Based on fathers’ responses to an online survey (N = 253), the comparison of the frequency of fathers’ general online activities and online activities for parenting, and the associations between fathers’ demographics and their online parenting activities were investigated. Furthermore, fathers’ attitudes towards online parenting resources, and the purpose for being involved in online parenting activities were explored. Results revealed that fathers engaged in each online activity significantly more frequently for general than for parenting purposes. Fathers’ age, race, education, income and residential area influenced their online parenting behaviors. Furthermore, despite fathers being comfortable using computers, they did not have a positive attitude toward online parenting resources. Implications for parenting education and family professionals are discussed.
In this article, structural equation modeling is used to examine direct and indirect paths between gender-based attitudes, how much fathers were involved in their children’s lives, how much more or less they would have liked to have been involved, and their perceptions of how good of a job they did as a father. Qualitative data are used to help contextualize the quantitative data. Sixty-eight fathers of emerging adults participated. As hypothesized, more egalitarian attitudes are associated with more involvement, which is in turn related to more favorable perceptions of how good of a job they think they did as a father. Less egalitarian attitudes are associated with less involvement, which is in turn related to fathers reporting that they would have liked to have been more involved in their children’s lives.
A sample of college students (N = 129; mean age = 19 years) at a small, religious university in the Pacific Northwest completed questionnaires assessing parental acceptance and rejection, depression, coping, and social experiences. Depression was positively related to perceived father acceptance and inversely related to his rejection, but not to either mother variables. Interestingly, only fathers’ acceptance was inversely related to depression for daughters, whereas only mothers’ acceptance was similarly related to sons’ depression. Mothers’ acceptance was positively related to perceived social support from significant others, whereas fathers’ acceptance and rejection—but not mothers’—were positively and inversely related, respectively, to social experiences with friends. Results highlight distinct associations between father- versus mother-child relationships and young adult socio-emotional outcomes.
The aim of this study was to apply Gee’s theory and method for discourse analysis to arrive at a theory of how unwed, adolescent fathers of Mexican origin talk about fatherhood and how fatherhood discourses reveal aims to attain self-defined social goods, including power, status, and recognition. Face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven participants who were unwed biological fathers of one or more children, 18 or 19 years old, identified as being of Mexican origin and spoke either English or Spanish. Interview data were analyzed using Gee’s 42 questions for discourse analysis. Findings contribute to the literature on biological father absence, fragile families and child wellbeing, and teenage pregnancy from the adolescent father’s perspective.
The lived experience of recently incarcerated fathers and their perception of the impact of incarceration on their relationship with their daughters were explored in this phenomenological study. Thirteen fathers living in transitional housing following incarceration were interviewed about their relationship with their eldest daughter under the age of 18 years. The framework of the study was primarily guided by Moustakas’s Phenomenological Transcendental approach to gain a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of fathers’ experiences through their attitudes, recollections, feelings and perceptions regarding this relationship. Findings reflected fathers reevaluating relationships with women after the birth of their daughters, decision-making about whether to contact their daughters during incarceration and reentry, identifying as their daughters’ protector, recognizing that their incarceration affected their daughters, and experiencing both optimism and apprehensiveness in reconnecting with their daughters during the reentry process. The study shows the need for more research and clinical practice on the special dynamics of father-daughter relationships when a man has been incarcerated.
The transition to first-time fatherhood has been shown to be a stressful time for men and social support is a factor that influences this experience. Research on first-time fathers’ experiences with formal support, such as programmatic efforts like childbirth classes and family education, is limited. This qualitative study explores firsttime fathers’ experiences with formal support, using data from focus groups with fathers and women with whom they co-parent, as well as community consultations with professionals who serve expectant and new parents. The findings indicated there is value in and benefits from formal support and at the same time there are limits in the current forms available for men. Suggestions are made to expand and tailor first-time fathers’ formal support opportunities.
Using a sample of 401 adolescent mothers (16-20 years of age at childbirth) and their firstborn toddlers, we examined relations between father involvement, mother-father relationships, and toddlers’ socioemotional functioning. Mothers reported on father involvement and father-mother relationship quality (support, conflict, intimate partner violence). Children’s behavior problems and social competence were assessed using the Brief Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment (BITSEA). The expected positive influence of high father involvement on toddlers was absent when parents were in conflict, or had high intimate partner violence (IPV). Results are discussed in light of the current emphasis on policies and programs to support father involvement and suggest that enhancing the quality of father-mother relationships may facilitate the potential positive effects of father involvement on children’s functioning.
