Relations Research Series no. 80. London: Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file40677.pdf Ellingsaeter, A. L. (2009) Leave policy in the Nordic welfare states: A ‘‘recipe’’ for high employment/high fertility? Community, Work and Family, 12, 1–19. Erler, D. (2009). Germany: Taking a Nordic turn? In S. Kamerman & P. Moss (Eds.), The politics of parental leave policies. Bristol: Policy Press. Erler, D., & Erler, W. (2007). Germany country note. In P. Moss & K. Wall (Eds.), International review;1; of leave policies and related research. Employment Relations Research Series no. 80. London: Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file40677.pdf Eurobarometer (2008). Family life and the needs of an ageing population. No. 247 Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. European Commission (2007a). Second stage of Consultation of European Social Partners on Reconciliation of Professional, Private and Family Life. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. European Commission (2007b). Report on Pregnancy, Maternity, Parental and Paternity Rights Commission’s Network of legal experts in the fields of employment, social affairs and equality between men and women. Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities Unit EMPL/G/2. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. European Commission (2008). Demography report, SEC (2911). Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. European Commission (2009). Report on the equality between women and men. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2009. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (2007). Parental leave in European countries. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.

References 575 European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, (2008). Second European quality of life survey—first findings. www.eurofound.europa. eu/publications/htmlfiles/ef0852.htm. Accessed April 15, 2009. Eurostat (2008). The life of women and men in Europe: A statistical portrait. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. Eydal, G. (2008) Policies promoting care from both parents: The case of Iceland. In G. Eydal & I. Gislason (Eds.), Equal rights to earn and care: Parental leave in Iceland. Reykjavik: Felagsvıˇsindastofnun. Eydal, G., & Gislason, I. (Eds) (2008). Equal rights to earn and care: Parental leave in Iceland. Reykjavik: Felagsvıˇsindastofnun. Finch, N. (2006). Gender equity and time use: How do mothers and fathers spend their time? In J. Bradshaw & A. Hatland (Eds.), Social policy, employment and family change in comparative perspective. Northampton, MA: Elgar. Fusulier, B. (2009). The European directive: Making supra-national parental leave policy. In S. Kamerman & P. Moss (Eds.), The politics of parental leave policies. Bristol,: Policy Press. Fuwa, M., & Cohen, P. (2007). Housework and social policy. Social Science Research, 36, 512–530. Gauthier, A., Smeeding, T., & Furstenberg, F. F. (2004). Are parents investing less time in children? Trends in selected industrialized countries. Population and Development Review, 30, 647–671. Gershuny, J. I., & Sullivan, O. (2003). Time use, gender and public policy regimes. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 10, 205–228. Gı´slason, Ing olfur, V. (2007). Parental leave in Iceland bringing the fathers in, developments in the wake of new legislation in 2000. Centre for Gender Equality, Ministry of Social Affairs. Gregory, A., & Milner, S. (2008). Fatherhood regimes and father involvement in France and the UK. Community, Work and Family, 11, 61–84. Guryan, J., Hurst, E., & Kearney, M. (2008). Parental education and parental time with children. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 22, 23–46. Haas, L. (1992). Equal parenthood and social policy: A study of parental leave in Sweden. New York: State University of New York Press. Haas, L., & Hwang, P. C. (1999). Parental leave in Sweden. In P. Moss & F. Deven (Eds.), Parental leave: Progress or pitfall? Research and policy issues in Europe (NIDI CBGS Publications; 35). The Hague and Brussels: NIDI/CGBS Publications. Haas, L., & Hwang, P. C. (2007). Gender and organizational culture. Gender & Society, 21, 52–79. Haas, L., & Hwang, P. C. (2008). The impact of taking parental leave on fathers’ participation in childcare and relationships with children: Lessons form Sweden. Community, Work & Family, 11, 85–104. Haas, L., & Hwang, P. C. (in press). Making fatherhood visible at work. Journal of Fathering. Hantrais, L. (2004). Families and family policies in Europe. London: Longman. Hook, J. (2006). Care in context: Men’s unpaid work in 20 countries, 1965–2003. American Sociological Review, 71, 639–660. Kamerman, S., & Moss, P. (Eds.) (2009) The politics of parental leave policies: Children, parenting, gender and the labour market. Bristol, UK: Policy Press. Kan, M. Y., & Gershuny, J. I. (in press). Gender and time use over the life course. In M. Brynin & J. Ermisch (Eds.), Changing relationships. London: Routledge. Kolbeinn, A., Eydal, G., & Gı´slason, I. (2008) Summary and conclusions. In G. Eydal & I. Gislason (Eds.), Equal rights to earn and care: parental leave in Iceland. Reykjavik: Felagsvıˇsindastofnun.

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Lammi-Taskula, J. (2007). Parental leave for fathers? Gendered conceptions and practices in families with young children in Finland. Research Report no. 166. Vaajakoskil, Finland: National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health. Lappegard, T. (2008). Changing the gender balance in caring: Fatherhood and the division of parental leave in Norway. Population Research Policy Review, 27, 139–159. Lewis, J., Campbell, M., & Huerta, C. (2008). Patterns of paid and unpaid work in western Europe: Gender, commodification, preferences and the implications for policy. Journal of European Social Policy, 18(1), 21–37. Moss, P. (2008). Making parental leave parental: An overview of policies to increase fathers’ use of leave. In P. Moss & M. Korintus (Eds.), International review of leave policies and related research. Employment Relations Research Series no. 100. London: Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. http://www.berr. gov.uk/files/file47247.pdf Moss, P. (Ed.) (2009). International review of leave policies and related research. Employment Relations Research Series no. 102. London: Department for Business, Innovations and Skills.: http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file52778.pdf Moss, P., & Deven, F. (2006). Leave policies and research: A cross-national overview. Marriage and Family Review, 39, 255–285. Moss, P., & Korintus, M. (Eds.) (2008). International review of leave policies and related research. Employment Relations Research Series no. 100. London: Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/ file47247.pdf Moss, P., & O’Brien, M. (Eds.) (2006). International review of leave policies and related research. Employment Relations Research Series no. 57. London: Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/ file31948.pdf Moss, P., & Wall, K. (Eds.) (2007). International review of leave policies and related research. Employment Relations Research Series no. 80. London: Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/ file31948.pdf Nepomnyaschy, L., & Waldfogel, J. (2007). Paternity leave and fathers involvement with their young children: Evidence from the American Ecls-B. Community, Work & Family, 10, 427–454. O’Brien, M. (2008, September 13). Fathers’ working hours and work-family policies: The UK experience. Paper presented International Sociological Association Family ResearchConference, Lisbon. O’Brien, M. (2009). Fathers, parental leave policies and infant quality of life: international perspectives and policy impact. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 624, 190–213. O’Brien, M., Brandth, B., & Kvande, E. (2007). Fathers, work and family life: Global perspectives and new insights. Community, Work & Family, 10, 375–386. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2008). OECD Employment Outlook. Paris: OECD. Pailhe, A., & Solaz, A. (2008). Time with children: Do fathers and mothers replace each other when one parent is unemployed? European Journal of Population, 24, 211–236. Pfau-Effinger, B. (2004). Historical paths of the male breadwinner family model— explanation for cross-national differences. British Journal of Sociology, 55, 177–199. Plantenga, J., & Remery, C. (2005) Reconciliation of work and private life: A comparative review of thirty European countries. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.

References 577 Plantin, L. (2007a). Different classes, different fathers? On fatherhood, economic conditions and class in Sweden. Community, Wealth and Family, 10, 93–110. Plantin, L. (2007b). Fatherhood and health outcomes in Europe. Geneva: World Health Organization. Pleck, J. H. (1977). The work-family role system. Social Problems, 24, 417–427. Puur, A., Ol ah, L., Tazi-Preve, M., & Dorbritz, J. (2008). Men’s childbearing desires and views of the male role in Europe at the dawn of the 21st century. Demographic Research, 19, 1883–1912. Ray, R., Gornick, J., & Schmitt, J. (2008) Parental leave policies in 21 countries. Washington, DC: Centre for Economic and Policy Research. Rostgaard, T. (2006). Denmark country note. In P. Moss & M. O’Brien. (Eds.), International review of leave policies and related research. London: Department of Trade and Industry, Employment Relations Research Series no. 57. http://www. berr.gov.uk/files/file31948.pdf Salmi, M., Lami-Taskula, J., & Takala, P. (2007). Finland country note. In P. Moss & Wall, K. (Eds.), International review of leave policies and related research. Employment Relations Research Series no. 80. London: Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file40677.pdf Seward, R., Yeatts, D., Zottarelli, L., & Fletcher, R. (2006). Fathers’ taking parental leave and their involvement with their children. Community, Work, and Family, 9, 1–9. Smallwood, S., & Wilson, B. (2007). Office of National Statistics: Focus on families. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Smeaton, D., & Marsh, A. (2006) Maternity and paternity rights and benefits: Survey of parents 2005. Pepartment of Trade & Industry, Employment Relations Research Series no. 50. Smith, A., & Williams, D. (2007). Father friendly legislation and paternal time across western Europe. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, 9, 175–192. Stropnik, N. (2007). Slovenia country note. In P. Moss & Wall, K. (Eds.), International review of leave policies and related research. Employment Relations Research Series no. 80. London: Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file40677.pdf Tanaka, S. (2005). Parental leave and child health across OECD Countries. Economic Journal, 115, F7–F28. Tanaka, S., & Waldfogel, J. (2007). Effects of parental leave and work hours on fathers’ involvement with their babies: Evidence from the Millenium Cohort Study. Community, Work & Family, 10, 409–426. Wall, K. 2007. Leave policy models and the articulation of work and family in Europe: A comparative perspective. In P. Moss & K. Wall (Eds.), International review of leave policies and related research. Employment Relations Research Series no. 80. London: Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. http://www.berr. gov.uk/files/file40677.pdf Wall, K., & Escobedo, A. (2009). Portugal and Spain: Two pathways in southern Europe. In S. Kamerman & P. Moss (Eds.), The politics of parental leave policies. Bristol,: Policy Press.

CHAPTER 20

Changing Policies Regarding Separated Fathers in Australia PATRICK PARKINSON

INTRODUCTION The period from about 2003 to 2008 has proved to be a tumultuous and important period in the development of Australian policies concerning parenthood, with considerable implications for the role of fathers. The changes include new laws dealing with parenting after separation, a new Child Support Scheme, and new processes for resolving family disputes, in particular, the development of Family Relationship Centers all over Australia. There have also been changes to the social security system that have impacts on families where parents live apart. What has emerged in Australia during this period is a coherent set of policies for postseparation parenting, which aim to encourage the involvement of nonresident parents in children’s lives. This is, in most cases, the father (82% of Australian children; Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008). Together, the changes are by far the most significant in a generation. They are backed up by substantial new funds to support the reforms. This chapter explains the etiology of the changes, what reforms have been implemented, and how they are intended to make a difference to father– child relationships. While the focus of this chapter is on fatherhood, it would be a mistake to treat the reforms as being just about fathers, or being ‘‘against’’ mothers. Family law reforms are often seen in such zero-sum terms (Mason, 1999), and there has been no shortage of commentary on family law reform in Australia over the years seeking to interpret changes to the law through the lens of the gender war (Armstrong, 2001; Rhoades, Graycar, & Harrison, 2000). That is an international phenomenon. However, it would be simplistic at best, and mostly incorrect, to see the reforms in these terms. There were many aspects of the reforms that were intended to address mothers’ concerns about failings in the family law system, particularly in relation to domestic violence. Changes to the law that promote closer relationships between nonresident fathers and their children need not be at the expense of the children’s closeness to mothers (Cashmore, 578

Origins: The Concern about Father Absence 579

Parkinson, & Taylor, 2008). The overriding concern that lay behind the reforms was to promote the well-being of children; but that, of course, is contested terrain.

ORIGINS: THE CONCERN ABOUT FATHER ABSENCE The dramatic changes in family law in Australia cannot be understood without reference to a prime motivating factor for reform—the perceived problem of father absence after parents separate. In 1997, the Australian Bureau of Statistics data based on reports of resident parents indicated that 30% of children saw their nonresident parent less than once per year, or not at all (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1998). In another study of a nationally representative sample of separated parents who were interviewed in 2001, it was found that 36% of nonresident fathers had not seen their youngest child in the past 12 months (Parkinson & Smyth, 2004). This study was based on reports from both mothers and fathers.

FATHERS’ DISSATISFACTION WITH PARENTING ARRANGEMENTS There was also a lot of evidence that fathers wished to see their children more than they had been seeing them. Parkinson and Smyth (2004) found that three-quarters of the nonresident fathers indicated dissatisfaction with the amount of contact they had. Fifty-seven percent of fathers indicated that they had nowhere near enough time with their children, and a further 18% said they did not have quite enough time with their children. Only 20% of those fathers with no contact, and only 8% of the group that saw the child for 1 to 17 days or nights per year, considered that the level of contact was about right. There have been similar findings in Britain. In a British study, 76% of fathers who never saw their children were dissatisfied with this (Simpson, McCarthy, & Walker, 1995). In Parkinson and Smyth’s (2004) study, it was not only fathers who indicated that they wanted more time with their children. Mothers also wanted to see more contact between the children and their fathers. Although the majority of resident mothers expressed satisfaction with the contact arrangements, 25% reported that they thought there was nowhere near enough father–child contact taking place, and a further 15% said there was not quite enough contact. Only 5% thought that there was too much contact. Other studies have also demonstrated a great deal of unhappiness with levels of father–child contact and a desire by fathers for much greater involvement in postseparation parenting. Forty-one percent of fathers contacted in a random telephone survey of divorced parents in 1997 indicated that they were dissatisfied with the residence arrangements for the children. Two-thirds of this group said that they wanted to be the primary residence parent, and the remaining one-third wanted to have equal time with their children. On average, this was about 5 years after the divorce. The study also indicated a very high level of dissatisfaction with levels of contact (Smyth, Sheehan, & Fehlberg, 2001).

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The new policies and initiatives concerning father–child relationships following separation can best be understood and evaluated against the background of the research on why it is that many fathers lose contact with their children or have fairly minimal contact. There is, of course, not just one reason, and a constellation of factors, taken together, are often at work. Smyth (2004a), using focus groups in Australia, found that mothers and fathers had very different accounts of paternal disengagement, with each blaming the other for the problem. Nonetheless, there are four situational factors that are common to the research literature on fathers who lose contact with or disengage from their children. These are high levels of conflict in the relationship with the mother and maternal gate closing (Dudley, 1991; Greif, 1995; Trinder, 2008); repartnering and responsibilities to children in the new family (Manning, Stewart, & Smock, 2003; Parkinson & Smyth, 2004); physical distance (Dudley, 1991; Greif, 1995; Smyth, Sheehan, & Fehlberg, 2001; Parkinson & Smyth, 2004); and feelings of disenfranchisement by the legal system (Braver & O’Connell, 1998; Kruk, 1993). Smyth (2004b), in an analysis of nationally representative Australian data, found that socioeconomic factors were associated with frequency of contact and whether children stayed overnight. Higher income fathers were more likely to see their children regularly than lower income fathers, and daytime only contact was correlated with having fewer bedrooms in the home. Having no postsecondary educational qualifications was also associated with having little or no contact. Not all of these factors are amenable to influence through changes to the law and public policy, although some of them are. The changes to the family law system made between 2005 and 2008 can be understood as responding to many of these situational factors in ways that ought to promote greater father involvement.

PRESSURE FROM FATHERS’ GROUPS The catalyst for change to family laws and processes was pressure from fathers’ groups, who were very active in lobbying federal Members of Parliament (MPs). Family law in Australia is governed principally by federal law and, in particular, the Family Law Act 1975. This legislation covers most aspects of family law including divorce, property, spousal maintenance, and the law of parenting. The law of marriage and child support are dealt with in separate enactments. The Family Law Act 1975 came under renewed scrutiny as a result of campaigns by fathers’ groups. That Act had already been amended only a few years earlier, in 1995. The amending legislation had removed the terminology of custody and access and replaced it with language that avoids the notion that after separation the majority of the power and responsibility for the child vests in one parent to the exclusion of the other. As a result of these reforms, the courts in Australia were able to make orders about residence and contact, as well as specific issue orders. Parental responsibility continued after

The Parliamentary Inquiry of 2003 581

relationship breakdown, subject to the effect of any court order, and there was a duty to consult on major issues (B and B, 1997). Nonetheless, these reforms, which were intended to provide for greater involvement by fathers, did not quell the demands for change. In particular, groups representing fathers or promoting shared parenting wanted a presumption in favor of equal time. There was also a perception, not entirely unwarranted, that the Family Court had paid lip service to the intent of the 1995 reforms and that further legislative instruction was needed in order to bring about change in the family law system. THE PRIME MINISTER’S INTERVENTION Members of Parliament had constant complaints from constituents about family law matters. A buildup of concern from backbench MPs of the conservative government of the day led eventually to overwhelming pressure on the government to do something. In the light of this, and given the pressures of fathers’ groups for change, the prime minister indicated in June 2003 that he wanted a parliamentary committee to explore the option of a rebuttable presumption of ‘‘joint custody.’’ In doing so, he directly linked this inquiry to the issue of children’s need for the involvement of fathers (Howard, 2003): [T]he obligation of society when a marriage breaks down is to have arrangements which are in the best interests of children but which also have proper regard to the interests of the parents of those children. I have expressed before, and I will say it again, that one of the regrettable features of society at the present time is that far too many young boys are growing up without proper male role models. They are not infrequently in the overwhelming care and custody of their mothers, which is understandable. If they do not have older brothers or uncles they closely relate to—and with an overwhelming number of teachers being female, in primary schools in particular—many young Australian boys are at the age of 15 or 16 before they have a male role model with whom they can identify.

THE PARLIAMENTARY INQUIRY OF 2003 THE INQUIRY PROCESS The Family and Community Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives was asked to examine whether there should be a presumption that children will spend equal time with each parent and, if so, in what circumstances such a presumption could be rebutted. It was also asked to consider grandparents’ rights to contact and whether changes should be made to the formula for calculating child support liabilities. The committee reported at the end of 2003 after one of the largest and most intensive public inquiries ever conducted by a parliamentary committee (Family and Community Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, 2003). It received more than 1,700 submissions and took evidence

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all over the country. The issues also generated a great deal of discussion in the media. THE COMMITTEE’S RECOMMENDATIONS The committee’s report was bipartisan and unanimous. It did not recommend a presumption in favor of equal time. Instead, it recommended that there should be a presumption in favor of equal parental responsibility. The committee gave a number of reasons for considering that there should not be a presumption in favor of equal time for each parent (Family and Community Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, 2003, p. 31): Two aspects of an equal time template have been highlighted. First, there are dangers in a one size fits all approach to the diversity of family situations and the changing needs of children. Secondly, there are many practical hurdles for the majority of families to have to overcome if they are to equally share residence of children. Many have pointed to the increased risk of exposure of children to ongoing conflicted parental relationships and the instability that constant changing would create for children. Family friendly workplaces are rare, as are the financial resources necessary to support two comparable households. Some parents lack the necessary child caring capabilities. Distance between households creates problems for transport and for schooling. Second families can also bring complications. Indigenous families’ approach to parenting does not fit with the expectations of equal time.

Although the committee recommended against a presumption of equal time, it still supported the concept of encouraging substantially shared parenting time for the majority of families. It had in mind, in particular, the families who are able to resolve their disputes without needing a judge to decide the case, and where there were not issues of violence or child abuse. The committee wrote: ‘‘the goal for the majority of families should be one of equality of care and responsibility along with substantially shared parenting time’’ (Family and Community Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, 2003, p. 30). The committee was especially critical of an assumption that nonresident parents should only see their children every other weekend and half the school holidays. They called this the 80–20 rule (Family and Community Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, 2003, p. 21): Out of court negotiated outcomes have favoured sole residence because they have been influenced by community perceptions, by experience of women as primary carers and by perceptions and outcomes in court decisions. This has been illustrated by suggestions in evidence to the committee that there is an 80–20 rule in the courts. This is the perception of a common outcome of, usually, the mother with sole residence and the father with alternate weekends and half the school holiday contact.

The committee noted also that since the introduction of the changes to the legislation in 1995, which had been intended to encourage greater

Changes to the Family Law Act 1975 583

involvement by nonresident parents, the incidence of orders for substantially shared parenting had declined. In 1994–1995, 5.1% of custody orders were for joint custody. In 2000–2001, only 2.5% of residence orders were for joint residence (Family and Community Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, 2003). The committee also proposed radical changes to the family law system in Australia (Family and Community Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, 2003). In particular, it recommended that the government should establish a multidisciplinary families tribunal, which, it was expected, would deal with most disputes between parents that require an adjudication. In the committee’s view, lawyers should not normally be allowed to appear before the tribunal. It would thus have a different character from litigation in the Family Court or Federal Magistrates Court in parenting disputes. The committee also proposed shopfront centers where people could go to get help after separation, which would endeavor to resolve cases without the need for a tribunal hearing. It made a range of other recommendations in response to its terms of reference, including the establishment of a task force to conduct a thorough review of the child support formula in the light of the available evidence concerning the costs of raising children. The committee’s report was the catalyst for the most radical overhaul of the family law system in 30 years. The pathway to reform was not a straightforward one. The proposed changes to the Family Law Act were to undergo a further evolution before a bill was introduced into Parliament; the tribunal was abandoned in favor of spending money on family relationship Centers, and much more work was to be done on child support before a new child support scheme was introduced. The Committee’s report, however, was of the greatest importance in starting the process of reform. A recurring theme in the report was on the importance of maintaining the involvement of fathers.

CHANGES TO THE FAMILY LAW ACT 1975 The Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Act of 2006 introduced numerous changes to the law. The overall effect of the legislation is to encourage greater involvement by nonresident parents (mostly fathers) in the absence of countervailing considerations such as violence or abuse. The Full Court of the Family Court of Australia, which acts as a specialist appeal court in family law cases, has summarized the effect of the legislative reforms as follows (Goode & Goode (2006), FLC {93–286 at para 72): In our view, it can be fairly said there is a legislative intent evinced in favour of substantial involvement of both parents in their children’s lives, both as to parental responsibility and as to time spent with the children, subject to the need to protect children from harm, from abuse and family violence and provided it is in their best interests and reasonably practicable.

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How is this achieved? The key changes are new objects for the legislation, the enactment of two ‘‘primary considerations’’ in determining what arrangements are in the best interests of the child, and requirements to consider particular types of parenting arrangement in allocating the time the children are to spend with each parent. NEW OBJECTS

FOR THE

LEGISLATION

First of all, the objects of the Act were amended to emphasize the importance of parents having a meaningful involvement in their children’s lives and also to protect children from physical or psychological harm. An ‘‘objects clause’’ is like a guiding light to courts. It indicates in broad terms how the detail of the legislation should be interpreted. Section 60B of the Act now provides: (1) The objects of this Part are to ensure that the best interests of children are met by: (a) ensuring that children have the benefit of both of their parents having a meaningful involvement in their lives, to the maximum extent consistent with the best interests of the child; and (b) protecting children from physical or psychological harm from being subjected to, or exposed to, abuse, neglect or family violence; and (c) ensuring that children receive adequate and proper parenting to help them achieve their full potential; and (d) ensuring that parents fulfill their duties, and meet their responsibilities, concerning the care, welfare and development of their children. The first two objects are reinforced by the factors a court must consider in determining the best interests of the child. There are two primary considerations (s.60CC(2)): (a) the benefit to the child of having a meaningful relationship with both of the child’s parents; and (b) the need to protect the child from physical or psychological harm from being subjected to, or exposed to, abuse, neglect, or family violence. THE MEANINGFUL INVOLVEMENT

OF

NONRESIDENT PARENTS

Other provisions in the legislation give effect to one of the objects of the legislation—to promote the meaningful involvement of both parents to the maximum extent that is in the best interests of the child. It requires the court at least to consider certain specified options concerning the allocation of time between the parents. There is a presumption in favor of equal shared parental responsibility, which can be rebutted if there is reason to believe a parent has engaged in child abuse or family violence (s.61DA). If the court is making an order for equal shared parental responsibility, then it must also consider whether it is in the best interests of the child, and reasonably practicable, to make an order that the child spend equal time with both parents (s.65DAA(1)). If that is contraindicated, then the court should consider whether it is in the best

Changes to the Family Law Act 1975 585

interests of the child, and reasonably practicable, to make an order that the child spend ‘‘substantial and significant time’’ with each parent (s.65DAA(2)). The Full Court of the Family Court of Australia, exercising appellate jurisdiction, has given guidance on what it means to ‘consider’ something. The Court has said that it ‘‘suggests a consideration tending to a result, or the need to consider positively the making of an order’’ (Goode & Goode (2006); FLC {93– 286 at para 64). This is something less than saying there is a legal presumption in favor of either equal time or substantial and significant time in the absence of violence or abuse, but the court is required to give positive and sympathetic consideration to parenting arrangements that meet the relevant description. The legislation identifies a checklist of factors to examine in determining whether an arrangement for equal time or substantial and significant time is reasonably practicable. Section 65DAA(5) of the Family Law Act provides: (5) In determining . . . whether it is reasonably practicable for a child to spend equal time, or substantial and significant time, with each of the child’s parents, the court must have regard to: (a) how far apart the parents live from each other; and (b) the parents’ current and future capacity to implement an arrangement for the child spending equal time, or substantial and significant time, with each of the parents; and (c) the parents’ current and future capacity to communicate with each other and resolve difficulties that might arise in implementing an arrangement of that kind; and (d) the impact that an arrangement of that kind would have on the child; and (e) such other matters as the court considers relevant.

EQUAL TIME This is in practice only an option for a limited number of parents, even though in one Australian survey 74% of nonresident fathers and 27% of resident mothers agreed with the idea that children should spend equal time with their parents after separation (Smyth & Weston, 2004). Smyth (2004b, p. 32) comments on the shared parenting families (6% of the total) in one nationally representative cohort: Socioeconomic resources appear to be a critical facilitator of shared parenting arrangements. Fathers with shared care were the most likely of the fathers to: (a) have a tertiary education (20% vs 8–14%), (b) be home owners or purchasers (74% vs 35–54%); and (c) live near their former partners (that is, within 10 kilometres, which itself may be related to financial resources) (69% vs 13–42%).

The statutory checklist draws attention to these various practical requirements such as the proximity of the parents to one another and, crucially, to the children’s schools, and the locations of extracurricular activities. The parents’ work schedules and traveling times to and from work must also be

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such as to make an equal time arrangement feasible. This checklist is useful for legal advisers and mediators in ‘‘reality testing’’ whether an equal time arrangement is practicable and best for the children. SUBSTANTIAL

AND

SIGNIFICANT TIME

An arrangement for ‘‘substantial and significant time’’ may well be reasonably practicable if the parents live in sufficiently close proximity to one another. The definition of ‘‘substantial and significant time’’ is particularly important because it indicates a legislative requirement to consider an arrangement that departs from the patterns of contact only on weekends and on school holidays. This is in response to the committee’s concern about 80–20 arrangements. The Act (ss.63DA(3) & 65DAA(3)) provides that: (3) a child will be taken to spend substantial and significant time with a parent only if: (a) the time the child spends with the parent includes both: (i) days that fall on weekends and holidays; and (ii) days that do not fall on weekends or holidays; and (b) the time the child spends with the parent allows the parent to be involved in: (i) the child’s daily routine; and (ii) occasions and events that are of particular significance to the child; and (c) the time the child spends with the parent allows the child to be involved in occasions and events that are of special significance to the parent.

It is not enough, then, even that the time allocated includes some time during the school week. It must also allow for the parent to be involved in the children’s daily routine. One judge has spelled out in more detail what substantial and significant time involves. Federal Magistrate Halligan wrote in KML and RAE [2006] FMCAfam 528, para 113: [F]or a parenting arrangement to involve substantial and significant time, one would normally expect to see the amount of mid week time, when taken with weekend, holiday and special occasion time, providing an opportunity for the child to be assisted by the parent with homework, to have the parent take the child to and from sports training and games in which the child is involved, to have the parent take the child to practice for, and to attend performances relating to, the child’s other extra curricular activities such as scouts or guides, music and dance, and to experience life as a member of the parent’s household with all the mundane reality that entails, including the parent cooking, washing and cleaning for the child, and the child, as may be age appropriate and in accordance with the reasonable wishes of the parent, assuming some household responsibilities in that parent’s household.

Changes to the Family Law Act 1975 587

DUTIES

OF

ADVISERS

Lawyers, mediators, and counselors must advise their clients that they should consider the options of equal time, and substantial and significant time (s.63DA). This is an unusual feature of the Australian family law legislation. The typical way in which legislation is drafted in common-law countries is for Parliament to instruct judges on how they should determine contested cases, or what factors they should consider, on the basis that the great majority who do not go before a judge will gain some guidance from the outcomes of the decided cases, ‘‘bargaining in the shadow of the law’’ (Mnookin & Kornhauser, 1979). This, of course, requires legal advice. The Australian legislation addresses not only lawyers but also mediators and counselors, seeking to reach the majority of families as the Parliamentary Committee wished. By imposing requirements on mediators and other advisers as well as judges, the Parliament intended that the content of discussions in mediation would be informed by the norms being promoted in the statute. SHARED PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY The legislation also defines what is meant by shared parental responsibility. Section 65DAC of the Family Law Act states that where two or more persons share parental responsibility, ‘‘the order is taken to require the decision to be made jointly by those persons. The long-term issues are issues about the care, welfare, and development of the child of a long-term nature (s.4 of the Family Law Act).’’ They include, but are not limited to, issues about: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

The child’s education (both current and future) The child’s religious and cultural upbringing The child’s health The child’s name Changes to the child’s living arrangements that make it significantly more difficult for the child to spend time with a parent

While s.65DAC(2) states that the decision must be made ‘‘jointly,’’ s.65DAC (3) and (4) go on to qualify this. Subsection (3) states that: the order is taken to require each of those persons: (a) to consult the other person in relation to the decision to be made about that issue; and (b) to make a genuine effort to come to a joint decision about that issue.

