Scholarship on Fatherhood in the 1990s and Beyond

Throughout the 1990s, scholars interested in fatherhood have generated a voluminous, rich, and diverse body of work. We selectively review this literature with an eye toward prominent theoretical, methodological, and substantive issues. This burgeoning literature, complemented by social policy makers' heightened interest in fathers and families, focuses on fatherhood in at least 4 key ways. First, theorists have studied fatherhood as a cultural representation that is expressed through different sociocultural processes and embedded in a larger ecological context. Second, researchers have conceptualized and examined the diverse forms of fatherhood and father involvement. Third, attempts have been made to identify the linkages between dimensions of the father‐child relationship and developmental outcomes among children and fathers. Fourth, scholars have explored the father identity as part of a reciprocal process negotiated by men, children, mothers, and other interested parties. Our review highlights research that examines the relationships between dimensions of the father‐child relationship and children's well‐being and development. We conclude by discussing promising avenues of scholarship for the next generation of research on fatherhood.     

Fatherhood regimes and father involvement in France and the UK

This paper contrasts and compares the institutional framework for fatherhood and father involvement and the survey evidence relating to fathers’ contribution to childcare and domestic work in the two countries. It shows that while men's contribution to such activities appears to be increasing in both France and the UK, change is slow and father involvement does not necessarily seem to correlate directly either with patterns of female labour force participation or with the support offered by the institutional framework. The authors explore the theoretical frameworks most appropriate for explaining their findings and situate them primarily in terms of Pfau-Effinger's theorization of the gender arrangement (1998, 2002, 2004). The authors conclude that while change in father involvement is slow, the introduction of statutory and organizational work–life balance measures which alter the gender order open up opportunities for negotiated change in the division of the labour in the home.     

Adulthood depression, anxiety, and trauma symptoms: a comparison of women with nonabusive, abusive, and absent father figures in childhood

We collected data from 447 women (aged 18 or higher) from seven domestic violence programs and five substance use disorder treatment programs in a midwestern state. Women who reported a nonabusive natural/adoptive father or stepfather (N=185), abusive natural/adoptive father or stepfather (N=200), or absent father figure (N=40) were compared on a series of mental health measures with multivariate analysis of variance and pairwise post hoc comparisons using the Bonferroni test. Women with absent father figures were found to have significantly lower mean scores on the Beck Anxiety Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory, and Trauma Symptom Checklist-40 (TSC-40) than women with abusive fathers. There were no significant differences between women with absent father figures and women with nonabusive father figures on the Beck Anxiety Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory, and TSC-40. Implications for research, practice, and policy are discussed.     

Women watching together: An ethnographic study of Korean soap opera fans in the US

To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic of American cultural–legal studies, and it offers in Atticus Finch an iconic hero who, as Stephen Lubet suggests, is popular culture's most important embodiment of lawyerly virtue. As other scholars have noted, however, To Kill a Mockingbird is not just, or primarily, a law story. Rather, Scout Finch's portrait of Atticus as a father is regarded by many as the key to the text's cultural resonance. Told as a daughter's memory of her father, her brother, and the town in which she grew up, the text frames the era's conflicts over race, gender, and justice through the lens of Scout's admiration for Atticus. From our perspective, however, it is the conjunction of lawyer and father that fuels To Kill a Mockingbird’s appeal and importance, and in this paper we argue that such a conjunction, particularly in its filmic incarnation, provides an opportunity to explore the role that fathers and fatherhood play in cultural imaginings of law and in exemplifying the various faces of law's power. We argue that Atticus Finch is a father/lawyer committed to a particular vision of fatherhood and law, one in which both can transcend, if not transform, the context in which they exist, one in which orienting oneself to the future takes precedence over controlling the present, one in which the temporal horizon of law and fatherhood is kept firmly in view. In the figure of Atticus, To Kill a Mockingbird suggests that law and fatherhood are powerful and yet limited in their power, and that both exist in the present but are oriented towards an as yet unrealized future.     

Does Fatherhood Matter for Men?