In this paper we discuss findings from the Transition to Fatherhood Project, as well as other research, to consider how changes in fatherhood may affect men. We first outline how the context of fathering has changed over the past half a century; we focus particularly on non-marital fatherhood, non-custodial fatherhood and multiple- partner fertility. Then, in the second part of the paper, we summarize what the literature can tell us about the employment and health consequences of fatherhood for men in different contexts and the intrinsic benefits from direct involvement with children. We close with a call for more research on the motivations for fatherhood, how fatherhood affects men differently and on how men think about fatherhood. In addition, we call for public policy based on the idea that children need time as well as money from their fathers.
Using data from the Dutch cohort study Generation R (N = 1,523), we investigate to what extent the association between father involvement and toddler's behavioral and emotional problems varies by child's gender. This research addresses important limitations in prior work by (a) differentiating between different father involvement tasks, (b) incorporating a diverse set of behavioral and emotional problems, and (c) using a prospective design to answer our research question. Our findings reveal that the negative association between father involvement and toddler's behavioral and emotional problems only holds for boys, and mainly for behavioral problems. The results showed that it is fathers' relatively stronger involvement in tasks labeled as responsibility which contributed to toddlers' lower levels of behavioral problems.
Expectant fathers in the U.S. frequently accompany their partner to a prenatal ultrasound, yet little is known about how fathers experience ultrasound attendance. This is an important knowledge gap because studies have shown strong and consistent associations between a father’s prenatal and postnatal involvement, and efforts to actively engage fathers at ultrasound may have longitudinal impact. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 22 fathers after ultrasound, analyzed data using principles of grounded theory, and built a conceptual model of how fathers experience ultrasound. Results suggest that ultrasound attendance contributes to paternal feelings of connection to the unborn baby and motivation to change behavior. Ultrasound appointments may offer an opportunity to engage men to promote positive partnering and parenting across the lifespan.
Interacting with infants changes affect and hormones in adult men; do these interactions and their effects also influence aggressive responding? In the present study, we tested 96 men in the Michigan Infant Nurturance Simulation Paradigm (MINSP) using a simulated infant (SI). Men provided saliva samples and responded to baseline questionnaires about health and affect, and then engaged in one of four randomly assigned conditions: neutral, audio cries (taped from infants), SI-R (responsive: (where the SI could be nurtured in ways that ended its crying), and SIN (nonresponsive: where the SI could be nurtured, but its crying could not be ended). After this, they viewed a neutral film video as a time filler, and then engaged in an aggressive responding task. Our results showed that hearing audio cries increased testosterone relative to baseline and the other conditions, and that the SI conditions increased negative affect relative to the other conditions. We found that the audio cries condition elicited more aggressive responding than the other conditions, but only marginally so. However, the hormonal changes were not associated with different patterns of aggressive responding. Results are discussed in light of biopsyschosocial pathways from nurturant and challenging infant interactions to psychological, hormonal, and behavioral outcomes.
Since the 1970s, fathers have experienced a new set of expectations for their role. Fathers are now expected to be more involved with the hands-on daily caregiving of their children. Perhaps because of these changing expectations, more men are choosing to be stay-at-home fathers than in previous generations. Very little sociological research exists about stay-at-home fathers’ ideas about fatherhood in the U.S. In particular, how do such men conceive of their status as stay-at-home fathers and of fatherhood? I explore these questions through in-depth interviews with men from locations across the United States. My study shows that stay-athome fathers enact fatherhood in ways that may be starting to transform traditional and new ideals of fatherhood.
Demographers have historically studied fertility with reference to female populations. As bearers and prime nurturers of children, women have been more reliable sources of data, and their lives are more strongly impacted by parenthood. Greater concern with men’s role in fertility decision-making and child socialization has, however, lately focused more attention on measuring male fertility. This paper estimates age-specific and total paternity rates for Australia during 1976-2010. Australia has long published ages of fathers for marital births, but from 1976, with cohabitation proliferating, also began publishing them for non-marital births where paternity was acknowledged. The methodology developed here estimates annual paternal age distributions for non-marital births where paternity was not acknowledged, enabling age-specific and total paternity rates to be estimated and compared with female fertility rates.