Subsection (4) provides: ‘‘To avoid doubt, this section does not require any other person to establish, before acting on a decision about the child communicated by one of those persons, that the decision has been made jointly.’’ It follows that the Act does not impose paralysis if the parents are not able to agree (e.g., on where the child will go to school or whether he or she should have certain elective surgery). Third parties may act upon the consent of one parent, and it is open to the other to seek an order from the court if he or she

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disagrees. In practice, third parties are likely to act on the consent or application of a primary caregiver, leaving the nonresident parent to seek recourse from the courts, by way of injunction or otherwise, if he or she objects to the given course of action. THE FAMILY LAW REFORMS

AND

PATERNAL DISENGAGEMENT

These legislative reforms address two of the factors associated with paternal disengagement. First and foremost, they respond to fathers’ perceptions of disenfranchisement by the system (Kaye & Tolmie, 1998). The 2006 legislation represents an attempt by the Parliament to give very clear direction to the courts on interpreting and applying the ‘‘best interests’’ test when making decisions about children in the context of parental separation. The duty of the courts to consider equal time is widely misunderstood in the community. Men going to mediation or seeking advice from family lawyers often seem to believe that there is a legal presumption in favor of equal time or that this is somehow a norm in the absence of violence or abuse. There is no such presumption or norm. Nonetheless, it ought no longer to be the case that men feel that the family law system discourages them from having a meaningful involvement in their children’s lives following separation from the children’s primary caregiver. The emphasis is very much on supporting the father’s role in the postseparation family in the absence of violence or abuse. The second possible implication of these reforms is in terms of the approach that courts might take to relocation disputes. Changes in this area may help to address the distance factor as a reason for paternal disengagement. Around 26% of separated/divorced parents in Australia live more than 500 kilometers from their former spouse, while another 15% live between 100 and 500 kilometers apart (Smyth, 2004b). The empirical evidence is that relocation has become more difficult under the new laws than previously, although the majority of relocation applications within Australia are still allowed (Easteal & Harkins, 2008; Parkinson, 2008a). However, the overall statistics mask significant disagreements between individual judges in this area, with quite different interpretations of the legislation and outcomes varying, depending on the city in which the application is brought (Parkinson, 2008a). The Full Court of the Family Court of Australia, perhaps unable to reach agreement among its members on how the new laws should be applied to relocation cases, has had difficulty providing normative guidance in determining appeals (Parkinson, 2008b). Relocation disputes thus remain an area where the application of the new laws is contested and uncertain. GROWTH

IN

SHARED CARE

What of the impact of the reforms on the patterns of parenting arrangements after separation? In recent years, Australia has seen a significant growth in the numbers of fathers in shared care arrangements. This growth predates the 2006 reforms, and so cannot be attributed only to those reforms. However, the public awareness and debate generated by the 2003 Parliamentary Inquiry,

Changes to the Family Law Act 1975 589

and a public perception (at least among men) that the system was supportive of equal time arrangements, was no doubt influential in the very rapid growth in shared care since 2003. Child Support Agency (CSA) data1 indicates that in June 2003, 3.96% of paying parents reported shared care arrangements of between 40 and 60% of nights with each parent. In June 2008, that had risen to 7.22%. The Child Support Agency database has been estimated to include 94% of separated parents in Australia (Ministerial Taskforce on Child Support, 2005). The CSA database includes data on all the parents in the child support system with children under 18. Many of these will, of course, have separated several years ago (if they ever lived together at all) and entered into parenting arrangements at a time when there was much less likelihood of reaching a shared care arrangement. A study conducted by the Family Court of Australia on cases finalized in 2007–2008 (Family Court of Australia, 2009) indicates the proportion of new cases in which shared parenting was the outcome. These are likely to be, for the most part, cases where the separation has been comparatively recent, although court statistics will include some cases involving less recent separations in which parenting arrangements have been renegotiated or relitigated. The Family Court data indicates that a significant proportion of these ‘‘new’’ cases now involve shared care. The court analyzed 1,448 litigated cases taken from a total of 6,992 such cases. The Family Court tends to deal with the more complex litigated cases (where the likelihood is that the trial will last longer than 2 days), since those cases that are less time consuming are dealt with by the Federal Magistrates Court. While most of these litigated cases would eventually have been settled rather than going to trial, these were all cases in which proceedings were commenced in the Family Court and would have involved at least some court-based dispute resolution processes and procedural hearings. The Family Court study also reported on 2,719 cases taken from a total of 10,575 in which agreements were reached by negotiation without court involvement. The court’s role was limited to making orders by consent—a common practice in Australia even when the issues have been resolved without filing proceedings. The study therefore provides data on more complex litigated children’s matters (these will be called the ‘‘litigated cases’’) as well as a broad cross-section of cases resolved by parental agreement and without going down the litigation pathway (these will be called the ‘‘negotiated agreement’’ cases). The study indicated that in 15% of litigated cases, and in 19% of the negotiated agreement cases, the court made orders for substantially equal time arrangements (between 45 and 55% of nights in each parent’s household). In 14% of litigated cases, and in 11% of the negotiated agreement cases, the court made orders for the children to spend between 30 and 45% of nights with the father. In only 3% of litigated cases, and in 1% of the negotiated

1. The data were provided specially to this author in September 2008.

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agreement cases, did the court make orders for the children to spend between 30 and 45% of nights with their mother. On these figures, therefore, 32% of the litigated cases resulted in both parents having the care of the children at least 30% of the nights each year. In the negotiated agreement cases, 31% of cases resulted in both parents having the care of the children at least 30% of the nights each year. Clearly, whether the cases are resolved by litigation or by negotiated agreement without filing proceedings, close to a third of parents are now finalizing parenting arrangements with orders for shared care of their children, with substantially equal time arrangements being more commonly the outcome than shared care arrangements involving at least 30% but under 45% of nights in the care of either the father or the mother. These figures exclude cases where there was not a rigid division of time in the orders. They also exclude cases where the pattern of care was hard to specify, for example, cases dealing with infants (in which the orders may well have provided for increased overnight stays over time) or where the arrangements varied between the children. It may well be that the levels of shared care are therefore even higher, particularly if substantial daytime contact, not involving overnight stays, is taken into account (Parkinson & Smyth, 2004). However, shared care may not last. Smyth, Weston, Moloney, Richardson, and Temple (2008) found, in an analysis of a nationally representative panel survey, that 40% of shared care arrangements in 2001 had altered the children’s being in the primary care of the mother 3 years later. Another dataset showed that 50% of the shared care arrangements made in 2003 had changed to mother residence by 2006, and another 7.5% to father residence (Smyth et al.). If these trends continue, then it may be expected that 40 to 50% of the shared care arrangements reflected in court orders in 2007–2008 will have changed to some other parenting arrangement (most likely with the mother being the primary caregiver) within a few years, and that only a small number will move into shared care arrangements from a position where they were in the primary care of one parent (Smyth et al.). Findings from a small study of litigated cases in Melbourne in 2006 have given rise to some concerns about the well-being of children in court-ordered shared care arrangements. In this study, shared care was defined as 35% of nights or more (an average of 5 nights per 2 weeks). Twenty-eight percent of these children entered court and 46% left court in a shared care arrangement. Half of these matters were interim orders (McIntosh & Long, 2007). This suggests that those fathers who were already seeing their children on a regular basis may be awarded more time with them than before they went to court, with a midweek night in addition to alternate weekend and holiday contact, being quite common. Seventy percent of these orders were made by consent, and 30% were judicially determined (McIntosh & Chisholm, 2008). The researchers found that being in a shared care arrangement was a predictor of having a mental health score in the clinical range. The issue they raised was not about shared care arrangements per se, but about parents that are in high conflict and have poor levels of communication between them. McIntosh and Long (2007, p. 19) wrote:

Changes to the Family Law Act 1975 591 The issue is not that shared care is harmful per se, but that the regular movement of children through a cross-fire of acrimony between parents who do not cooperate, brings accumulating and damaging levels of stress to children who are imperfectly, if at all, shielded from that discord.

The findings on the levels of shared care among litigants in this study must be qualified by reference to the fact that for half of the families, these were interim orders only. As the figures from the Family Court study (Family Court of Australia, 2009) indicate, a lower percentage of finalized cases involve shared care. Agreeing on a shared care arrangement at an interim stage may in some cases be a sensible way forward in resolving parental conflict. Sometimes the only way to know whether a parenting arrangement will work is to try it. Furthermore, doing so may be a better option in terms of children’s well-being than fighting the matter out before a judge, which also has adverse consequences for children’s mental health (McIntosh, 2006). The levels of hostility may also decline over time. Nonetheless, there are concerns about shared care in high-conflict families. These concerns, together with intense opposition to the 2006 amendments promoting greater father involvement from some women’s groups, has led to further calls for legislative reform. The Labor government, which replaced the conservative government of John Howard in 2007, is considering further amendments to the legislation. Whether they will significantly alter the main elements of the 2006 legislation remains to be seen. FATHERS

AS

PRIMARY CARERS

There also appears to be a substantial growth in fathers as primary carers. In June 1997, just 7.5% of cases had a father as the primary carer. In June 2008, this had risen to 11.71%. This increase is greatly affected by the influx of new cases. Twenty-one percent of new cases coming to the CSA during 2006 had a father as the primary carer for the children (Ellison, 2007). This is also evident from the Family Court study (Family Court of Australia, 2009). In 17% of litigated cases, and in 8% of the negotiated agreement cases, the children were to spend the majority of time with the father. While these figures are not as high as the CSA data on new cases, the CSA data will include many cases where the arrangements were made without being formalized in court orders. There is some evidence in Australia that parenting arrangements involving fathers as primary carers are less durable than cases in which mothers are primary caregivers (Qu, 2004; Smyth et al., 2008). OTHER DATA

ON

FATHER–CHILD CONTACT

There remains a long way to go in seeing greater father–child involvement. According to an Australian Bureau of Statistics study in 2007, only 43% of nonresident parents saw their child once every 2 weeks or more. Far fewer have the children overnight. CSA data for June 2008 indicates that only 18.5% of nonresident parents were having their children to stay overnight

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for 52 nights a year or more. Those fathers who are seeing their children regularly are much more likely to have shared care now than a few years ago. However, these are a small minority of the total of fathers living apart from their children. The trends are at least in the direction of greater involvement by fathers after separation. Over the period 1997 to 2007, Australian Bureau of Statistics research indicates that fewer children whose parents do not live together see their nonresident parent less than once per year or not at all. The proportion has fallen from 30% to 28% (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008). More children are also staying overnight with their nonresident parent (46 to 53%; Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008). These trends were well evident in the Australian Bureau of Statistics data for 2003, and so should be seen as reflecting longer-term changes rather than being the consequence of the 2006 reforms alone. The data from the CSA confirm the increased level of father–child involvement. In June 2003, 92.6% of paying parents had their children to stay overnight less than 30% of nights per year. By June 2008, the figure had declined to 87.83%. However, still 80.67% of nonresident parents living elsewhere have their children to stay overnight for less than 52 days per year (one night per week on average). Parkinson and Smyth’s (2004) research indicates that in addition to this figure, many more are likely to have regular daytime contact (especially where the children are below school age or the parents live in very close proximity to one another). In that study, based on nationally representative data collected in 2001, 17% of nonresident fathers had day-only contact. A major strategy in promoting greater involvement by fathers in children’s lives, as well as reducing postseparation conflict for the benefit of children in the longer term, is the establishment of 65 Family Relationship Centers around Australia since July 2006. This represents a long-term strategy for cultural change in the Australian community.

FAMILY RELATIONSHIP CENTERS The Family Relationship Centers (FRCs) are the centerpiece of the government’s family law reforms. There are now 65 centers all over the country. The first of them opened in July 2006.

WHAT ARE FAMILY RELATIONSHIP CENTERS? FRCs have many roles. First and foremost, they are an early intervention initiative to help parents work out postseparation parenting arrangements in the aftermath of separation, managing the very difficult transition from parenting together to parenting apart. They are also available to help resolve ongoing conflicts and difficulties as circumstances change. They also provide an educational, support, and counseling role to parents going through separation, with the goal of helping parents to understand and focus on children’s needs, and by giving initial information to them about such matters

Family Relationship Centers 593

as child support and welfare benefits. They are not only a resource for parents but for grandparents as well. One of the aims of the FRCs is to achieve a long-term cultural change in the pathways people take to resolve disputes about parenting arrangements after separation (Commonwealth of Australia, 2007). The concept behind the government’s investment in FRCs is that when parents are having difficulty agreeing on the postseparation parenting arrangements, they have a relationship problem, not necessarily a legal one. If no other solution can be found, it may need to go to an adjudication by someone who can make a binding decision; but it should not be seen as a legal issue from the beginning. The FRCs do not have only a role in helping parents after separation. They are not ‘‘divorce shops.’’ They are meant also to play a role in strengthening intact relationships by offering an accessible source for information and referral on marriage and parenting issues, and providing a gateway to other government and nongovernment services to support families. The potential for a supportive and preventive role in strengthening family life and in helping people whose relationships are beginning to experience significant difficulties was a key rationale for the development of FRCs. The extent to which Centers do so nonetheless depends on the organization running the Center. The government’s operational framework for the FRCs summarizes these different roles as follows (Commonwealth of Australia, 2007, p. 2): The Centers will be a highly visible entry point or gateway to a whole service system. They will assist:  

 



 

couples about to be married to get information about pre-marriage education families wanting to improve their relationships to get information about family relationship education and other services that can help strengthen relationships families having relationship difficulties to get information and referral to other services that help to prevent separation separated parents to resolve disputes and reach agreement on parenting arrangements outside the court system through child-focused information, advice and family dispute resolution, as well as referral to other services separated parents whose arrangements have broken down or whose court orders have been breached, to resolve the issue outside the court system, through information, advice, referral and family dispute resolution other people who deal with families such as teachers or doctors, and grandparents and other extended family members affected by a family separation through information, advice, referral or family dispute resolution services.

FRCs have been established in all the major population centers and regions. The provision of 65 such Centers across the country equates to approximately

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one center for every 300,000 people in the population. The Centers are funded by the government and operate in accordance with guidelines set by the government. However, they are actually run by nongovernment organizations with experience in counseling and mediation, selected on a tender basis, and staffed by professional counselors and mediators. Although actually run by different service providers in different localities, the FRCs have a common identity and badging to the public. THE EMERGENCE

OF THE

CONCEPT

The Parliamentary Committee’s report was a catalyst for the development of FRCs, although the pathway from committee report to the announcement of these new services was an indirect one. In its report, the committee had proposed shopfront centers where people could go to get help after separation, which would endeavor to resolve cases without the need for a judicial decision. There was, however, little detail given in the report of how these centers would operate and what roles they would fulfil. The focus, after the release of the committee’s report, was on its idea that most parenting disputes would be dealt with by a multidisciplinary tribunal. This led to a major debate, with opposition to the tribunal in particular from the legal profession and the courts. There were questions about whether it would be value for money. Would a tribunal end up making decisions that were substantially different from those made by the courts? The argument was that it would not matter which forum decided these cases; there would be disappointed litigants who would vent their anger on the decision makers. There were also constitutional issues about the extent to which a tribunal could make binding and enforceable decisions. The tribunal proposal received a very mixed reaction within the government. While it had its advocates within Cabinet, the prime minister made it clear that he had misgivings about the idea. Other members of Cabinet were unpersuaded about the proposal also. After some considerable debate in Cabinet, it became clear that it was unlikely to reach an agreement to implement the recommendation for a tribunal. At the same time, given the level of support for the tribunal from the Parliamentary Committee and the backbench, there was a reluctance to do nothing by way of a response to the committee’s recommendations. The idea of FRCs emerged as a compromise proposal (Parkinson, 2006).2 While FRCs may seem to be a quite different concept from the idea of a tribunal, it was put forward as another way of achieving the same objectives that the committee sought to advance, building on its proposed shop-front

2. The author was consulted by the prime minister’s office at a time when it was clear that Cabinet was unlikely to agree on the establishment of a families tribunal. The proposal for FRCs was set out in an unpublished paper that the author wrote following these discussions, entitled ‘‘Parenting After Separation: New Pathways to Dispute Resolution’’ (April 2004). This paper formed the basis for the plans then developed by the government and announced in July 2004.

How Do Family Relationship Centers Operate? 595

services, to help people reach agreement on parenting arrangements in the aftermath of separation. FRCs responded to three central objectives of the Parliamentary Committee. These were, first, to try to assist more fathers to remain involved in their children’s lives; second, to reduce the reliance on lawyers in resolving postseparation conflicts; and third, to reduce the debilitating effect of conflict on children. The Centers were funded for success. In total, the initial funding over 4 years for the establishment of the FRCs, and the expansion of other services to support parents after separation, was close to $400 million. As the centerpiece of the government’s reforms to the family law system, FRCs were thus not funded on the kind of minimalist basis that so often occurs for social problems. A realistic assessment was made of the numbers of Centers that would be required to meet demand, and of the funding needed to do the job well. The Centers had an appropriate level of start-up funding to find suitable premises, and to furnish them attractively so that the FRCs are welcoming places on entry. The specifics were left to the successful tenderer for the service.

FAMILY RELATIONSHIP CENTERS

AS

GATEWAYS

The Family Relationship Center is not a one-stop shop. It is a gateway. Certainly, FRCs provide all that many people need in making the difficult adjustment to separation as parents. Many such people will receive the information they need to work out their own parenting plan, or will benefit sufficiently from the availability of free mediation. However, it is unrealistic to think that any one service can provide all that people need. The FRCs act as a gateway to other kinds of services. There will be those who may want to attempt reconciliation with the assistance of relationship counseling services; others who will join a program for perpetrators of domestic violence or for gambling addiction; and others still who will want to access other kinds of services, such as support programs for separated fathers. The FRCs are thus about much more than organizing postseparation parenting. They may be the gateway also to services that will help heal relationships, or to services which will help people deal with the grief associated with relationship breakdown.

HOW DO FAMILY RELATIONSHIP CENTERS OPERATE? While there are some variations in the model around the country, most centers are staffed by a combination of individual advisers and mediators. The centers are intended to be highly visible and accessible. The government launched the centers with a major advertising campaign. Part of the brief for the centers was to find a location that is central for the community being served, being in the places that people go to for their shopping and other business needs. Leaflets about the centers can be found in such places as doctors’ surgeries, out-of-school care services, and community health centers. The centers achieved a high level of visibility very quickly indeed.

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INDIVIDUAL SESSIONS WITH ADVISERS Parents inquiring at the FRC are usually offered an individual session with an adviser to receive initial, basic advice about options and sources of help for dealing with whatever problems might have led them to call into the center. Most often, these advisers are called parenting advisers, but other names are in use in certain centers. They may advise on sources of help such as drug and alcohol or gambling addiction services, relationship counseling organizations and financial counseling services. They may also offer assistance to parents having problems in relation to their parenting role, providing referral, for example, to family support services and parent–adolescent mediation services. Most commonly, people who come into the centers will recently have separated, or will be contemplating separation. Some may have separated years before, but are coming because of ongoing difficulties with the parenting arrangements. The kinds of issues which might be covered include information about relationship counseling and mediation; initial advice about how to apply for income support payments, if needed, and applying for child support; and referral to sources of support for people with personal safety concerns. Of course, the relevant agencies would remain the most appropriate source of detailed advice on such matters as child support or welfare benefits. The need for this personal session with an adviser arose from a realization that people need a range of services other than legal advice in the aftermath of separation (Douglas & Moorhead, 2005). There are numerous services in Australia available to assist people going through separation. Most are already supported through the Family Relationships Services Program (FRSP) of the Commonwealth government. An evaluation of the FRSP conducted in the second half of 2003 and commissioned by the government found a very high level of client satisfaction indeed. However, one of the biggest problems identified in the evaluation was a lack of awareness of the services on offer. When told by the researchers about these services, most nonusers of these services indicated that they wished they had known about them (Colmar Brunton, 2004). Part of the idea of the FRCs was to respond to this need for information and support. The major role of the personal interview, beyond an initial assessment of the person’s needs, is to help people access the services and agencies that will be of most help to them. It was integral to the vision for the centers that this service should be a personal one. It would be a lot cheaper to provide free booklets from an information stand, or to put all the relevant information people want to know in a ‘‘frequently asked questions’’ section on a web site, but this is not what people need at times of great difficulty in their lives. They need individual attention and a personal, listening ear, to begin to move forward in addressing their difficulties. Some people need assistance in making links with the appropriate service. FREE MEDIATION The FRCs also offer free mediation on parenting issues. Financial matters may also be discussed in mediation as long as the primary focus is on resolving the

How Do Family Relationship Centers Operate? 597

parenting arrangements. This is because it is often impossible to separate the division of property from the discussion of where the children will live. The free mediation is for up to 3 hours (excluding the premediation session with each participant). Thereafter, it may be means tested. The parents may return for a further 3 hours of free mediation on two further occasions in a 2-year period, as long as the mediation is dealing with new issues. This reflects the new approach being taken to parenting after separation in Australia. The goal of the mediation is not to reach a final resolution of all the issues for the long term. Of course, if that occurs, so much the better. However, in the aftermath of separation, often feelings are too raw, and the situation too fluid, to make it possible for parents to commit to long-term parenting arrangements. There will be those who simply are not ready, early on in the separation, to reach a long-term agreement about postseparation parenting because they are still working through the emotional response to the other parent’s decision to leave. In any event, families are dynamic, not static. Children’s needs and schedules change as they grow older. Contact arrangements that work when a little boy is 5 may not work when, a couple of years’ later, he becomes a soccer enthusiast and his games need to be accommodated in the parenting schedule. Contact arrangements may also need to be negotiated if a parent’s working hours change significantly, or if a parent moves sufficiently far away from the other that regular midweek contact becomes impracticable. The goal of mediation in FRCs is therefore to help parents work out parenting arrangements for the time being. In an initial mediation, within a few weeks or months of separation, it is hoped that at the very least, shortterm parenting arrangements can be put in place that allow both parents to remain involved in caring for the children, and that these will then form the basis of more enduring arrangements. There is ample evidence from the history of counseling in Australia and the experience of other jurisdictions (Zuberbuhler, 2001) that the earlier parents can be involved in negotiating a compromise to their disputes, the more likely it is that the dispute will be resolved. Another reason for allowing more than one free mediation in any 2-year period is to allow for experimentation and reality testing. Mediators can suggest an arrangement that works for other parents in similar circumstances, and the parents can just try it for a few weeks or months. The opportunity to come back for further free mediation encourages this kind of experimentation to build a platform for lasting settlement of the arrangements. The FRCs have a particular role to play in the resolution of disputes about alleged contraventions. Experience in the courts has shown that at least some contravention disputes concern problems that arise from contact orders, frequently made by consent, which are either unworkable or have become unworkable as circumstances have changed (Family Law Council, 2007). The FRCs offer an option to triage these cases and to work out which cases can be resolved by negotiating variations in arrangements or by allowing parents to resolve their disputes by agreement, before going down the track of filing a contravention application.

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MANDATORY MEDIATION Some form of mediation, called ‘‘family dispute resolution,’’ is now a requirement before a person can file an application for parenting orders in court (Family Law Act 1975, s.60I). This does not have to be at an FRC. People may go to a mediation service of their choice. Some people may be exempted on application to the court. The grounds of exemption are (Family Law Act 1975, s.60I(9)): 

 

 

there has been abuse of the child by one of the parties to the proceedings or there would be a risk of abuse of the child if there were to be a delay in applying for the order; there has been family violence by one of the parties to the proceedings or there is a risk of it; the application is being brought for contravention of an order that is less than 12 months old and the court is satisfied that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the person has behaved in a way that shows a serious disregard for his or her obligations under the order; the application is made in circumstances of urgency; or one or more of the parties to the proceedings is unable to participate effectively in family dispute resolution (whether because of an incapacity of some kind, physical remoteness from dispute resolution services or for some other reason).

In addition to the grounds on which an exemption may be sought from the court, family dispute resolution practitioners may also decide that a case is not suitable for mediation. The grounds on which this determination may be made is that a party is unable to negotiate freely in the dispute because of any of the following matters (Family Law Regulations, 1984, regs. 62(2), 62A): (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f)

a history of family violence (if any) among the parties; the likely safety of the parties; the equality of bargaining power among the parties; the risk that a child may suffer abuse; the emotional, psychological and physical health of the parties; any other matter that the family dispute resolution practitioner considers relevant to the proposed family dispute resolution.

The discretion that family dispute resolution practitioners have to certify that a case is not suitable for mediation is of course, essential. There is a need to screen for domestic violence and to address other situations where mediation is inappropriate. A new assessment tool has been developed for this purpose (Winkworth & McArthur, 2008). At the conclusion of a mediation, a certificate is given if the parents have been unable to agree. A certificate may also be given if the mediation did not proceed because the other person was unwilling to participate, or if the family dispute resolution practitioner decided that mediation would not be appropriate in the circumstances. A certificate is required when filing an application in court unless a ground for exemption is claimed.

How Do Family Relationship Centers Operate? 599

The introduction of mandatory mediation, unless exempted, is a bold initiative in Australia. However, it is more evolutionary than revolutionary. Prior to the introduction of the FRCs, there was already a lot of experience with both court-based and community-based family dispute resolution in Australia. Since 1976, when the Family Court of Australia was established, alternative dispute resolution has been an integral part of the family law system. The Family Court was given its own Counseling Service, and this conducted free conciliation conferences in cases involving disputes about children. In recent years, the court’s services have been augmented by a range of community organizations that offer mediation in relation to parenting disputes. The development of FRCs thus builds upon an existing and welltried service capacity, and Australia has a workforce that is generally highly qualified and skilled in this area.

OTHER ROLES

OF THE

CENTERS

The Centers have various other roles and offer other kinds of services. A Resource Center. It is intended that the FRCs act as a hub for other community organizations to offer programs, taking advantage of the visibility and accessibility of the location, and the public awareness of the Centers in the community. The government’s operational guidelines explain (Commonwealth of Australia, 2007, p. 2): Many people only need information to help them make decisions about their families but don’t know where to get it. Family Relationship Centres will be a community resource, like the local library. The Centres will have information for people at all stages of family relationships. The Centres will encourage families to drop in for information and resources to support their family relationships, whether or not they have any difficulties. Centres may also send information out to families in their local area. Information might be provided through brochures, audiovisual material (such as DVDs) or fact sheets. Centres might hold public information sessions or training seminars on different family relationship issues. These might be run by the operators of the Centre or other organisations. Family Relationship Centres will be expected to encourage the use of their facilities by other local providers of relevant programs.

Group Sessions. Another important role of the Centers is to offer group sessions. A focus of this is to run sessions for parents experiencing separation. Parenting after separation seminars, required by courts, are an established feature of the landscape in the United States. The information sessions may cover such issues as:    

The way people deal with separation emotionally The need to separate the parents’ conflicts from issues about the children The value of a parenting plan What helps children get through the divorce process

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What harms them How parenting arrangements need to take account of the needs of children at different developmental stages Options for structuring postseparation parenting arrangements Shared parenting, and when shared parenting is contraindicated The issue of children’s participation in decision making about arrangements Sources of help to deal with domestic violence and child protection issues Comparing mediation and litigation as options for dealing with disputes about the children

Child Support. The FRCs also have a role in helping parents work through issues about child support. While the main focus is on the parenting arrangements, those arrangements have financial implications. Disputes about child support may well get in the way of the resolution of parenting issues. Arrangements have been made so that, during the course of mediation sessions, center staff or parents are able to contact the CSA and the government department responsible for benefits (Centrelink), to get further information about such matters. A priority phone line has been established to each agency for this purpose. SUCCESS

OF THE

FAMILY RELATIONSHIP CENTERS

In the first couple of years of their operation, FRCs were widely regarded as being highly successful. Fifteen centers were established in the first 12 months from July 2006. Another 25 were opened in July 2007. Almost all the remainder opened in July 2008. By the end of March 2008, the first 40 centers had held almost 15,300 family dispute resolution sessions (McLelland, 2008a). By the end of June 2008, there had been a drop in filings in family law proceedings over 1 year of about 18% (McLelland, 2008b). That figure is notable in two respects. First, the decrease in court filings has been achieved with only 40 centers open, not the full complement of 65 that are now open. It can be expected that with 65 centers fully operational, the annual decrease in court filings will be greater still. Second, the decrease is as a percentage of all filings, many of which are in relation to financial matters and the division of property. The proportion of parenting disputes that have been resolved without the need for a court application is therefore much greater than 18%. Balanced with this, some of the reduction in filings may have been due to a ‘‘delay effect.’’ As people have had to go through a dispute resolution process first, they have had to delay filing proceedings until the conclusion of that process. This may have affected numbers of filings in any given year. The success of FRCs should not only be measured, however, in terms of the extent of reductions in court filings. That is a measurable dimension of their success, but it is only one aspect of their purpose. The extent to which the centers promote healthier family relationships and act as a helpful resource

Other Services Supporting Fathers 601

when relationships are in trouble are also important in evaluating their success. In the long term, one of the most important measures of their success in relation to parenting after separation will be in the extent to which nonresident parents (mostly fathers) are able to maintain involvement with their children, and the extent to which conflict between parents after separation is reduced. These are, of course, related. Conflict with the mother is a significant factor in paternal disengagement. While it is too early for formal evaluations to be released, anecdotal reports indicate that fathers are accessing the centers in large numbers and the centers have received a lot of support from the main separated fathers’ groups. There have been issues in staffing the centers. The expansion of services has been so rapid that gaining enough mediators, particularly in certain geographic locations, has proved a challenge. Keeping staff, in competition with other FRCs and related services, has also been difficult. Necessarily, some mediators staffing the Centers have had limited experience when they have started in the role, and the quality of mediators across the FRCs is variable. This is not surprising. However, the government has developed a training and accreditation process, which is likely to improve standards over time. There have also been issues about the selection of service providers for some locations, with organizations being selected that have little track record in counseling and mediation with separated parents. The allocation of FRCs across the country, and the selection of service providers, has not been entirely free from political considerations and the serendipity of bureaucratic selection processes. Less-than-optimal decisions will in due course be reflected in less-than-optimal evaluations of some Centers. These are, however, matters of detail. Overall, the Centers have quickly established themselves as an important part of the family counseling and dispute resolution landscapes, and have attracted considerable international interest.

