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Journal Article A cohort study was conducted to examine the association between father involvement and child neglect. Participants were recruited from an inner-city pediatric primary care clinic and a clinic for children at risk for human immunodeficiency virus infection in a teaching hospital. Child neglect was measured via home observation, a videotaped mother-child interaction, and child protective services reports. A father or father figures was identified for 27 percent of the 244 five-year-old children participating in the study. Rates of neglect ranged between 11 percent and 30 percent. Father absence…
Preliminary data from the Fragile Families survey were analyzed to examine the impact of incarceration on marriage and family structure. The study specifically considered the characteristics of married and unmarried fathers at risk of imprisonment. Men who have been incarcerated are less likely to be married than men who have never been in prison. Former inmates were also less likely to have a relationship with the mother of their child at the child's first birthday. Regression analysis with incarceration as a dummy variable supported the finding that a history of incarceration negatively…
Soul searching can provide an in-depth understanding of the father's changing role in the family, the language of fatherhood, paternal contributions to child security, and the need to nurture androgyny. This chapter highlights the mythic and spiritual perspectives of these issues that should be integrated with social science and human studies in fatherhood research and policy. It explains that fatherhood is an act of faith in the acceptance of paternity and the social expectations of its meaning. The social expectations are derived from Biblical myths and common views about the callings of…
This chapter assumes a developmental focus to provide a psychological perspective of father involvement. A key element of this objective is to recognize how difficult it is to define the complexities of father involvement. Father involvement includes such relationship components as direct interaction, availability, and the managerial function, all of which are conceptually distinct. Other issues worthy of careful consideration are the context of father involvement, processes used to index involvement, and dimensions of involvement. In addition to examining father involvement from a…
This booklet helps men fulfill their responsibilities as parents with insight into fair discipline, children's physical and emotional needs, maintaining good relations when they live apart from their children, and more. (Author abstract)
This monograph describes Creating Lasting Family Connections (CLFC), a multifaceted youth substance abuse prevention program designed to promote the healthy development of youth at risk for alcohol and other drug abuse. Chapter 1 discusses the need for alcohol and other drug prevention initiatives, reviews historical trends in substance abuse treatment and prevention, and examines the impact of motivations on prevention practices. Chapter 2 reviews resiliency theory, the theoretical basis for the development of the CLFC program, and Chapter 3 describes the components of the CLFC program. Main…
Report, Other
As part of the Child Support Performance and Incentive Act of 1998, Congress established a medical child support working group to identify barriers to medical support enforcement and to recommend ways to address them. This webpage report is an effort to provide greater background on one such barrier - the lack of access by many nonresident parents to employment-based health care coverage. The report develops a national estimate of the extent to which nonresident fathers have access to employment-based health care coverage, and considers the potential for increasing the number of children…
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Journal Article Administrative data was used to compare pre-reform and post- reform cohorts of teenage parents regarding the impact of reform on welfare enrollments, case closures, child maltreatment, and subsequent births. The relationship between mandated living arrangements to outcomes was also examined. Cohort differences were observed in enrollments and reasons for closure, but not in maltreatment or birth rates. Living arrangements were found to be associated with case closure. 12 references and 2 tables. (Author abstract)
The commissioner of the first independent commission on children in Australia, established in Queensland in 1996, presents an overview of the agency's child and family welfare efforts and describes a new program to encourage support for fathers. The aim of the Focus on Fathering Project is to increase understanding about the importance of fathers in children's lives and to promote fathering education and support programs. The program takes a multidisciplinary approach to the problems of fatherless children and high-risk families, with a strong educational aspect and a research component to…
Unpublished Paper
The Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study is designed to collect information about the men who father children outside marriage and the nature of their relationships with their children and their children's mothers. The research will follow a new birth cohort of approximately 4,700 children, including 3,600 children born to unmarried parents representative of nonmarital births in each of 20 cities and in U.S. cities with populations over 200,000. Both mothers and fathers will be followed for at least 4 years, and in-home assessments of children's health and development will be carried…
