Coparenting and Children’s Adjustment to Divorce: The Role of Geographical Distance from Fathers

After divorce, shorter distances between parents’ homes are often seen as facilitating nonresident fathers’ involvement with their children, good coparenting practices, and children’s well-being. However, few studies have explored how geographical distance relates to coparenting and children’s adjustment. Moreover, the direction of causality remains unclear, as uninvolved fathers due to paternal disinterest, maternal gatekeeping, or interparental conflict are more likely to move farther away from their children. Based on a probability sample of 144 divorced mothers of school-aged children living in Geneva, Switzerland, this study explores how the distance between parents’ homes relates to maternal promotion of the father–child relationship (cohesive coparenting) and children’s emotional and behavioral outcomes. Results show that cohesive coparenting relates more to frequent father–child contacts by phone or e-mails than to residential proximity. Both cohesive coparenting and fathers’ residential proximity have positive and independent effects on children’s adjustment. Children whose fathers live nearby exhibit fewer behavioral difficulties and more prosocial behavior than children whose fathers live far away. These findings suggest that frequent contacts by phone or e-mail can substitute for distance in coparenting, but geographical proximity still matters for fathers’ contribution to children’s well-being. Overall, this study recommends that spatial and mobility dimensions should receive more attention in divorce research.     

Fathers’ Commute to Work and Children’s Social and Emotional Well-Being in Germany

Using the German Socio-Economic Panel study, we addressed the main question: Is fathers’ commute to work associated with increases in child social and emotional well-being as measured in Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaires? If so, would this association be mediated by reduced time spent with children or moderated by change in family income due to commuting? The findings show that fathers’ daily commute to work was associated with more peer relationship problems, and it also appeared to be linked to more emotional symptoms and greater hyperactivity in children. Fathers’ weekly commute was also linked to child emotional problems. The likelihood of having peer relationship problems in children increased with the distance of fathers’ daily commute to work. This is one of only two studies on this important topic and much further research is warranted.     

Paternal Incarceration and Children’s Social-Emotional Functioning at Age Nine: Why Fathers’ Violence Matters

Research documents the consequences of parental incarceration for children’s well-being, and studies have begun to explore heterogeneity in parental incarceration’s influence on child outcomes. This study investigates the effect of paternal incarceration on children’s social competence. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal study of new parents in urban areas, I examine (1) the effect of recent paternal incarceration on multiple measures of children’s social-emotional functioning, including children’s social competence, and (2) whether fathers’ violence against mothers and children weakens the effect of recent paternal incarceration on children’s social-emotional functioning. The results from propensity score and multivariate regression analyses show that recent paternal incarceration is detrimental to children’s social-emotional functioning, in general. However, for some indicators of children’s social-emotional functioning, the effects of recent paternal incarceration depend on whether fathers are abusive.     

Noncustodial Fathers Following Divorce

Noncustodial fathers are men whose parental rights and obligations have been altered through judicial action, usually accompanying marital separation and divorce. In the majority of divorces, physical and legal custody of children is taken from fathers and reassigned to mothers only. Despite the curtailment of their decision-making authority and despite the limitations imposed on their day-to-day presence in their children’s lives, in the majority of divorces fathers retain the duty to provide economic support for their minor children. The bulk of quantitative research on the post-divorce involvement of men as noncustodial fathers is structured by explora- tion of the interrelationships among these parameters: child custody awards, visitation privileges and performance, child support awards and compliance, and child well-being. The documentation of important linkages between child support compliance and child outcome have focused both social science and legislative attention on means to foster greater paternal acceptance of responsibility for children. Research using open-ended interviews and smaller surveys of limited samples have been of great importance in providing a richer understanding of the noncustodial father-child relationship. To retain(or for some, to build for the first time) a meaningful paternal relationship, men are challenged to find new ways to confront issues of autonomy, connectedness and power. However, societal supports for moving beyond the traditional polarization of genders and roles through which families have been organized are sorely lacking. The ways in which men respond to the changes precipitated by divorce are influenced by a number of factors related to their own self-definition as well as to the broader social context in which they operate. In order to design psychoeducational or therapeutic interventions that allow noncustodial fathers to adapt in ways that are beneficial to themselves and ultimately to their children, an awareness of these factors is imperative.     

Dads care too! Participation in paid employment and experiences of workplace flexibility for Australian fathers caring for children and young adults with disabilities

This study uses Australian survey data to explore whether caring for children and young people with disabilities affects paid employment participation of fathers who identify as the secondary caregiver. More fathers in the study were in full-time employment than those in the general Australian population, but they worked fewer hours, often in jobs they did not enjoy or roles with less responsibility. Over one third of fathers reported that caring had impacted on their job opportunities or career progression, particularly those whose children had more severe disabilities. The financial costs of raising a child with disabilities and their caring obligations informed many of the decisions fathers made in relation to employment. Fixed hours of work, lack of understanding from their employer, an income tied to hours worked and staff resources were cited as reasons why almost half of the fathers felt they were unable to access flexible working conditions to assist with their child’s care. Self-employment was seen by many fathers as desirable, but the perceived increase in flexibility may be accompanied by an increase in work hours. Implications for paternal well-being are discussed, along with the lifelong implications of caring on employment and financial security for families in the Australian context.     