OTHER SERVICES SUPPORTING FATHERS SERVICES SUPPORTING VULNERABLE FATHER–CHILD RELATIONSHIPS The FRCs were only part of a substantial expansion in services to help resolve parenting arrangements after separation and to deal with ongoing conflict between parents who live apart. Two programs in particular received increased funding as part of the package of reforms announced by the prime minister along with the FRCs in July 2004. One initiative was the significant expansion of Contact Orders Programs, as recommended by the Parliamentary Committee (Family and Community Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, 2003). These programs are intensive therapeutic interventions that assist parents to separate their conflicts as former spouses from their continuing role as parents, and encourage better communication and cooperation in the parenting role over time. Typically, participation in such a program will be mandated when there has been a breach of parenting orders. Judges may also mandate people to attend these programs as part of final orders for the resolution of

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parenting disputes when they anticipate that there will be ongoing problems of high conflict without such therapeutic intervention. Initially, pilot programs had been established in only three locations (Sydney, Hobart, and Perth). There are now services all over the country. Children’s Contact Services also received a substantial boost in funding as part of the package of family law reforms announced in 2004. These fulfill two roles. The first is to facilitate contact handovers, most frequently because of issues about domestic violence. The second is to provide supervision for parent–child contact in circumstances where there are concerns about the safety of the child if unsupervised contact were to occur. This is most commonly the case in relation to allegations of child sexual abuse. The Parliamentary Committee praised the work of these services (Family and Community Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, 2003). Both the Contact Orders Program and Children’s Contact Services have a major purpose of supporting father–child relationships where fathers might otherwise lose contact with their children. Children’s Contact Services, in particular, demonstrate the artificiality of categorizing services as being ‘‘for fathers’’ or ‘‘for mothers.’’ Children’s Contact Services are an important strategy in keeping women safe from domestic violence in the aftermath of separation in circumstances where it would not be in the best interests of children for contact to be severed entirely. They are also an important child protection strategy. In 2008–2009, the budget for the Attorney-General’s Department’s family relationship services program, (which supports the FRCs, telephone and Internet resources, other family dispute resolution services, the Contact Orders Program, and Children’s Contact Services) was $166 million, not including administration costs (Attorney-General’s Department, 2008). This compares, for example, with $126 million to fund the Family Court of Australia, one of the two courts hearing family law cases (Attorney-General’s Department). GENERAL SERVICES

FOR

FATHERS

Services that have a primary role in supporting the involvement of fathers after separation are complemented in Australia by a range of other services that are designed to support fatherhood more generally. In particular, the Men and Family Relationships Program (Commonwealth of Australia, 2002) involves funding a range of services aimed at strengthening the roles of fathers within families and supporting their involvement as parents after separation. These include groups for first-time fathers, programs supporting the involvement of fathers in their children’s schools and workplace programs concerned with work/family balance, as well as services supporting men in crisis such as Men’s Line. Illustrating again the nexus between programs for fathers and initiatives to support women and children, the Men and Family Relationships Program began life as part of a domestic violence strategy (O’Brien & Rich, 2003). Michael Flood, an Australian expert on fatherhood, writes (Flood, 2003, p. 31):

Child Support 603 Fatherhood is now on the mainstream political agenda, and there is widespread support for the promotion of fathers’ positive and responsible involvement in families.

Nonetheless, government policy in support of fathers in families remains patchy and inconsistent. Australian men have some of the longest average working hours in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; Dawson, McCulloch, & Baker, 2001), which limits their capacity to participate in household work and child care. Paternity leave is not common in workplaces. According to a recent study, about 75% of fathers who are in paid work took leave around the time of their child’s birth. On average, this leave was of 2 weeks’ duration. However, 60% had to take paid annual/holiday leave, only 27% took paid paternity leave, and around 9% took unpaid paternity leave (Productivity Commission, 2008). Government rhetoric concerning the support of families in general, and fatherhood in particular, is sometimes undermined by government regulation of the workplace (or, rather, the deregulation of the workplace) in a manner that undermines family life. CHILD SUPPORT The other major area of reform arising out of the aftermath of the Parliamentary Committee report (Family and Community Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, 2003) has been in the area of child support. The Child Support Scheme provides for the calculation of child support by reference to a legislative formula. The administration of the scheme is carried out by the CSA. The scheme first came into effect in 1988–1989. Unlike in some other countries, the CSA provides an almost universal service for separated parents. For a slight majority of clients, the CSA plays a role only in assessment. For a minority, it is also involved in collection. The CSA has access to tax records and other data on incomes, and provides an updated assessment based on the latest information about the taxable incomes of the parents, every 12–15 months. Child support is one of the most contested and controversial areas of public policy, attracting more complaints to members of Parliament, mostly from fathers, than any other issue. The scheme underwent major changes in 2006– 2008, following the report of the Ministerial Taskforce on Child Support in 2005.3 The Taskforce recommended an entirely different formula, as well as changes to the apportionment of Family Tax Benefit (a generous, but meanstested, government payment for children), new measures for the enforcement of child support obligations, and a range of other reforms to the social welfare system as it affects payers and payees of child support (Ministerial Taskforce on Child Support, 2005; Parkinson, 2007). As a result of all these changes, the scheme has been branded as the New Child Support Scheme. A major goal of the reforms was to ensure that the scheme was based on the best available

3. The author chaired the Taskforce.

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evidence of expenditure patterns on children in Australian families, and treated children in different family constellations as equally as possible. Until July 2008, the Child Support Scheme was based on a formula that did not differentiate between children based on age, and applied a flat percentage of gross taxable income after deducting a self-support component. The percentages were 18% for one child, 27% for two children, 32% for three children, 34% for four children, and 36% for five children. The formula was based only on the nonresident parent’s income for the great majority of families, since the resident parent’s income was factored in only to the extent that she or he earned above the threshold of average weekly earnings for all employees (amounting to $43,654 annually in 2007). The Taskforce, established in 2004 following the recommendation of the Parliamentary Committee, had various terms of reference. The essence of them was that the Taskforce should evaluate the existing formula having regard to the best available evidence of expenditure patterns on children ‘‘including the costs for both parents to maintain significant and meaningful contact with their children’’ (Ministerial Taskforce on Child Support, 2005, p. 3). The Taskforce was also asked to examine the costs for both parents of reestablishing homes for their children and themselves after separation. The terms of reference reflect the concerns of the government that the Child Support Scheme should properly take account of the position of fathers who want to remain actively involved in their children’s lives. THE COSTS

OF

CHILDREN

Central to the work of the Taskforce was research on the ‘‘costs’’ of children. Of course, children do not have a fixed cost. The term is really a shorthand way of referring to patterns of expenditure on children. The cost of children depends on a range of factors, including their ages, their needs, the expenses of the household of which they are a part, and the choices that parents make concerning their discretionary expenditure. Once basic needs are met, the costs of children depend on the resources available to their caregivers and how much they choose to spend on them. The ‘‘costs of children’’ cannot be disaggregated from the costs of the household. They need to be calculated as a proportion of the costs of all goods shared by members of the household, such as housing, running a car, and fuel bills. The Child Support Taskforce utilized three different methodologies to reach the best and most up-to-date estimates possible of the costs of children in Australian families, using approaches that are well established in the international economic literature (Henman, Percival, Harding, & Gray, 2007). The Household Expenditure Survey was used to examine actual patterns of expenditure on children (Percival & Harding, 2005). This method uses data on expenditure as reported by respondents in surveys. By analyzing the standard of living of a couple without children and a couple with children, it is possible to estimate the additional costs that are incurred in raising children in order to reach the same standard of living as a family without children.

Child Support 605

The budget standards approach was utilized to assess how much parents would need to spend to give children a specified standard of living, taking account of differences in housing costs all over Australia (Henman, 2005). A review was also done of all previous Australian research (Gray, 2005), so that the outcomes of these two studies could be compared with previous research findings. No single method of calculating the costs of children is without problems (Ellman, 2004), but the utilization of multiple approaches reduced reliance on any one methodology or study. The costs of children experts on the Taskforce compared the results of the various studies, and examined not only the differences, but also sought explanations for those differences. They then made recommendations to the Taskforce based on their considered and joint judgments about all the available research (Ministerial Taskforce on Child Support, 2005). Research on the costs of children can only provide a broad estimate for the purposes of developing an appropriate child support formula. For example, because it includes a proportion of the housing costs incurred by the family, the costs of children will vary depending on the location of the family. While the Taskforce considered the housing costs in different locations, it was necessary to average out the housing costs for the purpose of the child support formula. The averages also take no account of the gender mix of children. There are likely to be greater economies of scale in a family with two children of the same gender than if the family has a boy and a girl. THE CONTINUITY

OF

EXPENDITURE PRINCIPLE

Conducting careful research on the costs of children was fundamental to the work of the Taskforce because the Child Support Scheme is based on the notion that the nonresident parent should contribute a similar level of support to the children as he or she would have contributed if the parents were living together. This is the ‘‘continuity of expenditure’’ principle. The continuity of expenditure principle does not mean that children will necessarily be able to maintain the same living standards after their parents’ separation as they enjoyed before. Children’s living standards depend on the overall income of the households in which they spend their time. Nonetheless, it offers a moral basis for calculating appropriate levels of contribution by the nonresident parent to that household. It has been the basis not only of the Australian scheme but of many others around the world (Department of Social Security, 1999;Venohr & Williams, 1999). The Taskforce considered other bases for calculating child support, but concluded that the continuity of expenditure principle was the most appropriate one (Ministerial Taskforce on Child Support, 2005). Another possible approach was to compare living standards in households, taking account of the income of new partners. However, the complexity of so doing administratively is enormous. Potentially, four incomes would have to be assessed (if both parents had repartnered) rather than just the two parents’ incomes. The complexity would be even greater if, in the aftermath of separation, one parent had moved back home to his or her parents, or moved in with other family members. It was also felt that to go down this path would detract from

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a fundamental principle enshrined in the Family Law Act—that it is the parents who have responsibility for their children and this is unaffected either by separation or repartnering. This is an important issue for nonresident fathers, who understandably fear displacement by new male partners of the mother. The Taskforce considered that it would be incongruous for the law to assert the primary role of the parents who live apart in decision making about children, while accepting that the father’s role in providing for his children could be displaced by shifting the major burden for the children’s financial support onto the mother’s new partner. THE DEVELOPMENT

OF A

NEW MODEL

The Taskforce concluded that the old formula could not be justified. First, the old formula assumed that, across the income range, people spend the same proportion of their income on children. However, the research of the Taskforce (Percival & Harding, 2005) and the preponderance of international research published since 1988 (Beld, 2001; Gray, 2005; Williams, 1994) showed that, while the higher the household income, the more parents spend on their children in dollar figures, expenditure declines as a percentage of their income. The impact of marginal tax rates is one reason that spending on children does not increase in proportion to the increases in people’s taxable income. Furthermore, as income increases, expenditure becomes more discretionary. This made it impossible to justify the fixed percentages of taxable income under the old scheme. At the higher ends of the income spectrum, the child support liability was well in excess of levels of expenditure on children in intact families, especially for one or two children under 13 years of age (Ministerial Taskforce on Child Support, 2005). Second, the Taskforce concluded that there ought to be a differentiation made in the formula to take account of the higher costs of raising teenagers. While the approach of averaging the costs of children over the entire age range has the merit of simplicity, it means that child support payments are likely to be inadequate at the time that the costs of children are at their highest, and too high when the children are younger. Third, the Taskforce concluded that the formula ought to take account of the incomes of both parents. The majority of intact families with children depend on two incomes (Ministerial Taskforce on Child Support, 2005). One of the objects of the Child Support Scheme in its governing legislation (Child Support (Assessment) Act, 1989) is that both parents should share in the cost of supporting their children according to their capacity. That was not obvious to child support payers given that only one parent’s income was being taken into account in most cases. Fourth, the Taskforce concluded that the formula needed to take better account of the costs to the nonresident parent when children are staying with him or her. The old scheme took no account of the infrastructure costs of nonresident fathers who see their children regularly unless they had the children staying for 30% of nights or more per year (109 nights). Above this threshold, the nonresident parent’s child support was reduced substantially. One hundred and nine nights was greater than the common pattern of contact

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arrangements (every other weekend and half the school holidays). If both parents had at least 40% of overnights, they were treated as if they had equal care. For most nonresident parents, then, the costs of children which the formula was meant to reflect did not include their housing and infrastructure costs, but it did take account of those housing and infrastructure costs in the primary carer’s household. The quandary is, of course, that when children are being cared for in two households, the combined costs are much higher than when the children are being cared for in only one household. The costs of providing for the children do not diminish much for the resident parent, precisely because so many of those costs are related to infrastructure. THE NEW FORMULA: INCOME SHARES In exploring the range of available alternatives to the old formula, the Taskforce concluded that the income shares approach, which is widely used in the United States, is the fairest basis for calculating child support. The essential feature of the proposed new scheme, based on the income shares approach, is that the costs of children are first worked out as a percentage of the parents’ combined income, with those costs then distributed between the mother and the father in accordance with their respective shares of that combined income and levels of care. The resident parent is expected to incur his or her share of the cost in the course of caring for the child. The nonresident parent pays his or her share in the form of child support. Both parents have a component for their self-support that is deducted from their income in working out their child support income. There are other formulas to deal with the range of more uncommon family circumstances that can arise, based on the same principles. The Taskforce devised a Costs of the Children Table based on the parents’ combined taxable income in two age bands, 0 to 12 and 13 to 17. This reflects the fact that expenditure on teenagers is generally much higher than for younger children. The Costs of the Children Table also deals with the situation where there are children in different age bands in the one family. These costs are not expressed as fixed percentages across the entire income range. Since parents spend a higher amount on children the more money they have, but spend less as a percentage of their household income in the higher income ranges, the percentages applicable in this formula gradually decline as combined taxable income increases. As a consequence, under the new formula, a liable parent with a high income pays much more in child support than a parent on a low income, but less as a percentage of his or her taxable income than the parent on a low income. Under the new formula, child support obligations are based on the relativity between the parents’ respective incomes. Both parents are treated equally, and the way in which the child support obligation is calculated is transparent. The costs of children are capped at a combined child support income of 2.5 times male total average weekly earnings. A discretionary administrative process is available to take account of very high incomes above this cap where it is appropriate to do so. The most likely situation where this occurs is to deal

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with high private school fees where the parents cannot agree about this (Child Support (Assessment) Act, 1989, s.117(2)(b)(ii) and (c)(i)(a)). REGULAR CARE

AND

SHARED CARE

The costs to the nonresident parent of caring for the child while he or she is with that parent are given much greater recognition in the new formula. The Taskforce took the view that if a parent has the care of the children once a week or 2 nights per 2 weeks on average, it is likely that he or she will need accommodation that is appropriate for a child to stay regularly overnight. This and other infrastructure costs do not vary much depending on how much contact the nonresident parent has. For this reason, the Taskforce considered that recognition of contact arrangements in the formula should begin when a nonresident parent has at least 14% of nights per year caring for the child, that is, 1 night per week, 2 nights per two weeks, or substantial holiday contact. Adopting thresholds that reflect the real arrangements that parents have after separation was regarded as better than round numbers such as 20% or 30%. The Taskforce borrowed this idea from the English legislation (Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act, 2000). The new formula provides that where the nonresident parent is caring for the child between 14% and 34% of nights per year, child support should be calculated on the basis that the nonresident parent is credited with a contribution of 24% of the costs of supporting the child through the provision of that care. This is achieved by deducting the parent’s cost percentage (the share of the cost that they bear directly through care) from their income percentage (their share of the combined income, which gives their share of the total cost) to give their child support percentage (the share of the cost that they need to transfer). This child support percentage is applied to the total cost to determine the child support obligation. The allowance of 24% credit for regular contact was not reached by splitting the difference between 14% and 34% of nights per year. Rather, it was determined on the basis of the research findings of the Taskforce on how the proportionate costs of children across two households are distributed when children spend significant amounts of time with the nonresident parent (Ministerial Taskforce on Child Support, 2005). Where the parent is caring for the child for 35% of the nights or more per year, child support is calculated on the basis that the nonresident parent is bearing 25% of the costs, and this proportion rises gradually with each additional night of care above 35% of nights, until each parent is sharing 50% of the costs for approximately equal care. FAMILY TAX BENEFIT

AND

NONRESIDENT PARENTS

One of the other issues that the Taskforce had to deal with was the allocation of Family Tax Benefit (FTB). This is a government benefit paid on a per-child basis. It is payable to all families who qualify under a generous means test. It is in turn divided into two categories. The base rate of FTB A is paid to the great majority of families in Australia, and aims to achieve ‘‘horizontal

Child Support 609

equity,’’ being the fair treatment of people who have the same incomes but different family responsibilities (Ministerial Taskforce on Child Support, 2005). Low income families receive an additional payment. This is known as FTB at ‘‘more than base’’ rate. FTB is a very significant source of household income for low-income families, particularly those with more than one child. The benefit is paid on a per-child basis without regard to the economies of scale where there is more than one child in a household. Until the Taskforce-recommended changes took effect on July 1, 2008, the way in which contact and shared care arrangements affected entitlement to FTB was quite different from the position under the Child Support Scheme. In the Child Support Scheme, the child support obligation was not affected unless a parent had the child staying with him or her for 30% or more nights per year. In contrast, FTB could be split where a nonresident parent had 10% or more of the care. The FTB was split in direct proportion to the level of care, so that a parent with 25% of the time caring for the child would be eligible for 25% of the FTB. The Taskforce examined child support policy together with FTB, income support and a range of other benefits as they apply to families after separation. It became apparent that the various systems had been designed at different times and pursuant to different policy concerns, with the consequence that there was a growing problem of incoherence in the policy settings for the financial support of families after separation. Many of the recommendations made by the Taskforce, and accepted by the Government, involved the alignment of child support policy with policies concerning other benefits and pensions, so that a common set of principles is applied across government in dealing with patterns of care for families after separation. In particular, the definitions of ‘‘regular care’’ (14 to 34% of nights per year) and ‘‘shared care’’ (each parent having at least 35% of nights caring for the child) have been utilized in other legislation concerning taxation and financial benefits provided by the Commonwealth government. The Taskforce recommended that the child support and FTB systems be aligned so that, rather than having two different systems for taking regular contact and shared care into account, there would be one consistent approach. The outcome of the Taskforce deliberations on this issue was that while much greater recognition should be given to the costs of contact in the child support formula, resident parents should be entitled to 100% of the FTB where the care of the child is not being shared, and FTB splitting should be confined to those who have shared care—that is, where each parent has the children for at least 35% of nights per year. Consequently, under the new reforms, recognition of the costs of regular contact are dealt with through the Child Support Scheme rather than through splitting FTB, and the level of child support payable is calculated on the assumption that the resident parent has the benefit of all the FTB where the care is not being shared. PROTECTING

THE

POSITION

OF

LOW-INCOME FATHERS

This created a dilemma in relation to a number of low-income nonresident parents with regular contact with their children who are not as well off under

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these reforms as under FTB splitting. These are nonresident parents who received a lower reduction under the proposed arrangements for taking account of regular care in the Child Support Scheme than they gained previously as a result of FTB splitting. The research of the Taskforce demonstrated that a significant effect of not splitting FTB for low-income nonresident parents would be the loss of entitlements to ancillary or ‘‘passport’’ benefits that flow from eligibility for FTB above the base rate, including rent assistance and health care benefits. To ensure that these benefits remained for those exercising regular contact, the Taskforce proposed, and the government accepted, that nonresident parents who have contact between 14 and 34% of nights per year would continue to have access to rent assistance, health care allowances, and other such benefits if the eligibility criteria for FTB above the base rate were met. These recommendations, all accepted by the government and now enacted, indicate the concern that existed to support low-income fathers who want to maintain contact with their children. The focus is no longer just on the primary carer. There is now a recognition that fathers also play an important role in children’s lives that should be protected in government policy. IMPACT

OF THE

CHILD SUPPORT REFORMS

The new formula was implemented on one day, July 1, 2008, for all the child support payers and payees across the population (nearly 1.2 million people). The overall consequence of the reforms was that a majority of child support payers (51%) were better off than before, taking account of the combined effect of the child support reforms and the changes to FTB. Thirty-three percent of payers were worse off. Thirty-seven per cent of payees were better off, and 49% of payees were worse off (Department of Families, Housing, Community Services, and Indigenous Affairs, 2008). In the majority of cases, for both payees and payers, the changes were for $20 per week or less, but for some people, the changes were substantial. Seventy-seven percent of nonresident parents with ‘regular care’ of their children (between 14 and 34% of nights per year) were better off as a result of the changes, and 20% were worse off; so overall the changes did much to benefit fathers who saw their children regularly (Department of Families, Housing, Community Services, and Indigenous Affairs, 2008). However, putting this into perspective, only 49,400 payers out of a total of 581,100 payers had regular care of their children. No comparable figures have been published for those parents sharing the care of the children. The changes to the formula, which particularly benefited those nonresident parents who have their children to stay overnight on a regular basis, were balanced by a much greater emphasis on enforcement. The Taskforce made strong representations to the government about the importance of proper enforcement of child support obligations for the integrity and popular acceptance of the scheme (Ministerial Taskforce on Child Support, 2005). A number of the Taskforce recommendations were concerned with enforcement. Part of the funding package announced by the government for implementation of the reforms included substantially

References 611

increased funding for enforcement measures. The package of reforms also gave the Child Support Agency greater powers to assess realistic levels of income in relation to people who artificially minimize their income or illegally fail to declare it (Parkinson, 2007). Research conducted in August 2008, after the introduction of the new formula, indicates widespread support for the reforms. The research involved 300 payers and 300 payees. It was reported that 63% of payees, and 76% of payers, agreed that the system used a more balanced formula (Horin, 2008). CONCLUSION It cannot be expected that all of these changes to the law and services funded by the government will transform levels of involvement by nonresident fathers in a short period. Some factors that affect whether fathers stay involved in their children’s lives, such as the impact of fathers’ repartnering and second families, are not amenable to change through the family law system. However, the reforms do address many of the factors that lead to the disappearance of fathers from children’s lives. The changes to the Family Law Act 1975 promote the meaningful involvement of both parents. The Family Relationship Centers may play a role in improving relationships between parents, leading to more cooperation over contact arrangements. The changes to the Child Support Scheme, recognizing the infrastructure costs of children in both households, may help more fathers to be able to afford to accommodate their children overnight (Smyth, 2004b). Fathers have much less reason now to feel disenfranchised by the family law system. The success of these reforms, which are being rigorously evaluated in the short term, cannot only be assessed in the short term. They represent a long-term plan for cultural change to promote the wellbeing of children. Overall, they also represent a coherent approach to the support of postseparation parenting by both mothers and fathers. REFERENCES Armstrong, S. (2001). ‘‘We told you so . . . ’’ Women’s legal groups and the Family Law Reform Act 1995. Australian Journal of Family Law, 15, 129–154. Attorney-General’s Department (2008). Portfolio budget statements, 2008–09. Retrieved November 26, 2008, from www.ag.gov.au/www/agd/rwpattach.nsf/VAP/ (084A3429FD57AC0744737F8EA134BACB)02+pbs08-09_AGD_final.pdf/$file/ 02+pbs08-09_AGD_final.pdf. Australian Bureau of Statistics (1998). Family characteristics survey, 1997 (Catalogue no. 4442.0). Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics. Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2008). Family characteristics and transitions, Australia, 2006–07 (Catalogue no. 4442.0). Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics. B and B (1997). B and B (Family Law Reform Act 1995) (1997) FLC {92–755. Beld, J. M. (2001). Improving child support guidelines in Minnesota: The ‘‘shared responsibility’’ model for the determination of child support. William Mitchell Law Review, 28, 791–860. Braver, S., & O’Connell, D. (1998). Divorced dads: Shattering the myths.New York: Tarcher/Putnam.

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Cashmore, J., Parkinson, P., & Taylor, A. (2008). Overnight stays and children’s relationships with resident and nonresident parents after divorce. Journal of Family Issues, 29, 707–733. Colmar Brunton Social Research. (2004). Family Relationships Services Program: Client input consultancy. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved November 26, 2008, from www.facs.gov.au/internet/facsinternet.nsf/VIA/frsp_review/$File/ frsp_client_input_consultancy_062004.pdf. Commonwealth of Australia. (2002). Supporting fathers in families. Canberra. Retrieved November 26, 2008, from www.facsia.gov.au/internet/facsinternet.nsf/family/ mfr-men_family_relationships.htm. Commonwealth of Australia. (2007). Operational framework for Family Relationship Centres. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved November 26, 2008, from www.ag.gov.au/www/agd/agd.nsf/Page/ Families_FamilyRelationship ServicesOverviewofPrograms_ForFamilyRelationshipServicesPractitioners_ Family RelationshipCentreResources#Guidelines. Dawson, D., McCulloch, K., & Baker, A. (2001). Extended working hours in Australia: Counting the costs. Adelaide: University of South Australia. Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. (2008). Report on the population impact of the new child support formula. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. Department of Social Security. (1999). A new contract for welfare: Children’s rights and parents’ responsibilities (Cm 4349). London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Douglas, G., & Moorhead, R. (2005). Providing advice for lone parents: From parent to citizen. Child and Family Law Quarterly, 17, 55–74. Dudley, J. R. (1991). Increasing our understanding of divorced fathers who have infrequent contact with their children. Family Relations, 40, 279–285. Easteal, P., & Harkins, K. (2008). Are we there yet? An analysis of relocation judgments in light of changes to the Family Law Act. Australian Journal of Family Law, 22, 259–278. Ellison, C. (2007, March 26). Fathers playing a greater role as primary carers after separation. Media release. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, Department of Human Services. Ellman, I. (2004). Fudging failure: The economic analysis used to construct child support guidelines. University of Chicago Legal Forum, [2004], 167–224. Family and Community Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives. (2003). Every picture tells a story: Report of the inquiry into child custody arrangements in the event of family separation. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. Family Court of Australia (2009). Shared parental responsibility. Available at www. familycourt.gov.au/wps/wcm/connect/FCOA/home/about/Business/Statistics/FCOA_stats_SPR. Family Law Cases. (2006). Goode & Goode. FamCA: 1346. CCH Publication. Family Law Council. (2007). Improving post-parenting order processes. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. Flood, M. (2003). Fatherhood and fatherlessness. Discussion Paper no. 59. Canberra: Australia Institute. Gray, M. (2005). Costs of children and equivalence scales: A review of methodological issues and Australian estimates. Retrieved November 26, 2008, from www.facs.gov.au/ internet/facsinternet.nsf/via/childcare/$file/Costs_children-equivalence-scales. pdf. Greif, G. (1995). When divorced fathers want no contact with their children: A preliminary analysis. Journal of Divorce and Remarriage, 23(1/2), 75–84.