Ignored in the flurry of new research on fathers is that fatherhood may have consequences for men. This article explores possible effects on the lives and well‐being of men for a range of fatherhood experiences. Data are drawn from the National Survey of Families and Households. The first part of this article examines whether men's varied associations with children (no children, coresident, non‐coresident, and stepfatherhood) are associated with men's psychological health and behavior, social connections, intergenerational family relations, and work behavior. We found strong evidence that fathers differ from nonfathers in their social connections, family relationships, and work behavior. There is significant variation in effects among the father types as well. The second section of this article focuses attention only on men who are fathers and examines whether fathering behavior (e.g., the amount of time and nature of the activities that fathers are reported to be spending with their children) is associated with men's well‐being. The effects of father involvement on men was found to be most significant for those who were living with their own children.     

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.     

Does Adherence to Masculine Norms Shape Fathering Behavior?

Research suggests that many fathers struggle balancing hegemonic masculine norms with new fatherhood ideals. This study uses data on 2,194 fathers from a national study on fathers of children aged 2 to 18 and incorporates a comprehensive assessment of masculine norms to examine whether adherence to masculine norms is associated with father involvement and whether this relationship is mediated by fathers' adherence to the new fatherhood ideal that promotes engaged, nurturing parenting. Results suggest that fathers who more closely adhere to masculine norms are less involved in instrumental and expressive parenting and are more likely to engage in harsh discipline than fathers who are less masculine. Adherence to masculine norms also reduces the likelihood of embracing the new fatherhood ideal, and adherence to the new fatherhood ideal at least partially mediates the relationship between masculinity and father involvement. Overall, despite changing expectations for fathers, hegemonic masculine norms continue to shape fathers' behavior.     

Fathering latina sexualities: Mexican men and the virginity of their daughters

Mexican men have been traditionally misrepresented in or omitted from fatherhood scholarship, sexuality and reproductive health‐related research, and immigration studies. Based on in‐depth tape‐recorded interviews with 20 immigrant men living in Los Angeles, this study examined Mexican fathers’ views of virginity as they educate their daughters in the United States. Results indicate that fathers’ perceptions of a daughter's virginity are shaped by regional expressions of patriarchy and masculinity, and the socioeconomic segregation of inner‐city barrios. Protecting their daughters from a sexually dangerous society and improving their socioeconomic future is of greater concern to these men than preserving virginity per se. These men's narratives challenge stereotypical images and archetypes of the Latino macho father.     

Mothers' empowerment and father involvement in child health care in Bangladesh

With the advent of a couple-approach to health, particularly in the arena of reproductive health and child health, father involvement in child health care has become an important focus of preventative health. This study assesses the association between mothers' empowerment variables and father involvement in childcare in Bangladesh using data from a subsample of 903 women from the Couples Dataset of the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2011. Father involvement in child health care was measured as a count variable enumerating the number of specific events during which the father was present: child's last doctor's visit, child's immunization, and birth. Poisson regression was conducted to assess the association between empowerment and demographic variables and father involvement. Results indicated that mothers' household decision-making power and age above 45 years, and fathers' age, fathers' education, and family wealth were significantly associated with father involvement. The study concludes that older and more educated fathers with family wealth and whose wives denied having household decision-making power were more likely to be involved in their children's lives than their counterparts.     

Fathers' involvement and the impact on family mental health: evidence from Millennium Cohort Study analyses

This paper reports evidence from the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) on the relationship between fathers' involvement and the mental well-being of mothers, fathers and children. Drawing on previous research, we use a tripartite definition of father involvement: engagement, accessibility and responsibility. After searching 14 databases and websites, we screened for applicability, coded, quality assessed and synthesised the evidence. The majority of studies focused on ‘accessibility’ in terms of family structure or on ‘responsibility’ in terms of father employment. Overall, the studies suggest that aspects of fathers' involvement can positively influence both maternal and child mental well-being; fathers' mental health was only analysed in relation to one aspect of involvement: parental or father employment was found to influence fathers' mental well-being positively. Further MCS-based research is recommended to examine the impact of fathers' involvement on their own mental well-being, as well as the broader impact of a more active or ‘modern’ fatherhood model encompassing engagement and an understanding of responsibility beyond the breadwinning role.     