This article examines how moral norms shape fathers’ ability to choose their care commitments. Drawing upon semi-structured interviews with 21 Swedish fathers, it considers the ways men negotiate moral intelligibility vis-a-vis the prevailing ideals of fatherhood and masculinity when accounting for their decisions to either exercise or not their right to parental part-time work. The analysis shows fatherhood to be heavily permeated by moral norms. The constraints these norms impose upon and the possibilities they offer for present-day Swedish fathers’ agency when choosing and articulating their commitments are investigated. The moral discourses the fathers engaged with allowed for various ways of doing “good fatherhood” to be made morally intelligible, either enabling or excluding part-time work as a morally possible option.
Research increasingly indicates that father involvement during pregnancy influences outcomes for mothers, fathers, and children. However, little is known about what factors are associated with prenatal involvement. Here, the idea of fathers’ possible selves was used to guide an investigation of the importance fathers assign to becoming a parent and mothers’ expectations of father competence, and their individual and interactive associations with father reports of prenatal involvement. Neither variable was associated with prenatal involvement individually, but the interaction term was significant. When mothers viewed fathers as competent parents, fathers were uniformly highly involved. However, when mothers reported low levels of perceived father competence, then the level of prenatal involvement was significantly associated with fathering importance. Findings are discussed in terms of the need for dyadic research as well as their implications for interventions.
Personal, relational, and contextual characteristics were examined to explain paternal involvement by an ethnically diverse sample of young men at-risk for poor parenting due to psychosocial factors. Ninety-one young fathers (M= 21.6 years) of young children (M = 17.1 months) participated at Time 1; 64 were in the longitudinal sample. Half did not have a high school education; incomes were working poor levels or below. Data were collected at two time points 8 months apart through interviews and questionnaires administered in the participants’ homes. Level of paternal cognitions was the strongest predictor of father involvement. Fathers reported that job/school was often a barrier to involvement; the children’s mothers were seen as gatekeepers or gateopeners and own mothers were seen as facilitators of involvement.
Results of a qualitative study of low-income men’s experience with the provider role are reported here. This study explored how 47 low-income men construct, express, and negotiate their identities as fathers and providers, and perceived barriers presented by the provider role. Overall, fathers consistently expressed the need to redefine the provider role in to include social and emotional components. Additionally, fathers articulated the many barriers and social pressures they experience as a result of the provider role, and how these barriers create an environment that is detrimental to their attempts at being a father, and how this could lead to their disengagement from the lives of their children.
Studies of incarcerated men frequently describe their incapacitation as fathers. This phenomenological study challenges the notion that fathering must necessarily go dormant in prison. It provides a sensitive look at the lived experiences of one particular father who has maintained contact with his daughter over the past 18 years of his incarceration. By carefully disclosing his daughter’s presence (real and imagined) in his day to day ‘doing time’ in prison, the study explores how temporalities—the experience of presences, pasts, futures, etc.—are essential structures in the decidedly non-dormant being of fathers, and profoundly shape the way prisoners orient toward or away from life, hope, and despair. Implications for prison-based parenting and family literacy projects are discussed.
Using qualitative data from Project SIZE—a study that explores child and family well-being in the context of HIV/AIDS and poverty, we interviewed the female caregivers of 20 9- to 10-year-old children and 16 of the father-figures nominated by children. We consider how childhood experiences with fathers are associated with women’s expectations and men’s experiences of fathering. Data were analysed thematically in pairs of the focal child’s caregiver and father-figure. Data from four women who were not paired were analysed individually. Results generally support both the modelling and the compensatory hypotheses to explain intergenerational influences on men’s fathering attitudes and behaviour. Our results go a step further to acknowledge that fatherhood is dynamic and, in rural KwaZulu-Natal, it is influenced also by socio-cultural and economic factors, societal expectations, fathermother relationship and individual characteristics of men.
This study was designed to examine connections among father beliefs, perceptions, context, and involvement, and school-aged children’s attachment and school outcomes in the U.S. and Taiwan (n = 274 father-child dyads). Fathers completed questionnaires regarding their family demographics, education-related beliefs, perceptions, and involvement, and children’s school achievement. Children completed a pictorial measure of attachment and standardized socio-emotional assessments. Father involvement was related to father beliefs and perceptions and to children’s attachment-related secure exploration. Children’s positive and negative school outcomes were related to father beliefs, perceptions, involvement, and children’s attachment. School outcomes were uniquely predicted from nationality, attachment, father-teacher relationship quality, and fathers’ beliefs about teachers, motivation for involvement, perceptions of invitations for involvement, efficacy, and school-based involvement, as well as from family income and mother involvement. Results are discussed in the context of “relationship-focused” education.