References 613 Henman, P. (2005). Updated costs of children using Australian budget standards. Retrieved November 26, 2008, from www.facs.gov.au/internet/facsinternet.nsf/ via/childcare/$File/costs_of_children.pdf. Henman, P., Percival, R., Harding, A., & Gray, M. (2007). Costs of children: Research commissioned by the Ministerial Taskforce on Child Support (Occasional Paper 18). Canberra: Department of Family and Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. Retrieved November 26, 2008, from www.facsia.gov.au/research/ op18/oip18.pdf. Horin, A. (2008). Parents back new child support. Sydney Morning Herald, October 11, 2008, p. 2. Retreived November 26, 2008 from www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/ 10/10/1223145635805.html. Howard, J. (2003, June 24). House of Representatives debates. 17277–78. Kaye, M., & Tolmie, J. (1998). Fathers’ rights groups in Australia and their engagement with issues in family law. Australian Journal of Family Law, 12, 19–68. Kruk, E. (1993). Divorce and disengagement: Patterns of fatherhood within and beyond marriage. Halifax, Nova Scotia: Fernwood. Manning, W., Stewart, S., & Smock, P. (2003). The complexity of fathers’ parenting responsibilities and involvement with nonresident children. Journal of Family Issues, 24, 645–666. Mason, M. (1999). The custody wars: Why children are losing the legal battle and what we can do about it. New York: Basic Books. McIntosh, J. (2006). The Children’s Cases Pilot Project: An exploratory study of impacts on parenting capacity and child well-being. Melbourne: Family Transitions. McIntosh, J., & Chisholm, R. (2008). Cautionary notes on the shared care of children in conflicted parental separation. Journal of Family Studies, 14, 37–52. McIntosh, J., & Long, C. (2007). Children beyond dispute: A prospective study of outcomes from child focused and child inclusive post-separation family dispute resolution (Final Report to the Attorney-General’s Department, 2006). McLelland, R. (2008a, June 13). Speech given at Newcastle Gateway Project Family Pathways Conference. Retrieved November 26, 2008, from www.attorneygeneral. gov.au/www/ministers/RobertMc.nsf/Page/Speeches_2008_13June2008NewcastleGatewayProjectFamilyPathwaysConference. McLelland, R. (2008b, November 5). Speech given at Family Relationship Services Australia Inaugural National Conference, 2008. Retrieved November 26, 2008, from www.attorneygeneral.gov.au/www/ministers/robertmc.nsf/Page/Speeches_ 2008_5November2008-FamilyRelationshipServicesAustraliaInauguralnational Conference2008. Ministerial Taskforce on Child Support (2005). In the best interests of children— reforming the Child Support Scheme: Summary report and recommendations of the Ministerial Taskforce on Child Support. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved November 26, 2008, from www.fahcsia.gov.au/internet/facsinternet. nsf/via/childcare/$file/summary_report_15jun2005.pdf. Mnookin, R., and Kornhauser, L. (1979). Bargaining in the shadow of the law: The case of divorce. Yale Law Journal, 88, 950–997. O’Brien, C., & Rich, K. (2003). Evaluation of the men and family relationships initiative final report. Canberra: Department of Family and Community Services. Parkinson, P. (2006). Keeping in contact: The role of Family Relationship Centres in Australia. Child and Family Law Quarterly, 18, 157–174. Parkinson, P. (2007). The future of child support. University of Western Australia Law Review, 33, 179–206.

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Parkinson, P. (2008a). The realities of relocation: Messages from judicial decisions. Australian Journal of Family Law, 22, 35–55. Parkinson, P. (2008b). Freedom of movement in an era of shared parenting: The differences in judicial approaches to relocation. Federal Law Review, 36, 145–171. Parkinson, P., & Smyth, B. (2004). Satisfaction and dissatisfaction with father–child contact arrangements in Australia. Child and Family Law Quarterly, 16, 289–304. Percival, R., & Harding, A. (2005). The estimated costs of children in Australian families in 2005–06 (commissioned research report for the Ministerial Task Force; on Child Support). Canberra: National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, University of Canberra. Retrieved November 26, 2008, from www.facsia.gov.au/inter net/facsinternet.nsf/via/childcare/$File/natsem_costs_of_children.pdf. Productivity Commission. (2008). Paid parental leave: Support for parents with newborn children. Draft inquiry report, Canberra. Retrieved December 2, 2008, from www. pc.gov.au/projects/inquiry/parentalsupport/draft. Qu, L., (2004). Children’s living arrangements after parental separation. Family Matters, 67, 4–7. Rhoades, H., Graycar, R., & Harrison, M. (2000). The Family Law Reform Act 1995: The first three years. Melbourne: Family Court of Australia & University of Sydney. Simpson, B., McCarthy, P., & Walker, J. (1995). Being there: Fathers after divorce. Newcastle: Relate Centre for Family Studies, University of Newcastle. Smyth, B. (2004a). Little or no contact. In B. Smyth (Ed.), Parent–child contact and postseparation parenting arrangements (Research Report no. 9, pp. 31–49). Melbourne: Australian Institute of Family Studies. Smyth, B. (2004b). Postseparation fathering: What does Australian research tell us? Journal of Family Studies, 10, 20–49. Smyth, B., Sheehan, G., & Fehlberg, B. (2001). Patterns of parenting after divorce: A pre-reform act benchmark study. Australian Journal of Family Law, 15, 114–136. Smyth, B., & Weston, R. (2004). The attitudes of separated mothers and fathers to 50/ 50 shared care. Family Matters, 67, 8–15. Smyth, B., Weston, R., Moloney, L., Richardson, N., & Temple, J. (2008). Changes in patterns of post-separation parenting over time: recent Australian data. Journal of Family Studies, 14, 23–36. Trinder, L. (2008). Maternal gate closing and gate opening in postdivorce families. Journal of Family Issues, 24, 1298–1324. Venohr, J. C., & Williams, R. G. (1999). The implementation and periodic review of state child support guidelines. Family Law Quarterly, 33, 27–37. Williams, R. (1994). An overview of child support guidelines in the United States. In M. Haynes (Ed.), Child support guidelines: The next generation (pp. 1–17). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Winkworth, G., & McArthur, M. (2008). Framework for screening, assessment and referrals in Family Relationship Centres and the Family Relationship Advice Line. Canberra: Attorney-General’s Department. Retrieved November 26, 2008, from www.ag.gov.au/www/agd/rwpattach.nsf/VAP/ (CFD7369FCAE9B8F32F341DBE097801FF)Screening+and+Assessment+Frameework+-+July+2008.PDF/$file/Screening+and+Assessment+Framework+-+July +2008.PDF. Zuberbuhler, J. (2001). Early intervention mediation: The use of court-ordered mediation in the initial stages of divorce litigation to resolve parenting issues. Family Court Review, 39, 203–206.

Author Index Abbey, A., 281 Abbott, D., 365, 489 Abbott, S., 395 Aberle, D. F., 427 Abraham, K. G., 427 Abramovitch, R., 8 Achanyi-Fontem, J., 398 Achatz, M, 533 Achenbach, T. M., 331 Ackerman, M. C., 210 Ackerman, M. J., 210 Acs, G., 524 Adams, M., 443 Adams, P. L., 5 Adamsons, K., 68 Addis, M. E., 462, 467, 471, 477, 479 Adler-Baeder, F., 272 Ahmeduzzaman, M., 491 Ahnert, L., 101, 117 Ahrons, C. R., 185 Ainsworth, M. D., 98, 101 Akechi, T., 497 Albertini, M., 184 Alcorta, C., 420 Aldana, S. I., 506 Aldous, J., 43 Aldrich, T., 182 Alexander, J., 319 Alkon, A., 125 Allen, E., 122 Allen, J. P., 128, 130 Allen, S., 107, 111, 214, 304, 389 Allison, P. D., 218, 254 Aloa, V., 121 ALSPAC Study Team, 96, 108 Altman, J., 417 Altobelli, J., 182 Alvidrez, J., 472 Amato, P., 7, 15, 16, 17, 38, 43, 58, 62, 67, 70, 71, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 83, 95, 118, 177–200, 211, 217, 218, 221, 222, 226, 228, 229, 250, 254, 255, 260, 281, 282, 313, 444, 473, 487, 523

Ames, G., 4, 96 Anderson, B., 116 Anderson, E., 65, 246, 533 Anderson, J. R., 283 Anderson, K. G., 272, 274, 279, 281, 283, 286, 418, 430 Anderson, K. J., 8, 36 Andress, H. J., 182 Angleton, P., 528 Antonucci, T. C., 130 Antonuccio, D. O., 462 Anxo, D., 567 Aoki, K., 372 Aono, M., 372 Apfel, N., 300 Aquilino, S. A., 43 Aquilino, W. S., 187, 225 Aramaki, H., 358 Arbuthnot, J., 210 Ardelt, M., 526 Arends-Toth, J. V., 446 Argys, L., 534 Argys, L. H., 208, 218, 219, 220, 221, 313 Argys, L. M., 254, 301 Armesto, J. C., 323, 324 Armstrong, S., 578 Arnold, E., 437 Aro, H. M., 184 Asencio, M., 438 Asgary, V., 468, 479 Ashbourne, L., 525, 526, 528, 529 Ashwell, S., 502 Asiwaju, A. I., 390 Astone, N., 29, 83, 84, 179, 279 Atzaba-Poria, N., 111 Audigier, C. N., 178 Auerbach, C. F., 10, 34, 42, 298, 301, 323, 324, 326, 327 Austin, B., 112 Avery, D., 465 Axia, V., 400 Axinn, W. G., 247, 251 Ayalon, L., 472

615

616 AUTHOR INDEX Bachrach, C., 241, 242, 309, 517 Back, J., 364 Backett, K., 111 Back-Wiklund, M., 554 Bader, A. P., 95, 96 Bagner, D. M., 464, 474, 477 Baham, M. E., 223 Bahrassa, N. F., 130 Bailey, J. M., 332 Bailey, R. C., 425 Bailey, W. T., 49, 65 Bak, M., 554 Baker, A., 603 Baker, B. L., 492, 495, 507 Baker, L., 496 Baker, R. L., 184 Bala, N., 228 Bales, R. F., 117 Balgopal, P., 440 Ball, J., 389 Ballard, K., 486, 488 Ban, P., 99 Bandura, A., 118, 331 Bane, M. J., 534 Bankston, C. L., 437 Barber, B., 64, 68, 77 Barber, L., 98, 99 Barmish, A. J., 465 Barnard, A. L., 115 Barnes, J., 98, 117 Barnett, M., 160, 214, 304 Barnett, R. C., 45, 74, 110, 307, 308 Barret, R. L., 320, 323, 328 Barrett, A. E., 182 Barrett, H., 320, 325, 328, 332 Barry, H., 419 Bartek, L., 496 Bartfeld, J., 189, 301 Barth, J., 313 Bartley, M., 129 Baruch, G., 45, 74, 307, 308 Basavarajappa, K. G., 437 Baskerville, S., 535 Bates, F., 206 Bathurst, K., 110, 122 Bau, J., 159 Baucom, D. H., 495 Bauer, J. J., 49 Baumgartner, M., 558 Baumrind, D., 64, 82, 121, 329 Bauserman, R., 213, 214 Beaman, J., 217, 226, 534 Beardshaw, T., 402 Bear-Scharf, L., 96 Beatty, L., 541 Beauchaine, T. P., 460, 461

Beaudry, M., 284 Beaumatin, A., 116 Becher, H., 551, 554 Beck, A. N., 250, 281 Beck, C. J. A., 210 Beck, J. C., 208 Becker, B. J., 226 Becker, G. S., 251 Beckerman, S., 424, 426 Behnke, A., 437, 441 Behunin, M. G., 124 Beitel, A. H., 66, 70, 106, 112 Bekker, D., 467, 468, 470 Bekombo, M., 397 Belanger, C., 95 Beld, J. M., 606 Bell, K. L., 128, 130 Bell, R. Q., 106 Belsky, J., 4, 83, 97, 101, 103, 105, 106, 107, 112, 115, 122, 307, 308, 313, 539 Bem, S., 30 Bengston, V. L., 275 Bennett, S., 121 Bennett, T., 497, 503 Benoit, D., 306 Benson, A. L., 323, 324 Benson, B., 113 Benzies, K. M., 103 Berdondini, L., 397 Berenbaum, S. A., 331 Berg, B., 226 Berger, L., 39, 170, 261, 278, 279, 282, 283 Berko-Gleason, J., 8 Berkowitz, D., 320 Berman, M. E., 460 Berman, P. W., 4 Bernard, J., 181 Berndt, T. J., 359 Bernhardt, E. M., 274 Bernheimer, L., 446 Bernier, A., 102 Beron, K. J., 124 Berry, J. O., 108 Berry, J. W., 436, 437, 441, 446 Berthiaume, M., 488, 506 Best, D. L., 115, 121 Bethell, K., 117 Bettelheim, B., 496 Bhanot, R. T., 122 Bianchi, S., 63, 67, 72, 73, 74, 179, 188, 279, 430, 467 Biblarz, T. J., 185 Bichard, S., 466, 467, 468, 469, 471, 472, 475 Bielawska-Batorowicz, E., 107 Bierman, A., 180, 181, 184 Bigner, J. J., 320, 323, 324, 325, 326, 328

Author Index 617 Biller, H. B., 4, 5, 10 Billette, J., 187, 188, 208 Billings, F. J., 493, 507 Binitie, I., 462, 463, 474, 475, 477, 478 Birkeland, R. W., 463, 469, 470, 473, 474, 477, 478 Bisson, J., 488, 506 Bjarnason, T., 43 Blacher, J., 491, 492, 495, 507 Black, A. E., 121 Black, M. M., 260, 299, 301, 302, 313 Blackledge, J. T., 494, 506 Blaisure, K. R., 210 Blank, R., 532 Blank, S., 437 Blankenhorn, D., 5, 10, 34, 283 Blau, F., 536 Blaze, R. W., 461 Blazei, R. W., 189 Blehar, M. C., 98, 101 Block, J., 119, 128 Blount, G. B., 96 Blurton-Jones, 417 Blyth, D. A., 126 Bock, J. A., 417 B€ ogels, S., 465 Bohannon, J. N., 96 Boller, K., 313, 518, 520, 521 Bolton, P., 498 Bond, F. W., 506 Bond, L. A., 114, 115 Bond, R., 120 Bonds, D. D., 130, 210, 444, 445 Bongers, I. L., 461, 479 Bonney, J. F., 45 Booth, A., 186 Booth-LaForce, C., 122, 124 Bopp, M., 180 Borgloh, B., 182 Borke, J., 114 Bornstein, M., 329, 439, 444, 445, 504 Borrego, J., 472 Bos, H., 328 Boserup, E., 396 Bost, K., 70, 81, 82 Bouchard, G., 468, 479, 494 Bouchard, J. M., 488, 506 Bougher, L. D., 443, 449 Bourgois, P., 436 Bow, J. M., 210 Bowbrow, D., 332 Bowlby, J., 98, 100, 224, 306, 329, 415, 486 Boxer, P., 167 Boyce, L., 113, 487, 541 Boyce, P., 95 Boyce, W. T., 125

Boyd, M., 437 Bozett, F. W., 323, 328, 332 Brachfield- Child, S., 97 Bradbury, T. N., 180, 252 Braddock, D., 487 Bradford, K. P., 160, 488 Bradley, B., 155, 403 Bradley, C., 395 Bradley, R., 62, 83, 94, 122, 255, 519 Brahrassa, N., 437, 445, 446 Bramlett, M. D., 178, 179 Brand, S. R., 460, 461 Brandon, P. D., 242, 274, 283, 439, 444 Brandth, B., 552, 559 Brannen, J., 551 Branson, M. P., 65 Bratter, J., 179 Braun, M., 558 Braungart-Rieker, J., 97, 101, 108 Braver, S., 169, 182, 185, 186, 190, 201–240, 407, 535, 580 Bray, A., 486, 488 Breaux, C., 388, 407 Breedlove, W. L., 419 Bremberg, S., 38, 60, 67, 76, 80, 125 Brennan, P. A., 128 Brennan, R. T., 110 Brenner, E., 537 Brentano, C., 188 Breslau, N., 490 Bretherton, I., 98, 120, 122, 123 Brewaeys, A., 328 Brewster, K. L., 105, 110 Brickman, A. L., 475 Bridges, L., 103, 217, 221, 222, 225 Brimhall, D., 217 Brinamen, C. F., 325 Bristol, M. M., 489, 490, 492, 495, 505 Brobst, J. B., 497, 499 Brockel, M., 182 Brockmann, H., 180, 181 Brody, G. H., 120, 282 Brodzinsky, A. B., 330 Brodzinsky, D., 321, 330, 333 Broman, C. L., 186 Bronfenbrenner, U., 82, 427, 438 Bronner, R., 96 Bronstein, P., 120 Bronte-Tinkew, J., 107, 444, 540 Brookmeyer, K. A., 124 Brooks, G. R., 478 Brooks-Gunn, J., 43, 44, 70, 77, 110, 122, 126, 246, 250, 259, 260, 281, 283, 300, 301, 302, 313, 517, 518, 519, 520, 521, 524, 525, 534 Broom, B. L., 107 Brophy, D. R., 488

618 AUTHOR INDEX Brophy-Herb, H. E., 98 Broude, G., 420, 421 Brown, G., 70, 77, 81, 102, 106 Brown, J., 299 Brown, L., 528, 529 Brown, P., 209 Brown, R. T., 462 Brown, T., 495, 498, 499, 500, 501 Brownell, C. A., 122 Brownlee, J., 127 Brownridge, D. A., 95 Bruce, C., 66, 70, 223 Bruce, E. J., 506 Bryant, A. S., 320 Buchanan, A., 39, 122, 125, 129, 130, 211, 216, 397, 399 Buchanan, C. M., 225, 226, 227, 228, 229 Bucholz, K. K., 461 Buckhalt, J., 167 Buckner, J., 313 Budd, K. S., 463 Buehler, C., 68, 158, 160, 228, 258 Bukodi, E., 179 Bumpass, L. L., 201, 274 Burchell, B., 554, 555 Burchinal, M., 122, 307 Burgess, A., 107, 109 Burgess, K. B., 124 Burgoa, M., 181 Buriel, R., 443 Burkhauser, M., 540 Burman, B., 155, 159, 258 Burns, A., 128, 130 Burston, A., 328 Burton, L., 246, 252, 255, 258, 304, 306, 525 Burton, M. L., 422 Bushnell, J. A., 107 Bushwall, S., 299 Bussey, K., 331 Busza, J., 399 Butler, J., 302, 320 Bygren, M., 566, 568 Bzostek, S., 39, 170, 261, 278, 282, 283 Cabrera, N. J., 4, 9, 21, 43, 62, 77, 83, 94, 98, 110, 120, 123, 155, 188, 255, 258, 259, 260, 299, 301, 302, 304, 307, 310, 313, 442, 517–550 Cai, Y., 343 Cain, R., 116 Cairns, E., 170 Caldera, Y., 102, 104, 160 Caldwell, H. C., 518 Caldwell, J., 393 Caldwell, L., 49 Caldwell, P., 393

Call, V., 274 Callaghan, L., 391, 400 Callahan, M., 528, 529 Callan, V. J., 127, 128 Callanan, M. A., 122 Callus, C., 561 Calzada, E. J., 158, 160 Cameron, S., 114 Campbell, D. T., 215 Campbell, M., 555 Campbell, S., 122, 154, 156, 164, 313 Campos, J. J., 99 Cancian, M., 209, 533, 535 Cancian, N., 182 Cantwell, D. P., 496 Capaldi, D. M., 124 Capps, R. C., 444 Carette, V., 570 Carey, C., 506 Carey, L., 506 Carlsmith, J., 299 Carlson, E. A., 307 Carlson, M., 7, 16, 17, 39, 41, 60, 64, 69, 77, 95, 170, 178, 185, 188, 241–269, 273, 274, 278, 283, 519, 523, 525 Carlson, V., 438 Carneiro, C., 95, 96 Carothers, L. E., 184 Carpendale, J. I., 123 Carpenter, B., 486 Carr, A., 468, 474, 475, 478 Carragher, D. J., 323 Carranza, E., 469 Carrette, V., 552 Carter, A. S., 498, 499 Carter-Pokras, O., 472 Carver, K., 279 Case, A., 281 Cashmore, J., 190, 211, 225, 227, 578 Casper, L. M., 74, 242 Caspi, A., 260, 461, 479 Cassidy, J., 81, 102, 306 Cauce, A. M., 467 Caughlin, J. P., 180 Cavanagh, S. E., 185 Cavanaugh, B., 119 Ceballo, R., 281 Cen, G., 359 Chacko, A., 464, 477 Chagnon, N. A., 418 Chambers, D. L., 204 Chan, J. B., 507 Chan, R. W., 328 Chang, J., 77, 78, 79, 80 Chaplin, T. M., 159 Chapman, M. V., 438

Author Index 619 Charng, H. W., 187 Charnov, E. L., 7, 14, 29, 59, 60, 98, 521 Charsley, K., 440 Chase, E., 528 Chase-Lansdale, P. L., 184, 185, 258, 297 Chassin, L. A., 461 Chavez, L., 298 Cheadle, J., 187, 188 Chen, G., 351, 362 Chen, H., 359, 365, 368 Chen, H.-C., 367 Chen, S.-J., 375 Chen, X., 128, 359, 365, 368 Chen, Y., 282 Cheng, H., 217, 221, 222, 225 Cheng, X., 367 Cherlin, A. J., 184, 185, 201, 251, 252, 254, 259, 271, 274, 279, 301, 524 Cheung, P. C., 359 Chiga, Y., 372 Chisholm, R., 590, 591 Cho, H. S., 360 Cho, S. H., 360 Choi, E. J., 359 Choi, E. S., 369 Choi, K. S., 366 Choi, M. S., 350, 360, 371 Choi, S. H., 342 Chong, Y. S., 368 Chowbey, P., 111 Chriki, M., 96 Christensson, K., 96 Christiansen, K., 541 Christiansen, S. L., 49, 526 Christopherson, V. A., 427 Christopoulos, A. L., 184 Chronholm, A., 569 Chronis, A. M., 464, 477 Chuang, S., 51, 110, 113, 435, 442 Chun, Y. J., 352, 362 Chung, O. B., 354, 367 Chung, S. H., 359 Ciarrochi, J., 462 Cicchetti, D., 156, 161 Cioro, M. J., 279 Claessens, A., 259 Clampet-Lundquist, S., 303, 304 Clapton, G., 95 Clark, D., 436, 438, 445, 450 Clark, R., 106, 108, 110 Clark, S. C., 208 Clarkberg, M., 251 Clarke, A. T., 471 Clarke, L., 111 Clarke-Stewart, A., 188

Clarke-Stewart, K. A., 100, 104, 114, 115, 217, 220, 226, 313 Clarkson, J., 486, 488 Claxton-Oldfield, J., 272 Claxton-Oldfield, S., 271, 272 Clayton, O., 283 Clements, M. L., 159, 180 Clopton, J. R., 497, 499 Clowes, L., 389 Cnattingius, S., 497, 498 Cochran, B. N., 467 Cohan, M., 258 Cohen, B. R., 212 Cohen, D., 99 Cohen, L. J., 99 Cohen, P., 570 Cohen, P. N., 242 Cohen, Y., 437 Cohn, D. A., 98, 307 Coinwell, R. E., 96 Coiro, M. J., 158, 159 Coker, D., 105 Colder, C., 460, 461 Coldwell, 111 Cole, M., 400 Cole, R. S., 400 Coleman, J. S., 83 Coleman, M., 186, 271, 272, 274, 282, 285 Coley, R., 69, 78, 79, 80, 108, 188, 219, 223, 242, 258, 260, 297, 517 Collier, R., 551 Collings, S. C., 107 Collins, A., 36, 96 Collins, K., 99 Collins, W., 119, 120, 126, 127 Coltrane, S., 43, 62, 66, 73, 279, 422, 443, 446, 447, 449, 537 Comparini, L., 84 Compas, B. E., 459 Condon, J. T., 95 Conger, R., 43, 160, 217, 226, 526, 534 Connell, A., 460 Connell, J. P., 103 Conner, D. B., 4 Connolly, J., 111 Connor, M., 51 Conti-Ramsden, B., 8 Cook, G. A., 487, 541 Cook, J., 487 Cook, L., 487 Cook, S., 182, 208, 218, 219, 220, 221, 254 Cook, W., 80 Cooksey, E. C., 187, 258, 278, 279, 282 Cookston, J., 69, 77, 78, 79, 80, 169, 185, 208, 212, 223, 229, 446, 447, 449 Cooley, M. J., 535

620 AUTHOR INDEX Coontz, S., 403, 524 Cooper, C. E., 250, 281 Cooper, P., 107 Cooper, R. P., 97 Corboz-Warnery, A., 96 Corcoran, M. E., 185 Corkindale, C. K., 95 Corman, H., 253 Coronel, R., 210 Corwyn, R. F., 519 Cossman, B., 523 Costigan, L. C., 441 Courtenay, W., 467 Courtney, S., 97 Cowan, C. P., 98, 159, 251, 306, 307, 523 Cowan, P. A., 98, 159, 251, 306, 307, 523 Cox, A., 496 Cox, M., 7, 102, 106, 108, 110, 113, 155, 158, 160, 228, 229, 307 Cox, R., 7, 228, 229 Coyl, D. D., 128 Coyle, A., 330 Coyne, J. C., 156, 162 Coyne, L. W., 494 Craig, P. H., 187, 258 Crawford, I., 322 Crawley, S. B., 4, 97, 114, 115 Creasey, G. L., 102 Creekmore, C., 403 Creswell, J. W., 448 Crippen, G., 204 Crnic, K., 106, 307, 438 Crockenberg, S., 156, 166 Crockett, L., 39, 300 Croft, C., 103 Crooks, C. V., 228, 471 Crosbie-Burnett, M., 229, 325 Cross, D. R., 4 Cross, S., 502 Cross-Barnet, C., 252 Crouter, A., 46, 108, 110, 444, 491 Crowder, K. D., 270, 272 Crowley, K., 122 Crowley, S. L., 505 Cummings, E. M., 9, 13, 15, 95, 106, 124, 129, 154–176, 225, 228, 313, 460, 461, 495, 523 Cummings, S., 489 Cunningham, C., 489 Curley, J., 463 Curran, L., 528, 531, 533, 538 Curran, P. J., 461 Curtin, R. B., 278, 282 Curtis, J. W., 494 Curzio, J., 448 Cusack, J., 462 Cuskelly, M., 487, 493

Cutrona, C., 282 Cwikel, J., 322 Daiuto, A. D., 495 Dalton-Hummel, D., 4, 96 Daly, K., 389 Daly, M., 272 Daniels, J. L., 497, 498 Daniels, K., 330 Danziger, S., 96 Dariotis, J., 29 Darke, P. R., 98 Darling, N., 122, 329 Darling, R. B., 487, 490, 495, 505 Das-Eiden, R., 106 da Silva, R. A., 107 Dauber, S., 460 Dave, S., 108 David, J., 98, 99 Davies, L., 126 Davies, P. T., 124, 129, 154, 155, 156, 157, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 167, 225, 228, 313, 460, 461 Davies, R., 298, 299 Davis, D., 283 Davis, E. F., 106 Davis, K. D., 444 Davis, N. O., 498, 499 Davis, P. B., 491 Davis-Kean, P. E., 37, 62 Dawes, A., 389, 391 Dawson, D., 603 Day, R., 58, 76, 77, 111, 112, 188, 255, 270, 417, 487 Day, R. D., 221, 255, 444 Day, R. E., 519, 520 Deane, F. P., 462 Deater-Deckard, K., 96, 439 DeCarlo, C., 155 Deepak, A. C., 440 Deey, R. M., 389 de Falco, S., 504 DeFrain, J., 45 DeGarmo, D. S., 284, 285 degli Espinosa, F., 495, 498, 499, 500, 501 de Graaf, P. M., 179, 180 DeKlyen, M., 246 Deleau, M., 104, 120 Delgado, M., 130, 444 DeLuccie, M. F., 81, 118 De Luse, S. R., 169 DeLuse´, S. R., 208, 210 Del Valle, C., 107, 115 DeMaris, A., 180, 277 Demetriades, S., 555 Demian, N., 320

Author Index 621 Den Boer, A., 356 Deng, M., 160 Denis, P., 399 Dennis, J., 66, 123, 397, 443 DeParle, J., 309 Depner, C. E., 216 Dermond, N., 505 Dermott, E., 551 de Silvertri, A., 423 Desmond, C., 399 deSt. Aubin, E., 49 Dettlaff, A. J., 436 Deutsch, F., 66, 70 Deven, F., 529, 551, 552, 555, 559, 570 Devereux, E. C., 427 Devey, R., 398, 399 De Winter, A. F., 185, 281 DeWolff, M. S., 4, 98, 101 De Woof, M. S., 330 Dex, S., 556 Diaz, P., 201–240 Dickerscheid, J. D., 113, 115 Dickson, K. L., 114 Dickson, N., 260 Dickstein, S., 105 Diekstra, R. F., 279, 282 Diener, M. L., 101, 103, 124 Dillon, P., 210 Dion, M. R., 522 DiPrete, T. A., 182 Dishion, T., 460 Doherty, W. J., 283, 533, 538, 539 Dokis, D. P., 441 Dollahite, D. C., 109 Domenech-Rodriguez, M., 467 Dominelli, L., 452, 528, 529 Donahue, E., 309 Donate-Bartfield, D., 97, 98 Dong, Q., 367 D’Onofrio, B. M., 185 Doolittle, F., 255, 538 Dorbritz, J., 553 Dore, M. K., 218 Dorius, C., 7, 15, 16, 17, 38, 71, 95, 177–200 Dornbusch, S., 65, 211, 216, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 299 Dotterweich, D., 212 Doucet, A., 36, 66, 271 Douglas, E. M., 208, 210, 212, 217, 218 Douglas, G., 596 Douglas, K., 201, 205 Downey, G., 156, 162 Doyle, A-B., 124 Doyle, K. W., 225 Drakeford, M., 112 Draper, J., 529