Indebted Relationships: Child Support Arrears and Nonresident Fathers' Involvement With Children

Low‐income, nonresident fathers owe a disproportionate amount of child support arrears, creating potential challenges for these fathers and their family relationships. This article uses mediation analysis to provide new evidence about how and why child support debt is related to paternal involvement using information from 1,017 nonresident fathers in the Fragile Families Study. Results show that child support arrears are associated with nonresident fathers having significantly less contact with children, being less engaged with them in daily activities, and providing less frequent in‐kind support 9 years after the birth. This negative association between child support debt and father involvement is most strongly and consistently mediated by the quality of the relationship between the biological parents. Although child support policies are designed to facilitate fathers' economic and emotional support, these results suggest that the accruement of child support debt may serve as an important barrier to father involvement.     

Evening and night work schedules and children's social and emotional well-being

ABSTRACT

An emerging body of evidence shows that parents’ non-standard work schedules have a detrimental effect on children's well-being. However, only a limited number of studies have investigated mediating factors that underpin this association. Likewise, only a few studies have examined the impact of fathers’ non-standard work schedules on children's well-being. Based on data from the Families in Germany Study (FiD), this study aimed to address these research gaps. The sample consists of parents and their children at ages 7–8 and 9–10 (n?=?838 child observations in dual-earner families). The data were collected in the years 2010–2013. Non-standard work hours were defined as working in evenings and or at night (every day, several times a week, or changing as shifts). Children's social and emotional well-being was measured with the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). The findings show that both mothers’ and fathers’ evening and night work schedules are linked to an increase in children's externalizing and internalizing behavior and that this association is partially mediated by mothers’ and fathers’ harsh and strict parenting, with a stronger mediation effect for fathers parenting.     

Social Fathering in Low‐Income,African American Families with Preschool Children

Although research increasingly focuses on nonresident biological fathers, little attention has been given to the role of other men in children's lives. The authors examine the factors associated with social father presence and their influence on preschoolers' development. Findings indicate that the majority of children have a social father and that mother, child, and nonresident biological father characteristics are all related to social father presence. These associations differ depending on whether the social father is the mother's romantic partner or a male relative. The social father's influence on children's development also depends on his relationship to the child. Male relative social fathers are associated with higher levels of children's school readiness, whereas mothers' romantic partner social fathers are associated with lower levels of emotional maturity.     

Joining formative evaluation with translational science to assess an EBI in foster care: Examining social–emotional well-being and placement stability

This study examined measures of placement stability and social–emotional well-being for a federally-funded demonstration project of inhome Parent Management Training-Oregon model (PMTO) for children in foster care with serious emotional disturbance (SED). Following a cultural exchange framework for translational research and a tollgate approach to evaluation, this formative study tested these measures prior to further investment in summative evaluation. The research aim was to observe whether measures of social–emotional well-being and placement stability performed as expected. Using a pretest–posttest randomized consent trial, children identified as SED within six months of entering foster care were randomly assigned to PMTO or to a services-as-usual comparison group (N = 121). A multi-group structural equation model was tested to observe the relationship of baseline social–emotional wellbeing and placement stability on post-test social–emotional well-being. Results showed that post-test well-being was significantly predicted by baseline well-being for both groups and, importantly, only the intervention group demonstrated significant effects of placement stability on post-test well-being. For the intervention group, as placement stability increased, post-test social skills significantly improved, demonstrating an association between well-being and placement stability that was not evident in the comparison group. Overall, wellbeing measures performed as expected and detected relationships between variables and variation as hypothesized. Additionally, placement stability may have been mediated by the PMTO intervention. In conclusion, by using a real world example of the translational research concept of cultural exchange between university-based researchers and agency-based practitioners, this study shows that formative evaluation offers an important opportunity to test ad hoc research questions inspired by the process of implementation itself.     

