Patterns of Father Involvement and Child Development among Families with Low Income.

Susan Yoon,Minjung Kim,Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan,Yiran Zhang,Anika Latelle,Junyeong Yang,Joyce Y Lee,Jingyi Wang

doi:10.3390/children8121164

Abstract

This study examined patterns of father involvement and their relations with social, behavioral, and cognitive development among low-income children < 5 years. Latent class analysis on data from 2650 fathers (Mage = 29.35 years) in the Supporting Healthy Marriages program revealed four father involvement patterns: (1) High positive involvement (48%); (2) engaged but harsh discipline (42%); (3) low cognitive stimulation (8%); and (4) lower involvement (2%). The low cognitive stimulation pattern was associated with greater father- and mother-reported child behavior problems and lower child socioemotional and cognitive functioning. The engaged but harsh discipline pattern was associated with more father-reported child behavior problems. These findings highlight the need for active engagement of fathers in parenting interventions to promote child development.

Highlights

Father involvement is a key family protective factor that is crucial to children’s healthy development [1,2,3,4]
Identifying distinctive patterns of father involvement and their contributions to diverse aspects of child development among families with low income is an important focus of inquiry that can inform the development of interventions to promote healthy development in vulnerable children
Spend one or more hours a day with the child Told that you love? Praised or told him/her that you appreciated something that he/she did? Laughed with? Yelled, shouted, screamed at, or threatened because you were mad at him/her? Hit, spanked, grabbed, or used physical punishment with? Played inside with games or toys Taken the child for a walk or to play outside Sung songs or nursery rhymes with the child Read books or told stories to the child Dealt with the children when he/she did something wrong

Summary

Introduction

Father involvement is a key family protective factor that is crucial to children’s healthy development [1,2,3,4]. Various patterns of father involvement across multiple dimensions of functioning and their unique impacts on healthy child development across the social, behavioral, and cognitive domains remain unclear, especially among economically disadvantaged families. There is preliminary evidence that the positive impact of father involvement on child academic outcomes is stronger for children in families with low income than those in middle- and upper-income families [19]. It is vital to examine whether such benefits of father involvement on child academic outcomes among children in families with low income extend to other domains of development (e.g., social and behavioral) for this population. Identifying distinctive patterns of father involvement and their contributions to diverse aspects of child development among families with low income is an important focus of inquiry that can inform the development of interventions to promote healthy development in vulnerable children

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Conclusion