Drew, E., 567 Driscoll, A. K., 274 Dronkers, J., 179, 184, 185 Drucker, B., 210 Duan, X., 371 Dubowitz, H., 260, 299, 301, 302, 313 Dudley, J. R., 580 Duffy, S., 443 Duhig, A., 156, 469, 470, 477 Duhig, A. M., 463, 473, 474, 478 Duindam, V., 184 Dukewich, T. L., 156 Duku, E., 497, 503 Dulude, D., 95 Dumas, J. E., 494 Dumenci, L., 156 Dumka, L. E., 130, 444, 445 Duncan, G. J., 185, 251, 313, 519, 524 Dunlop, R., 128, 130 Dunn, J., 95, 111, 126, 217, 221, 222, 225 Dunn, W., 476 Dunne, G. A., 320, 321, 323, 324 Dunne-Bryant, A., 181, 182, 183 DuPaul, G. J., 462 Dupre, M. E., 181 DuRocher Schudlich, T. D., 162, 163 Durrett, M. E., 106 Duursma, E., 122 Duvander, A. Z., 566, 568, 569, 571 Dvir, R., 100, 115 Dwyer, K. M., 124 Dyer, W. J., 77, 80, 81 Dykens, E. M., 503 Earls, F., 104 East, A. J., 460 Easteal, P., 588 Easterbrooks, M. A., 4, 103, 106 Eastman, G., 66 Eccles, J. S., 128 Edin, K., 187, 252, 253, 255, 257, 259, 260, 273, 303, 304, 309, 524, 525, 533, 534 Edwards, E. P., 106, 460, 461 Edwards, M. C., 461 Edwards, R., 554 Edwards, W. N., 396 Egeland, B., 307 Eggebeen, D., 39, 183, 273, 300, 517, 519 Ehrbar, L. A., 472 Ehrenberg, M. F., 225 Eickhorst, A., 114 Eidelman, A. L., 96 Eiden, R. D., 106, 460, 461 Eikeseth, S., 502 Einam, M., 493 Einarsdo´ttir, Þ, 565

622 AUTHOR INDEX Einfeld, S., 497, 498, 499, 500, 507 Eiraldi, R. B., 471 Eisenberg, M., 96 Elder, G. H., 526 Elder, J. H., 502 Eldevik, S., 502 Elgar, F. J., 95 Eliasz, A., 400 Ellingsaeter, A. L., 571 Ellis, B. J., 125 Ellis, T. Y., 355 Ellison, C., 591 Ellman, I. M., 206, 213, 605 Ellwood, D. T., 241, 251 Elmore-Staton, L., 167 El-Sheikh, M., 156, 164, 165, 167, 225 Elster, A. B., 106, 540 Elwood, R., 420 Ely, R., 8 Ember, C., 421 Ember, M., 421 Emde, R. N., 112 Emerson, E., 487, 507 Emerson, P. E., 99, 486 Emery, E., 179, 185 Emery, R., 71, 80, 154, 159 Emery, R. E., 158, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 201, 204, 208, 210, 214, 227, 228, 230, 254, 397 Emori, I., 363 Engels, R. C., 156 Engfer, A., 106 England, P., 252 England, P. J., 187 Englar-Carlson, M., 478 Engle, P. L., 388, 407 Entwisle, D., 83, 84 Epstein, N., 558 Erath, S. A., 156, 225 Erel, O., 155, 159, 258 Erera, P. I., 322 Erickson, M. F., 533, 538, 539 Erickson, P., 426 Erikson, E. H., 49 Erler, D., 566, 567 Erler, W., 566 Erny, P., 391, 392 Escobeda, A., 565 Eshel, Y., 441 Espana-Maram, L. E., 442 Espin, O. M., 436 Espinosa, F. D., 499, 500 Esposito, G., 504 Essex, E. L., 490, 493 Essex, M. J., 110, 125, 536 Este, D., 110, 436, 438, 444, 445, 450 Ethridge, B. L., 506

Evans, H., 298, 299 Evans, J., 96, 108, 391, 393, 461, 479 Evans, V. J., 274 Ewert, B., 8 Eyberg, S., 158, 160, 464, 474, 477 Eydal, G., 568, 571 Ezell, E., 166 Fabiano, G. A., 463, 464, 470, 471, 475, 477, 478 Fabricius, W., 16, 17, 169, 185, 188, 191, 201–240 Fagan, C., 554, 555, 567 Fagan, E. C., 96 Fagan, J., 112, 214, 259, 304, 523, 524, 538, 541 Fagot, B. L., 103 Fairtlough, A., 328 Falk, P. J., 327 Fals-Stewart, W., 468, 469 Fang, X., 367 Fanti, K. A., 124 Farbotko, M., 502 Farr, R., 330, 333 Farrell, M., 533, 535 Farrie, D., 259, 524, 538 Farrington, D. P., 129 Farris, A., 159 Faust, M., 496 Favez, N., 95, 96 Fazio, E. M., 180, 181, 184 Feder, T., 121 Fehlberg, B., 579, 580 Feinberg, M. E., 466 Felce, D., 487 Felder, W., 226 Feldman, L., 120 Feldman, R., 98, 107, 129 Feldman, S. S., 99 Feng, X., 359, 365 Ferber, M., 536 Fergusson, D. M., 185, 281 Fernandes, M., 101, 102, 116 Ferri, E., 119 Ferro, I., 179 Fewell, R. R., 489, 494 Feychting, M., 497, 498 Ficher, I., 328 Field, T., 99, 107, 108, 115, 116 Fields, S., 156, 459, 462, 463, 471, 474, 475, 477, 478 Fiksenbaum, L., 465 Finch, N., 557 Fincham, F. D., 129, 154, 160, 167, 228, 468, 469 Fine, M. A., 201, 274, 282, 284, 285 Fineman, M. L., 535

Author Index 623 Finlay, A., 69, 77, 78, 79, 80 Finley, G., 68, 69, 204, 223 Fish, M., 106 Fisher, B. C., 494, 506 Fisher, K., 109 Fisher, P., 278, 282 Fishman, H. C., 487 Fitzgerald, H., 83, 94, 255 Fitzpatrick, K., 460 Fitzsimons, E., 493 Fivaz-Depeursinge, E., 95, 96 Fivush, R., 331 Flaherty, D., 99 Flaks, D. K., 328 Flanagan, E., 164 Flanagan, K., 302 Fleet, C., 528, 529 Fletcher, R., 536, 570 Flinn, M., 299, 418 Flouri, E., 39, 77, 78, 79, 80, 111, 122, 125, 129, 130, 279, 399, 495 Floyd, F. J., 507 Flyn, M. L., 123 Flyr, M., 66, 397 Fogas, B. S., 186 Fogel, A., 114 Folber, N., 524 Folberg, J., 205 Foley, D. L., 279, 282 Fombonne, E., 498 Fomby, P., 251 Fonagy, I., 129 Fonagy, P., 102, 103 Fondell, M. M., 278, 279, 282 Foner, N., 437, 439 Foote, F. H., 475 Ford, C., 30 Forehand, R., 159, 504 Forgatch, M. S., 185, 284, 285 Forgays, D. K., 166 Forsberg, S., 460 Forssen, U., 497, 498 Fortes, M., 390, 392 Fortin, J., 397 Fortner, M., 444 Foster, E. M., 526 Foster, P. A., 124 Fouts, H., 113, 117, 418 Fox, G. L., 66, 70, 208, 223 Fox, N. A., 101 Frankel, J., 113 Franz, C., 7, 128, 129, 130 Frascarolo, F., 95, 96, 100 Frascarolo-Moutinot, F., 100, 101, 115, 116 Fraser, M. W., 463, 473, 474, 477 Freed, D. J., 204

Freeman, T., 330 Freire, M., 465 Freisthler, B., 283 Fremmer-Bombik, E., 125, 130, 131 Frey, K. S., 489, 494 Friend, M., 487 Fristad, M. A., 462, 468 Frodi, A. M., 3, 45, 100, 101, 103, 115, 116, 117 Frodi, M., 3, 45, 100, 101, 103, 115, 116, 117 Frosch, C. A., 158 Fu, H., 368 Fugate, J., 529 Fujita, H., 372 Fukaya, N., 361 Fukumaru, Y., 348 Funder, K., 211 Furnham, A., 299 Furstenberg, F. F., 83, 218, 245, 246, 253, 254, 255, 259, 274, 278, 279, 300, 301, 313, 430, 519, 525, 533, 557 Furuhata, K., 343 Furukawa, T. H., 497 Fusulier, B., 559, 561, 567 Fuwa, M., 570 Fweell, R., 505 Gable, S., 106 Gadsden, V., 537 Gaehler, M., 184 Gagnon, J. H., 320 Galarneau, D., 525 Galinsky, E., 118 Gallagher, J. J., 489, 490, 492, 495, 505 Gallagher, M., 241, 523 Gallant, B., 271 Gallimore, R., 446 Gallop, M. M., 211, 227 Galperin, M. B., 124 Ganong, L., 271, 272, 274, 282, 285 Garasky, S., 208, 218, 219, 220, 221, 254 Garber, J., 460 Garcia, R., 99 Garcia Coll, C., 438 Gardner, G. O., 279, 282 Gardner, W. P., 103 Garduque, L., 103 Gareis, K. C., 110 Garey, A. I., 402, 403 Garfield, C., 65 Garfinkel, I., 178, 242, 243, 253, 254, 256, 259, 273, 301, 302, 531 Garnefski, N., 279, 282 Garrett-Peters, R., 252 Gartrell, N., 328 Garwood, M. M., 97, 101 Gary, L., 541

624 AUTHOR INDEX Gauthier, A., 557 Gautier, A. H., 430 Gavazzi, S. M., 468 Gavidia-Payne, S., 493, 494 Geasler, M. J., 210 Geffken, G. R., 496, 497 Gentsch, J. K., 124 Geoke-Morey, M. C., 129 George, M. W., 154–176 George, T., 209 Georgiades, S., 497, 503 Gershuny, J., 109, 556, 557 Gerson, K., 65 Gettler, L. T., 416 Gewirtz, H. B., 113 Gewirtz, J. L., 99, 113 Ghate, D., 119 Gianino, M., 321, 325, 326, 327 Gibbons, G., 98 Gibbs, E. D., 114, 115 Gibson-Davis, C., 252, 253, 273, 278, 309 Giesselmann, M., 182 Gilbreth, J., 38, 77, 189, 190, 217, 226, 260, 279, 282, 313 Gil-Burmann, A., 416 Giles-Sims, J., 272 Gilles, V., 126 Gilroy, R., 114 Gilstrap, B., 4, 97, 106 Ginther, D. K., 281 Gı´slason, I., 568 Gjerde, P. F., 128 Gleason, J. B., 96, 105 Glick, P. C., 7 Glidden, L. M., 490, 493, 507 Glover, A., 121 Godwin, M., 111 Goede, M. D., 184 Goedhart, A., 466, 479 Goeke-Morey, M. C., 9, 154, 155, 156, 157, 159, 160, 163, 166, 167, 170, 313, 495, 523 Golby, B., 98, 120, 122, 123 Goldberg, J., 497, 503 Goldberg, S., 98 Goldberg, W. A., 4, 103, 106 Goldberg-Arnold, J. S., 468 Golding, E., 45 Goldman, J. D., 121 Goldman, R., 121, 123 Goldscheider, F., 273, 274, 283, 286 Goldsmith, H. H., 125 Goldstein, S., 116 Golinkoff, R. M., 4, 96 Golombok, S., 5, 18, 319–340 Goncy, E., 70 Gong, F., 349

Gonzales, N. A., 130, 437, 444, 445 Gonzalez, J., 107 Good, G. E., 478 Goodman, J. H., 107 Goodman, M., 210 Goodman, S., 460 Goodman, S. H., 460, 461 Goodman, W. B., 110 Goodnow, J. J., 401 Goody, J., 420 Goodyear, C., 272 Goosens, F. A., 101 Gordis, E. B., 166 Gorman, B. K., 282, 283 Gornick, J. C., 536, 537, 567 Gottainer, G., 185 Gottfried, A. E., 110, 122 Gottfried, A. W., 110, 122 Gottman, A. E., 123 Gottman, J. M., 158, 180, 252 Gould, J. W., 210 Graefe, D. R., 252 Graham, J. N., 9 Grant, G., 489, 493, 495 Gratton, B., 444 Gray, D. E., 500, 507 Gray, J., 327 Gray, K., 497, 498, 499, 500 Gray, M., 605, 606 Gray, P., 430 Graycar, R., 578 Green, R., 327 Greenbaum, C. N., 97 Greenberg, J. S., 507 Greenberg, M., 95, 505 Greenberg, R., 99 Greene, A. D., 260 Greene, S., 209 Greenfield, P. M., 448, 449 Greer, M., 477 Gregg, P., 110 Gregory, A., 552 Gregory, R., 329 Gregory, S., 120 Greif, G., 580 Griffin, W. A., 169, 208, 407 Griffith, J. D., 274, 301 Griffith, T. E., 205, 209, 211 Grindle, C. F., 502 Griswold. R. L., 3 Grolnick, W. S., 103 Gross, H. E., 460 Gross, M., 321 Grossman, F. K., 45 Grossmann, K., 125, 130, 131 Grossmann, K. E., 102, 113, 125, 130, 131

Author Index 625 Grotevant, H. D., 126 Grotevant, M., 330 Group, E. U. W., 180 Grych, J. H., 106, 108, 110, 129, 154, 167, 228 Gubernick, D. J., 417 Gugliemino, C. R., 423 Guishard, J. A., 114 Gu¨ng€ or, D., 444, 445 Gunlicks, M. L., 20, 461 Gunn, P., 487 Gunnoe, M. L., 208, 215 Gurven, M., 417 Guryan, J., 557, 569 Guthrie, D., 106 Gutierrez, E., 279 Gutierrez-Fisac, J. L., 181 Gutmann, M. P., 444 Guttfreund, D., 129 Guzzo, K. B., 278 Ha, T., 156 Haas, L., 536, 559, 566, 568, 569, 570 Haberfield, Y., 437 Hagan, L., 120 Hake, J. M., 397 Halberstadt, A. G., 123 Hale, S., 108 Halford, W. K., 523 Hall, A. S., 535 Hall, J., 188, 206, 207, 211, 220, 227 Halli, S. S., 437 Halpenny, A. M., 209 Halpern, A., 522 Halpern, C., 77, 78, 79, 80 Hamilton, B. E., 241, 272 Hamilton, H. A., 279, 281, 282 Hammen, C., 128 Han, E. J., 349, 373 Han, J., 371 Han, K. H., 359 Han, N. J., 350 Hanashima, H., 370 Hankinson, J. C., 459–485 Hannon, N., 419 Hansen, D. J., 472 Hanson, T. L., 218, 242, 243, 279, 281, 534, 535 Hantrais, L., 553, 554 Harding, A., 606 Hare, J., 322 Harkins, K., 588 Harkness, S., 394, 395, 396, 400, 413, 424, 425, 428 Harknett, K., 252, 253, 274 Harkonen, J., 179, 185 Harold, G. T., 160, 163, 166, 167, 168 Harrington, M., 246

Harris, K., 43, 186, 187, 188, 278, 300, 313, 533 Harris, M., 328, 330, 331 Harrison, M., 97, 103, 104, 578 Harrison-Jay, S., 271, 283, 284 Hart, H. M., 49 Harter, K., 155 Hartley, R., 121 Harvey, J. H., 201 Harwood, R., 84, 438 Haskins, R., 309 Hastings, P., 359 Hastings, R., 20 Hastings, R. P., 486–516 Hastorf, A., 299 Hatten, W., 111 Hatton, C., 507 Hau, K., 359 Hauser, S., 49, 128, 130 Hauser-Cram, P., 491, 495, 505 Hawkes, K., 417 Hawkins, A., 39, 61, 62, 67, 70, 79, 107, 109, 111, 160, 214, 218, 221, 222, 300, 304, 488 Hawkins, D., 78, 190, 221, 508 Hayes, S. C., 494, 506 Hayward, C., 217, 220, 226 Hayward, M., 180, 183 Hazel, N., 119 He, S.-Z., 368 Head, J., 129 Healy, J. M., 228, 229 Heard, H. E., 186, 187, 188, 533 Hearn, G. K., 274 Heath, A. C., 185, 461 Heatherington, L., 167 Heaton, C., 99 Heaton, T. B., 178 Hecker, L. L., 469, 475 Hedvat, T. T., 495, 505 Heermann, J. A., 97 Hegtvedt, K. A., 441 Heinicke, C. M., 106 Helfenbaum-Kun, E. D., 464 Helff, C. M., 507 Heller, T., 490, 492, 508 Helmbrecht, L., 325 Helms-Erikson, H., 108 Helson, R., 49 Heming, G., 251 Henderson, J. L., 96 Henderson, S., 127, 278 Henderson, U. K., 106, 113 Henderson, V. K., 102 Hendrick, S. S., 497, 499 Henman, P., 182, 605 Henrich, C. C., 124 Henwood, K., 95

626 AUTHOR INDEX Heo, S. Y., 371 Herbert, E., 486 Herek, G., 333 Herman, M. A., 120 Hernandez, D. C., 108, 223, 258, 274, 283 Hernandez, D. J., 242, 439 Hernandez, M., 436 Heron, J., 461, 479 Herring, S., 497, 498, 499, 500, 507 Hershko, Z., 96 Herzog, R., 5 Hetherington, E. M., 6, 7, 107, 180, 181, 187, 217, 228, 229, 277, 278, 282 Heuveline, P., 309 Hevey, D, 499 Hewitt, B. S., 273 Hewlett, B., 13, 19, 116, 117, 418 Hewlett, B. S., 397, 407, 413–434 Hicks, S., 321 Hiebert-Murphy, D., 491, 492 Hildebrandt, K. A., 113 Hill, D. H., 251 Hill, D. S., 96 Hill, H. D., 252 Hill, J., 126 Hill, K., 426 Hill, M. S., 185, 313 Hill, P., 394 Hill Collins, P., 275 Hillegers, M. H. J., 461, 479 Hines, M., 331 Hinojosa, R., 7, 17, 95, 270–295 Hirayama, J., 353 Hirsch, B. J., 49 Hirschil, T. A., 182 Hirshberg, L. M., 105 Hirst, M., 490 Hjelmstedt, A., 96 Ho, D.Y.F., 342, 346 Ho, M., 69, 123 Hock, E., 96 Hodapp, R. M., 503, 505 Hoeffer, B., 327 Hofferth, S. L., 37, 43, 59, 60, 62, 64, 69, 70, 74, 155, 188, 255, 279, 281, 283, 286, 467, 468, 520 Hoffman, L. W., 122 Hoffman, S. D., 251 Hogan, D. M., 209 Hogan, D. P., 273 Hogue, A., 467, 468, 470 Hohmann-Marriott, B., 180, 181, 184 Holcomb, P. A., 531 Holcombe, E., 278 Holden, C. J., 427 Holland, J., 126, 127

Holmbeck, G., 126 Holmen, T. L., 184 Holtzman, M., 282 Honan, R., 499 Honda, T., 358 Hondagneau-Sotelo, P., 439 Honey, E., 499 Hong, J., 507 Hong, K. H., 368 Hong, S., 77 Hook, J., 557, 558, 570 Hooven, C., 123 Horenczyk, G., 441, 445 Horiguchi, S., 372 Horn, W. F., 7 Hornby, G., 488 Horne, M., 490 Horowitz, A., 107 Horta, B. L., 107 Horton, F., 110, 536 Horvath, L. S., 208, 209 Horwood, L. J., 281 Hosaka, T., 358 Hosegood, V., 399 Hosley, C. A., 126, 127 Hossain, Z., 65, 107, 108, 115 Hotvedt, M. E., 327 Hou, F., 281 Hou, J., 368 House, A. S., 115 Houser, R., 489 Houts, R. M., 108, 180 Howard, J., 580 Howard, K. I., 127, 307 Hoyer, W. D., 476 Hrdy, S. B., 117, 426 Hrncir, E., 103 Hsieh, K., 490, 492 Huang, C. C., 189 Huang, H., 371 Huang, L., 438 Huber, B. R., 419 Hudson, V., 356 Huerta, C., 555 Huggins, S. L., 327 Hughes, C., 498 Hughes, J. C., 502 Hughes, M. E., 83 Hugo, G., 450 Huisman, M., 180 Hultman, C. M., 497, 498 Hummelsheim, D., 182 Hunsley, J., 473 Hunt, J., 104 Hunter, F. T., 104 Hurst, E., 557, 569

Author Index 627 Hurtado, M., 426 Hussong, A. M., 461 Huston, A., 102, 519 Huston, T., 491 Huston, T. L., 108, 110, 113, 180 Hwang, C. P., 3, 45, 100, 101, 103, 113, 115, 116, 117, 491, 492, 493, 568, 569, 570 Hwang, J. H., 352 Hwang, P. C., 559, 566 Hwang, S. Y., 368 Hyde, B. L., 115 Hyde, J. S., 110, 536 Hyder, C., 96 Hynes, K., 29 Hyun, J-H., 18 Hyun, O. K., 368 Iacono, W. G., 189, 461 Ialongo, N., 39 Iglesias, A., 541 Ihinger-Tallman, M., 258 Iinaga, K., 348 Ikramullah, E., 278 Ilbanez, E., 472 Imaizumi, N., 342, 343, 345, 358 Ingham, M. E., 99 Inglis, S., 555 Ingram, K. M., 499, 500 Innocenti, M. S., 491 Insabella, G., 185, 190, 217 Isabella, R., 106, 124 Isacco, A., 65 Isay, R. A., 324 Ishii-Kuntz, M., 43, 353, 355, 366 Isicher, P. A., 518 Israelashvili, R., 106, 113 Italinna, M., 491, 492, 495, 505, 507 Jaccoby, J., 298 Jackson, B., 522 Jacob, T., 126, 461 Jacobsen, R. B., 323, 328 Jacobsson, L., 344 Jadva, V., 330 Jaffe, P. G., 228 Jaffee, S. R., 107, 260, 461, 479 Jahn, J., 392 Jahr, E., 502 Jain, 115 Jalovaara, M., 179 Jang, Y. A., 369 Jans, A. C., 569, 571 Jarrett, R. L., 246, 255, 304, 306 Jarvis, P. A., 102 Jasinskaja-Lahti, I., 446 Jayakody, R., 261, 270, 285

Jencks, C., 241, 251 Jenkins, J. M., 95 Jenkins, R., 438 Jeung, C. A., 354 Jewell, T., 179 Jobe, M., 493, 507 Jodl, K. M., 128, 278 Joels, T., 306 Johnson, D. R., 183 Johnson, E., 255, 538 Johnson, L. C., 8 Johnson, M. P., 228 Johnson, S., 69 Johnson, S. E., 417 Johnson, S. M., 321 Johnston, J. R., 219, 220, 228, 229 Jolley, S., 304, 310 Jones, D., 541 Jones, L. C., 97 Jones, R. M., 128 Jonsson, O., 184 Jordan, H., 498 Joseph, G., 328 Joshi, 115 Joshi, H., 556 Jouriles, E. N., 106, 159, 166 Jovanovic, J., 122 Juby, H., 187, 188, 189, 208 Juhel, J., 104, 120 Jung, K. R., 130, 437, 445, 446 Jung-Hwan, H., 341–387 Jutta, J. M., 536 Kaczynski, K. J., 159 Kagan, J., 99 Kahana-Kalman, R., 111, 299, 442 Kahn, J. H., 124 Kahn, T., 119 Kaitz, M., 96 Kalil, A., 257, 258, 259, 261, 270, 285 Kalmijn, M., 179, 180 Kamboukos, D., 156, 459, 463, 471 Kamenetsky, S. B., 96 Kamerman, S., 559 Kan, M. L., 466 Kan, M. Y., 556 Kan, S., 348, 360 Kanai, A., 343 Kandel, W., 439 Kane, P., 460 Kang, R. H., 363 Kanner, L., 495, 496 Kao, G., 437 Kapinus, C. A., 282, 283 Kaplan, H. S., 274, 281, 417, 418 Kaplan, N., 102, 306

628 AUTHOR INDEX Kaplan, P. S., 107 Karney, B. R., 180, 252 Kashiwagi, K., 342, 353, 372 Kashy, D., 80 Kato, M., 497 Katoh, K., 366 Katz, A. R., 128 Katz, L., 123 Katz, M. M., 420, 423 Katz, P., 45 Kaufman, G., 283, 286 Kaufman, J., 77, 78, 79, 80 Kaumanns, W., 416 Kaunelis, R., 209 Kavanagh, K., 103 Kawai, H., 358 Kaye, B., 397 Kaye, M., 588 Keady, J., 489 Kearney, M., 557, 569 Keefer, C. H., 400 Kefalas, M., 252, 525, 533, 534 Keiley, M., 165 Keith, B., 281 Kellam, J., 39 Keller, H., 114, 445, 448 Keller, P. S., 124, 156, 163, 164, 165, 460, 461 Keller, W. D., 113 Kelley, M., 45, 65, 472 Kelley, M. L., 468, 469 Kelly, J., 6, 7, 15, 107, 277 Kelly, J. B., 201, 203, 204, 205, 208, 210, 211, 227, 228, 229, 230, 535 Kelly, R. F., 204, 208, 214 Kendall, P. C., 465 Kenney, C., 80 Kenyatta, J., 393 Kephart, D. K., 251, 309 Kerig, P. K., 159 Kerr, D. C., 124 Kersh, J., 495, 505 Kersting, K., 476 Kertes, J., 436 Ketterlinus, R. D., 127 Khalil, A., 442 Khoo, S., 450 Kier, C., 96 Kiernan, K., 259 Kilbride, C. P., 395, 403 Killen, M., 121 Killian, C., 66, 123, 397, 441 Kim, A. H., 124 Kim, D. N., 347 Kim, E. J., 367 Kim, G. H., 369 Kim, H. S., 366

Kim, J., 344, 363 Kim, K. H., 371 Kim, K. W., 367 Kim, M., 66, 369 Kim, S. H., 359 Kim, S. Y., 437 Kim, U., 342, 364 Kim, Y. J., 179, 344 Kimmerly, N. L., 101 Kindler, H., 125, 130, 131 Kindlon, D., 104 King, C. A., 462, 472 King, R. B., 179 King, V., 43, 67, 70, 78, 79, 185, 187, 188, 189, 190, 218, 221, 222, 225, 226, 260, 278, 279, 281, 282, 533 King, W., 277 Kinn, S., 448 Kirkham, M. A., 490 Kirkpatrick, M., 327 Kiselica, M. S., 540 Kitamura, T., 369, 370 Kitzman, K. M., 159 Kleiman, D. G., 416 Klein, M. E., 115 Klein, R. E., 99, 104 Klein, R. P., 115 Klein, T., 180, 181 Klerman, J. A., 536 Kline, M., 219, 220, 228, 229 Klinth, R., 51 Klohnen, E. C., 49 Klosterman, C., 476 Kluckholn, C., 427 Knab, J., 242, 246 Knabb, J., 274 Knafo, A., 441 Knibiehler, Y., 2 Knight, D. K., 4 Knitzer, J., 537 Knoester, C., 183, 273 Knox, V. W., 534 Knussen, C., 489 Ko, H. J., 369 Ko, S. J., 354 Kobak, R., 123 Koball, H., 274 Koestner, R., 7, 129 Kofman, E., 440 Koh, J. B. K., 130, 131 Kohlberg, L., 331 Koizumi, T., 377 Kokkinaki, T., 96, 97 Kolbeinn, A., 568 Kong, J. S., 360 Konner, M. J., 113, 117

Author Index 629 Konner, M. L., 420, 423 Koo, H. P., 274 Kopp, L. M., 460, 461 Koren-Karie, N., 306 Korintus, M., 559 Korman, M., 97 Kornhauser, L., 211, 587 Koso, G., 182 Kossakowska-Petrycka, K., 107 Kotake, M., 362 Kotchick, B. A., 504 Kotelchuck, M., 65, 81, 98, 99, 113, 115 Kouneski, E. F., 533, 538, 539 Kouros, C. D., 156, 164, 167, 225 Kouyoumdjian, H., 472 Kovshoff, H., 495, 498, 499, 500, 501, 502 Koyama, M., 372 Kraemer, H. C., 125 Krain, A. L., 471 Kramer, B. J., 486, 487 Kramer, W., 330 Krampe, E. M., 188 Krauss, M. W., 490, 491, 493, 508 Kreider, R. M., 273, 274 Krishnakumar, A., 158, 228 Kristiansson, R., 38, 60, 67, 76, 80, 125 Kroesen, K., 446 Kruk, E., 580 Ksansnak, K., 45 Ku, L. C., 30 Kuebli, J., 120 Kueh, R. O., 427 Kuehne, V. S., 49 Kugiumutzakis, G., 96 Kunst, A. E., 180 Kuperminc, G. P., 124 Kupfer, D. J., 125 Kurdek, L. A., 45, 180, 226, 228, 229, 278, 282 Kurman, J., 436, 441, 445, 448 Kurtines, W., 444, 446 Kvande, E., 552, 559 Kwak, B. H., 359 Kwak, K., 438 Laakso, J. H., 532 Laakso, M. L., 104 LaBounty, J., 123 Labrell, F., 97, 104, 115, 120 Lagattuta, K., 123 Laible, D. J., 7 Lam, D., 251, 418 Lamb, K. A., 226, 277 Lamb, M. E., 1–26, 29, 43, 45, 58, 59, 60, 62, 65, 75, 76, 77, 81, 94–153, 154, 155, 190, 205, 218, 221, 227, 228, 229, 230, 255, 260, 270, 272, 299, 301, 302, 313, 330, 389, 398, 399,