Fathers matter: involving and engaging fathers in the child welfare system process

Research suggests that children with involved and engaged fathers tend to have more positive outcomes relative to physical, cognitive, and social emotional health. Of children who become involved in the child welfare system, involving multiple parents in the case (e.g. mother and father) often results in a greater chance of a child returning home, fewer placement episodes, and reduced trauma that may be caused by separation anxiety. With the rise of single parenting homes (which are mostly maternal) in the United States, child welfare agencies are examining the efficacy of engaging multiple caregivers (esp. fathers) in the child welfare process. Research suggests that in order to involve fathers in child welfare processes, practices and policies must be intentional in implementing systems and protocols that encourage involvement of all parents regardless of relationship status of the parents. However, few child welfare agencies are required to inquire about fathers or involve fathers in the child’s case. The purpose of this paper is to highlight efforts of the Connecticut Comprehensive Outcome Review (CCOR) process and discuss challenges and lessons learned from interviews and listening forums/focus groups that included social workers and fathers who are involved in the child welfare system in the state of Connecticut. Recommendations and considerations on engaging and involving fathers are discussed.     

Pathways Among Marital Distress,Parental Symptomatology,and Child Adjustment

A community sample of 295 mothers, fathers, and children (M age = 11.14 years, SD = 2.32 years) rated marital distress, maternal and paternal psychological symptoms, and child adjustment. The predicted direct relations between these family and child variables were demonstrated for both fathers and mothers. Tests of pathways among these variables were conducted for separate but complementary mediation models. Maternal and paternal symptoms mediated the association between marital distress and child adjustment. Marital distress mediated the link between fathers’ symptoms and child adjustment, but the direct pathway between mothers’ symptoms and child adjustment remained. Pubertal status was modestly related to higher levels of family stressors. Joint implications of marital distress and parental symptoms for child adjustment are discussed.     

Parents' Affect,Adolescent Cognitive Representations,and Adolescent Social Development

Prior research regarding the role of parent‐child relationships in children's social development generally has been limited to concurrent or short‐term longitudinal data and has focused primarily on mothers' influence in the early or middle childhood years. Using a multimethod, multiinformant design, the present study extends previous findings by examining whether maternal and paternal affect predicted adolescent social behavior and peer acceptance 2 years later. Both maternal and paternal affect had significant direct and indirect effects (via adolescent cognitive representations of parents) on adolescent negative social behavior as reported by siblings, which in turn predicted decreased peer acceptance as rated by teachers. Findings suggest that both mothers and fathers shape adolescent social development and attest to the importance of exploring multiple pathways that may account for continuity in parent‐child and peer relationships.     

Parenting Practices of Resident Fathers: The Role of Marital and Biological Ties

This paper uses data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 2,098) to examine differences in the parenting practices of four types of resident fathers, defined by their biological relationship to a focal child and their marital status with regard to the focal child's mother. Regression results suggest that biological and social (i.e., stepfathers or mothers' cohabiting partners) fathers differ significantly, and in some unexpected ways, on most measures of parenting. However, a considerable portion of these differences can be explained by variation in the background characteristics of the individuals and families in each group. Additionally, difference-in-difference analyses reveal a stronger link between marriage and higher quality parenting practices among social fathers than among biological fathers.     

Job burnout and affective wellbeing: A longitudinal study of burnout and job satisfaction among public child welfare workers

Workplace experiences that threaten the affective well-being of child welfare workers pose a hazard to child protection organizations as a whole. This study tests a series of proposed interrelationships of workplace demands and resources as predictors of burnout development and the subsequent impact of burnout on affective worker well-being (e.g. job satisfaction) using longitudinal data collected from a sample of public child welfare workers. This study uses multi-group path models to test hypotheses about the temporal order of the relationships between work demands and resources, burnout, and job satisfaction. The hypothesized models were tested individually by social support in the workplace and specialized child welfare training. The overall theory-driven conceptual model tested performed as was hypothesized with some noteworthy exceptions. Findings from the multi-group path models suggest that the type and level of job resource moderate the relationship between job demands, burnout and job satisfaction. Job demands had diverging effects on several relationships in the model with the exception of two relationships. The relationships between emotional exhaustion and depersonalization and emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction were consistent across all groups and models. This finding suggests that regardless of social support and specialized training, emotional exhaustion is positively related to depersonalization and negatively related to job satisfaction. All models demonstrated good model fit. This article describes the implications of study findings on future research and workforce management practices in child welfare organizations.     

Male kinship caregivers: Do they differ from their female counterparts?

Few studies have been conducted about male caregivers in general and even fewer about male caregivers who provide care for their relative's child when the child is in the custody of the child welfare or child- and family-serving systems. This exploratory study examined the motivations, parenting capacity, readiness, stress and strain, family support, and perceptions of child well-being of male caregivers and compared their experiences with those of their female counterparts. The study also compared the experiences of caregivers in different family roles (i.e., adult siblings, grandparents, aunts/uncles) to determine if gender differences exist. Results show a high level of capacity and ability of male caregivers and a relatively low level of stress and strain. Significant differences were not gender-defined; instead, as it pertains to caregiver capacity, stress and strain, and perceptions of child well-being, differences were distinguishable by such sociodemographic characteristics as marital status, educational attainment, number of children being cared for, ethnicity, and income. Practice, policy and research recommendations are offered.     

