Father Facts 7 contains the research you need to be more effective in your work to promote involved, responsible, and committed fatherhood. As with past editions, it includes abstracts of the most recent studies, published since the last edition, and helpful tables that organize the data on rates of father absence. For this edition, we added brief summaries at the start of each chapter and section on the state of the research in each area that distills what we know related to that fatherhood-related topic. (Author abstract)
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Journal Article We use longitudinal survey and qualitative information from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine how risk factors such as physical abuse, problematic substance use, and incarceration among unmarried fathers in the study are related to fathers' early involvement with their children. The survey results indicate that nearly half of fathers have at least one risk factor and that each risk is negatively associated with paternal involvement. The results also show that fathers with risk factors are less likely to have romantic relationships with mothers and that relationships…
The Responsible Fatherhood, Healthy Marriage and Family Strengthening Grants for Incarcerated and Reentering Fathers and Their Partners (MFS-IP) initiative was established in 2006 by the federal Office of Family Assistance (OFA), and required grantees serve fathers who were either incarcerated or recently released, as well as their spouses or committed partners. The grantees were required to deliver services to support healthy marriage and were also permitted to provide activities designed to improve parenting and support economic stability. From 2006 to 2011, the 12 MFS-IP sites delivered a…
High rates of incarceration in the United States have motivated a broad examination of the effects of parental incarceration on child wellbeing. Although a growing literature documents challenges facing the children of incarcerated men, most incarcerated fathers lived apart from their children before their arrest, raising questions of whether they were sufficiently involved with their families for their incarceration to affect their children. I use the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N=4,071) to examine father-child contact among incarcerated fathers, and find that most…
High rates of incarceration in the United States have motivated a far-reaching literature examining the effects of parental incarceration on child wellbeing. Although a growing body of evidence documents challenges facing the children of incarcerated men, most incarcerated fathers lived apart from their children before their arrest, raising the question of whether they were sufficiently involved with their families for their incarceration to affect their children. We use the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N=4,071) to examine father involvement among incarcerated fathers, both…
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Journal Article We use longitudinal survey and qualitative information from the Fragile Families and Child WellbeingStudy to examine how risk factors such as physical abuse, problematic substance use, and incarceration among unmarried fathers in the study are related to fathers' early involvement with their children. The survey results indicate that nearly half of fathers have at least one risk factor and that each risk is negatively associated with paternal involvement. The results also show that fathers with risk factors are less likely to have romantic relationships with mothers and that relationships…
This paper utilizes the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to investigate if a father's previous incarceration reduces the stability in the relationship between parents who recently had a child. Our results suggest that parents that were non-co-resident at the time of the birth of their child are 19 percent less likely to cohabit 12 months later ifthe father has been incarcerated. Similarly, non-co-resident couples are 37 percent less likely to be married 12 months after the birth of their child if the father has been incarcerated. (Author abstract).
The populations targeted by the Healthy Marriage Initiative and the Serious and Violent Offender Re-entry Initiative (SVORI) and other reentry programs can overlap considerably. The majority of incarcerated individuals are parents, and of these, roughly a quarter are married and 46 percent were living with their children and presumably their child's mother at the time of their arrest. Marital, cohabiting and parent-child relationships are at especially high risk of disruption when parents are involved in the criminal justice system. For those who want to continue their family relationships,…