400, 401, 402, 424, 440, 443, 444, 449, 487, 519, 520, 521, 530, 538, 540 Lambert, J. D., 98, 120, 122, 123 Lamberty, G., 438 Lamm, B., 114 Lammi-Taskula, J., 561, 566, 567, 569 Lanborn, S., 65 Lancaster, J., 418 Lancaster, J. B., 274, 281, 417 Lancioni, G. E., 494, 506 Landale, N. S., 187, 258 Landman, I., 96 Landry, D. J., 251, 309 Lang, K., 38, 40 Langford, W., 109, 111, 121, 126, 127, 131 Langrock, A., 156, 166 Lansford, J., 229, 281, 439 Lantum, D. N., 393 Lanza, S. T., 110 Laosebikan, S., 392, 397, 404 Lapidot, P., 96 Laplante, B., 187, 188, 208 Lappan, S., 416 Lappegard, T., 569 Lareau, A., 66 LaRossa, M. M., 417 LaRossa, R., 29, 417, 440, 519, 520 Larson, R., 30, 127 Larsson, K., 96 La Taillade, J. J., 523 Lau, S., 359 Laumann, E. O., 320 Laumann-Billings, L., 191, 210, 227, 397 Laurenceau, J. P., 159 Lawrence, E., 180 Laxman, D., 80, 81 Lazar, A., 463, 473, 474, 477 Leach, P., 98, 117 Leaper, C., 8, 36, 122 Le Bourdais, C., 187, 188, 189, 208 Leboyer, M., 498 Le Brocque, R. M., 128 Lecavalier, L., 499 Leckman, J. F., 98 LeClere, F. B., 309 Lee, C. M., 468, 473, 479 Lee, I. S., 367 Lee, J. H., 363 Lee, J-K., 354 Lee, K. B., 346 Lee, K. Y., 347 Lee, M., 227 Lee, R., 130, 437, 445, 446 Lee, S., 348, 349, 360, 373 Lee, W., 477 Lee, Y. M., 363

630 AUTHOR INDEX Leeson, T. V., 111 Lefebvre, H., 492, 504 Lei, L., 367 Leibowitz, A., 536 Leiderman, H., 299 Leiferman, J. A., 460 Leighton, D., 427 Lein, L., 255 Leinonen, E., 491, 492, 495, 505, 507 Lemieux, D., 406 Lenney, E., 30 Leonard, K., 106, 440, 460, 461 Leone, S., 499 Leo-Rhynie, E., 298, 299 Lerman, R., 242, 243, 254, 535 Lerner, Y., 436 Lero, D., 525, 526, 528 Lesejane, D., 389, 402 Leslie, L. A., 65 Leslie, L. K., 462 Lester, B. M., 99 Lesthaeghe, R., 179 Letablier, M. T., 567 Leukfeld, C., 208, 209 Leung, K., 448 Lev, A. I., 321 Levant, R. F., 45, 324, 327 Leve, C., 278, 282 Leve, L., 278, 282 Levenson, R. W., 158, 180 Levin, A., 535 Levin, H., 129 Levine, A., 255, 538 Levine, J. A., 7, 12, 14, 29, 59, 60, 98, 190, 521 LeVine, R. A., 395, 396 Levy-Schiff, R., 95, 106, 113, 114 Lew, W. J. F., 359 Lewis, C., 14, 94–153, 399, 488 Lewis, J., 106, 113, 555 Lewis, M., 15, 99, 105 Lewis, O., 246 Lewis, S., 98 Lewis-Elligan, T., 114 Lewkowicz, K. S., 100, 115 Leydendecker, B., 84, 438 Li, C., 362 Li, D., 128, 365 Li, J., 346 Li, X., 186 Li, Y., 185, 186 Liao, P. J., 165 Liao, Y., 351, 362 Liber, J., 466, 479 Lichter, D. T., 251, 252, 274, 309 Liddle, H. A., 467, 468, 470 Lieberman, M. A., 124

Liebkind, K., 441, 445, 446 Lilja, E., 107 Lillie, T., 491 Lillis, J., 506 Lim, I. S., 360 Lim, K. G., 159 Lin, H. F., 541 Lin, I-F., 281 Lin, Q., 343 Lind, R., 112 Lindahl, K. M., 159 Lindsay, L. L., 156 Lindsey, E. W., 104, 120, 160 Lindstrom, H., 344 Little, T. D., 185, 190 Litzenburger, B., 113, 116 Liu, D., 123 Liu, G., 179 Liu, H., 370 Liu, L., 368 Liu, M., 128, 365, 371 Liu, Y., 77 Liu, Z., 365, 367 Lloyd, K., 251 Lloyd, N., 119 Lloyd, T., 506 Lobmaier, J. S., 96 Lock, J., 460 Logan, C., 278 Logan, D. E., 472 Logan, T. K., 208, 209 Loiselle, J. E., 45 Lollis, S., 445 Lombard, C., 397 Lombreglia, M., 210 London, K., 4, 260, 299, 301, 302 Long, C., 210, 590 Loomis, L. S., 186 Lopez, E., 156, 459, 463, 471 Lo´pez, G., 446 Lopoo, L., 246, 253 Lorant, V., 180 Louie, J., 437 Louv, R., 538 Lovejoy, M. C., 465, 477 Low, S. M., 163 Lowe, N. V., 201, 205 Lu, Y., 367 Luecken, L. J., 169, 185, 191, 220, 226, 227, 228, 229 Lugaila, T., 208 Lum, J. J., 462, 472 Lundahl, B. W., 465, 477 Lundberg, S., 259 Lundy, B. L., 101, 106 Luoma, J. B., 506

Author Index 631 Lussier, Y., 494 Lutz, M., 76, 478 Lutz, W., 96 Lycett, E., 330 Lynch, J. M., 324, 325 Lynn, S., 538 Lyon, L., 113 Lytton, H., 37, 113, 119, 120 Lyytinen, P., 104 Ma, W., 371 Maas, C., 184 MacAllum, C. A., 533 MacCallum, F., 328, 330 Maccoby, E., 64, 82, 118, 127, 129, 204, 208, 209, 211, 216, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 329 MacDonald, E., 20, 486–516 MacDonald, W. L., 277 Mace, R., 416, 427 MacFarlan, S. H., 413–434 Macfie, J., 108 Mackenbach, J., 180 Mackey, W. C., 118, 417 MacTurk, R. H., 104, 115 Madden, P. A., 185 Madhaven, S., 402, 403 Madigan, A. L., 43 Maeda, T., 353 Maes, H. H., 279, 282 Maeshiro, K., 369, 370 Magalhaes, P. V., 107 Magill-Evans, J., 97, 103, 104 Mahalik, J. R., 462, 467, 471, 477, 478 Mahoney, K., 179 Mailhot, M., 488 Main, M., 102, 306 Maiter, S., 450 Makino, K., 348, 360, 363, 366, 377 Malanchuk, O., 128 Malcolm, J. R., 416 Malik, N. M., 159 Malkin, C., 272 Malley, J. E., 228, 229 Mallon, G. P., 326 Malmberg, L.-E., 117 Malphurs, J., 107, 108, 115 Mana, A., 446 Mana, Y., 446 Manassis, K., 465 Mandel, J. B., 327 Mangelsdorf, S. C., 102, 106, 158 Mangum, G., 532 Manlove, J., 278, 540 Mann, M., 528 Manning, L. N., 477, 478 Manning, W., 580

Manning, W. D., 187, 188, 226, 242, 251, 258, 273, 309 Mannle, S., 8 Mansbach, I. K., 97 Mansbach-Kleinfeld, I., 452 Mansfield, A. K., 462, 467 Mao, X., 371 Maquet, J., 389, 391 Marcell, A., 30 Marcil-Gratton, N., 189 Marcoen, A., 103 Margand, N. A., 102 Margolin, A., 307 Margolin, G., 166 Markiewicz, D., 124 Markman, H. J., 180, 523 Markovitz, J. H., 225 Markus, M., 466, 479 Marlowe, F., 118, 416, 417, 418, 420, 421, 423 Marsh, A., 569 Marsiglio, W., 7, 17, 28, 58, 62, 64, 76, 77, 95, 221, 254, 255, 258, 270–295, 404, 406, 444, 487, 519 Martin, A., 43, 44, 70, 77, 122, 260, 517, 524 Martin, C. L., 331 Martin, J., 64, 82, 127, 241, 272 Martin, L., 210 Martin, M. A., 242 Martindale, D. A., 210 Martinez, C. R., 185 Martinez, I. L., 472 Martinson, B. C., 251 Marton, P. L., 95, 114 Maryanski, A., 353 Masciadrelli, B., 37, 43, 45, 49, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 69, 71, 77, 109, 113, 255, 495 Mason, B., 469 Mason, C., 420 Mason, E., 469 Mason, M. A., 203, 271, 284, 578 Massey, D., 439 Massey, S. G., 323 Masterpasqua, F., 328 Masuda, A., 506 Matson, J., 505 Matsui, N., 372 Matteson, D. R., 324 Matthews, K. A., 225 Maurer, T. W., 29, 50 May, J. E., 491 Mayes, L. C., 98 Mayseless, O., 306 Mazrui, A. A., 391 Mazumda, S., 437 Mazzuca, L. B., 471 McAdams, D. P., 49

632 AUTHOR INDEX McAdoo, H. P., 297, 438 McAleavey, K., 494, 506 McArthur, M., 598 McBain, H., 477 McBride, B. A., 69, 70, 74, 76, 77, 80, 81, 123, 478, 541 McCabe, A., 8 McCarthy, J., 274 McCarthy, M. E., 104, 115 McCarthy, P., 579 McCartney, K., 96 McClelland, D. C., 128, 129, 130 McClelland, M. M., 107 McConachie, H., 115, 499 McConkey, R., 487 McCulloch, A., 109 McCulloch, K., 603 McDermott, J., 321 McDonald, P., 450 McDonald, R., 166 McDowell, D., 66, 123, 397 McElwain, N. L., 107, 123, 162 McEwen, B. S., 225 McFadden, K., 17, 296–318 McFarlane, S., 13, 19 McGoldrick, M., 436 McGrath, M., 489 McGrath, P. J., 95 McGrellis, S., 127 McGue, M., 189, 461 McHale, J. L., 158 McHale, J. P., 105, 159 McHale, S., 46, 94, 108, 110, 112, 120, 491 McIntosh, J., 210, 590 McKeering, H., 50 McKelley, R. A., 476, 477 McKinney, M., 212 McLachlan, A. J., 322 McLanahan, S. S., 7, 16, 17, 38, 39, 40, 95, 170, 178, 179, 218, 241–269, 273, 278, 279, 281, 282, 298, 299, 301, 302, 309, 397, 517, 519, 523, 524, 525, 534, 535 McLaren, S., 322 McLaughlin, D. K., 309 McLelland, R., 600 McLeod, A. C., 322 McLeod, J. D., 283 McLoyd, V. C., 298 McManus, P. A., 182 McNeil, C. B., 463, 466 McQuiston, S., 104, 115 McRae, C., 184, 185 McRoy, R., 330 Meadows, S. O., 181 Medeiros, B., 69, 78, 79, 80, 219, 260 Mednick, B. R., 184

Meehan, C. L., 418 Meeus, W., 184 Meirov, H., 96 Mellott, L. M., 274 Meltzer, L. J., 497, 499 Mendlowitz, S. L., 465 Menning, C., 282 Mera, A., 373 Meredith, W., 365, 489 Merrilees, C. E., 154–176 Messick Svare, G., 283 Metz, A., 540 Meyer, D., 182, 301, 488, 505, 533, 535 Meyer, H. J., 106 Meyer, I. H., 323 Meyers, C., 71, 80, 186, 187, 188, 189, 254 Meyers, M. K., 536, 537 Michael, A., 128 Michael, R. T., 320 Michaels, S., 320 Mignot, J., 273 Mikach, S., 332 Mikelson, K. S., 109, 285 Miles, J., 169, 185, 229 Miljkovitch, R., 102 Milkie, M., 63, 73, 74, 180, 181, 184 Miller, A., 438 Miller, B., 323, 324, 328, 332 Miller, C., 533, 535 Miller, D., 472 Miller, H., 121 Miller, J. E., 283 Miller, W., 450 Mills, D. M., 275 Mills, G., 70, 74 Mills, L. G., 535 Mills, R. S. L., 95 Millsap, R., 130, 444, 445 Mills-Koonce, W. R., 160 Milner, J. R., 5 Milner, S., 552 Min, H. Y., 363 Mincy, R., 253, 257, 259, 260, 273, 283, 301, 302, 522, 531 Minde, K., 95, 114 Ming, Z. F., 365 Minuchin, S., 487 Mira, S., 68, 69 Mischel, W., 331 Mitchell, K., 182, 534 Mitchell, P. M., 165, 460, 461 Mitchell, S. J., 94, 110, 188, 442, 519, 540 Mitchell, V., 325–326 Miyashita, K., 366

Author Index 633 Mize, J., 120 Mizuno, K., 372 Mnookin, R. H., 208, 209, 211, 216, 587 Mochizuki, T., 372 Moffitt, T. E., 260, 461, 479 Mogilner, M. B., 95, 114 Moilanen, K. L., 460 Moloney, L., 590, 591 Monte, L. M., 252 Monteiro, L., 101, 102, 116 Montemayor, R., 126, 127 Montfort, V., 96 Montgomery, C. M., 399 Moon, S. K., 364 Mooney, A., 551 Mooney-Somers, J., 328 Moore, C. C., 422 Moore, K. A., 260, 274, 313, 444, 518, 520, 521 Moore, T., 65 Moorhead, R., 596 Morelli, G. A., 413 Moreno, J., 460 Moreno, R., 51, 435 Morgan, S. B., 496, 497 Morgan, S. P., 218, 254, 300, 301 Morishita, M., 366, 373 Morrell, R. G., 389, 393, 398, 399, 405 Morris, K. L., 123, 397 Morris, N., 95 Morrison, D. R., 279 Morrison, J. A., 467, 478 Morrow, V., 126 Morse, C. N., 322 Moselle, K., 389 Mosely, J., 7 Mosher, W. D., 178, 179 Mosley, J., 281 Moss, P., 21, 112, 529, 551–577 Mott, F. L., 300 Mounts, N., 65 Mueser, K. T., 495 Mulligan, G. M., 43 Mullis, N., 534 Munroe, R. H., 395, 420 Munroe, R. L., 395, 420 Munson, M. L., 517 Murray, C., 328, 330, 488 Murray, J., 129 Murray, K., 324, 325 Murray, L., 107, 461, 479 Murrell, A. R., 494 Musoke, L. K., 394 Mussen, P., 45 Muthe´n, B. O., 80 Muthe´n, L. K., 80 Muto, T., 348

Nakamichi, K., 367 Nakazawa, J., 18, 341–387 Narasimhan, B., 8 Navara, G. S., 445 Nazareth, I., 108 Neely, R., 211 Neff, C., 102 Neighbors, B. D., 159 Nelson, S., 524 Nelson, T., 242, 282, 303, 304 Nepomnyashcy, L., 189, 208, 218, 219, 220, 221, 253, 254, 256, 259, 531, 534, 570 Nettle, D., 122 Newash, N., 541 Newman, S., 496 Newson, E., 124, 128 Newson, L. J., 124, 128 Newton, R. R., 188 Nicholson, J. M., 281 Ninio, A., 112 Nir, T., 96 Nock, S. L., 241, 251 Nolan, M., 489 Nolen, W., 461, 479 Noller, P., 120, 127, 128 Noonan, K., 253 Nord, C., 208, 217 Norton, A. J., 7 Norwood, W., 166 Noss, A., 424 Notaro, P. C., 4, 97, 101 Nsamenang, A., 19, 388–412, 413 Ntsimane, R., 399 Nugent, J., 113 Nyquist, L., 106 Oberklaid, R., 38, 60, 67, 76, 80, 125 O’Brien, C., 554, 555, 559, 567 O’Brien, M., 21, 102, 109, 111, 112, 119, 488, 551–577 O’Brien, T. P., 463 O’Connell, D., 203, 204, 208, 209, 211, 215, 227, 230, 535, 580 O’Connell, J. F., 417 O’Connell, M., 74, 320 O’Connor, E., 321 O’Connor, J., 528 O’Connor, T. G., 95, 96, 108, 128, 130, 217, 221, 222, 225, 461, 479 O’Donnell, L. N., 30 O’Donohue, W. T., 214 Oelofsen, N., 491 Offer, D., 127 Ogata, K., 348, 366 Ogletree, M. D., 128 Oh, Y. H., 354

634 AUTHOR INDEX Oh, Y. J., 369 O’Hare, W. P., 7 Ohm, J. A., 354 Ok, S. W., 354 Ola´h,, L., 553 Olaniyan, R., 389 Oldehinkel, A. J., 185, 281 O’Leary, C., 278, 282 O’Leary, S. G., 106 Oliver, H., 302 Oliver, M. N. I., 491 Oliver, P. H., 166 Olsen, J., 64, 68 Olshtain-Mann, O., 450 Olson, S., 123 Olsson, M. B., 491, 492, 493, 507 Omar, M. A., 98 Omidvar, R., 443 O’Neill, S., 271 Onodera, A., 372 Ooms, T., 525 Opie, A., 535 Oppenheim, D., 103 O’Reilly, A. W., 106, 155, 158, 170 Orloff, A. S., 528 Ormel, J., 185, 281, 461, 479 Oropesa, R. S., 187, 258 Orr, E., 446 Ortiz, C., 464 Orubuloye, I. O., 393 Osborne, C., 39, 170, 250, 251, 252, 261, 273, 278, 281, 283, 517, 519 Osborne, L. N., 160 Osella, C., 441 Osella, F., 441 Osgood, D., 46 Ostrov, E., 127 Ostrove, J. M., 49 Ota, M., 355 Otaki, M., 106 Otto, R. K., 214 Overbeek, G., 156 Owen, L. D., 124 Owen, M. T., 102, 106, 113, 158 Oyabu, Y., 353 Paasch, K., 279 Padget, D., 448 Padgug, E. J., 96 Paige, J. M., 420 Paige, K. E., 420 Paikoff, R., 126 Pailhe´, A., 557 Pakenham, K. I., 50 Palacios, J., 400 Palameta, B., 443

Paley, B., 155, 307 Palkovitz, R., 45, 49, 61, 62, 67, 76, 109, 113, 131, 221, 255, 259, 444, 488, 519, 521, 526 Palmer, G., 121 Palmer, P., 498 Palosaari, U. K., 184 Pan, B. A., 105, 122, 302 Pan, F., 371 Pannabecker, B., 112 Papacosta, A., 112 Papp, L. M., 156, 162, 163, 165, 167 Paquette, D., 36, 81, 100 Paradise,M., 467 Pardini, D. A., 460 Parent, C., 284 Pargament, I., 179 Park, E. J., 360 Park, I. J., 366 Park, K. A., 105 Park, M. S., 350 Park, S. Y., 350, 354, 367 Park, Y. S., 347, 364 Parke, M., 523, 524 Parke, R. D., 66, 70, 77, 96, 97, 105, 106, 111, 112, 113, 115, 123, 154, 156, 279, 313, 330, 397, 399, 443, 444, 446, 447, 449 Parker, K. C., 306 Parkinson, P., 21, 190, 211, 225, 227, 578–614 Parra Cardona, J. R., 437 Parrillo, V. N., 439 Parsons, T., 117, 272 Pasley, K., 190, 258 Passman, R. H., 97, 98 Patterson, C., 42, 321, 327, 328, 330, 332, 333 Patterson, W., 45 Patton, M. Q., 448 Paul, A., 417 Paulson, J. F., 460 Paxon, C., 281 Paxson, L. M., 419 Payne, C. C., 307 Payne, J., 66, 70–71 Payne, M., 299 Pears, K. C., 124 Pearson, J., 7, 39, 98, 210, 307 Pedersen, F. A., 105, 116 Pedersini, R., 555 Pederson, F. A., 99 Peggy Keller, P., 225 Pelaez, F., 416 Pelchat, D., 488, 492, 504, 506 Pelham, Jr., W. E., 464, 477 Pellegrini, A. D., 120 Pelletier, L., 468, 479 Pemberton, J. R., 472

Author Index 635 Pence, A. R., 390, 401 Pennebaker, J., 106 Percheski, C., 242, 261 Percival, R., 606 Perez, N., 446, 447, 449 Perez Foster, R., 436 Perez-Vidal, A., 475 Perlick, D. A., 477, 478 Perloff, J., 313 Perraudin, C., 567 Perreault, M., 492 Perreault Suacier, J. F., 488, 506 Perreira, K. M., 438 Perrett, D. I., 96 Perrin, E. C., 320 Perris, C., 344 Perris, H., 344 Perry, B., 328 Perry-Jenkins, M., 108, 110, 491 Pessar, P. R., 437 Peters, B., 225, 254 Peters, E., 208, 218, 219, 220, 221, 301, 313, 519, 520, 521, 531 Peters, H. E., 252, 534 Peterson, B. E., 49 Peterson, C., 129 Peterson, R., 65 Petrie, P., 555 Pettee, Y., 507 Pettengill, S. M., 127 Pettys, G., 440 Pe´tursdo´ttir, G. M., 565 Pfau-Effinger, B., 551 Pfeiffer, C., 226 Pfiffner, L. J., 106 Phares, V., 13, 20, 124, 128, 156, 302, 459–485 Phelps, J. L., 307 Phillips, J. A., 178, 179 Phillips, R. D., 96 Phinney, J., 441 Phinney, J. S., 445 Pickens, J., 115 Pickford, R, 112 Pickles, A., 279, 282 Pike, A., 111 Pinheiro, K. A., 107 Pinheiro, R. T., 107 Pink, J. E., 282 Pinquart, M., 101 Pinto, R. H., 107 Pituch, K. A., 476 Piven, J., 498 Plantenga, J., 567 Plantin, L., 551, 569, 572 Pleck, E., 2, 3, 520, 530

Pleck, J. H., 2, 7, 9, 13–14, 27–57, 58–93, 98, 109, 113, 190, 255, 279, 440, 444, 446, 447, 449, 467, 495, 521, 552 Plotnick, R., 255 Plumet, M. H., 498 Poikkeus, A. M., 104 Pollack, W. S., 45 Pollak, R. A., 281 Pollet, S. L., 210 Pollock, L., 113 Pong, S. L., 279 Ponjaert, I., 328 Popenoe, D., 5, 10, 34, 395 Portes, A., 439, 446 Posel, D. R., 389, 398, 399 Pottie, C. G., 499, 500 Pouncy, H., 257 Power, T. G., 4, 97, 114, 115 Power, T. J., 471 Powers, B. P., 97, 101 Powers, J., 443 Prenderville, N., 96 Prentice, D. A., 469 Pressel, A. S., 108 Presser, H. B., 74, 109 Preuss, U., 226 Previti, D., 180 Price, D. A., 531 Primus, W., 253, 273 Prior, J., 498 Procter, J., 95 Pruett, K., 7, 113, 116, 520 Pruett, M. K., 185, 190 Pryor, J., 270, 278, 534 Pullen, J., 96 Pulver, C. A., 535 Purdie, G. L., 107 Puur, A., 553 Qian, M., 346 Qian, Z., 274 Qin, D., 130, 442 Qin, X., 368 Qu, L., 591 Querido, J. G., 158, 160 Quinn, L. S., 201 Quinn, P., 505 Quinnell, F. A., 210 Quinton, D., 113 Quinton, R. L., 96 Raag, T., 120 Rabash, J., 95 Raboy, B., 328 Rackliff, C. L., 120 Radey, M., 105, 110

636 AUTHOR INDEX Radin, N., 5, 7, 45 Rah, Y., 123 Raikes, H., 122, 258, 301, 302, 519, 525, 541 Ram, B., 98, 281 Ramchandani, P., 96, 108, 461, 479 Ramcharan, P., 489 Ramey, S. L., 508 Ramsey, S. H., 214 Rane, T. R., 29, 50, 541 Rank, M. R., 182 Rao, J. M., 108 Ravi, S., 460 Ray, R., 567 Ray, V., 329 Raymond, J., 9, 129, 155, 156, 157, 159, 166, 168, 170, 313, 495, 523 Reagan, T., 388 Reckase, M., 186 Reed, J., 524 Reese, L., 446 Reese-Weber, M., 124 Regidor, E., 181 Reichart, C. G., 461, 479 Reichman, N., 178, 242, 253, 302 Reitzes, D., 29 Remery, C., 567 Remington, B., 495, 498, 499, 500, 501, 502 Rendina, I., 113, 115 Renne, E., 393 Repetti, R. L., 158 Rescorla, L. A., 331 Reynolds, W. L., 211 Rezac, S. J., 228, 229 Rhee, E. Y., 347 Rhee, K. C., 347 Rhoades, H., 578 Rhodes, P., 505 Ribben, J., 554 Ribbens McCarthy, J., 126 Ricard, N., 488, 506 Ricaud, H., 116 Ricci, L. A., 503, 505 Rich, B., 158, 160 Richards, L., 322 Richards, M. E., 113 Richards, M. H., 127 Richards, M. P., 131 Richards, P., 106 Richardson, N., 590, 591 Richardson, P., 491 Richer, C., 494 Richmond, T., 443 Richter, L., 393, 398, 399, 405 Ricks, M. H., 306 Riggs, S. A., 205 Rinott, N., 112

Risser, H., 465, 477 Risser, S. D., 124 Ritchey, G., 99 Ritchie, C., 397 Ritter, P., 299 Rivera, F., 43, 62, 76, 77 Rivers, I., 323 Robert, P., 179 Roberts, P., 522, 531 Roberts, S. L., 107 Robertson, J., 277, 285 Robertson, R., 436 Robins, P. K., 254 Robinson, B. E., 320, 323, 328 Robinson, J., 63, 73, 74 Robitaille, C., 284 Robson, K., 99 Rochlen, A. B., 476, 477 Rodgers, B., 278, 534 Rodgers, R., 427 R€ odholm, M., 96 Rodrigue, J. R., 496, 497 Rodriguez, C., 181 Roer-Strier, D., 19, 435–458 Rogers, M. L., 274 Rogers, S. J., 283 Roggman, L., 37, 83, 94, 113, 255, 487, 541 Roh, H. M., 366 Rohner, R. P., 127, 307 Rojas, A., 459–485 Romney, A. K., 422 Romney, D., 37, 113, 119, 120 Rondal, J. A., 4, 96, 105 Ronen-Eilon, C., 436 Roopnarine, J., 113, 115, 116, 117, 298, 299, 435, 440, 491 Rose, E., 259 Rose-Krasnor, L., 124 Rosen, K. S., 101 Rosenbaum, P. R., 80 Rosenkoetter, S. E., 107 Rosenthal, N., 123 Rosenthal, R., 36 Rosenwasser, S. M., 45 Rosnow, R., 36 Rossi, A. S., 417 Rostgaard, T., 569 Roth, A., 203 Rothbaum, F., 101 Rothe, E. M., 275 Rothert, K., 179 Rousey, A. M., 491 Rovine, M., 4, 97, 106 Rowe, M. L., 105 Rowitz, L., 490, 492 Roy, K., 246, 255, 258, 304, 306

Author Index 637 Roy, R., 327 Roysamb, E., 184 Rubin, D., 36, 80 Rubin, K., 124, 359 Ruble, D. N., 331 Rumbaut, R., 439, 446 Russell, A., 37, 119, 121, 126, 127, 159 Russell, D., 505 Russell, G., 7, 8, 36, 119, 120, 126, 127 Russell, S., 42, 328 Rust, J., 331, 332 Rutherford, E., 45 Rutman, D., 528, 529 Rutter, M., 279, 282, 327, 332, 486, 496, 498 Ryan, G. W., 446, 519 Ryan, R., 43, 44, 70, 77, 122, 188, 301, 302, 519 Ryan, R. M., 257, 258, 259, 260, 517, 524, 525, 534, 540 Ryan, S., 43, 186, 187 Rycraft, J. R., 436 Ryu, H. S., 360 Ryu, J. S., 347 Saavedra, L. M., 460 Sabaawi, M., 494, 506 Sabatier, C., 444, 445, 446 Sabourin, S., 494 Saebel, J., 37, 119, 126, 159 Saenz, D., 223 Sagi, A., 100, 103, 115, 306, 463, 473, 474, 477 Saint-Jacques, M., 284 Saitoh, H., 343 Sakai, A., 369 Sakai, K., 348, 349 Salem, P., 210 Sales, B. D., 210 Salkever, D., 490 Salmi, M., 566, 567 Saloviita, T., 491, 492, 495, 505, 507 Saluter, A., 208 Salway, S., 111 Sameroff, A., 128 Sanchez, S., 416 Sandberg, J. F., 37, 62 Sandefur, G., 38, 241, 250, 254, 279, 298, 299, 301, 313, 523, 524, 525 Sanders, P., 8, 36 Sanderson, S., 45 Sanders-Thompson ,V. L. T., 45 Sandler, I., 169, 185, 186, 208, 210, 225, 229 Santos, A. J., 101, 102, 116 Saraza, M., 96 Sarkadi, A., 38, 39, 60, 67, 76, 80, 125 Sasaki, K., 372 Sasawaga, I., 372 Sassler, S., 283

Sato, R., 372 Saunders, R., 526 Savin-Williams, R. C., 319 Savitz, D. A., 497, 498 Sawin, D. B., 96, 111, 113 Sayer, L., 279, 467 Sayer, L. C., 179 Sbarra, D. A., 210 Scadden, L., 330, 331 Scafidi, F., 116 Scapillato, D., 465 Scarr, S., 96 Scelza, B. A., 418 Schacher, S. J., 326, 327 Schacht, P. M., 157, 168 Schaeffer, N. C., 187 Schafer, W. D., 101 Schaffer, H. R., 99, 486 Scharf, M., 306 Scheeren, A. M., 498 Schenck, C. E., 223 Schermerhorn, A. C., 124, 154, 155, 161, 162, 165, 170 Scherrer, J. F., 461 Scheurer-Englisch, H., 125, 130, 131 Schiffman, R. P., 98 Schilling, R. F., 490 Schimmele, C. M., 183 Schindler, H., 79, 188 Schinke, S. P., 490 Schloesser, A., 541 Schmitt, J., 567 Schock, A. M., 468 Schoen, R., 179, 251 Schoeni, R. F., 532 Schonpflug, U., 441 Schopler, E., 489, 490, 492, 495, 505 Schoppe-Sullivan, S., 69, 97, 106, 123 Schrepf, N. A., 5 Schudlich, T. D., 95 Schultz, C. L., 506 Schultz, N. C., 506 Schulz, M. S., 251 Schwartz, S., 68, 69, 204, 223, 441 Sciarra, D. T., 437 Scorgie, K., 492 Scott, E., 179, 204 Scott, J., 122 Scott, K. L., 471 Scott, M. E., 107 Scourfield, J., 112, 529 Sear, R., 416, 427 Searle, W., 436 Sears, R. R., 129 Seccombe, K., 283 Sechiyama, H., 377

