The Father Involvement and Nurturant Fathering Scales: Retrospective Measures for Adolescent and Adult Children

Abstract

This study provides preliminary psychometric data for two fathering measures, the existing Nurturant Fathering Scale and the newly developed Father Involvement Scale. Both measures are completed from the adolescent or adult child’s retrospective point of view. The Nurturant Fathering Scale assesses the affective quality of fathering that young people perceived while growing up. The Father Involvement Scale assesses the extent to which young adults perceived their fathers to have been involved in different domains of their lives during childhood and adolescence. This study obtained high internal consistency estimates for both the Nurturant Fathering Scale, including both the reported and desired involvement subscales, and the Father Involvement Scale. It is intriguing that the factor structure of the Father Involvement Scale was consistent with Parsons and Bales’s instrumental and socioemotional dimensions of fathering and family life. Implications for the study of father involvement and of nurturant fathering are discussed.