Father Involvement

Myth -- A father's involvement is crucial for the well-being of a child.

Fact: "While it would be a seemingly obvious proposition to most of us, that fathers' consistent and substantial involvement in child care would benefit the child, this appears to have not been well established. The relationship between paternal involvement and children's well-being seems to be mediated by a number of other conditions that involve the father, the mother, and the child. In other words, increased paternal involvement does not automatically result in improved child outcomes. Nor is it clear whether the father's involvement provides unique nurturance that can not be as readily provided by substitute caregivers."

THE MEANING OF FATHERHOOD Koray Tanfer, Battelle Memorial Institute; Frank Mott, Ohio State University; Prepared for NICHD Workshop "Improving Data on Male Fertility and Family Formation" at the Urban Institute, Washington, D.C., January 16-17, 1997, http://aspe.os.dhhs.gov/fathers/cfsforum/apenc.htm

Fact: "In 38 studies published since 1990, researchers examined linkages between children's well-being and their relationships with nonresident fathers. In general, these studies do not provide strong support for the belief that visitation with nonresident fathers benefits children. Of the 24 studies that included data on the frequency of contact, only 10 (42%) found that contact significantly predicted some aspect of children's well-being. Other studies focused not on contact but on how close children feel to their fathers. Of these 10 studies, only 3 found significant associations in the predicted direction. Taken together, these studies suggest that the frequency of visitation and children's feelings about their fathers are not good predictors of children's development or adjustment."

William Marsiglio, Paul Amato, Randal D Day, Michael E Lamb (2000) Scholarship on Fatherhood in the 1990s and Beyond Journal of Marriage and Family 62 (4), 1173-1191.


Fact: "The primary aim of this study is to assess how multiple dimensions of nonresident father involvement are associated with different dimensions of adolescent well-being... studies provide some limited evidence that nonresident father-child closeness and authoritative parenting practices may contribute to adolescent well-being independently of the mother-child relationship. All these studies, however, also report that the quality of the mother-child relationship has a stronger, more consistent effect on adolescent well-being than the father-child relationship... The effects of nonresident father involvement on adolescent well-being found in this study are clearly modest. This finding is consistent with the meta-analysis by Amato and Gilbreth (1999) showing that when it comes to nonresident father involvement, although feelings of closeness and indicators of authoritative parenting have the strongest influence on child well-being, the effects are generally modest... Our results also reveal that the quality of the mother-child relationship has stronger, more consistent effects on adolescent well-being than the nonresident father-child relationship. This finding does not negate the importance of nonresident fathers, but it does highlight the crucial role that the mother-child relationship plays in children's well-being..."

Valarie King, Juliana M Sobolewski (2006) Nonresident Fathers' Contributions to Adolescent Well-Being Journal of Marriage and Family 68 (3), 537-557.

Fact: "[P]aternal involvement is likely to have predominantly positive consequences only when it is the arrangement of choice for the particular family."

Lamb, M. E., Pleck, J. H., & Levine, J. A. (1987). Effects of increased paternal involvement on fathers and mothers. In C. Lewis & M. O'Brien (Eds.), Reassessing fatherhood: New observations on fathers and the modern family (pp. 109-125). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Fact: "Research on the impact of father involvement on children provides evidence that high levels of paternal participation tends to increase children's cognitive competence, empathy, and internal locus of control. These children are also characterized by reduced sex-stereotyped beliefs. However, these positive outcomes may result because of the fact that the fathers sampled wanted to be and enjoyed being involved in childcare, not just because they were involved per se."

Lamb, M. E. & Oppenheim, D. (1989). Fatherhood and father-child relationships: Five years of research. In S. H. Cath, A. Gurwitt, & L. Gunsberg (Eds.), Fathers and their families (pp. 11-26). Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.

Fact: "[I[nfants with less involved fathers were significantly more attached to their mothers than were infants with highly involved fathers."

Keith, H. (1993). Paternal involvement in relation to quality of infant-mother attachment, paternal role and frequency of infant contact with their children. Dissertation Abstracts International, 53, 3807.

Fact: "The salutary effects of being raised by two married, biological parents depend on the quality of care parents can provide. Using data from an epidemiological sample of 1,116 5-year-old twin pairs and their parents, this study found that the less time fathers lived with their children, the more conduct problems their children had, but only if the fathers engaged in low levels of antisocial behavior. In contrast, when fathers engaged in high levels of antisocial behavior, the more time they lived with their children, the more conduct problems their children had. Behavioral genetic analyses showed that children who resided with antisocial fathers received a "double whammy" of genetic and environmental risk for conduct problems."

Sara R Jaffee, Terrie E Moffitt, Avshalom Caspi, Alan Taylor (2003) Life With (or Without) Father: The Benefits of Living With Two Biological Parents Depend on the Father's Antisocial Behavior Child Development 74 (1), 109-126.

Fact: "Public attention and social policies have focused on fathers living apart from their children because of rising concerns about the consequences of this arrangement for child well-being (Cabrera & Peters, 2000). A father's absence from the household, however, does not necessarily mean that he is absent from his child's life (King, 1994). A significant number of nonresident fathers still maintain ties with their children (Amato & Sobolewski, 2004), and recent evidence indicates that when fathers maintain an active presence in their children's lives and foster close bonds with them, their children appear to benefit (Amato & Gilbreth, 1999)."

Juliana M. Sobolewski, Valarie King (2005) The Importance of the Coparental Relationship for Nonresident Fathers' Ties to Children Journal of Marriage and Family 67 (5), 1196-1212.


From the Liz Library.