Urban American Indians: A Comparison of Father Involvement Predictors across Race

Abstract

Father involvement in families of urban American Indians has been a neglected area of research. In this study, the authors examined the associations among parental relationship quality, father involvement, and coresidence. The authors conducted a multiple group analysis through structural equation modeling comparing 107 American Indian fathers with fathers of the general population in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Although the results were similar between groups, findings indicated two key differences for urban American Indians. First, emotional supportiveness had a stronger relationship with physically active engagement for American Indian fathers. Second, parental relationship quality had greater total standardized effects on American Indian father engagement than did coresidence. When developing culturally sensitive supports to increase American Indian father involvement, these findings imply that this will be best achieved through increasing the couple's relationship quality.