638 AUTHOR INDEX Seefeldt, K. S., 531 Segal-Engelchin, D., 322 Seiffge-Krenke, I., 126 Seitz, V., 300 Seligman, M., 487, 489, 490, 495, 505 Sellers, A. H., 9 Sellers, M. J., 99 Seltzer, J., 187, 188, 208, 218, 254, 255, 258, 533, 534, 535 Seltzer, M. M., 490, 493, 507 Selzer, J. A., 301 Senior, R., 108 Serpell, R., 400 Servis, L., 66, 70–71 Serwik, A., 123 Seung, H. K., 502 Seward, R., 536, 570 Shanahan, M. J., 283 Shannon, J., 4, 43, 77, 98, 110, 120, 123, 188, 258, 260, 301, 302, 304, 307, 310, 442, 519, 538, 540 Shannon, J. D., 299, 301, 523, 525, 534 Shao, Y., 130, 131 Sharir, H., 95, 114 Sharpe, S., 127 Shaver, S., 528 Shaw, C., 119 Shaw, D. S., 460 Shaw, S., 302 Shea, J. M., 467 Sheehan, G., 579, 580 Sheets, V. L., 211 Shek, D. T., 370 Shek, Y. L., 442 Sheldon, S., 551 Shelton, E. J., 486 Shelton, K. H., 163, 166, 168 Shemilt, I., 109, 111 Shen, H.-Y., 359 Sherman, C., 476, 477 Sherr, R., 108 Sherrod, L. R., 417 Sherrod, R. B., 4, 97, 114, 115 Sherwood, K. E., 255, 533 Shigeto, A., 102 Shimoni, R., 436, 438, 445, 450 Shin, H. S., 369 Shin, N., 70, 81 Shindo, T., 497 Shiono, P. H., 201 Shiri, S., 96 Shirlow, P., 170 Shoham, R., 100, 115 Shoham, V., 495 Shoji, J., 358 Shonkoff, J. P., 491

Shook, S., 496 Shoppe-Sullivan, S., 155 Shor, R., 437 Shulman, S., 126 Shwalb, B. J., 343 Shwalb, D. W., 18, 341–387 Sidle Fulgni, A., 110 Siegel, A. U., 119 Sigafoos, J., 507 Sigal, A., 210 Sigle-Rushton, W., 38, 39, 40 Silberg, J. L., 279, 282 Silva, P. A., 107 Silverberg, S., 126 Silverman, W. K., 460 Silverstein, L. B., 10, 34, 42, 298, 301, 323, 324, 326, 327, 467, 473, 478 Simeonsson, R. J., 508 Simmerman, S., 495 Simmons, R. G., 126 Simmons, T., 320 Simon, R. W., 181, 182 Simons, G. L., 282 Simons, L., 43 Simons, R. L., 217, 226, 282, 534 Simpson, B., 579 Singer, G. H., 492, 506, 507 Singer, J. B., 211 Singh, I., 468 Singh, J., 494, 506 Singh, N. N., 494, 506 Single, J. P., 211, 227 Sinno, S. M., 121 Sisk, P. J., 533 Skelton, E. J., 488 Skinner, E., 69 Skop, E., 444 Slattery, S. C., 45 Sligo, J., 107 Sliter, J. K., 107 Sloper, P., 489 Slutske, W. S., 185 Sluzki, C. E., 436 Small, S. A., 66 Smallwood, S., 554 Smart, C., 112 Smeaton, D., 569 Smeeding, T., 430, 557 Smimizu, Y., 353 Smith, A., 442, 557, 569, 570 Smith, A. B., 211, 227 Smith, C., 327 Smith, D. J., 393 Smith, D. W., 330 Smith, J. R., 283, 313, 534 Smith, K., 119, 259

Author Index 639 Smith, L., 327 Smith, M., 119, 554, 555, 567 Smith, P. K., 397 Smith, S. E., 180 Smith, T. B., 491 Smock, P. J., 187, 188, 242, 251, 258, 272, 273, 309, 580 Smollar, J., 127 Smuts, B. B., 417 Smyrnios, K. X., 506 Smyth, B., 210, 220, 579, 580, 585, 590, 591, 592, 611 Snarey, J., 49 Snyder, J. R., 159 Snyder, T., 69 Sobolewski, J., 43, 177, 183, 185, 187, 189, 190, 221, 222, 225, 226, 250, 260, 282, 473 Sobsey, D., 492 Sofronoff, K., 502 Solaz, A., 557 Solheim, E., 446 Solomon, Y., 109, 111, 121, 126, 127, 131 Son, L., 49 Sone, H., 372 Sonenstein, F. L., 30, 242, 531 Song, J. R., 352 Song, Y. H., 368 Song, Z., 365 Sorensen, E., 208, 218, 219, 220, 221, 301, 522, 535 Sorenson, E., 242, 254 South, S. J., 179, 251 Sparen, P., 497, 498 Speak, S., 114 Spelke, E., 99 Spencer, A., 327 Spendlove, S. J., 472 Spicer, P., 302 Spicker, B. S., 115 Spinks, J., 342 Sprengelmeyer, A., 96 Sprengelmeyer, R., 96 Sprujit, E., 184 Srebnik, D., 467 Srinivasan, S., 440 Srivastav, 115 Sroufe, L. A., 102, 307 Ssennyonga, J. W., 391 Stacey, J., 320, 321 Stack, C. B., 299 Stahl, P. M., 210, 228 Stamps, L. E., 212 Stancliffe, R. J., 487 Standish, N. J., 179 Stanley, J. C., 215 Stanley, S., 180, 523

Stanley-Hagan, M. M., 107 Stansfield, S., 129 Starr, R. H., 260, 299, 301, 302, 313 Staruch, K. S., 490 Staton, L., 156, 225 Stauder, J. E. A., 498 Steele, H., 102, 103 Steele, M., 102, 103 Stein, A., 96, 98, 108, 117, 461, 479 Stein, G. L., 438 Steinberg, J., 116, 329 Steinberg, L., 65, 122, 126, 127 Stephens, A., 96 Stephens, L. S., 187 Sternberg, K. J., 218, 227 Stevens, M., 328 Stevens, P., 112 Stevenson, H., 541 Stewart, A. J., 49, 228, 229, 281 Stewart, M. A., 496 Stewart, S., 187, 218, 221, 222, 258, 274, 359, 580 Stickle, T. R., 495 Stieglitz, J., 417 Stier, H., 558 Stirling, K., 182 Stocker, C., 163 Stolz, H., 64, 68, 77 Stolzenberg, R. M., 251 Stoneman, Z., 120, 491, 493, 494, 503 Stoppelbein, L., 460 Storey, A. E., 96 Størksen, I., 184 Story, L. B., 158, 180 Strega, S., 528, 529 Strier, R., 19, 435–458 Stroh, K., 437 Strohschein, L., 186, 281 Stropnik, N., 566, 567 Struening, K., 523, 525 Struss, M., 226 Stueve, J. L., 61, 65, 279, 467 Sturge-Apple, M. L., 155, 156, 161 Sturgess, W., 126 Su, J. C., 130, 437, 445, 446 Su, Y., 110, 442 Suarez-Orozco, C., 436, 437, 439 Suarez-Orozco, M. M., 436, 437 Suchindran, C. M., 274 Sudia, C. E., 5 Suess, G. J., 102 Sugawara, K., 369, 370, 377 Sugawara, M., 369, 370, 377 Sugie, S., 351 Sugland, B. W., 274 Suh, S. H., 344, 362

640 AUTHOR INDEX Sullivan, A. M., 488 Sullivan, M. L., 255, 533 Sullivan, O., 62, 73, 557 Summers, J., 302, 541 Sun, L., 115, 367 Sun, Y., 185, 186 Super, C. M., 394, 395, 396, 400, 413, 424, 425, 428 Suppal, P., 116 Sussman, A. L., 98 Sutton, P. D., 272, 517 Suzuki, M., 497 Svare, G. M., 271, 284 Svejda, M., 105 Swank, A. B., 179 Sweeney, D., 497, 498, 499, 500, 507 Sweeney, M. M., 178, 179, 183, 286 Sweet, J. A., 201, 274 Swisher, R., 259 Swiss, L., 187 Sylva, K., 98, 117 Szalacha, L. A., 438 Szapocznik, J., 444, 446, 475 Szatmari, P., 497, 503 Tach, L., 257, 259, 260 Tachble, A., 110, 438, 444, 450 Taffe, J., 497, 498, 499, 500, 507 Takagi, K., 372 Takahashi, K., 342 Takala, P., 566, 567 Taketani, K., 497 Takuma, N., 377 Talukder, 115 Tambs, K., 184 Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., 4, 9, 17, 37, 43, 44, 62, 77, 98, 111, 120, 123, 154, 155, 188, 255, 258, 260, 296–318, 440, 442, 519, 520, 534, 538, 540 Tanaka, K., 372 Tanaka, S., 364, 497, 569, 570 Tanaka, Y., 349 Tangwa, G. F., 403 Tankersley, L., 160 Tanner, J. L., 185 Tardif, S. D., 416 Tarkow, A., 304, 310 Tasker, F., 5, 18, 319–340, 466, 467, 468, 469, 471, 472, 475 Taunt, H. M., 499, 507 Taylor, A., 190, 225, 260, 461, 479, 579 Taylor, B., 437, 441 Taylor, K., 330 Taylor, M., 505 Tazi-Preve, M., 553 Teachman, J., 179, 270, 272, 279

Tedrow, L. M., 270, 272 Tehee, E., 499 Tein, J., 185, 225 Teitler, J. O., 242, 253, 302, 397 Teitler, N., 178 Temple, J., 590, 591 Tenebaum, H. R., 122 Tennenbaum, D., 126 Teti, D. M., 114, 115 Texidor, M. S., 115 Thoennes, N., 7 Thomas, E., 534, 535 Thomas, P. A., 188 Thompson, E. H., 486 Thompson, J. S., 437 Thompson, L., 158 Thompson, R. A., 7, 98, 218, 227 Thomson, C., 271 Thomson, E., 7, 218, 251, 278, 279, 281, 282 Thomson, R., 127 Thornton, A., 247, 251 Thuen, F., 180 Thurston, I. B., 459–485 Tiano, J. D., 463, 466, 472 Tillman, K. H., 279, 283 Timaeus, I. M., 399 Timberlake, J. M., 309 Timmer, S. G., 186 Tippins, T. M., 210 Tither, J. M., 125 Tobari, M., 358 Todorov, A., 437, 461 Tollefson, D., 465, 477 Tolmie, J., 588 Tomasello, M., 8 Tondo, C., 210 Tonge, B., 497, 498, 499, 500, 507 Torrecilha, R., 437 Torres, N., 101, 102, 116 Tota, M. E., 120 Townsend, N., 402, 403 Townsend, N. W., 259 Trainor, L. J., 96 Tran, A. G. T., 130, 437, 445, 446 Treas, J., 437 Treffers, P., 466, 479 Trehub, S. E., 96 Trejos-Castillo, R., 438 Trinder, L., 580 Tripp-Reimer, T., 448 Troilo, J., 186 Tronick, E. Z., 413 Troxel, W. M., 225 Trute, B., 490, 491, 492 Tsai, L., 496 Tschann, J. M., 219, 220, 228, 229

Author Index 641 Tsuchiya, M., 366 Tsunetsugu, K., 358 Tulananda, O., 117 Tully, E. C., 461 Turkheimer, E., 185 Turner, A., 330 Turner, P., 328, 330, 331 Turner, S., 489 Turrittin, J., 394 Tyrer, P., 528 Uka, N., 397 Umberson, D., 181, 183, 227 Underwood, M. K., 124 Unyk, A. M., 96 Updegraff, K., 108, 130, 442, 444 Utens, E., 466, 479 Uzgiris, J., 104 Vadasy, P. F., 489, 494, 505 Vaden-Kiernan, N., 39 Vaillant, G. E., 49 Valcante, G., 502 Valentine, G., 272 Valentine, P., 424, 426 van der Ende, J., 461, 479 van der Leeden, A., 466, 479 van der Valk, I., 184 Van de Vijver, F. J. R., 446, 448 Vandewater, E., 229 Van Dulmen, M., 70 Van Egeren, L. A., 508 Van Hall, E., 328 van IJzendoorn, M. H., 4, 98, 101, 102, 306, 330 Van Schaik, C. P., 417 van Widenfelt, B., 466, 479 Vatz Laaroussi, M., 446 Vaughn, B. E., 82, 101, 102, 116 Vaziri, M., 321, 333 Vazsonyi, A. T., 438 Vedder, P., 441, 445 Veenstra, R., 185, 281 Vega, E., 446, 447, 449 Vega-Lahr, N., 116 Velez, C., 201–240 Veneziano, R. A., 421 Venohr, J. C., 205, 209, 211, 605 Ventura, S. J., 241, 272, 309, 517 Venuti, P., 504 Verhulst, F. C., 185, 281, 461, 479 Verissimo, M., 101, 102, 116 Vermulst, A. A., 156 Veroff, J., 186 Verscheuren, K., 103 Vetere, A., 470

Veum, J. R., 533 Videon, T. M., 186 Vietze, P. M., 104, 115 Vignoli, D., 179 Vinter, L., 111 Vintner, L., 111 Vogel, C., 258, 301, 302, 519, 525 Vogel, S., 350 Volk, H. E., 461 Volkmer, H. J., 113 Volling, B. L., 4, 97, 101, 107, 123, 162, 307, 308 von Knorring, L., 344 Votruba, A., 207 Votruba-Diaz, E., 79 Wachs, T., 104 Wagatsuma, H., 345, 357, 375 Wagner, M., 179, 185 Wahler, R. G., 494, 506 Wainwright, J., 42, 328 Waite, L. J., 241, 251 Wakamatsu, S., 372 Waldfogel, J., 570 Waldman, D., 301 Waldron, M. C., 210 Walker, A. J., 158 Walker, E. M., 117 Walker, H., 114 Walker, J., 579 Walker, K. M., 117 Walker, R., 208, 209 Walker, T. B., 204 Wall, K., 559, 565 Wall, S., 98, 101 Waller, M., 114, 246, 252, 255, 259 Wallerstein, J., 211, 220 Walmsley, C., 528, 529 Wals, M., 461, 479 Walsemann, 518 Walsh, C. J., 96 Walsh, P. N., 493 Walters, J., 466, 467, 468, 469, 471, 472, 473, 475 Walzer, S., 66 Wampler, K. S., 282 Wang, H., 181, 183, 184 Wang, J. J., 437 Wang, L., 365 Wang, M., 362, 371 Wang, Q., 130, 131 Wang, R., 72 Wang, X., 101 Wang, Z., 367 Wanless, S. B., 107 Ward, C., 97, 436

642 AUTHOR INDEX Ward, N. J., 495, 498, 499, 500, 501 Ward, S. L., 204 Ware, H. S., 166 Warfield, M. E., 491, 493, 495, 505 Warin, J., 109, 111, 112, 121, 126, 127, 131 Warren-Leubecker, A., 96 Warshak, R. A., 204, 205 Warwick, I., 528 Waschbusch, D. A., 95 Washbrook, E., 110 Wasik, B. H., 438 Waters, E., 98, 101 Wattenberg, E., 533 Weaver, G., 541 Webster-Stratton, C., 463, 464 Weimer, A. A., 223 Weinberger, J., 7, 128, 129, 130 Weinger, S., 393 Weinick, R. M., 251 Weinraub, M., 15, 105, 113 Weiß, B., 179, 185 Weisner, T., 395, 396, 401, 403, 446 Weiss, Y., 535 Weissman, M. M., 20, 461 Weisz, J. R., 479 Weitzman, L. J., 211, 216 Welkowitz, J., 120 Welles-Nystrom, B., 400 Wellman, H. M., 123 Wells, Y. D., 210 Welsh, D. P., 160 Wen, M., 283 West, A. F., 98, 117 West, J., 110, 217, 302, 313, 442, 518, 520, 521 West, M. M., 113 West, S., 486, 504 Western, B., 246, 253 Weston, D. M., 102 Weston, H. E., 167 Weston, R., 585, 590, 591 Wheeler, L. A., 130 Wheelock, J., 109 Whilde, M. R., 476 Whisman, M., 156 Whitbeck, L. B., 217, 226, 534 White, D., 113 White, J., 49, 51 White, L., 226, 252, 279, 282, 283 Whitehead, B. D., 5 Whiteman, S., 46 Whiteside, M. F., 226 Whiting, B. B., 396 Whiting, J. W. M., 396, 420, 422 Whitney, R. A., 208 Whittell, B., 493, 495

Wikoff, R. L., 97 Wilcox, W. B., 245, 252, 523 Wild, M., 66, 123 Wildeman, C., 253 Wilemsen, E., 99 Wilkes, J. R., 437 Wilkie, J. R., 520 Wille, D., 96 Williams, C. L., 183, 227 Williams, D., 557, 569, 570 Williams, J., 121, 208 Williams, K., 180, 181, 182, 183 Williams, K. M., 518 Williams, R., 111, 113, 605, 606 Williams, T. Y., 185, 190 Williams, V. S., 531 Willis, R. J., 535 Willoughby, J. C., 490 Willoughby, M., 160 Wilmoth, J., 182 Wilson, B., 554 Wilson, C. J., 462 Wilson, K. G., 494 Wilson, M., 272, 460 Wilson, W. J., 246 Wiltz, J., 499 Windle, M., 156, 162 Wineberg, H., 274 Wingfield, J. C., 225 Winking, J., 417 Winkler, A., 536 Winkworth, G., 598 Winsler, A., 43 Wint, E., 299 Wintemute, R. W., 333 Winton, A. S., 494, 506 Wirth, R. J., 461 Wittman, J. P., 210 Woitch, M. J., 155 Wolchik, S. A., 186, 210, 223, 225 Wolfe, M., 332 Wolfinger, N. H., 245, 252, 271, 284 Wong, M. S., 102, 124 Woo, S. K., 368 Woodhead, M., 403 Woodward, L., 107, 185 Woollett, A., 113 Wright, I., 494 Wright, J., 95, 518 Wu, D. Y. H., 346 Wu, J., 183 Wu, L. L., 251 Wu, Z., 183 Wyers, N. L., 323, 328 Wymbs, B. T., 464, 477 Wynne-Edwards, R. E., 96

Author Index 643 Xi, R., 365 Xiane, S., 346 Xue, X., 343 Yaeger, D., 476 Yagashita, A., 377 Yalcinkaya, A., 84 Yamada, A., 497 Yamamoto, T., 18, 341–387 Yan, Y., 371 Yang, B., 368 Yang, C. M., 351 Yarrow, L. J., 104, 115 Yaxley, D., 111 Ye, G., 343 Yeatts, D., 570 Yeo, C. K., 352, 362 Yerushalmi, H., 129 Yeung, C.S.H., 342 Yeung, W. J., 37, 62, 63, 67, 185, 313 Yi, S. H., 347 Yin, X., 370 Yogman, M. W., 104, 114 Yoon, S. Y., 354, 367 Yoshikawa, H., 111, 299, 442 Young, D. M., 491 Young, V., 111 Youngblade, L. M., 105, 122 Youniss, J., 127 Yu, H., 359 Yuan, A. S., 279, 281, 282 Yun, H. S., 357 Zabar-Ben Yehoshua, N., 448 Zacharostilianakis-Rousseau, I., 111 Zaff, J., 444

Zagorsky, J., 38, 40 Zamboagna, B. L., 472 Zaouche-Gaudron, C., 116 Zaslow, M., 116 Zautra, A. J., 185 Zechmeister, J., 322 Zehavi, N., 441 Zelazo, P. R., 98, 99 Zeng, Q., 367 Zhai, L., 359 Zhang, F., 365 Zhang, F.-H., 359 Zhang, J., 367 Zhang, L., 369 Zhang, W., 359, 362 Zhang, X., 367, 368 Zhang, Z., 180, 183 Zhao, S., 370 Zhou, M., 437, 439 Zhou, Y., 351, 362 Zhou, Z., 359 Zhu, H., 365 Zhu, Z., 343 Zigler, E. F., 98 Zilber, N., 436 Zill, N., 208, 279 Zimba, R. F., 394 Zimmerman, M. A., 518 Zimmermann, P., 125, 130, 131 Ziol-Guest, K. M., 257, 258, 259 Zottarelli, L., 570 Zou, H., 362 Zou, K., 367 Zuberbuhler, J., 597 Zucker, R. A., 461 Zvetina, D., 186 Zwaigenbaum, L., 497, 503

Subject Index Absent fathers, 5–7, 60. See also Divorced fathers; Noncustodial fathers; Nonresident fathers; Single mothers in Australia, 579–581 and child outcomes, 38–39, 250–254 Acceptance and commitment training (ACT), 506 Acculturation, 446 Ache´, 416, 426 Active parenting, 217 Adaptationist studies, 413, 416, 428 Adjustment, child. See Child adjustment Administration for Children and Family Services (ACF), 522 Adolescence/adolescents, 125–126 closeness to nonresident fathers, 226 father-adolescent relationships, 118–131 father’s influence on development, 128–131 importance of relationships with nonresident fathers, 225 including fathers in clinical interventions, 459–485 and parental depression, 460 as parents, 300 relationship between depression and stepfathers, 281 role of fathers in development of, 223 and sexual risk behaviors, 79 well-being and relationship with fathers, 226 Adoptive parenting, 277, 321, 330 Africa, 19, 388–412 developing new patterns of fatherhood, 406 education, 395 fatherhood in cultural context, 392–394, 394–396 future of fatherhood, 400–405 gender inequalities, 390 historical images of fatherhood, 390–391 overview of research on fathers, 396–400

644

policy research, 402–404 reaching fathers, 404–405 supporting fathers in parenting, 405–406 African Americans, 517. See also Black fathers and childhood poverty, 518 and fragile families, 241 and marriage, 253 and nonessential fathers, 299 African Charter on Human Rights and People’s Freedoms, 402 African Fathers Initiative, 405, 406 Aggression, marital, 165, 166, 167, 421 Aka, 117, 415, 416, 418, 423, 424–425, 428, 429–430, 431 Alcohol abuse, 70, 78, 183, 252, 259 paternal, 106, 164–165, 169, 460, 461 Alexithymia, 497, 503 Algeria, 442 Allo mothering, 118 Anorexia nervosa, 460 Antisocial characteristics, 461 Anxiety, 460, 466 Approximation Rule, 204–205 Asia. See East Asia Asperger syndrome, 502 Assisted reproduction, 319, 330, 334 Association of Practitioners, 532 Assortative mating, 461 Attachment security, 160 Attachment theory, 1, 81–82, 98–100, 123, 224, 306–307 Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, 461 Australia, 12, 21–22, 578–614 Authoritarian parenting style, 121–122 Authoritative parenting style, 64–65, 67, 84, 121–122, 189–190 Autism, 495–503 Autonomy, 86, 122 Avoidance, 506 Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), 110

Subject Index 645 Baltimore Men’s Start, 532 Bantu, 423 Bari, 424, 426, 431 Bayley Mental Development Index (MDI), 44 Behavioral parent training (BPT), 463, 470, 505 Behavior problems, children’s, 124, 125, 460, 461 Bem Sex Role Inventory, 30 Bernard van Leer Foundation (BvLF), 406 Best Interest of the Child (BIC)standard, 204, 584, 588 Bipolar disorder, 461 Birth attendance, 113 Birth registration, 403, 404 Black fathers, 49, 73, 299. See also African Americans and incarceration history, 253 involvement with children, 114, 257 relationship with children’s mother, 246 Bofi, 117, 416, 418 Breadwinning, 3, 76, 86, 109, 245, 443. See also Employment Bronfenbrenner’s theory, 82–83 Building Strong Families, 539–540 Butterfly metaphor, 445 Cameroon, 391, 392, 393, 394, 397, 398, 401 Canada, 21, 444, 526–530 Canada Child Tax Benefit, 528 Caregiving. See Child care Caribbean men, 298–299 Chameleon metaphor, 445 Charting Parenthood (Child Trends), 71–72, 73 Child abuse, 272 Child adjustment: to divorce, 184–186, 215 and marital conflict, 156 and parental alcohol abuse, 165 and parenting time, 225–227 and paternal depression, 163 Child Behavior Checklist, 331 Childbirth, 419 Child care, 8, 65–66, 110–111 in African societies, 397, 401 in Australia, 591 and children with intellectual disabilities, 490, 491 in hunter-gatherer societies, 117–118, 417 and marital unhappiness, 108 Child custody. See Custody Child development: in African culture, 397–398 cognitive and behavioral skills, 104–105

development of father-child relationships, 95–97 influence of Chinese fathers on, 365–366 influence within families, 105–118 linguistic development, 105 parents’ effect on, 122 and paternal masculinity orientation, 45–46 role of fathers in adolescence, 223 and same-sex parents, 327–333 Child Development Supplement (CDS), 37, 59, 69, 70 Child Disability Benefit, 528 Child effects model, 190–191 Childhood: father-child relationships during, 118–131 poverty, 518–519 Childhood Development Survey (CDS), 74 Child outcomes, 31–33, 38–40 and de facto parenting time, 225–227 and immigration, 444–446 and paternal involvement, 58–93 theoretical linkages with paternal involvement, 75–87 Child-related work, 65 Children: association between adjustment and father’s involvement, 130 and behavior problems, 124, 125 and clinical interventions, 459–485 community connections, 66 contact with nonresident fathers, 186–189 costs of, 604–605, 607–608 with developmental disabilities, 486–516 and divorce, 16, 177–200 (See also Divorce) educational performance, 122–123, 161 effects of immigration, 437 emotional security, 169 and fragile families, 254–261 of gay fathers, 328–333 gender attitudes, 46 gender development, 331–333 indirect care of, 65–66 and marital conflict, 154, 159, 166 and necessity of parenting time, 227–228 and nonresident fathers, 190–191, 260–261 and parents’ relationship, 110 and poverty (See Poverty) psychopathology in East Asia, 369–371 and stepfathers, 278–279, 280–283 stereotyped views of parental roles, 7, 121 time with fathers in Europe, 556–558 and unmarried parents, 250 Children Act of 1989, 284 Children’s Contact Services, 602

646 SUBJECT INDEX Child support, 9–10, 189 in Australia, 583, 600, 603–611 and child well-being, 260–261 and fathers’ continued involvement with children, 259 and fragile families, 254 and public policy, 527, 528, 530, 532–535 and unmarried fathers, 255–256 Child welfare, 528–529 China, 18–19, 341–387. See also East Asia childhood psychopathology, 370–371 family and school contexts, 351 father-child relationships, 362 fathers’ influence on personality development, 368–369 fathers’ influence on social development, 367 future of fatherhood, 375–376 historical and cultural context of fathering, 345–346 images of fathers, 359 public policy and fathering, 355–356 quality of research on fathering, 343–344 women’s roles, 353–354 work and fathers, 349 Christianity, 391, 393 Clinical interventions, 20, 459–485 barriers to fathers’ involvement, 466–471 for children with developmental disabilities, 504–506 predictors of fathers’ involvement, 471–474 treatment barriers from mental health perspective, 469–471 ways to increase fathers’ involvement in, 475–478 Cofathering, 277, 287 Cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT), 465–466, 506 Cognitive development, 104–105, 107, 125, 365–366 Cohabiting couples, 39, 111–112, 251, 273, 274, 286, 311 Communication styles, 8–9, 104 Community responsibility, 66, 67 Community social capital, 84 Compassion Capital Fund, 522 Conflict: and immigration, 130–131 interparental, 470 marital (See Marital conflict) Confucianism, 345, 346, 375 Contact Orders Program, 601–602 Contextualism, 400–402

Continuity of expenditure principle, 605–606 Control, 64, 67, 71, 86 and child outcomes, 77 levels and change over time, 73–74 Coparenting, 508 Coping skills, 489–490, 493–494, 495, 500, 501, 506 Cornell Parent Behavior Inventory, 427 Cortisol reactivity, 161 Cost of Children Table, 607 Couples relationship education, 523 Couvade, 419–420 Cross-cultural studies, 117–118, 374–377, 413, 419–423, 438 Cross-sex socialization influence, 46 Cuckoo bird metaphor, 445 Cultural identity, 440 Culture: defined, 415 and fatherhood, 18–19 and fathers’ roles in Africa, 397–400 historical changes in fatherhood in East Asia, 345–347 and migration, 130–131 and nonessential fathers, 298–299 and nonmarital childbearing, 252 Culture core, 422 Culture shock, 436 Custody, 201–240. See also Joint custody contemporary alternative standards, 204–206 current practice, 208–213 empirical comparisons with parenting time, 213–217 and high parental conflict, 228–230 processes at arriving at provisions of, 209–213 public opinion about, 206–207 and public policy, 535 recommendations for decision makers, 230–231 standards, 203–207 Deadbeat dads, 297, 301–306 Death, 40 De facto parent, 284 Deficit perspective, 436–437, 447, 450 Degendered parenting, 327 De jure legal and physical custody, 208 De jure parenting time, 208–209 Delinquency, 70, 78, 79 Demic diffusion, 422, 423 Democratic Republic of the Congo, 425 Demographic renewal, 553 Denmark, 569