Like a Parent and a Friend,but Not the Father: A Qualitative Study of Stepfathers’ Experiences in the Stepfamily

Research about the experience and position of stepfathers in stepfamilies is scarce. Using data from semi‐structured interviews with eight stepfathers, we aim to explore how stepfathers experience family life and their relationships with their (step)children and extended family members (biological father and grandparents), as well as how they describe their position within the stepfamily. Interpretative phenomenological analysis revealed three main themes: most participants saw themselves ‘like a parent and a friend.’ While none of them considered themselves as ‘the father’ – this position being assigned to the biological father – they described acting like a parent or a father figure in their relationships with the children. Secondly, despite some difficulties in the initial stages of formation of their new families, most participants described a positive evolution over time and were satisfied with their current family situation. Thirdly, the stepfather's positioning towards non‐cohabiting family members such as the biological father and grandparents added complexity but was managed well. Research findings are discussed in light of the current family therapy literature on working with stepfamilies.     

Beyond the dyad: Including the father in separation-individuation

As a result of changes in family role distribution generated by the Women's Movement, many fathers are participating more directly in the care of their infants and young children. To be responsive to this change in the ecology of parenting, clinicians must reconsider and update traditional formulations about fatherhood toward, an expanded theoretical perspective for learning about and helping families. Using Mahler's phases of separation-individuation as an organizing conceptual framework, the author, reviews recent theory and empirical findings regarding the role of the father in preoedipal development and discusses some implications for social work practice.     

Managing the Multifather Family: Stepfathers as Father Allies

Drawing on qualitative in‐depth interviews with 46 stepfathers, we explore how stepfathers characterize the biological father and their relations with him. We focus specifically on instances in which stepfathers directly and indirectly act like a father ally; that is, they presumably help the father sustain or improve his relationship with his child. Our analysis generates theoretical insights about father ally properties (development, purpose, awareness level, reciprocity routines, building trust/respect, and social capital) while discussing conditions that either facilitate (male bonding, avoiding the threshold of discomfort, stepfather’s romantic relationship security, father’s perceived worthiness, and having biological children) or could foster (mother as gatekeeper/mediator, quality of stepfather‐child relationship) its expression. We consider how stepfathers conceptualize and display a cooperative interactive style reflecting a less traditional masculine self. Our study illustrates some of the interpersonal complexities associated with stepfamily fatherhood in the United States.     

The History of Research on Father Involvement

SUMMARY

Both our understanding and operationalization of fatherhood and father involvement have changed over time. Fatherhood has always been a multifaceted concept, although over time the dominant or defining motif has shifted in turn from moral guidance to breadwinning to sex-role modeling, marital support, and finally nurturance. As a result of these changing concepts, the extent of father involvement has been viewed and indexed in different ways at different times. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, at a time when societal concerns about the effects of fatherlessness were coming to the fore, social scientists also became much more interested in quantification of concepts such as father involvement, motivated in part by the emergence and popularity of time-use methodologies. This prompted a shift from a focus on qualitative dimensions (such as masculinity and dominance) to quantifiable dimensions (the amount of time spent by fathers with their children). This led to a restricted focus on paternal nurturance with little if any attention paid to the other functions or aspects of fatherhood. The narrowly focused view of fatherhood that resulted, ignored subcultural variation in the definition and understanding of fatherhood. Social scientists are only now beginning to seek a broader and more inclusive understanding of fatherhood-efforts that should permit more insightful research on the effects of variations in performance of the relevant roles.     

Nonstandard parental employment schedules and father involvement

This study assesses the impact of nonstandard employment schedules (shift work) on parenting among US fathers of young children in dual-earner couples. The outcomes examined include total caregiving, caregiving without the mother present, and the elements of father involvement proposed by Pleck: positive engagement, warmth, and control. Models with latent variables and with lagged dependent variables are estimated using three waves of nationally representative data from the Early Child Longitudinal Study – Birth Cohort. The results indicate that employment scheduling mainly shapes the context in which involvement takes place. Compared to dual-earner couples who are each employed during the day, fathers in couples in which at least one parent has a nonstandard schedule tend to care for their children more in the mother's absence. To a more limited extent, they also do more caregiving overall. These effects are most conclusively found when the father works during the day and the mother works during the evening, when the mother works during the day but the father works a night, split, rotating, or other shift, and when both parents have nonstandard schedules. Parental work schedules, however, have little impact on father involvement aside from care.     