Children's Affection Toward Fathers: A Comparison between Japan and the United States

Abstract Previous studies on fatherhood have focused primarily on the extent of paternal involvement from fathers' point of view and the impact of such involvement on children. These studies report that the level of paternal involvement varies depending on such factors as the fathers' ages, and the mothers' employment hours and income, and that the active participation by fathers has a positive impact on children's emotional and cognitive development. The current study not only focuses on paternal involvement but also on questions rarely addressed in the previous studies. How do children perceive the extent of fathers' involvement with them? Are their perceptions highly correlated with the report made by fathers? Further, how does paternal involvement influence children's affection toward fathers? In this paper, these questions are examined using a cross-national data collected in Japan and the United States. The major findings of the survey indicate that the levels of paternal involvement perceived by children and fathers are not as strongly correlated as were expected both in Japan and the United States. In both countries, children who spend more time with their fathers and who are younger and girls express more affection toward fathers. A cross-national difference was found with respect to the impact of social network on children's affection toward fathers.     

Exploring long-term economic well-being and child outcomes with the Supplemental Poverty Measure: evidence from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics

This study is the first to use the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) to reexamine the relationships between long-term economic well-being and child outcomes. We decompose the differences between the Official Poverty Measure (OPM) and the SPM and examine such relationships with 15 cognitive, physical, and social–emotional outcomes for 754 ten- to nineteen-year-olds as reported in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) 2007 Child Development Supplement. Using PSID data from 1998 to 2006, we measure long-term economic well-being using the average natural logarithm of the ratio of family resources to the poverty threshold with a series of models, beginning with the OPM and converting it step-by-step into the SPM. We find that some steps in constructing the SPM, especially including in-kind benefits and using the SPM thresholds, weaken the relationships between our economic well-being measure and the cognitive outcomes, although including in-kind benefits strengthens the relationships with many of the physical and social–emotional outcomes. Better understanding the relationships between different poverty measures and outcomes of interest can open new avenues for research on mitigating the adverse effects of poverty and could perhaps allow us to better target interventions to individuals who are at greatest risk for adverse outcomes.     

Breaking the intergenerational transmission of child abuse: Beyond the mother-child relationship

Studies comparing abusive and non-abusive parents who were abused as children are reviewed to determine protective factors that may lead to a break in the transmission pattern. Non-abusers have several factors in common. For instance: they have extensive emotional and social support from significant others. they are aware of what happened to them as children and are openly angry about their abuse. and many of them received (psycho)therapy as adolescents or young adults. Discovering protective factors by which some parents overcome a family pattern of abuse is valuable in guiding both prevention and intervention efforts. A brief discussion of the influence of methodological variations of different studies on reported transmission rates precedes the review. Furthermore. attention is given to the underrepresentation of (abusive) fathers in theory as well as in research on child abuse. The effects of undervaluation of gender differences are discussed in terms of their importance in the occurrence and (breaks in the) transmission of child abuse.     

Adolescents’ Daily Experience of Fathers’ Emotional Support and Self‐Evaluation in Korea

Recently, fathers’ role in children's development has been recognized internationally. In Asian countries, similar conversations have emerged but there has been a lack of empirical studies that considered the unique cultural contexts. As a response, based on Bronfenbrenner's process‐person‐context‐time model, the present study examined the daily dynamics and individual differences in the experience of fathers’ emotional support and self‐evaluation in social roles among 283 Korean adolescents in 5th and 8th grade. Through Hierarchical Linear Modeling, within‐person associations between adolescents’ experience of fathers’ emotional support and self‐evaluation in social roles on the same day and the next day were found, with individual differences by grade level and family affluence. Theoretical and practical implications within the relevant cultural context are discussed.     

Children's exposure to paternal imprisonment: Incidence, evolution, and correlates among young nonmarital children

Although the well-being of nonmarital children has been the focus of recent public policy developments and academic research, relatively little is known about the risk of paternal imprisonment among these children. Particularly in a context of declining public assistance, the unprecedented imprisonment rate may place additional stress on nonmarital children if a substantial portion of their fathers are incarcerated and therefore unable to provide support. Research on this topic has been impeded by methodological difficulties, such as the lack of representative data on nonmarital children's fathers, and inaccurate or insufficient information on fathers' incarceration. Using unique combined administrative data sets from Wisconsin that largely overcome these methodological obstacles, I provide improved estimates of paternal imprisonment risk among young nonmarital children. I distinguish between point-in-time and cumulative risks and assess the length of paternal imprisonment, first considering only biological fathers and then also including the mothers' other partners. I also estimate the risks separately by socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. Results suggest that nonmarital children face a high risk of paternal imprisonment, a substantial proportion also face an elevated risk of lengthy paternal imprisonment, and the racial disparity in risk is significant.