Subject Index 647 Depression, 70, 78, 125 adolescent, 281 and alcohol abuse, 460 childhood, 460 and divorce, 183 and immigration, 436 maternal, 107–108, 128, 156 parents’, 124, 164, 460 paternal, 107–108, 156, 162–163, 169, 461, 489–490, 492 Developmental disabilities, 20–21, 486–516 Diaspora, 422 Differential reactivity hypothesis, 166–167, 167–168 Discipline, 124, 349, 472 Discrimination, 330, 443 Dispute resolution, 593, 598 Dissonant acculturation, 446 Distal contact, 114 Distant fathers, 425 Divorce, 311, 517 in Australia, 578–614 and child outcomes, 250–254 in China, 351 consequences for men and fathers, 180–184 family relationships and well-being after, 201–240 father involvement after, 221–225 gay fathers, 323–325 implications for practice and policy, 192–193 implications for research, 231–232 and infidelity, 252 in Japan, 350 in Korea, 351 men compared with women, 181–183 men’s adjustment to, 184 nonresident fathers’ involvement with routine activities, 217 predictors of, 179–180 and public policy, 535 rate of, 178–179 recommendations for future research, 191–192 and substance abuse, 252 and violence within marriage, 252 when there is high conflict, 228–230 worldwide increase in, 179 Divorced fathers, 5–7, 15–16, 17, 177–200. See also Absent fathers; Noncustodial fathers; Single mothers and child support, 189 compared with childless men, 183 stability and change in contact with children, 188–189

DNA testing, 389 Down syndrome, 496, 503–504 Drinking. See Alcohol abuse Early childhood: development of father-child relationships, 95–97 education programs, 541–542 Early Child Longitudinal Survey-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), 521 Early Head Start, 540, 541 Early Head Start Fragile Families study, 521 Early Head Start National Evaluation Father Study, 302, 303 East Africa, 424, 425 East Asia, 18–19, 341–387 childhood psychopathology, 369–371 comparative research, 360–361, 363–364 cross-cultural studies, 374–377 empirical studies of fathers, 357–361 fathering research in transition, 377–378 fathers’ influence on personality development, 368–369 fathers’ influence on social development, 366–368 father-son relationships, 375 influence of fathers on child development, 365–371 transition to fatherhood, 371–374 Economics, 252, 299–301 Education: in Africa, 395 in East Asia, 350–352 increasing parenting skills, 537–542 mother’s, 252 and unmarried fathers, 246 Educational performance, 122–123, 127–128, 161 Efe, 425 Effect size, 36 EMBU scale, 344, 359, 368, 369, 371 Emotional availability, 161, 223 Emotional responsibility, 66 Emotional security, 168, 169 Emotional security theory (EST), 157 Emotional support, 9 Employment, 8, 51–52, 108–109, 116 as barrier to fathers’ involvement with clinical interventions, 468 and child care, 110–111 in East Asia, 347–350 in Europe, 554–556 in families of children with intellectual disabilities, 492–493 maternal, 74–75 paternal, 252, 443

648 SUBJECT INDEX Employment (continued ) and public policy, 536–537 and public policy in Europe, 551–577 Engagement, father’s, 60–63, 67, 71–75, 77, 98 Engagement and responsibility, 190 Equality, gender, 405, 422, 442, 558 Equal time, 585–586 Essential father hypothesis, 27, 34–48, 51 Ethiopia, 438, 442 Ethnic minority groups, 113 Ethnographic studies, 413, 419, 423–428 Europe: paternity leave, 112 public policy, 21 work and family policies, 551–577 Evolutionary studies, 413, 416–419 Executive capacity, 103 Expansionist history, 422 Extended families, 437 Externalizing behavior, 160, 169, 460–461 Families: in Africa, 388–412 changing demographics, 519 and children with developmental disabilities, 487 in China, 351 disruptions to system, 107–108 effects of fathering in family context, 168–170 effects of welfare reform, 532 and European fathers, 553–556 father-child relationships, 14 fathering within dynamic family systems, 105–118 fathers and marriages, 154–176 fathers’ role conflict in East Asia, 348–350 fragile (See Fragile families) gay, 325–327 and immigration, 130–131, 437 importance of, 11 and incarceration history, 253 in Japan, 350–351 and joint custody, 215 in Korea, 351–352 and social processes, 108–109 stepfamilies, 275–280, 283 two-parent families, 94–153 with unmarried parents, 250 Family and Medical Leave Act, 536 Family cohesion, 107 Family Law Act, 580, 583–592, 598 Family planning, 540 Family Relationship Centers, 592–601 Family social capital, 84 Family systems theory, 487

Family Tax Benefit, 608–609 Farmers, 420, 421 Father absence. See Absent fathers Father-adolescent relationships, 126–128 Father-child activation relationship, 37, 82 Father-child relationships, 14 after divorce, 201–240, 580, 592 characteristics of, 114–116 during childhood and adolescence, 118–131 and children’s peer relationships, 124 comparative research studies, 363–364 development in early childhood, 95–97 East Asian, 361–365 in fragile families, 254–261 in hunter-gatherer societies, 417, 422, 428 and immigration, 444–446 importance of harmony between parents, 106–107 as indicator of quality of all family relationships, 126 and marital conflict, 158 and parenting time, 225–227, 227–228 as predictor of psychosocial development, 129 security of attachment, 101–104 in two-parent families, 94–153 vulnerable, 601–602 Father figures, 270 Fatherhood, 10 cross-cultural studies, 374–377 cultural context in Africa, 392–394 cultural shift in nature of, 519–520 in East Asia, 341–387 East Asia transition to, 371–374 and ethnicity, 113–114 future in Africa, 400–405, 406 and generativity, 28, 49 growth and limitations of East Asian research, 342–345 and immigration, 435–458 support systems in Australia, 602–603 Fatherhood-Masculinity Model, 27, 28–34, 34–48, 48–50 Fatherhood Research Initiative, 518, 520–522 Father-infant attachments, 98–105, 113, 115, 424–425 Fathering vulnerability hypothesis, 157–160, 160–162 Father-mother relationship, 259 Father presence, 38–40, 42–43, 60 Fathers, 29 absence of (See Absent fathers) of adolescents, 126–128, 223 and adolescent well-being, 226 African, 388–412

Subject Index 649 African American (See Black fathers) aggression, 166, 421 and alcohol abuse, 106, 164–165, 169 attitudes and relationship status at child’s birth, 248 Australian, 578–614 as breadwinners, 3, 76, 86, 109, 245, 443 childhood histories and current involvement, 307–308 of children with autism, 495–503 of children with developmental disabilities, 20–21, 486–516 of children with intellectual disabilities, 488–495, 503–504 and child’s peer relations, 123 Chinese, 341–387 and clinical interventions, 459–485 communication styles, 8–9, 104 comparative research, 360–361 consequences of divorce, 180–184 coping skills, 493–494 current political and social context in U. S., 518–526 death of, 40 and depression, 107–108, 156, 162–163, 169, 461, 489–490 development of attachments to infants, 98– 105 differences from mothers, 3–4, 10–11, 35–38, 119–121, 498–500 and discipline, 124 divorced (See Divorced fathers) earnings and employment, 252 East Asian, 357–361 effects of culture on, 18–19 effects on mothering, 43–45 emotional unavailability, 161 employment, 51–52, 116, 443 engagement, 60–63, 71–75 ethnographic studies, 423–428 European, 551–577 evolutionary studies, 416–419 in family context, 105–118, 168–170 in fragile families, 241–269 gay (See Gay fathers) and housework, 9 in hunter-gatherer societies, 413–434 and immigration, 439–446 importance of involvement, 3 incarcerated, 111, 246, 259, 309 and infants, 95–97 influence on adolescent development, 128–131 influence on children’s development, 1–26 influence on development of social skills, 123

influence on educational performance, 127–128 influence on personality development, 368 influence on social development, 366–368 intervention programs, 537–542 invisible, 404 involved (See Involved fathers) Japanese, 341–387 Korean, 341–387 level of education, 246 low-income (See Low-income fathers) male gender status, 31–33 and marital quality, 157–162 marriages and families, 154–176 and masculinity, 10, 13–14, 27, 30–31, 31–33, 50–52 masculinity orientation (See Masculinity orientation) mental health and marital functioning, 156, 246 multiple, 425–427 multiple images of, in Africa, 390–391 nonresident (See Nonresident fathers) and parental leave (See Paternity leave) as parental status and as parenting, 28–29 and play, 3, 36–37, 100, 102, 114–115, 116, 117, 120, 125, 424 as primary caregivers, 320 provisioning roles, 421 psychological functioning of, 15, 162–165 and psychological problems (See Mental health) and public policy, 517–550 public policy in East Asia, 355–357 quality and quantity of involvement after divorce, 221–225 relationship with stepfathers, 287 role in childbirth, 419 roles of, 2–4 and sex role development, 4 in small-scale cultures, 413–434 and social policy, 11–13 and substance abuse, 128, 246 teenage (See Teenage fathers) unmarried (See Unmarried fathers) in various world regions, 422 warmth, 5, 421–422 work and family policies in Europe, 551–577 Fathers Count bill, 532 Father-son relationships, 5, 375 Fertility, 525. See also Multipartnered fertility rates in Europe, 553 Filial piety, 346, 375 Financial capital, 83 Financial hardship, 113

650 SUBJECT INDEX Finland, 567 Fragile families, 16–17, 241–269 Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, 242–243, 539–540 Fragile Families Study, 178 Fragile X syndrome, 504 France, 444 Freud, Sigmund, 1, 94

Hunter-gatherer societies, 19, 413–434. See also Small-scale cultures and child care, 117–118 father involvement, 420 observations and future studies, 429–431 research issues, concepts and terms, 414–415 Husband-wife relationships, 353–355

Gatekeeping, maternal, 111, 112, 304–306, 580 Gay fathers, 5, 18, 319–340 divorced, 323–325 living apart from their children, 333 living with their children, 329–333 planned families, 325–327 preparing children to deal with society, 322–323 whose children live with their mothers, 328–329 Gender, child: and fathers’ interactions, 113 and marital conflict, 159 Gender development, 331–333 Gender differences: and parenting, 35–38 and stepfathers, 282 Gender equality, 422, 442, 558 Gender identity, 442 Gender inequalities, 390, 405 Gender orientation, 49 Gender role differentiation, 490 Gender roles, 469 Gender role theory, 158 Gender socialization, 45–46, 467 Gender status, 49 Generative/resilience perspective, 437–438, 450 Generativity, 28, 49, 50, 450 Germany, 566, 567 Grandparents, 416, 418, 581

Iceland, 565, 568, 571 Identity, father’s, 440 Identity construction, 276–278 Immigration, 19–20, 435–458 effects on fathers, 436–437, 439–446 and family cohesion, 437 and family conflict, 130–131 and fragile families, 245 longitudinal studies, 449 research methodological challenges, 446–450 socialization strategies, 445–446 theoretical framework, 436–438 and unemployment, 436 Important father hypothesis, 27–28, 47–48 Incarceration, 111, 246, 253, 259, 309 Income, family, 40, 283 Income shares, 607–608 Indirect care, 8–9, 65–66, 67, 70–71, 74, 86 Individuation, 126 Infancy, early, 95–97 African Americans, 114 development of father-infant attachments, 98–105 father involvement in world regions, 422 medically compromised, 98 Infertility, 392, 393 Infidelity, 252 Intellectual competence, 104 Intellectual disabilities, 488–495 effect on fathers, 503–504 and parental stress, 491–492 and paternal depression, 492 Intergenerational transmission of parenting, 306–309 Internalizing behaviors, 160, 169, 460 Internal working model, 306–307, 415 International Fatherhood Summit, 405 Interparental conflict, 470 Interparental processes, 154, 161 Intervention programs, 76, 169, 284, 494, 537–542 for African fathers, 405–406 in Australia, 592–601 for fathers of autistic children, 501–503 for immigrant fathers, 450 Intimate fathers, 424–425

Hadza, 416, 418 Hardship, 493 Harmonic responsiveness, 495 Head Start program, 541 Healthy Marriage Initiative, 517, 520–526, 539 Hispanics: and childhood poverty, 518 fathers’ involvement with children, 257 and fragile families, 241 and marriage, 253 Hmong, 437, 445 Homosexual fathers. See Gay fathers Household Expenditure Survey, 604 Housework, 9

Subject Index 651 Involved fathers, 3, 7–8, 14, 58–93. See also Paternal involvement and child outcome, 40–41 and child’s educational performance, 122–123 and child’s gender, 113 effects of public policy on, 530–537 in fragile families, 254–261 and infants, 116 and maternal employment, 108–109 personalities of, 112–113 positive effects on children, 124–125 as predictor of adolescent’s security, 130 revised conceptualization of, 59–68 Islam, 389, 391, 393 Israel, 438, 442–443 Japan, 18–19, 341–387. See also East Asia childhood psychopathology, 369–370 comparative research studies, 363–364 family and school contexts, 350–351 father-child relationships, 361–362 fathers’ employment and work roles, 347–349 fathers’ influence on social development, 366–367 future of fatherhood, 375 historical and cultural context of fathering, 345 images of fathers, 357–358 public policy and fathering, 355 research publications on fathering, 343 transition to fatherhood, 371–373 women’s roles, 353 Joint custody, 205–206, 207, 209, 213–217. See also Shared custody in Australia, 583 and public policy, 535 Kangaroo metaphor, 445 Kenya, 393 Kipsigis, 424, 428, 431 Korea, 18–19, 341–387. See also East Asia childhood psychopathology, 371 comparative research studies, 363–364 family and school contexts, 351–352 father-child relationships, 362–363 fathers’ influence on personality development, 369 fathers’ influence on social development, 367–368 future of fatherhood, 377 historical and cultural context of fathering, 346–347 images of fathers, 359–360

influence of fathers on child development, 366 public policy and fathering, 357 quality of research on fathering, 344–345 transition to fatherhood, 373 women’s roles, 354 work and fathers, 348–349, 349–350 !Kung, 117, 416, 423 Lamb-Pleck conceptualization, 59–68 Language, 36 Latinos, 438 Learning: fathers’ influence on, 365–366 Lesbian mothers, 42, 321–322, 327–328, 334 Linguistic development, 105 Longitudinal studies, 160–162, 163–164, 449, 507 Los Angeles Study of Families and Communities, 521 Low-income fathers, 17, 98, 242, 296–318, 517 in Australia, 609–610 in Canada, 526–528 and healthy relationships, 524 involvement with their children, 302 stuck in histories, 306–309 uninvolved with their children, 304–306 views about cohabiting, 311 views about divorce, 311 views about marriage, 309–313 Maladaptive behavior, 460 Male gender status, 29–30, 31–32 Marginalization, paternal, 554 Marital conflict, 15, 156–158, 523 and child adjustment, 154 and children’s emotional security, 164 children’s exposure to, 166–168 and child’s gender, 159 custody after divorce, 228–230 and fathers’ psychological functioning, 162–165 harmful effects of, 13, 107 Marital satisfaction, 125–126, 130 Marriage: dissenters of, 309–313 fathers and families, 154–176 as marker of of parental interaction with children, 106 quality and fathering, 157–162 value of, 309–312 Marriage movement, 523 Marriage-Plus, 525 Martu Aborigines, 416, 418 Masculinity, 4–5, 10, 13–14, 27–57

652 SUBJECT INDEX Masculinity orientation, 30, 31–32, 33, 34, 45–46, 47–48 Mastery motivation, 104 Material indirect care, 65, 67, 86 Maternal gatekeeping, 111, 112, 304–306, 580 Maternal sensitivity, 97, 101 Maternal template, 487 Mating effort, 417 Medically compromised infants, 98 Men and Family Relationships Program, 602 MenEngage, 405, 406 Mental health, 20, 246, 459–485 and immigration, 437 and marital conflict, 162–165 and marital functioning, 156 maternal, 253 Mexican-Americans, 444, 472 Microsystem relationships, 83 Middle childhood, 111 Mindfulness interventions, 494, 506 Monogamy, 391 Mother-child relationships, 9, 15, 43, 119 in adolescence, 125–126 and attachment theory, 123 characteristics of, 114–116 and marital conflict, 158 Mother-father-child system, 104–105 Mother-father relationship, 259 Mother-infant attachments, 102 Mothers: and alcohol abuse, 165 communication styles, 104 depression, 107–108, 128, 156 differences from fathers, 10–11, 35–38, 119– 121, 498–500 earnings, 251 education and likelihood of marriage, 252 effects of depression on children, 107–108 employment, 116 employment and paternal involvement, 108–109 gatekeeping, 111, 112, 304–306, 580 influence from fathers, 43–45 influence on children, 130 interactions with children, 3–4 lesbian, 321–322, 327–328, 334 low-income, 524–525 mental health, 162, 253, 460 paternal child care during work hours, 74– 75 and paternal influence, 43 and paternal involvement, 68 and play, 120 relationship with adolescents, 127 single (See Single mothers) unmarried (See Nonmarital childbearing)

Multinational Time Use Surveys, 556 Multipartnered fertility, 245, 253, 525 Multiple fathers, 425–427 National Center for Marriage Research, 539 National Center on Families and Fathers, 532 National Child Benefit Supplement, 528 National Child Development Study (NCDS), 77, 119, 130 National Early Head Start Evaluation, 44 National Fatherhood Initiative, 40 National Health and Social Life Survey, 320 National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health), 42, 69–70 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), 39, 41, 60, 69, 78, 79 and divorce, 219 and fragile families, 243 National Survey of America’s Families, 178 National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), 62–63, 243 National Survey of Parents, 72, 73–74 Navajo, 427, 428 New Hope, 521 Ngandu, 429 NICHD Early Childcare Research Network, 110 NICHD Early Child Care Study, 116 Nonconformist parenting style, 121 Noncustodial fathers, 9, 169 Nonessential fathers, 298–301 Noninvolved fathers, 303–304 Nonmarital childbearing, 178, 241, 273, 309, 517, 519, 540. See also Single mothers in Africa, 389, 392 in Canada, 532 in Europe, 553 Nonresident fathers, 12, 16, 517. See also Absent fathers and adolescents, 225, 226 in Australia, 578–614 benefits of involvement with routine activities, 217 and childhood poverty, 518 and child outcomes, 38–40 and child well-being, 190–191, 260–261 and clinical interventions, 473 and delinquency, 79 involvement with children, 71, 254 and public policy, 526–527, 532–535 quality of involvement, 189–190 and their children, 186–191 and visitation, 226 Nordic countries, 567–568 North Korea, 347 Nso, 392

Subject Index 653 Observational learning, 118 Oceania, 19 Office of Child Support Enforcement, 532 Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), 37, 59, 286 Panic disorder, 460 Paraguay, 426 Parent-adolescent relationships, 126–128 Parental capital, 58–59, 76, 84–87 Parental identity, 49–50 Parental leave: in Canada, 529–530 in Europe, 552, 558–571 impact on fathers’ involvement, 569–570 in United States, 536–537 Parental socialization, 37 Parent availability, 224 Parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT), 464 Parent-child relationships, 11, 105–107, 225. See also Father-child relationships; Mother-child relationships; Motherinfant attachments Parenting: after divorce, 201–240 after separation, 588–591 and coping skills, 495 cross-cultural studies, 117–118 degendered, 327 differences in style between mothers and fathers, 119–121 effects of marital conflict on, 161 and father’s masculinity orientation, 33 gender differences in, 35–38 improving quality of, 523–534 intergenerational transmission of, 306–309 in middle childhood, 111 qualitative dimensions, 63–65 research, 82 shared, 402, 584 stepfathers, 282 styles of, 64–65, 82, 121–125 training programs, 464–465 vulnerability, 159 Parenting effort, 417–418 Parenting time, 201–240 defined, 202 empirical comparisons with custody, 213–217 father-child relationship, 225–227 and high conflict, 228–230 how much is necessary, 227–228 recommendations for decision makers, 230–231 research, 217–225 Parent Management Training (PMTO), 284

Parents: cohabiting, 111–112 employment, 108–109, 116 employment and child care, 110–111 quality of relationship and child’s well-being, 110 as role models, 119–121 Parents’ Fair Share, 538 Parliamentary Inquiry of 2003, 581–583 Partible paternity, 426 Pastoralists, 420, 421, 427 Paternal disengagement, 588 Paternal generativity, 50 Paternal identity, 49–50 Paternal importance hypothesis, 47–48 Paternal investment, 421 Paternal involvement, 14–15. See also Involved fathers components of, 68–75 implications for research and practice, 87–88 research on child outcomes, 79–81 revised conceptualization of, 59–68 theoretical linkages with child outcomes, 75–87 Paternal mental health hypothesis, 162–164 Paternal nonresidence. See Absent fathers; Divorced fathers; Single mothers Paternal presence. See Father presence Paternal scaffolding, 4, 104 Paternal sensitivity, 95–97 Paternity certainty, 426 Paternity establishment, 531 Paternity leave, 112, 529, 559–562, 603 Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), 44 Peer relations, child’s, 67, 105, 123, 124 fathers’ role in managing, 86 and marital conflict, 160 Permissive parenting style, 121 Personality development, 368–369 Personality disposition, 30 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), 521, 523 Pervasive developmental disorder (PDD), 497 Philippines, 442 Play, 3, 36–37, 100, 102, 114–115, 116, 117, 120, 125, 424 Polygyny, 391, 420 Portugal, 565 Positive engagement activities, 67, 71–75, 77 Poverty, 21, 38, 40, 283, 296–318, 518–519, 528–529. See also Low-income fathers

654 SUBJECT INDEX Prader-Willi syndrome, 497, 503 Pregnancy Discrimination Act, 536 Pregnancy prevention programs, 540 Prejudice, 327, 330 Pre-School Activities Inventory, 331, 333 Primary Caretaker standard, 204 Prison. See Incarceration Process responsibility, 66, 67, 70–71, 74–75, 87 Promoting Responsible Fatherhood, 538 Proximal process, 82–83, 84 PRWORA, 521, 523 Psychological problems, 20. See also Mental health connections between fathers’ and childrens’, 459–462 East Asia, 369–371 and immigration, 436 Psychosocial generativity, 49 Puberty, 126 Public policy, 21, 517–550 in Africa, 402–404 in Australia, 21–22, 578–614 in East Asia, 355–357 effects on father involvement, 530–537 in Europe, 551–577 Racism, 442, 444 Recreational parenting, 189 Relationship stability, 249–254 Relativistic research, 438 Religion, 252 Remarriage, 17, 274 Research: on African fathers, 396–400 African policy, 402–404 comparative in East Asia, 360–361, 363–364 contextual, 400–402 correlational, 4–5 cross-cultural studies, 117–118, 374–377, 413, 419–423, 438 East Asian in transition, 377–378 empirical in East Asia, 357–361 ethnographic studies, 423–428 evolutionary studies, 416–419 families of children with developmental disabilities, 507–508 immigrant fathers research methodological challenges, 446–450 longitudinal studies on developmental disabilities, 507 longitudinal studies on immigration, 449 longitudinal study on marital conflict, 160–162

longitudinal study on paternal mental health, 163–164 parenting time after divorce, 218–225 qualitative, 500–501 Responsibility, 65–66, 538–539 Responsible Fatherhood program, 532 Responsive Fathers Program, 538 Responsiveness. See Warmth-responsiveness Russia, 442 Same-sex parenting, 18, 322–323. See also Gay fathers; Lesbian mothers Scaffolding, paternal, 4, 104 Secondary fathers, 426 Security, emotional, 168, 169 Self-differentiation, 126 Self-efficacy, 502–503 Self-worth, adolescents, 125 Sensitivity, parental, 95–97, 101, 103 Separated fathers, Australian, 578–614 Separation protest, 99 Sex role development, 4, 6, 119–121 Sexual abuse, 272 Sexual orientation, 331–333 Sexual risk behaviors, 79 Shared custody, 535, 584, 588–591. See also Joint custody Shared parental responsibility, 583, 587 Shared parenting, 402, 582–583 Single mothers, 6–7, 12, 17. See also Absent fathers; Noncustodial fathers; Nonmarital childbearing contact with fathers, 301–302 and poverty, 38, 518, 528–529 Slovenia, 566, 567 Small-scale cultures, 19, 413–434. See also Hunter-gatherer societies Social capital theory, 83–84, 86, 87 Social development: fathers’ influence on, 123 influence of East Asian fathers on, 366–368 Social environment flexibility, 46 Social fathers, 29, 261, 270, 271, 388, 426 Social indirect care, 66, 67, 86, 87 Socialization: and immigration, 444–446 parental, 37 Social policy, 11–13. See also Public policy Social processes, 108–109 Social stratification theory, 438 Social withdrawal, 158 Society: attitudes toward immigration, 441 Socioeconomic disadvantage, 241

Subject Index 655 Socioeconomic status. See Poverty South Africa, 393, 397, 398, 402 South America, 424, 426, 427–428 Soviet Union, 438 Spain, 565 Spanking, 472 Special Improvement Project, 539 Sports, 128 Stability, relationship, 249–254 Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS), 419 Stepfathers, 7, 17, 39, 270–295 closeness with stepchildren, 282 cultural context, 271–272 demographics, 272–275 difficulties of, 272 in Europe, 554 family complexities, 275–280 future research, 285–288 in hunter-gatherer societies, 418 identity construction, 276–278 influence on children, 280–283 policy and programmatic issues, 283–285 relationships with stepchildren, 278–279 relationship with biological fathers, 287 Stress: and divorce, 181–182 and father-infant attachments, 102 in parents of autistic children, 499–500 in parents of children with intellectual disabilities, 491–492 Substance abuse, 128, 246, 252, 259, 460 Substantial and significant time, 586 Sudan, 444 Sure Start programs, 119 Surrogacy, 321, 330 Sweden, 566, 568 Teenage fathers, 247, 300, 540 African, 404 in Europe, 554 Teen pregnancy, 554 Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), 521, 533–534 Theory of mind competence, 123 Therapists, 473–474, 478 Time use studies, 61–62, 556 Transnational culture, 130–131 Trinidad, 418 Trust, 281 Tsimane, 416, 417 Two-parent families, 7–8, 14–15

father-child relationships in, 94–153 and positive child outcome, 38, 42 promoting marriage to increase, 523 U.K. National Child Development Study, 39, 125, 129 UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC), 402 Unemployment, 436 UNICEF, 397–398 Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act, 535 United States: cross-cultural studies, 425 current political and social context of fathers, 518–526 parental leave, 536–537 public policy, 21 Unmarried fathers, 242, 532 African American, 246 characteristics and capabilities, 243–246 characteristics that promote continued involvement, 258–260 and child support, 255–256 compared with married fathers, 244 involvement with children, 254–257 relationships with mothers, 246–254 Unmarried parents, 539–540. See also Nonmarital childbearing; Unmarried fathers Unwed mothers. See Nonmarital childbearing Urban-industrial cultures, 430 U.S. National Survey of Gay and Lesbian Parents, 321 Uzgiris-Hunt scales, 104 Violence, 252, 259 Visitation, 226 Warmth-responsiveness, 5, 63–64, 67, 71, 86, 223 and child outcomes, 77 individual differences in, 97–98 levels and change over time, 73 Welfare: in Canada, 528, 531–532 Welfare law, 521 Welfare reform, 537 Welfare Reform Act, 522 Well-being: adolescent, 226 in families with autistic child, 497–498 parental, 493

656 SUBJECT INDEX Well-being, child: in Africa, 388–412 and child support, 260–261 and divorce, 201–240 and financial resources, 300 and immigration, 444–446 and nonresident fathers, 190–191, 260–261 and parental leave policies, 569–570 and parents’ relationship, 110 stepchildren, 280–283

Women: roles in East Asia, 353–355 status in hunter-gatherer societies, 422 and work in Europe, 554 Work: and public policy in Europe, 551–577 Xhosa, 418 Yanomamo, 418

THE DEFINITIVE REFERENCE ON THE IMPORTANT ROLE FATHERS PLAY IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT TODAY

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dited by Dr. Michael Lamb—the recognized authority on the role of fathers in child development, The Role of the Father in Child Development, Fifth Edition brings together contributions from international experts on each subject to provide a thorough and current summary of the state of fatherhood across cultures, classes, economic systems, and family formations. This classic guide offers a single-source reference for the most recent findings and beliefs related to fathers and fatherhood. This thoroughly updated new edition provides the latest material on topics such as: • The effects of divorce • Fathers from low-income backgrounds • Stepfathers’ lives: exploring social context and interpersonal complexity • Social policy • Gay fathers • Fatherhood and masculinity The definitive book on when, why, and how fathers matter to their children and families, The Role of the Father in Child Development, Fifth Edition is an essential reference for all mental health professionals who endeavor to understand and support fathers in becoming positive influences in their children’s development.

MICHAEL E. LAMB, PHD, is Professor of Psychology in the Social Sciences, Cambridge University, and has served as head of the Section on Social and Emotional Development at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. His current research is concerned with the evaluation, validation, and facilitation of children’s accounts of sexual abuse; the effects of domestic violence on children’s development; the effects of contrasting patterns of early child care on children and their families; and the description of early patterns of infant care in diverse sociocultural ecologies.