Near and Far

In this paper we distinguish between two measures of contact between children and their non-residential fathers: whether or not the children have seen their father in the previous year, and how many weeks the children stayed with their father. The distinction between the two is important because there are many aspects of a parent-child relationship, some of which may be met during shorter contacts, and others which may be nurtured during an extended visit at the father's house. Using data from the 1987-88 National Survey of Families and Households we find that having a legal agreement regarding joint custody is positively related to the number of weeks that a child stays with his/her father. Children are more likely to see their fathers if there is a legal child support agreement and the father pays child support, which indicates that paying child support and seeing the child are complementary activities. This pattern is reversed for the number of weeks the child stays with the father, which gives support to the hypothesis that non-residential fathers substitute one activity for another. This research highlights the need for careful consideration of different measurements of contact between non-residential parents and children in order to understand more fully the dynamics of families following divorce.     

The Father Friendly Initiative within Families: Using a logic model to develop program theory for a father support program

The transition to fatherhood, with its numerous challenges, has been well documented. Likewise, fathers’ relationships with health and social services have also begun to be explored. Yet despite the problems fathers experience in interactions with healthcare services, few programs have been developed for them. To explain this, some authors point to the difficulty practitioners encounter in developing and structuring the theory of programs they are trying to create to promote and support father involvement (Savaya, R., & Waysman, M. (2005). Administration in Social Work, 29(2), 85), even when such theory is key to a program's effectiveness (Chen, H.-T. (2005). Practical program evaluation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications). The objective of the present paper is to present a tool, the logic model, to bridge this gap and to equip practitioners for structuring program theory. This paper addresses two questions: (1) What would be a useful instrument for structuring the development of program theory in interventions for fathers? (2) How would the concepts of a father involvement program best be organized? The case of the Father Friendly Initiative within Families (FFIF) program is used to present and illustrate six simple steps for developing a logic model that are based on program theory and demonstrate its relevance.     

DIFFERENT CLASSES,DIFFERENT FATHERS?

This paper discusses how social class and different economic conditions influence men's parenting. The paper is based on a qualitative study of 30 Swedish couples who live together with their biological children. The study shows that, despite the generosity of the Swedish welfare state and family subsidies, both internal and external economic conditions affect the way men construct their fatherhood. This was shown most clearly in the couples’ discussions around parental leave where parents under economic pressure often distributed the leave in a gender-traditional way. It was also apparent how traditional class patterns and structures still have a strong influence on today's parenthood. Fathers in working-class households often saw fatherhood as creating meaning in their lives and saw the process of becoming a parent as an explicit aspiration to establish something ‘natural’, well known and predictable. Fathers in middle-class households, on the other hand, considered fatherhood as something new, a reflexive project or an opportunity to develop their identity and to get to know new sides of themselves. In practice, these different ways of creating meaning in fatherhood are illustrated by the finding that working-class fathers tend to take up fewer parental leave days and uphold more traditional patterns of family life than fathers in middle-class households.     

Family Structure,Father Involvement,and Adolescent Behavioral Outcomes

Research has shown that living away from one's biological father is associated with a greater risk of adverse child and adolescent outcomes; yet, the role of the father‐child relationship in understanding this association has not been directly investigated. This study uses data on biological fathers’ relationships with their children from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 2,733) to assess whether father involvement mediates the relationship between family structure (i.e., father absence) and four measures of adolescent behavior. Differences in father involvement are shown to account for a sizeable fraction of the variance in outcomes by family structure. Father involvement does not affect boys and girls differently but is more beneficial when the father lives with the adolescent.     

Public Policies and Father Involvement

SUMMARY

The last two decades have been marked by a series of social and policy developments that are changing both how men see themselves as fathers and how policies conceptualize and encourage their involvement in the lives of children and families. This paper focuses on several areas of intersection between research on fathers and policy. The paper first summarizes the research that led to the current political and social interest in fathers. The paper then describes the Fatherhood Initiative, a set of activities that stemmed from a 1995 memorandum from President Clinton. This Initiative led to coordinated efforts by U.S. Federal Statistical agencies to collect better data about fathers. The paper concludes with a discussion of what we know about the effects on father involvement of policies such as welfare reform, child support, work place policies, responsible fatherhood programs, and other fatherhood interventions. Examples of new programs and initiatives on father involvement are also given.