red dot icon
Journal Article This issue of The Future of Children assesses past and current two-generation programs. But it goes much further than that. The editors identified six widely acknowledged mechanisms or pathways through which parents, and the home environment they create, are thought to influence children’s development: stress, education, health, income, employment, and assets. Understanding how these mechanisms of development work—and when, where, and how they harm or help—should aid us in designing interventions that boost children’s intellectual and socioemotional development, strengthen families, and help…
red dot icon
Journal Article This study employs nationally representative data on adolescents and their stepfathers (n=2085) from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine factors associated with positive stepfather-stepchild relationships in married stepfamilies. Results reveal substantial variability in the perceived quality of adolescents' relationships with stepfathers. Structural equation models using Wave I data reveal that close relationships with mothers and close ties between mothers and stepfathers are positively related to the perceived quality of adolescents' relationships with…
red dot icon
Journal Article Grandparents or other relatives are raising over 2.7 million children in the United States; and research suggests that the birth parents of these children maintain varying levels of involvement with them and their relative caregivers. However, the impact of parental involvement on children's developmental outcomes remains largely unexplored. This study sought to understand the role of maternal and paternal involvement (each parent's contact with the caregiver, contact with the child, friendliness to the caregiver, and quality of relationship with the child) on competence levels of African…
red dot icon
Journal Article Father involvement research has typically not recognized that reports of involvement contain at least two components: 1 reflecting a view of father involvement that is broadly recognized in the family, and another reflecting each reporter’s unique perceptions. Using a longitudinal sample of 302 families, this study provides a first examination of shared and unique views of father involvement (engagement and warmth) from the perspectives of fathers, children, and mothers. This study also identifies influences on these shared and unique perspectives. Father involvement reports were obtained…
red dot icon
Journal Article The young adult years raise a number of intriguing questions about the relationship between fathers and daughters. How does the quality of their relationship throughout childhood manifest itself during a daughter's college years? In what specific ways is the 'well-fathered' daughter advantaged compared with daughters who had troubled or distant relationships with their fathers? What aspects of the daughter's college and early adult life are generally more influenced by her relationship with her father than by her relationship with her mother? This review of recent research provides intriguing…
red dot icon
Journal Article The absence of biological fathers in South Africa has been constructed as a problem for children of both sexes but more so for boy-children. Arguably the dominant discourse in this respect has demonized non-nuclear, female-headed households. Fathers are constructed as either absent or 'bad'. Thus it has become important to explore more closely how male care-givers have been experienced by groups of men in South Africa. This article examines discourses of fatherhood and fatherlessness by drawing on qualitative interviews with a group of 29 men who speak about their reported experiences and…
red dot icon
Journal Article The children of Mexican immigrants face formidable barriers to achieving socioeconomic mobility due to their parents? precarious economic position and high rates of unauthorized status. In the short term, Mexican immigrants often coreside in extended household living arrangements with extended kin and unrelated friends and associates to shelter themselves from economic deprivation and insecurity of unauthorized status. Using individual-level Census data, the present study examines how family economic resources relate to household living arrangements. The results are consistent with various…
red dot icon
Journal Article High rates of imprisonment among American fathers have motivated an ongoing examination of incarceration's role in family life. A growing literature suggests that incarceration creates material and socioemotional challenges not only for prisoners and former prisoners but also for their families and communities. The authors examined the relationship between fathers' incarceration and one such challenge: the housing insecurity of the mothers of their children. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 4,125) and a series of longitudinal regression models, they found…
